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We All May Have a Little Martian In Us
coondoggie writes "Men are supposed to be from Mars as John Gray's iconic relationship book would have you think, but new research presented this week suggests that in reality; we all may hail from the Red Planet. 'The evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock. It's lucky that we ended up here nevertheless, as certainly Earth has been the better of the two planets for sustaining life. If our hypothetical Martian ancestors had remained on Mars, there might not have been a story to tell,' Professor Steven Benner of The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology said."
So it's a slow news day wherever this was written. It seems they pull this recycled article out of the garbage somewhere every couple months. Yes, we "might" be from Mars. That isn't news. I think I saw a special on it on TV in 1998.
Gonna need proof there was life on Mars or that whatever life we have here somehow came from Mars.
I'm not saying it was aliens, but...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I ain't descended from no martian!
Jeebus.
Pretty speculative. Oxidized molybdenum is crucial for the formation of life? How could he possibly know that?
It's required for bovine life, at least. After all, you can't have a cow without MoO!
The sun used to be significantly dimmer billions years ago, maybe putting Venus firmly within the Goldilocks zone of habitability.
So we don't have even a scrap of evidence that there was ever life on Mars, but evidence is "building" that we come from there. No, that's not science.
And how are organic molecules going to turn into tar in the presence of ample water and little heat (such as the case on the surface)? He seems to have neglected that high levels of liquid water (yet another oxide, but one which was prevalent in the early Earth environment) also inhibits the formation of tar.
The only argument against water as the tar-inhibitor agent is that it is "corrosive" to RNA. But which of these three compounds (including oxides of boron and molydenum) are currently found in living cells in quantity?
Now we are going to have a whole bunch of cults thinking the Garden of Eden is on Mars.
I didn't need that.
This falls squarely into the category of Hypothesis. Professor Benner hasn't even found a way to test it yet. Therefore it falls into the subheading of Interesting Speculation but nothing more.
Among the many, many things he would have to prove, and this is just for starters:
1). "Oxidized molybdenum could not have existed on Earth in early Earth history." While it's widely accepted that the early Earth had low oxygen levels, it does not follow that oxidized molybdenum could not have existed. There are a couple of ways I can think of without even trying.
2). "Oxidized molybdenum was essential to the formation of life." This is unproven.
3). "Tar is antithetical to life." Well, tar exists now and so does life. Some organisms even consume tar. At any rate it seems overstated and rash to claim that the formation of tarlike compounds would prohibit the formation of life.
4). "Mars was hospitable to the formation of life at that time while Earth was not." Really? How? They were far more alike than dissimilar. My argument is weak but so is Professor Benner's, and he's the one who has to prove his hypothesis.
5). "O2 was essential to the creation of oxidized molybdenum, essential to life." This becomes a paradox. There is widespread agreement that high levels of O2 is indicative of life, not a precondition for it. If that were true, and oxidized molybdenum were essential to life starting, then life could not start to produce the O2 necessary for it's creation.
6). "Transfer of life from Mars to Earth happened at the time observed in the archeological record." This will be a tough one to nail down. It's plausible but that's all.
7). "Reverse seeding of life, from Earth to Mars, did not happen." This may be easier to support. Earth's gravity well is greater than Mars. However ruling it out will be extremely difficult.
8). "The archeological record shows common morphology, and ideally common biology (including genetics) between Earth and Mars." This will have to wait on archeological data from Mars.
I understand that my paraphrases of Professor Benner's position may not correctly reflect his true beliefs. If so, I await correction and will withdraw them as appropriate.
Or known is the USA as "Five Million Years to Earth", had this plot although a little more "out there" -- but it essentially claimed that we were all descended from Martians. They came here in a spaceship and integrated their DNA into the indigenous life-forms and presto, that's where we came from.
BTW: If you've never seen this film, it scared the crap out of me as a kid. I didn't sleep for a week. It still sends chills down my spine.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
we also might be from Uranus, I'm sick of this zombie story.
Molybdenum doesn't require free molecular oxygen to oxidize. It can steal the oxygen from other sources.
By the way, when did molybdenum become crucial for life? Did the earliest life require it? I would like to see some proof here.
He wasn't disagreeing with the expounding of the hypothesis(sic), he was mocking. There's a difference.
Fantastical ideas with tenuous at best support deserve mockery.
If you find this even vaguely scientifically credible here are some questions to think about:
It's certainly possible but conjecture this wild without the evidence to back it up is just hard science fiction not science.
It's conjecture, no more, and weak at that.
The Martian soil is full of really nasty chlorine compounds that would make it hard for living things to grow in it. Are they saying those compounds weren't there back then?
We All May Have a Little Martian In Us
And if you don't but would like to imagine you do, just google for "Marvin the Martian Rule 34".
POPPYCOCK!!
I always wanted to say that, so thanks for a post that made that possible.
-- L8R, guitardood
The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one...
The atomic number of Molybdenum is 42!
Double reply, sorry.
By the way, you can notice almost every major scifi show with aliens and space travel, tends to have humans be either:
A) A fabrication from aliens
B) Inferior creatures that learned their science from superior aliens
C) Aliens that came to earth and became humans
Also notice how the advanced space race is never humanity (except in one or two exceptions I can think of), and how humanity is always used to deliver some sort of half-assed eco/social critical message. We are too greedy and war-like and destroy nature! Human fiction keeps repeating that faulty aesop ad-nauseam.
In short, humanity thinks too poorly of itself. Fiction nails that down and also increases that belief. We aren't worthy of being a successful lifeform, we had to have had some help. Or so they think. If it's not God, it's aliens or extinct superbeings we stole our genetics and knowledge from.
Alternatively, this gives some people an excuse to say we didn't evolve from primates. We evolved from aliens/alien bacteria, not a chimp! Of course we can't be related to simians!
I don't always read astronomy news, but when I do, I read it on NetworkWorld.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
If these martian organisms can survive the journey why are they still not covering Mars? The surface of Mars is far, far more hospitable to life than the cold, hard, irradiated vacuum of space. Indeed space probes going to Mars have to be disinfected because there are terran micro-organisms that would thrive there. For your story to be correct you have to explain what sterilized the surface of Mars and removed all signs of life from it (or at least hid it well). It seems far, far more probable to me that live evolved here on Earth by a mechanism that we still imperfectly understand.
For starters, we don't want any Terran organisms contaminating the research, so naturally the equipment is disinfected. That doesn't presume that those organisms would thrive or last for thousands or years or more, but they'd last long enough to compromise and muddle the research.
A few decades in interplanetary space is probably no worse, if not better, than a billion years on Mars. Mars, unlike Earth has no magnetic field, nothing to protect it from the solar wind, radiation, and coronal mass ejections over that vast expanse of time, except a very thin atmosphere, and that's not enough - even a hundred years compared to a billion is nothing.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.