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."

Comments

slow news day

[slashmydots]

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.

Re:slow news day

[oodaloop]

Yes, let us never speak of this again, regardless of whatever new evidence is found! Evar!

Re:slow news day

[girlintraining]

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.

Actually, the "we came from Mars" thing has been around since the 1600s, ever since we observed there were other planets and imagined life on them. Of course, back then, we burned people at the stake for such ideas... whereas today it's just a piece of pleasant fiction written for a hot summer day.

I guess that's progress.

Re:slow news day

[oodaloop]

Um, it does say "new research" in the first sentence of both TFS and TFA. True, we have not yet set foot on Mars. But are suggesting this means there is NO EVIDENCE from Mars? Besides which, if a rock matches the chemical composition from our nearest neighbor, it kind of narrows things down. Maybe these scientists know a thing or two about what they're doing.

Re:slow news day

[rahvin112]

The life we know needs certain things, in particular liquid water. That exists very few places. Mars is proven at this point to have had liquid water in the past, none of the other places has.

On the other hand the force necessary to hurl a chunk of mars off the planet would likely kill even microscopic life in the containing object. I find it silly that people are suggesting that could happen. I imagine that an impact of significant enough magnitude to eject rocks from the surface into space would liquify the rocks (and thus killing everything on them) before they were ejected into space. Even if it didn't liquify them they would be heated to thousands of degrees by the instantaneous change in velocity needed to reach exit velocity. Even if you could come up with some bizarre circumstance that could get life bearing rocks into space the radiation between earth and mars would kill almost anything that wasn't 10's or 100's of feet buried in rock. So eve if it's survives the exit and is buried deep enough to survive the journey what on earth sustains it for the journey? It's not like it would have packed a knapsack. Even with food the temperatures would be near zero and very little life can survive being frozen.

To me what kills the idea is just how impossible the odds are. You have several near impossibilities all combined to move life from one planet to another.

Re:slow news day

[tibit]

very little life can survive being frozen

On the contrary, and Samantha Wright please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd think a whole big hunking lot of single-cellular life can in fact survive being frozen. I mean, come on, human fucking sperm even does. Never mind that frozen life is well, frozen. While the DNA repair mechanisms are dormant, so are the copying mechanisms. Bacteria can live quite deep within porous rocks. I'm not exactly sure if it's really necessary for ejecta to be always heated up to sterilization. Now I'm not saying that this little life-from-Mars theory has got any legs to stand on just yet, but your arguments don't really do much to discount it, I don't think.

Re:slow news day

[Longjmp]

To be fair, you are certainly correct about the freezing part.
However, GP's other points remain valid. Not much survives the heat of an impact, even less (molten) debris ejected into space. Simple organic molecules are destroyed easily with heat (and radiation), not even talking about (primitive) life forms.
As for the article, we can safely assume that probability of life originating from Mars is about the same as amino acids from "outer space" hitting the earth - or the remains of FSM's tomato sauce.
In other words, pure fantasy.

Re:slow news day

[icebike]

And not that many years ago, the FBI insisted their scientists could tell you if the bullet that killed someone came out of the same box of bullets found in the suspects house, based on a spectral analysis of the lead in the bullet.

They had a whole bunch of scientists willing to swear to this in court under oath.
And it all turned out to be utter and complete bullshit. More than one defendant got out of prison on that one.

You can not know the origin of a random rock from outer space that lands someplace on earth. You can't even tell with certainty where a random rock from earth originated.

Re:slow news day

[ColdWetDog]

People have made credible arguments for survival of micro organisms in large chunks of rock. The rock acts as an ablative shield - pieces burn off and protect the rest of the rock by transferring heat. Episodes such as the Late Heavy Bombardment could have dumped enormous chunks of planetary remains on other planets. An organism safely ensconced in meters of rock might well survive the trip.

The molybendum part I'm a bit concerned about. Sounds like a huge leap but I'm unable to come up with a copy of the lecture so all we have is this near useless summary. Remember, this guy is one of the founders of synthetic biology and has been mentioned as a candidate for a Nobel Prize. That doesn't mean he's right by any means, but he's liable to have put a bit more thought into this than the hive mind here.

Re:slow news day

[Maritz]

And not that many years ago, the FBI insisted their scientists could tell you if the bullet that killed someone came out of the same box of bullets found in the suspects house, based on a spectral analysis of the lead in the bullet.

Non sequitur. Did anyone claim the lead was not from Earth?

They had a whole bunch of scientists willing to swear to this in court under oath. And it all turned out to be utter and complete bullshit. More than one defendant got out of prison on that one.

Non sequitur. Don't care.

You can not know the origin of a random rock from outer space that lands someplace on earth. You can't even tell with certainty where a random rock from earth originated.

You can't know anything with certainty. So what. They make arguments, and I find theirs compelling whereas I find yours more akin to ignorance mongering.

To clarify, I don't think life originated on Mars. I do think it's reasonable to think that meteorites identified as being from Mars are from there, mainly because of ratios of gases found in the rocks lining up with the composition of the Martian atmosphere (e.g. here). If you don't think that's reasonable then fine, but if I were to bet it wouldn't be your way.

That's about all I have to say it on it. Thanks ;)

Re: slow news day

[barlevg]

Actually, how science usually works is that someone uses those results in their own research. And if the new results don't jive, one of the first steps is to verify the old research. If the old research can't be verified, they can publish and make a name for themselves out of refuting the previous work.

Re:slow news day

[symbolset]

Waterbears can be dehydrated, frozen to only a few degrees Kelvin, and in that dehydrated frozen state withstand 100 g acceleration, hard vacuum and radiation without ill effect, on contact with liquid water reanimating. They can do so for at least a decade and thousands of years is not beyond reason. And that is not RNA, nor a bacterium. It is a complex animal. There are life forms that actually prefer extreme environments like this.

Re:fossil fueled debate

[XxtraLarGe]

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...

I ain't descended...

[joocemann]

I ain't descended from no martian!

Jeebus.

Re:oxidize this

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Ugh

[khallow]

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?

Hypothesis

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Hypothesis

[jc42]

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.

Actually, some astronomers looked at this back in the 1970s, and concluded that at the bacterial level, Earth to Mars travel is fairly easy, and has almost certainly been going on since early in the Solar System's history.

The mistake people are making is thinking that impacts ejecting rocks are the way that bacterial would make such trips. The astronomers examined and verified the effectiveness of an entirely different mechanism. The Earth (and all the planets with atmospheres) has a "cometary tail" produced by the solar wind. This tail is mostly gases, of course, but it also includes a small proportion of dust-like particles. It turns out that this includes bacterial spores, which have been found at all levels of the Earth's atmosphere, and have probably been there for a few billion years.

The Earth's cometary dust tail is thin, but it is of interest to astronomers. Taking pictures through a haze of air and dust is more difficult than avoiding the air and dust, so some astronomers need to keep track of our planet's tail and avoid it when possible.

Anyway, measurements back in the 1970s did show that the Earth's dust tail contains small particles the size of bacterial spores, and since they exist in our upper atmosphere, they are to be expected in the tail. How long they can survive in space isn't well understood, but tests in orbit have shown some rather good survival rates of the spores when exposed to conditions near our planet.

So the solar wind has been pushing small quantities of Earth's air outward for a few billion years, and that includes assorted tiny dust particles and bacterial spores. This has to have "contaminated" all the outer planets with Earth's bacteria for all that time. Whether they've survived anywhere else isn't known, but Mars is the most likely place.

Some of the astronomers have also calculated the spread of our dust tail outside the Solar System. Most of it does escape eventually, and gets lost out in interstellar space. We make an orbit around the galaxy roughly every 220 million years, so since life arose on Earth, we've been spraying the galaxy with our bacterial spores for around 15 to 20 orbits.

How such spores survive out there, nobody knows, of course. But it's an interesting thing to consider when the "panspermia" hypothesis comes up. Any planet that develops bacterial life will, probably within a billion years or so, start spraying them out into the galaxy like we do, possibly contaminating any compatible planet anywhere else in the galaxy over the next few billion years.

(I recently read somewhere an estimate, based on current measurements of the solar system's dust, the likelihood of spores from Earth hitting Earth-size planets around stars at various distances. The numbers were nonzero, but I took them all with a grain of salt -- also included in the dust -- since so little is known about the reality of interstellar space and the likelihood of a spore surviving a trip that may last a few million years.)

Plenty of oxygen

[mschaffer]

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.

Dubious Evidence

[Roger W Moore]

As far as I can tell the article mentions that research has found one thing that might help in the formation of early life. They combine this with what evidence there is of the conditions on both Earth and Mars 3.5 billion years ago (and for Mars I imagine that is highly sketchy) and leap to the conclusion that life may have originated on Mars.

If you find this even vaguely scientifically credible here are some questions to think about:

• Is highly oxidised molybdenum the only possibility that could assist in the formation of early life or the only one they have found so far?
• How certain are we of the conditions on Earth 3.5 billion years ago everywhere on the planet? What about deep ocean trenches - even if the surface lacked oxygen did these areas?
• How certain are we that the conditions required existed on Mars 3.5 billion years ago?
• How likely is it that an organism which evolved under the conditions required would survive a journey from Mars to Earth on a blasted out chunk of rock? We can find organisms now on Earth that might make the journey but out planet is teeming with a vast array of life - if a similar diverse array of life was present on Mars why hasn't some of it survived? It seems strange that none of these organism could survive on the surface of Mars now and yet survive a meteor impact followed by years in the cold vacuum of space ending with a fiery entry through Earth;s atmosphere.

It's certainly possible but conjecture this wild without the evidence to back it up is just hard science fiction not science.

Re:Dubious Evidence

[AvderTheTerrible]

Its because the organisms being talked about are likely some form of bacteria or similarly simple single celled organism. There are many, many varieties of that kind of life, and there seems to be at least one microorganism that can survive in almost every extreme condition short of raw flame, and I'm not even certain if that would stop them forever.

So, this is how I see it having gone down:

Life evolved on mars as single cellular organisms and those organisms spread all over the planet, including places where it was extremely warm, and places where it was chillingly cold. Some of those hardy organisms started to work their way deeper and deeper into some rocks in an exceptionally frigid part of the planet, where they lived, if not thrived, highly adapated to the cold, to the point where they could survive being frozen during the coldest parts of the martian year.

One day, during one of the several bombardments of the solar system by meteors and comets and whatnot, something struck the martian surface near these organisms hard enough to accelerate the rock they were living in out of mars' gravitational field. Coincidentially, this rock was also large enough that when it would eventually enter earths atmosphere, enough of it would survive that not every little organism in it would be fried from the re-entry heat.

So this rock floats in space and the little organisms in it get frozen. And I mean really frozen. Phillip J. Fry frozen. Because, you know, it's actually cold in space. And this rock drifts around, going who knows where for thousands, millions, maybe even billions of years, until it gets caught in earths gravity well. It falls down the well, hits the atmosphere and the outer layers start burning off, and the rest of it starts to warm up. The little organisms in the center of the rock get thawed out, and when the meteor hits one of the early earths primordial seas, some of these little organisms start to slip out of the micro-fractures that were inflicted on whatever remains of their rock.

Those little organisms find for themselves an environment that is alien, but useable. And they thrive. If not off the bat, then within a few generations thanks to how fast single celled organisms can evolve. At some point we get primordial earths first figurative algae bloom, and suddenly the seas are full of em! They start sucking up the methane and other gasses that were present in the early earths atmosphere, coughing out oxygen, and eventually the oxygen in the atmosphere exceeded the earths capacity to store it in rocks and we started to get an oxygenated atmosphere. The seas turned from green to blue as other gasses were driven out of the oceans and replaced by oxygen, and stuff started evolving until one day we arrive at a discussion where some people can wrap their heads around the plausible, yet highly speculative possibility that maybe life did in fact start on Mars instead of Earth, and other people simply can't handle such an awesome idea.

Re:Dubious Evidence

[symbolset]

This is a good story. Sharpen it by learning more about the primordial atmosphere composition, because you have that part exactly backward. Still, nicely done.

Re:Dubious Evidence

[Woek]

Exactly! Whenever I see claims that life started on Mars (or was brought here on meteors) I wonder why there is even a need for those hypotheses. You need pretty strong evidence that life COULDN'T have started on earth to resort to such a much less likely theory...

Personal fantasy posing as science.

[Oligonicella]

It's conjecture, no more, and weak at that.

Perclorates

[jeremylichtman]

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?

It's really the origin of life!

[greichert]

The atomic number of Molybdenum is 42!

NetworkWorld

[booch]

I don't always read astronomy news, but when I do, I read it on NetworkWorld.