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Oxygen-Rich Liquid Water May Exist on Mars (scientificamerican.com)
Brines suffused with the life-giving gas could offer hope for past and even present microbes on the Red Planet, according to a new study. From a report: New research suggests our neighboring world could hide enough oxygen in briny liquid water near its surface to support microbial life, opening up a wealth of potentially habitable regions across the entire planet. Although the findings do not directly measure the oxygen content of brines known to exist on the Red Planet, they constitute an important step toward determining where life could exist there today. Aerobic respiration, which relies on oxygen, is a key component of present-day life on Earth. In this process, cells take in oxygen and break it down to produce energy to drive metabolism.
Mars's very low levels of atmospheric oxygen have led many scientists to dismiss the possibility of aerobic respiration there today, but the new research brings this possibility back into play. The study appears in the October 22 edition of Nature Geoscience. "Our work is calling for a complete revision for how we think about the potential for life on Mars, and the work oxygen can do, implying that if life ever existed on Mars it might have been breathing oxygen," says lead study author Vlada Stamenkovic, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. "We have the potential now to understand the current habitability." Although Mars is today a freeze-dried desert, it possesses abundant reserves of subsurface water ice, as well as some amount of liquid water in the form of brines. The brines' high salt content lowers the temperature at which they freeze, allowing them to remain liquid even on Mars's frigid surface.
In their new study, Stamenkovic and his colleagues coupled a model of how oxygen dissolves in brines with a model of the Martian climate. Their results revealed that pools of salty liquid at or just beneath the surface could capture the meager amounts of oxygen from the Red Planet's atmosphere, creating a reservoir that microbes might metabolically utilize. According to the research, Martian brines today could hold higher concentrations of oxygen than were present even on the early Earth -- which prior to about 2.4 billion years ago harbored only trace amounts of the gas in its air.
Mars's very low levels of atmospheric oxygen have led many scientists to dismiss the possibility of aerobic respiration there today, but the new research brings this possibility back into play. The study appears in the October 22 edition of Nature Geoscience. "Our work is calling for a complete revision for how we think about the potential for life on Mars, and the work oxygen can do, implying that if life ever existed on Mars it might have been breathing oxygen," says lead study author Vlada Stamenkovic, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. "We have the potential now to understand the current habitability." Although Mars is today a freeze-dried desert, it possesses abundant reserves of subsurface water ice, as well as some amount of liquid water in the form of brines. The brines' high salt content lowers the temperature at which they freeze, allowing them to remain liquid even on Mars's frigid surface.
In their new study, Stamenkovic and his colleagues coupled a model of how oxygen dissolves in brines with a model of the Martian climate. Their results revealed that pools of salty liquid at or just beneath the surface could capture the meager amounts of oxygen from the Red Planet's atmosphere, creating a reservoir that microbes might metabolically utilize. According to the research, Martian brines today could hold higher concentrations of oxygen than were present even on the early Earth -- which prior to about 2.4 billion years ago harbored only trace amounts of the gas in its air.
"cells take in oxygen and break it down to produce energy to drive metabolism"
Wouldn't breaking down oxygen by a nuclear reaction?
Brines suffused with the life-giving gas could offer hope for past and even present microbes
Tell it to the anaerobes
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
oxygen-rich liquid water exist on Uranus? (sorry I couldn't help myself)
If there was no life, and o2, that o2 would soon split and join with Fe or whatever it finds more attractive than its own kind. That contradicts the assumption. Qed.
... it might not.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Then all of our Space Force will be controlled by our Martian Overlords and we'll have to find allies from another solar system.
Unless they're originally from Planet X, and then we're good.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Am I lost here? Where does it say that there's water on Mars? And if there's no water on Mars, or if we just don't know about it, then how is this meaningful research?
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Nobody tell Nestle about it or it'll be gone before you know it.
It turns out there's quite a bit of water on Mars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
So if we go there, folks might get infected with something sketchy and bring it back. One way tickets I'm thinking.
How do you break down oxygen?
C'mon, Slashdot. You can do better than that.
Water, by its very definition, contains oxygen. All you need is a catalyst and a power supply. Such kits can be found in many high school science labs.
Thanks!
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap0...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Useful for sterilizing things yes, useful for supporting life, not so much.
I do not comprehend why we are so fixated with looking for water and o2 in the search of extraterrestrial life. as far as i know it is completly posible that life generates and is viable on other compounds.
or are we looking for a place to migrate once we fuck this world?
The first aerobic respiration evolved on Earth about 3 billion years ago, after over a billion years of anaerobic life. Aerobic respiration is a consequence of the accidental great oxygenation event in which the waste byproduct oxygen flooded Earth's atmosphere and nearly killed everything. It exists because it has to on this oxygen-polluted planet, not because it's important to life.
It makes no sense to look for pockets of oxygen to find life on Mars. That may actually be where you're least likely to find life, because the oxygen may have stifled the anaerobic life.
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You behave or K'Breel will have your gelsacs lanced.
>cells take in oxygen and break it down to produce energy
Fission cells are old and dangerous.
Fusion produce energy by fussing oxygen to produce energy and heavier elements.
Some will tell you that solar cells are the future, but I ain't no green leaf-tie.
The sand is rich in silicon, and the carbon dioxide is rich in carbon.
Dust cloud ? The nothing to see here article from Forbes? Is there water there, will Elon like the taste? I like that scene in Independence Day that talks about the $20,000 hammer and the $30,000 toilet seat.