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New Evidence for Life on Mars
The BBC is reporting on
new evidence that life existed on Mars. It revolves around
the unique properties of magnetsomes: tiny magnetic crystals of iron
that some terrestrial bacteria produce to sense the Earth's
magnetic field. Magnetosomes are far purer than magnetite
grains that occur naturally. The research of Nasa's Dr
Kathie Thomas-Keprta indicates magnetite produced by
bacteria-like microorganisms is present in the Allen Hills
meteorite, a Mars rock picked up in the Allen Hills region
of Antarctica.
Does this mean that if I walked around Mars with a Walkman I run the risk of having my tapes obliterated by magnetic martian critters?
The Rio is looking better all the time...
"Its Mars compatible!"
Join the Mars Society.
Mars has a magnetic field, but it is quite week.
I believe one of the instruments on Mars Global
Surveyor is currently mapping the field.
That the field is so weak indicates that the core
of the planet isn't undergoing the same sorts of
motion as the core of Earth. This seems
reasonable, though, since Mars is a smaller planet
than Earth, and should thus cool and solidify more
quickly.
The current field (from what I have read) is
actually due to the crust of the planet... many
magnetic particles were aligned by the planet's
(then stronger) magnetic field in the past. Now
that the big field is gone, the small fields of
all of those little particles are adding up to a
weak net remnent magnetic field for the planet.
one theory of the extinction of life on mars has to do with the loss of the magnetic field which then allowed the suns radiation to rain down on the surface thereby killing everything
you can't really use a compass because the magnetic field just isn't there. This is curious.
I do know that the earth's magnetic field has flip-flopped many times in its history; alternating patterns in the rock around oceanic ridges shows that. Perhaps Mars had a magnetic field at some point; perhaps Mars is just now in the middle of one of those flip-flops, and in a few centuries it'll have a magnetic field again.
Dunno. I haven't kept up with planetary science since high school; college demands that I delve into many other (equally interesting) fields...
I'm still not convinced that these meteorites are from Mars anyway. What proof do they have that they come from the Red Planet. All they've been able to say so far is that the composition of these rocks is similar to those on Mars. That's far from proving that they came from there.
After all the hoopla concerning the microstructure they found in the rocks with several spokespeople stating that 'they could only come from organisms', thus 'proving' that life existed on mars. There was a later (much less publicized) article in SciAm stating that they could indeed come from non-organic processes.
Indeed even if it DID come from Mars, there's no proof that the organisms in question came from there. They could have infiltrated the rock after landing.
When they find a similar rock on Mars and study it, then I might believe it...
That's true today, but as somebody else said previously, the field is so weak because the core has solidified. Long ago the core was molten just like earths and there was most likely a much stronger magnetic field. Probably about as long ago as the meteor found in the Antarctic was launched from the surface of mars.
The same reason people came to America. To promote freedom and new ideas. Perhaps we'll get it right this time.
Ok, whos to say bacteria from earth didn't get blown into space by a comet/meteor/asteroid in the past? Could it make it's way to mars? The moon? Back to earth?
Nasa just wants to send people to Mars. Send machines!
All it's saying is that the magnetite grains found in the bacteria (it's the bacteria that did the evolving, not the mineral) are purer than normal geological magnetite.
Doesn't mars have a negligable magnetic field?
(Same AC as first mentioned the solidification of
the core)
Actually, the field wasn't necessarily around when
the rock was blasted off of Mars. If the magnetic
particles were formed by life, though, the
planet's field was likely around back then. (I
don't know the real numbers, but the asteroid
impact might have been millions or tens of
millions of years ago, while the surface life
(if it ever existed) was probably billions of
years ago.)
I find it very difficult to believe that intelligent life would lack the inquisitiveness for what else is out there. What is intelligence if not curiosity?
It's very unlikely there's any there now. Certainly none you could talk to.
The other test was for the release of carbon dioxide from soil mixed with water. Carbon dioxide WAS released, but that hardly proves the existance of life, i.e. it COULD be explained by chemistry, not necessarily biology.
out and visited any other intelligent life? And we've only been broadcasting radio for less than
100 years, so it is unlikely that any intelligent life has intercepted those signals...
In conclusion: large interstellar distances make travel and communication very difficult.
I hereby flame you.
{{{FLAME}}}
Heck, this whole discussion about life on Mars is stupid anyway. Who cares if there was "life"? It doesn't mean anything. It's all just one big mechanistic bunch of chance and chemicals anyway. There's no final difference between us and the meteor from Mars anyway.
Nobody has asked the obvious question... just how do we know these meteorites are actually from Mars? Is there a little "Made on Mars" sticker on them? For any Martian material to reach Earth would probably require a meterorite impact on Mars strong enough to propel the material to escape velocity (less gravity than Earth, but still pretty substantial) so these rocks could in fact be a mixture of Martian and asteroid/comet material... meaning the "life" could have also originated in a comet anyway!
You'd be better off with a CD player.
Send machines!
Or just send people, and don't bring them back! Much cheaper, should be around the same price as sending machines. Now, who should be nominate for this mission?
. . . . . . 1 . . . . . . . .11 . . . . . . . .110011 . . . . . .========== . . . . .
. . . .
. . . . 1011. 1 . . .
. . . . 11011111. . .
. . . . 11000011. . . .
. . . .
. . .
. . . . |||||||| . . . . .
. . . . |||||||| . . . . .
(This is a flame)
Reality:
g /"21st century leading" CRAP!
A.) Yes, rocks can be knocked from one planet to another. There's scads of Martian crap around on Earth.
B.) There are ways of determining where rocks come from. Instead of dismissing valid research, maybe we could all learn (!?!) how the determination is made.
Opinion:
A:) NASA needs to stop drumming up support for godforsakenly stupid ideas with crap science. The work done on the "microorganisms" seems to be reaching at best, rushed bullshit at worst.
B:) We will send people to Mars over my dead body. The cost for putting people anywhere in space is immense, and largely a waste. Can you say, ISS? 100 BILLION FSCKING DOLLARS for PORK? Meanwhile marvels of engineering that are actually functioning and doing research have to scrabble for antenna time (read: money). Fsck the jingoistic bastards in congress funding this crap. How about N.A.S.A. do some more actual research instead of massive-construction/bloated-ass/harmony-inspirin
You $%##Q$ng #$#)(*#!! WHAT THE #$#(*( DO YOU THINK YOU'RE (*&*#$% #)(*#$)(*)*?!???!??!
I saw a special on TV where a scientist said
that we are the Martians, and we need to go
home.
You can do some quick back of the envelope
:)
calculations of the rate of net heat loss on Mars
as comparted by Earth by comparing the ratio of surface area to volume for each planet. Mars has
a smaller radius than Earth, so this ratio is
larger than Earth.
Heat is created in the volume of a planet via
nuclear reactions, and loss from the surface into
space via radiation. (Also, some is gained from
the surface from solar radiation.)
Anyway, it's possible to quickly estimate how hot
the core of Mars is. (Much more complex
simulations are necessary to pin down a hard
number... and I don't know that all of the
parameters necessary for an accurate simulation
have been obtained yet.)
We don't know whether the planet is solid to the
core, but there is evidence to indicate a much
thick crust, and the lack of a magnetic field is
evidence for a sluggish (or solid) core.
There was some recent evidence that a volcano
might have been active in the recent past. (Say
100 million years ago.) However, I don't think
that is conclusive... we need more data from the
planet.
Sorry, I think you are. Not that I disagree with you. You're right that in Earth contexts, structures produced by bacteria are normally considered to be natural. On the other hand, since many people assume that there has never been life on Mars, bacterially produced structures would be unnatural on Mars.
As for the whole discussion about life on Mars being stupid, I have to disagree. If there were life on Mars, it would help to answer a lot of questions. For instance, you write that the evolution of life is "all just one big mechanistic bunch of chance and chemicals anyway", but you ignore that many people do not believe that. Look up the Creationist FAQ sometime. The people who assembled that piece of work go so far as to suggest, for example, that the speed of light has been slowing down since the creation of the universe (thus explaining how, since the universe is supposed to be only thousands of years old, light from stars millions of light years away has managed to reach us). Even those who believe that life came into being without being directly called forth by some supreme being (I don't know why they never consider the possibility that God might have brought humans into being through the process of evolution) question how probable it is that life could come about. Is it likely on every world with conditions like early earth? Every hundred? Every thousand? Every million? Billion? Trillion?
Simply put, knowing if there was life on Mars at some point would answer a lot of peoples questions, and make some other people come up with yet more bizarre explanations. What would be even more interesting would be to know if there had ever been any intelligent life in the solar system. Maybe on Venus, for example. How could we find out? What artifacts of civilization could last millions or billions of years? Especially on a planet with an atmosphere full of sulphuric acid. Heck, how about Europa, maybe there's something living under all that ice.
There are lots of ways bits of planet can leave a planet. Mars has been struck by many a meteor, where do you think the martian shards go after the boom (a million megatonnes of force, for example)? They fly into space! Also, the (if that's what they were) bacteria weren't ALIVE when they came here, they were already fossilized. As for re-entry, the fossils on the inside of the meteor would not have been damaged.
get a clue
ok grrlz cliq here im hot
There are lots of ways bits of planet can leave a planet. Mars has been struck by many a meteor, where do you think the martian shards go after the boom (a million megatonnes of force, for example)? They fly into space! Also, the (if that's what they were) bacteria weren't ALIVE when they came here, they were already fossilized. As for re-entry, the fossils on the inside of the meteor would not have been damaged.
get a clue
ok grrlz cliq here im hot
Yeah! And what's up with that stupid trying to sail to China from Spain thing anyway? What a total waste of money. Surely the monarchy can find something better to waste its money on. There are perfectly good land routes that are actually functioning instead of this pie in the sky effort by C. Columbus.
That the rock could be from Venus or one of Jupiters or Saturns sattelites or something? Frankly I don't care that much just so long as it's not just an Earth rock that got blasted off the planet and then landed again. Anyway, at least we can be certain that the rock isn't an asteroid fragment. Sedimentary rocks don't tend to form well in space.
We know the rocks are from Mars because they have isotope ratios you just don't get in Earth rocks. Or if they aren't from Mars, they're from somewhere even stranger. Either way, we should investigate.
Well, no wonder; you're holding it too close to yourself.
IIRC, these rocks match isotopic ratios we know to exist on Mars. Admittedly, that's not proof they didn't come from Venus of some other planet we haven't put a lander on and studied, but if Earth and Mars differ, why shouldn't Mars and Venus differ as well?
Search around, you'll find the proof. Various scientists seem to have picked apart every piece of information about ALH84001. If that were unproven I'm sure we would have heard about it.
It sucks.
You can say that again. You make claims without evidence, e.g.
Garbage In, Garbage Out. What have you been reading? A mind is a terrible thing to feed upon waste.
Try having profound (or any) thoughts before posting; this post was only good for sarcasm.
new evidence came to light this week that your neighbors are actually human beings. they are observed infrequently going in and out of the 'door portal' device upon their life supporting box station. but it appears that there is much more to them than might be indicated by the 'hi'
you manage to exchange with each other once every two months. in fact, many neighbors ingest food,
exude bodily heat, and may even have a limited form of proto consciousness. scientists say further research into the lives of the 'neighbor' creatures will be hampered until solutions to several major obstacles can be found. among these are the phenomena of 'hatred', 'judgement', 'prejudice', 'envy', 'pride', 'greed' and some
say even 'cowardice'. but researchers hope that with the new 5 trillion dollar grant from the UN that progress will be made on several of these fronts within the next few decades. perhaps 30 years from now we might be interacting with the 'neighbors' in strange ways we never thought possible.
And I care what you think why again?
Man, learn to write in complete sentences.
nother point: What are the chances that two completely separate evolutionary paths would develop these magnetites? That's like assuming that all the aliens we meet have two arms, two legs, and a head in reasonably the same locations as we do.
This idea only sounds as ridiculous as you think if you assume that the universe has evolved in a completely random fashion. Given that we've been able to relate chaos theory to many, many observable phenomena on both microscopic and macroscopic scales, I personally believe it's quite likely that there is life elsewhere in the universe that has evolved VERY similarly to life on Earth. I see no reason not to believe that the evolution of life on Mars may have been similar to the process that occurred here.
"Nuclear reactions" doesn't necessarily mean
bombs.
lots of iron and nickel. However, the core also
has trace amounts of uranium and other radioactive
isotopes. (I believe, but am not sure, that
uranium is the main culprit.) The isotopes
involved have very long half-lives-- comparable to
the age of the planet. (The half-life is the time
it takes for a given amount of an isotope to decay
into different isotopesother stuff, such as
helium nuclei, electrons, positrons, and photons.)
Anyway, each radioactive decay dumps some energy
into the surrounding matter. The energy release
is small (A few mega-electron volts (MeV)) for a
typical decay. There are radioactive decays
going on in your body, in the walls, and in the
food you eat all the time, but the energy release
is small and the rate of decays isn't very high,
so you don't notice it.
Here's the main point: A few radioactive decays
per are giving off a bit over energy in a cubic
yard of dirt every (say) second. (I have no idea
what the real rate is, but it isn't high and it
isn't zero.) Thus, if you have a greater volume
of dirt, you have a higher total energy production
rate. So, the bigger the planet, the more energy
is produced, and, as I mentioned in that other
post, the rate that the planet dumps energy into
space doesn't increase as quickly, so the planet
ends up hotter.
This isn't a big effect when you have a block of
dirt a meter on a side,
thousands of miles (millions of meters) on a side,
it is very important.
I honestly don't know of any websites on this
stuff, but I'll bet an intro geology or planetary
science textbook goes through it.
Also, you are absolutely right that tidal forces
can heat astronomical bodies. The moons Europa
and Titan are small compared to the sizes of Earth
and Mars, but they might have much higher core
temperatures than you would guess from their size
alone, since they have extremely strong tidal
interactions with their host planet. How much
each source contributes to heating depends on the
situation the planet is in.
Anyway, great questions. Be one with the nuclear
reactions, though... they're everywhere.
Someone from HUAC is a censor here.
:)
> Sengan at it again (Score:-1)
> by RedOctober >(red_october@my-dejanews.com) on Wednesday March >10, @06:55PM
> (User Info) http://
> Oh, no, Sengan's at it again with his >anti-US agenda. It seems he's been reading too >much Karl Marx again. Sengan, why can't you
> take your anti-capitalism posts and >go and live in North Korea or somewhere like >that? Some of us actually like freedom and
> democracy.
>
Yes! It's about time we dragged the "Worldwide Communist Consipracy" out of the closet for another go-around! This is because only
Americans can understand freedom, because we invented it, and we're the only ones who are worthy of it. And we all know that
anyone who has a problem with capitalism or materialism is obviously an evil communist bastard bent on world domination.
Let me remind you of a few things about the good old USA.
Remember a little thing called the Vietnam War? I believe we were on the ruthless dictator's side, but hell at least he wasn't a
communist.
Strom Thurmond tried to have John Lennon deported because of his antiwar beliefs. He also supported segregation and other racist
causes. He is still working in the highest levels of our government.
A certan Senator McCarthy destroyed the lives of countless individuals accused of being communist sympathizers.
The Civil Rights marchers in the sixties were also considered to be communists by much of America.
This "democracy" that we live in denied black people the right to vote until less than 40 years ago.
Not to mention any number of assasinations, invasions, scandals, etc during the 80s when we again supported dictators instead of "the
Evil Empire" only this time it was in Latin America.
So the totalitarian communist regimes finally crumbled for the most part and we need a new enemy.
Now homosexuals are destroying this country. Not to mention the Arabs, because we all know that they're just terrorists.
This is the same country that tried to get the CDA to pass twice, and you know they're going to get it through one of these days by
attaching it to a tax increase or something similar.
This is the same country where it's perfectly legal to show pepole killing each other on TV, but you can't show someone smoking a
joint because children might get the wrong impression.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-american. I am an american. But I also know that I am not free. American society at present is based
on the illusion that we are free, while every day huge corporations and lobbyists are allowed to corrupt our government for personal
political gain.
How do we fix it? Simple. We need to put people in power who will not grandstand about morality, decency, communists, religion,
homosexuals, or any of the other crap that is tearing this country apart. Read the constitution. There isn't one damn word about
morality, or communists being evil, or homosexuals destroying the american family. Every day that we allow our government to be
corrupted and hijacked by those who are interested only in personality is a day that we come closer to being what we, as americans,
should hate the most: A society in which freedom is a privelage, rather than a right, and a society where conformity is king.
Just remember that the people who are complaining about the state of affairs in this country aren't trying to destroy it, they are trying to
save it.
Posted by sengan on Wednesday March 10, @05:01PM
:) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @07:05PM
g /"21st century leading" CRAP! /. (Score:1)
:-)
from the will-the-magnet-theory-stick? dept.
The BBC is reporting on new evidence that life existed on Mars. It revolves
around the unique properties of magnetsomes: tiny magnetic crystals of iron
that some terrestrial bacteria produce to sense the Earth's magnetic field.
Magnetosomes are far purer than magnetite grains that occur naturally. The
research of Nasa's Dr Kathie Thomas-Keprta indicates magnetite produced
by bacteria-like microorganisms is present in the Allen Hills meteorite, a Mars rock picked up in
the Allen Hills region of Antarctica.
Related Links
new evidence that life existed on Mars
More on Science
Also by sengan
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. Slashdot is not responsible for what they say.
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(Warning:this stuff might be beta right now)
Nice. Very nice. (Score:2)
by Kiwi (kiwi-nody4la@koala.samiam.org) on Wednesday March 10, @05:13PM
(User Info) http://linux.samiam.org/linux_links.html
When the original "Life on Mars" was discovered back in '96, it was a very exciting moment for people in the science fiction
community. Further discoveries putting this discovery in doubt were a dissapointment to many people.
Whether there were primitive microrganisms on Mars is still "up in the air", and I am glad to see some more evidence support that there
was life there.
Supposing there was life on Mars, every known constant of the equation used to determine hoe much life there is out there is very high,
which means it is very likely there are aliens. Which leads to the next question. Why haven't we met them? Or have we??
- Sam Trenholme
My music
"And no, I will not sleep with you" - Anonymous Slashdot babe
[ Reply to this ]
Nice. Very nice. by kaisyain on Wednesday March 10, @05:26PM
Enquiring minds want to know. by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:10PM
Also... by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:18PM
Nice. Very nice. by Ektanoor on Wednesday March 10, @06:14PM
Enter the Flame (Score:2)
by J05H on Wednesday March 10, @05:16PM
(User Info)
Let the war rage again! 8)
The original announcement, in 1996, sparked
almost violent arguments among planetary
scientists. Recent press on it has declared
the subject as "dead". I guess this reopens the
debate.
Personally, I think that the evidence is strong,
despite some inconsistencies in the original work.
I'm waiting for the sample-return mission in 2005
to really have a conclusion, though.
Even then, we'll never be able to prove that there isn't/wasn't
life on Mars, only that we can't find the remains of it.
Check panspermia.org for more info.
[ Reply to this ]
Enter the Flame by Rip Van Winkle on Wednesday March 10, @06:15PM
Enter the Flame by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @07:19PM
Um... (Score:1)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @05:19PM
Some terrestrial bacteria have evolved the ability to sense the Earth's magnetic field. They do this by making tiny magnetic crystals of
iron inside themselves and arranging them into chains called "magnetsomes".
These tiny grains, made of a material called magnetite, have a very specific size and shape. They are also very pure - far purer than
magnetite grains that occur naturally.
If these things are presupposed to have evolved, then they ARE occuring naturally. Evolution doesn't leave room for anything else but
nature (plus time, plus chance).
[ Reply to this ]
What's the problem? by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @05:59PM
What's the problem? by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:22PM
What's the problem? by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:36PM
Nit picking. by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:45PM
martian magnetic fields (Score:1)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @05:27PM
I've recently been reading about mars and one of the interesting things is that you can't really use a compass because the magnetic
field just isn't there. This is curious.
[ Reply to this ]
The field is there... by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @05:37PM
martian magnetic fields by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @05:38PM
martian magnetic fields by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @05:38PM
martian magnetic fields by Osty on Wednesday March 10, @07:17PM
martian magnetic fields by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @05:51PM
martian magnetic fields by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:10PM
martian magnetic fields by coreybrenner on Wednesday March 10, @06:16PM
martian magnetic fields by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:44PM
martian magnetic fields by coreybrenner on Wednesday March 10, @06:58PM
Planet heating by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @07:37PM
wow! (Score:1)
by NaTaS777 on Wednesday March 10, @05:29PM
(User Info) http://www.mp3.com/pedophagia
Pretty interesting....but its just bacteria. But then again, bacteria can be really cool. I wonder how deadly (if its deadly) this stuff can
be?
natas
[ Reply to this ]
Bacteria == early Linux users by timur on Wednesday March 10, @06:02PM
Bacteria == early Linux users (Flame 1) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:20PM
Bacteria == early Linux users (Flame #2) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:31PM
Bacteria == early Linux users #3 by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:35PM
Bacteria by Jonathan on Wednesday March 10, @07:16PM
magnetic materials
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @05:29PM
Does this mean that if I walked around Mars with a Walkman I run the risk of having my tapes obliterated by magnetic martian critters?
The Rio is looking better all the time...
"Its Mars compatible!"
[ Reply to this ]
CD's by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:27PM
Let's go there now.
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @05:31PM
Join the Mars Society.
[ Reply to this ]
Let's go there now. by kaisyain on Wednesday March 10, @05:38PM
Let's go there now. by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @05:55PM
Mars Colony != Freedom and New Idea's... yet. by torpor on Wednesday March 10, @07:26PM
Mars -round two (Score:1)
by Ektanoor on Wednesday March 10, @05:42PM
(User Info)
Here it goes. It's Mars round two.
Surveyor started the remap, Scientists revive the old-good theory. And we soon are going to start digging on photos and gathering all
wiednesses and wild theories.
But I wonder. Will Surveryor end its mission in a much like Pathfinder one? A few frames for the public and a nearly silent death?
Will these British guys get on the same luck as their American colleagues? Downplays, rumours, discreditation and once more silence?
Will such guys, from serious scientists like Molenaar or Van Flandern, through McDaniel down to Vanisko, Olaf or me, jump into the
bandwagon of possible life, seas, civilization, catasthrophes, scientific alternatives? And then get fire from all sides who consider such
crazy ideas should be silenced?
And then will they let Hoagland create havoc once again?
[ Reply to this ]
Mars -round two by coreybrenner on Wednesday March 10, @06:20PM
Mars -round two by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @07:30PM
I'm not convinced...
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @05:47PM
I'm still not convinced that these meteorites are from Mars anyway. What proof do they have that they come from the Red Planet. All
they've been able to say so far is that the composition of these rocks is similar to those on Mars. That's far from proving that they
came from there.
After all the hoopla concerning the microstructure they found in the rocks with several spokespeople stating that 'they could only come
from organisms', thus 'proving' that life existed on mars. There was a later (much less publicized) article in SciAm stating that they
could indeed come from non-organic processes.
Indeed even if it DID come from Mars, there's no proof that the organisms in question came from there. They could have infiltrated the
rock after landing.
When they find a similar rock on Mars and study it, then I might believe it...
[ Reply to this ]
I'm not convinced... by Ektanoor on Wednesday March 10, @06:09PM
So you're saying... by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:57PM
So you're saying... by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @07:15PM
earth bacteria infiltration by witten on Wednesday March 10, @06:36PM
Martian bacteria on earth? Hogwash. (Score:1)
by the_tsi (willie@perigee.net) on Wednesday March 10, @05:51PM
(User Info) http://
I'm all for NASA trying to find ways to convince the government to budget more funds for space exporation (grin), but this isn't going
to do it.
Okay, there's a rock from Mars. And it's got similar cell components to some things on Earth. Nifty. Who's to say that rock hasn't
been sitting in Antarctica long enough for Earth bacteria to say, "Hi, I like this location. We'll put up some drapes and a few
magnetized iron chunks right after we move in."
Now assume the magnetites *are* from Mars. Why would naturally occuring ones be less pure than organically made ones? Scientist's
answer: Because on Earth, that's the case. Well, wouldn't it be possible that, since Mars has a pretty high iron content on the surface
that their naturally occuring magnetites are rather pure?
Another point: What are the chances that two completely separate evolutionary paths would develop these magnetites? That's like
assuming that all the aliens we meet have two arms, two legs, and a head in reasonably the same locations as we do. And, that they
"see" the same spectrum as we do. And can "hear" the same sounds. Life which has evoloved in other systems than our own little
biosphere probably won't share anything recognizably in common with us, unless of course they're carbon-nitrogen based and have
some familiar looking amino acids.
-Chris
[ Reply to this ]
Martian bacteria on earth? Hogwash. by Bill Currie on Wednesday March 10, @06:19PM
Martian bacteria on earth? Hogwash. by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @07:33PM
Viking missions (Score:1)
by ethereal on Wednesday March 10, @05:54PM
(User Info) http://
Actually, if you want possible proof of life on Mars, the Viking missions in the 70s already provide some. Viking (I think it was Viking
2) included two tests for life in the Martian soil. Test A reported that there was life, and test B reported that there wasn't. Now, either
test could have malfunctioned, so NASA also tested Viking in Antarctica. Antarctica is as close to Martian conditions as you can get
on this planet, but there is definitely life (bacteria as well as insects, etc.) in Antarctica. The results? Test A found that there was
indeed life in Antarctica, but test B concluded that there was not.
Were the tests invalid? Possibly. I know one of them involved mixing some soil into a growth medium and measuring the opacity of the
solution over time, to see if any bacteria grow and cloud the water. I don't remember what the other test was. I don't anyone can really
decide for sure until we have a permanent research institution, or several, on Mars.
[ Reply to this ]
Viking missions by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:15PM
Nasa building support for a Mars mission?
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @05:58PM
Ok, whos to say bacteria from earth didn't get blown into space by a comet/meteor/asteroid in the past? Could it make it's way to
mars? The moon? Back to earth?
Nasa just wants to send people to Mars. Send machines!
[ Reply to this ]
Nasa building support for a Mars mission? by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:30PM
sending machines instead of humans to Mars by witten on Wednesday March 10, @06:47PM
Question... (Score:1)
by MaxZ (#tsvetova@cs.umn.edu#) on Wednesday March 10, @06:01PM
(User Info) http://www.cs.umn.edu/~tsvetova
I'm wondering if X million (or billion) years from now some green alien from Venus will inspect a meteorite from earth and find
remnants of bacteria Will he conclude that there was life of Earth or will he be shouted down (it's too cold there, and not enough sulfur
in the athmosphere)?
[ Reply to this ]
Probably... by Bill Currie on Wednesday March 10, @06:26PM
magnetic field?
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:03PM
Doesn't mars have a negligable magnetic field?
[ Reply to this ]
Bacteria (terrestrial/martion) == Tool Makers? (Score:1)
by torpor (jay2teklab.com ) on Wednesday March 10, @06:10PM
(User Info)
Hmmm... doesn't this magnetite thing qualify as a form of tool making?
Jay Vaughan, SlashDot-Addicted Developer (SAD)
[ Reply to this ]
Does it really matter?
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:12PM
It's very unlikely there's any there now. Certainly none you could talk to.
[ Reply to this ]
bzzzz! p.u. (Score:1)
by trb on Wednesday March 10, @06:13PM
(User Info)
sounds like my b.s. detector went off.
[ Reply to this ]
bzzzz! p.u. by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @07:09PM
bzzzz! p.u. by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @07:28PM
This is just stupid (Score:1)
by fatboy (fatboy@groovin.net) on Wednesday March 10, @06:14PM
(User Info) http://www.windowssucks.com
Um, now how did these rocks escape the gravity of Mars?? I think the idea that a rock from _ANY_ planet could just "fly away" is
simply stupid.
(Flame proof underware ON)
--- fatboy
[ Reply to this ]
PS --This is just stupid by fatboy on Wednesday March 10, @06:22PM
Stupid? I feel not. by hank on Wednesday March 10, @06:41PM
Hi, You're retarded. YO CHIQZ READ D1Z by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:51PM
Hi, You're retarded. OK GRRLZ READ THIS ONE by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:51PM
rocks don't fly by witten on Wednesday March 10, @06:56PM
That's great CS boy, but learn some physics
Wait a minute...
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:25PM
Nobody has asked the obvious question... just how do we know these meteorites are actually from Mars? Is there a little "Made on
Mars" sticker on them? For any Martian material to reach Earth would probably require a meterorite impact on Mars strong enough to
propel the material to escape velocity (less gravity than Earth, but still pretty substantial) so these rocks could in fact be a mixture of
Martian and asteroid/comet material... meaning the "life" could have also originated in a comet anyway!
[ Reply to this ]
indications that the meteorites are from Mars by witten on Wednesday March 10, @06:59PM
Here's your minute. by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @07:08PM
Big Momma sez:
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:35PM
Reality:
A.) Yes, rocks can be knocked from one planet to another. There's scads of Martian crap around on Earth.
B.) There are ways of determining where rocks come from. Instead of dismissing valid research, maybe we could all learn (!?!) how the
determination is made.
Opinion:
A:) NASA needs to stop drumming up support for godforsakenly stupid ideas with crap science. The work done on the
"microorganisms" seems to be reaching at best, rushed bullshit at worst.
B:) We will send people to Mars over my dead body. The cost for putting people anywhere in space is immense, and largely a waste.
Can you say, ISS? 100 BILLION FSCKING DOLLARS for PORK? Meanwhile marvels of engineering that are actually functioning and
doing research have to scrabble for antenna time (read: money). Fsck the jingoistic bastards in congress funding this crap. How about
N.A.S.A. do some more actual research instead of massive-construction/bloated-ass/harmony-inspirin
[ Reply to this ]
Big Momma sez: by Dredd13 on Wednesday March 10, @06:55PM
Big Momma sez: by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @06:56PM
Geekyness is more than Computers! Thanks
by clintp on Wednesday March 10, @06:40PM
(User Info) http://www.geeksalad.org
'Bout time we get an article that's not about a computer vendor, Linux/BSD/Be, computer chips or the latest Open Source squabble!
Star Wars doesn't count--since it was a false alarm.
[ Reply to this ]
new evidence for life down the block
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10, @07:26PM
new evidence came to light this week that your neighbors are actually human beings. they are observed infrequently going in and out of
the 'door portal' device upon their life supporting box station. but it appears that there is much more to them than might be indicated by
the 'hi'
you manage to exchange with each other once every two months. in fact, many neighbors ingest food,
exude bodily heat, and may even have a limited form of proto consciousness. scientists say further research into the lives of the
'neighbor' creatures will be hampered until solutions to several major obstacles can be found. among these are the phenomena of
'hatred', 'judgement', 'prejudice', 'envy', 'pride', 'greed' and some
say even 'cowardice'. but researchers hope that with the new 5 trillion dollar grant from the UN that progress will be made on several
of these fronts within the next few decades. perhaps 30 years from now we might be interacting with the 'neighbors' in strange ways
we never thought possible.
Back when the artifacts, which may be the fossils of bacteria, formed the magnetic field was stronger. This presumeably has to do with some part of the planets core solidifying. In fact, the loss of its magnetic field could have killed off life on Mars in the first place by allowing too much radiation through.
Okay, assuming that I make these calculations, that suffices for a planet with a totally static surface (i.e. no tectonic activity). I don't know enough about Martian geology to ascertain the correctness of that.
This is correct. Part of the reason Mars has such impressive geologic features is that the crust is never subsumed back into the mantle. Plus you get some really huge mountains with a static crust. A lava plume makes it to the surface on Earth, and you get the Hawaiian islands. A lot of little mountains in a straight line, as the crust slides over the static plume. A lava plume on Mars get you Olympu Mons. A lot of rock in one place.
I have a couple of issues with the "nuclear reactions" line of thought, though. I find it hard to believe that there are nuclear reactions (which to me leads to "explosive nuclear force") going on at the core of the planet,
Not a "nuclear reaction" as in cascading, uncontrolled nuclear fission, but a "nuclear reaction" as in the decay of radioactive materials. That releases energy, but not enough energy to turn the planets into small stars.
which is a solid iron-nickel mass, from all that I have read.
It is now, but remember that Mars radiates heat off much faster than Earth does. Even the moon had a molten core at one point.
so why are you still here?
search the skies for spaceship surprise to bring you back home...
Ahhh, but what happens during the period of polarity reversal? Does the field diminish (disappear) then return in the flipped state? Do the magnetic poles start to migrate from north to south while passing the equator (polar wandering)? Finally, what actually causes the magnetic poles to flip? Chaotic convention in the outer core?
:-)).
Bet you didn't learn the answers to these in Geology 117 even at a fine place as UIUC. That's because your profs are still debating some of these questions (not because you skipped more than your should have
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Silly little techno-optimists, don't even TRY a comparison between technological advancement and space exploration.
There are some MAJORLY different economic and technical dynamics going on once you start doing things in space...
A) Humans in space are only marginally useful, and are mainly for complex tasks like: Maintaining people in space.
B) Real deep-space science and observation is hard to do on a jostling, jolting, polluting space station. There is precious PRECIOUS PRECIOUS little you can do on a space station that you can't do on a shuttle mission. (Other than spend fabulous billions of dollars every quarter)
New does NOT NECESSARILY mean necessary.
While the government wastes billions and billions of dollars on this, people are still starving, people are still homeless, people are dying of aids. I think they should get their priorities straight.
Haven't you heard. Hoagland probably won't be alive past the end of the week. Massive heart attack.
Rushed bullshit?? It took them 13 years to release the results of their tests on the meteorite.
Your tax dollars don't need to pay for dirt-digging, at least not all of it. Sooner or later, when we start to run out of resources on Earth, large corporations will realize that they could make a killing on Mars, especially if they terraformed it and sold land. The goverment could sponsor some initial development, but I don't think it would take long for the Boeings, Weyerhausers, and Monsantos to invest big bucks. It'd be a long-term project, but the results would be (if you'll pardon the pun) Earth-shattering.
If everyone in the whole duration of time though like you do we would still be running around naked wielding clubs to get our next diner, and we would be afraid of fire.
It would go something likethis:
What are you doing?
Well I am messing with these two sticks.
Hey stop that, and get us some diner...people are starving....
Of course the trouble is that language would not have been invented yet, so it would be in some more rpimitive version of comunications...luckily some people are forward looking, and so we are able to progress, and advance......
AC......you know what that is.....
Obviously the rock didn't just fly away. What really happened is that, millions of years ago, highly evolved dinosaurs went on an exploratory mission to mars. On the way back, their vessel suffered a coolant leak, requiring them to descend into the atmosphere sooner than expected. In order to do so, they had to reduce weight so that they'd have enough thrust to make a safe landing. So, they had to dump their hold full of minerological samples. The samples were dumped in very high orbit, so they orbited for millions of years before finally plunging into earth's atmosphere.
Or, there's the less probable theory that a meteorite impact on Mars was powerful enough to send large chunks of rock rocketing right off the planet. This theory is clearly bunk, because any impact that powerful would leave a massive crater, and there are no such impact craters... er, well, ok, maybe a few. So, ok, maybe the dinosaur theory has a few holes in it too.
P.S. I actually believe more in the meteorite impact on Mars theory more than the dinosaur one. It's not a particularly improbable theory either. Comets and asteroids really do hit that hard. Especially on a planet with a very thin atmosphere.
I find speculation such as this a waste of time. Simply because of all of the things that can happen between now and when a colony has started to flourish, it's impossible to predict the course of events.
I say, start the colonization and let the free market forces do the work.
Hows this for a theory?!
Mind you this theory is not based on any scientific investigation... There are the pyramids on Mars and there are the same pyramids on Earth.
Not quite. The entire "face on Mars" thing is a product of Richard Hoagland's marketting skills, not scientific research. I would love it if there were artificial structures on Mars (no excuse for not flying a mission if there were), but the "Face" and the "Pyramids" and "City" are just hills.
What's the possibility that they are related?
None? The pyramids and ziggurats on Earth were made by people. The "Pyramids" on Mars were made by water, lava and later a very lo-res imager.
High.... If this is the case then it may be possible that people from Mars colonised the Earth. It's not impossible... We're trying to colonise the Moon...
It's actually quite likely that Mars and Earth have traded organisms (if there is bacteria there), but it's highly unlikely that humanity is originally from Mars, in the sense of having migrated to Earth as humans. Best evidence: fossil record has clear line through time that leads to us.
As for colonising the moon, I wish! I'd have already put a down payment on a crater if we were. Colonisation isn't going to happen until two conditions are met:
- Launch costs drop radically (yeah Roton!)
- It becomes profitably in some way.
I'm open to discussion on this issue because it opens up profound thoughts.It would open profound thoughts, if they were real. Much better to focus on what we know is there, here are two very informative links that you should check out:
Mars Global Surveyor Home
Malin Space Systems
Malin is the company that has built a number of cameras for Mars missions, and the other link is a probe that is currently mapping the entire surface of Mars, including the Cydonia region.
Science be damned. There are good *ECONOMIC* reasons to send people to space in the long term completely aside from the immediate side benefits of fundamenental technology development and scientific research. Pushing the envelope technologically has _always_ payed off in cold hard cash on the long haul. And almost never where the short-sighted thought the payoffs would be.
Well, something is known about the period between flips. At the very least, the period is still short enough to be negligible on the geologic timescale. And, let's not forget that rock coming from mid-ocean ridges is actually formed pretty fast. So non-polar periods would be pretty short.
In any case, all this is pretty much a moot point, since scientists are fairly certain that Mars had a magnetic field, but it has weakened greatly due to cooling at the planets core.
homeless poor people with aids obviously
are just 'stupid' 'lusers' who dont 'get it'
and its better for the rest of us if they die.
i mean, they are such a burden on us, if only
they would sod off we would have space stations.
wouldn't that be great! mein furh.. m
oh soryr must have had a spasm
I think I also heard that during the Mars Pathfinder saga. Definitely a question i'd like answered too!
However, thats Mars of today. Its certainly possible that the magnetic field of Mars has changed over time.
For instance, I know the Earth's magnetic field switches polarities on occasion. Evidenced by the atlantic seafloor spreading apart producing strips of rock magnetized in opposite directions - never heard why it switches, anyone know?
Tom
I noticed the smiley. And the rather lengthy essay I posted on freedom was simply meant to poke fun at America and see what kind of response I could get. But there was no reason to knock the thread to -1, that's why I'm reposting it.
If this is what the future composition of our society and government looks like, think I'll check out real estate elsewhere.
Better hope you never lose your job or suffer a disability.
It's a problem of scale. The center of the planet is much better insulated than any lump of dirt at the surface. It's called the square-cube ratio or something like that. Imagine a cube that's two by two by two units. It has a volume of eight cubic units, and a surface area of twenty four square units. Now, consider a cube that's two hundred by two hundred by two hundred units. It has a volume of eight million cubic units and a surface area of two hundred and forty thousand square units. Now, consider a cube that's twenty thousand by twenty thousand by twenty thousand units. It has a volume of eight trillion (American trillion) cubic units and a surface area of two billion, four hundred million cubic units. In the first example, the ration of volume to surface area was 1:3, in the second it was 100:3, in the third it was 10,000:3. Obviously, as an object scales up, the surface area does not increase as fast as the volume does. This is true for spheres as well as cubes.
The upshot of this is that planet sized masses lose heat very, very slowly compared to the amount of heat they have stored. So, the heat from that radioactive decay although not that great (although not exactly negligible) doesn't get lost all that fast.
Wouldn't the UV light make the records brittle?
I omitted that because I thought it would make the :) I mentioned it in
post to cumbersome to read.
some other thread, though. You're absolutely
right.
Yeah, I see your suffering from severe sense of humor disorder. Must be terrible.
As a liberal, even I know you can't do *everything*. There is a limit to charity. By nature alone we are selfish animals. You cannot eliminate competition when it is the main motivating factor in evolution.
The US government has spent lots of money on the aforementioned problems, and they still loom as large as ever. That's because money can't fix the problem. I remember seeing somewhere that 80% of those on welfare suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome. From my personal experience with the homeless, they are people who simply suffer from some unspeakable problem (I suspect terrible things happened to them in the past, and that is why they are the way they are now) and cannot act normally. We (I) want so desperately to help them, but it is like they are trapped in a prison in their own mind and cannot escape!
Concerning AIDS. Believe me lots of money is spent on aids. But no cure is in site, and it's not clear that more money will help. There is one scientist who believes AIDS is not even caused by a virus, that it's caused by excessive drug use (inclunding AZT, the most common drug treatment for aids, ergo, a self perpetuating cicle) or toxic exposure. Before you call him crazy, consider that AZT was once a failed chemotherapy drug.
I just want to say that more money is not help. We do not have the answers, I do not know where to find them. Sometimes I think complete nuclear war would be the best for all. Human suffering would finally end and would never return.
Well actually, http://www.cwru.ed u/affil/ansmet/meteorites/lunar_meteorite.html mentions the discovery of lunar remainders in the same meteorite fields the Mars meteorites were found in.
The atmosphere is almost irrelevent when the
big stuff hits.
larger objects.)
Well, irrelevent for terrestrial planets... the
atmosphere is of course always a factor in impacts
onto gas giants.
The current store of nukes wouldn't kill off everyone, even if they had enough ICBMs to launch all the warheads they have. Human life might be greatly diminished, but many would survive. True, many might die off from radiation poisoning, cancer, starvation, violence visited on them by other desperate people, etc. But I don't think it would be the end of human life by any means.
That was a fucking shitty book if I've ever read one. I like David Brin, but Gregory Benford is the touch of death.
Sure. If there was ever any life on Mars, it completely invalidates the Book of Genisis. Bout time.
Oh very nice. You get extra points for using :)
0's and 1's in the flame.
This is also the reason that fat people sweat a lot, and also why elephants have big ears (they're radiators)
fat people are just hotter, because they don't have the surface area to radiate the heat.
BTW, I weigh 300 lbs. I know whereof I speak.
Damn it yet another penicillin regimen.
That is, after all, what is believed to have happened to most of the water on Venus over hundreds of millions of years. This is shown by the fact that the levels of deuterium are very high in the martian atmosphere. Deuterium, being significantly denser than regular hydrogen, doesn't sublimate off the planet as easily.
On the other hand, I don't know if I completely agree with the 250 million year estimate. For one thing, it could start to happen sooner if we manage to generate a runaway greenhouse effect (no-one knows enough about it to say that it's impossible). Of course, such a problem would kill us and most multicellular life long before the Earth ran out of water. Anyway, ignoring all the things that could destroy us sooner, let's not forget that intelligent life has the capacity to, as well as threatening its own existance, extending its existance. In other words, even a million years is a long time. Ample time I think, even with current technology, to cover the entire planets surface in such a way that water can't escape above the ozone layer. On the other hand, we're talking about a species that waits 'til the last few years to fix a problem they've known is coming for decades (guess which one I mean, you're probably right, there are multiple correct answers). So, I suppose if we don't survive, it'll be up to any future, non-human archeologists and paleontologists who happen by to decide if we truly were intelligent or not. Provided, of course, that any evidence remains that we ever existed since even our more durable structures tend to be made more or less of limestone (concrete) and iron and our mortuary practices discourage fossilization.
And all of that is even if you believe the proposition that life is out there.
Somebody once said
What I fail to understand is why some people unconditionally reject the notion of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe (and most likely elsewhere in our galaxy) as being farfetched and silly. Of course, there are some folks who object to the notion and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence on the basis of religious beliefs, but they are generally politely ignored (as they should be.) That leaves a vocal minority of scientists, many of whom are astronomers and cosmologists, who are not willing to accept the notion that life could exist elsewhere.
I suppose the most often-cited "proof" that Earth is the sole life-bearing place in the Universe is the damnable Fermi Paradox, a "scientific" precept which, in order to survive, relies on some assumptions which are far more outlandish than the notion that intelligent civilizations not only exist, but are plentiful.
I would side with the majority of scientists who believe that intelligent life is fairly common throughout our universe, but the unfortunate fact is that we will probably never know for sure (at least in our lifetime.)
Well, one reason I can think of that magnetic field reversal may result in large extinctions of microbes has to do with the same fact that is central to the main discussion: some microbial lifeforms make their own compasses. I don't really know why they make their own compasses, but I presume it gives them a survival advantage, or they probably wouldn't do it. So, when those compasses are suddenly giving incorrect results, maybe it suddenly becomes a great disadvantage, and when those microbes go down, they bring down large parts of the whole system. Pure speculation, but it's the best I can invent on short notice.
Another possibility is that shifts in the Earths magnetic field might be precipitated by shifts in the suns magnetic field. We already know that the sun follows a 22 year cycle in its magnetic field, maybe every now and then it skips a beat or two and then flips really, really hard the next time. The blow that this could give Earth's magnetic field might be enough to flip it. As for the extinctions, the massive solar storms, which might last years could conceivably put out enough radiation to kill off lots of little squiggly wigglies.
Hmmm, here's one that's a lot less probably since there would be fossil evidence. Let's say that shifts in the Earths magnetic field are caused by actual physical shifts of some sort deep inside the Earth. These shifts cause stress on the tectonic plates and result in volcanic eruptions that spew evil gases or sky clouding ash, killing off microbes. But, as I said, we'd see the ash fossilized.
Ok, here's another theory. A bunch of really enlightened, spiritual aliens came by Earth in a craft hidden behind a comet. Countless billions of enlightened microbes were awaiting their arrival in purple robes and sneakers. The aliens took the spirits of the microbes with them and left the bodies behind. In order to keep their comet in a stable solar orbit and on schedule for the next pickup, the aliens had to use their magnetic propulsion device to push themselves off from the earth. This is something that the aliens need to do periodically, but certainly not every trip, and it only reverses the Earths magnetic field when they need a really big boost.
"No difference between us and bacteria" ? Wow. Sounds pretty depressing to me. Why don't you
check out the Jesus Action Figures and inject
a little purpose into your life.
Anonymous "But Better than Bacteria" Coward
Not really. There's absolutely nothing in the Bible that precludes the possibility of life on other planets.
As far as it helping "answer questions" -- to what end? What's the point of asking questions or getting answers if you just die anyway?
And for the ones that don't accept pure chance as the explanation for their origins -- well, that's them. My issue is with those who inconsistently try to mix the two. If you're going to presuppose something, don't act like you have a reason to live based on a conclusion your presuppositions won't support.
Anyway, what does "better" mean in the first place if we all just evolved by chance from the same mess and continue on, driven only by cause and effect and chance?
Which also have wings, and also follow a different evolutionary path. In any case, to address your point, do insect wings and bird and bat wings differ all that much? From my point of view, they're similar structures that were assembled from whatever materials happened to be available. Birds wings are made of feathers and bone and muscle and skin. The creatures that birds evolved from (I believe dinosaurs, but some disagree) seem to have had some sort of scales, which developed into feathers which catch the air better as well as providing good insulation, etc. Mammals lack scale like structures, so instead they formed membranes from skin, but otherwise, their wings are structurally very similar to bird wings. Insects, similarly, formed their wings out of the materials they had available, presumeable some sort of chitin. The wings don't need to be as big as those of birds or bats because of the greater surface area to mass ratio that small insects enjoy. Insect wings, to me, appear to be an extension of general insect principles to include the concept of a flat, light bit that flaps. The size difference really does change a lot about how insect wings can be designed. Insect wings wouldn't be aerodynamic if it weren't for the fact that they can flap so fast.
Of course, it's important to realise that the different types of wings are used in different ways. For example, the wings of a penguin are very different from those of typical avians. I've already noted that insect wings are designed to be used by much smaller creatures than bird and bat wings. The size of the organism does play a part in the design of the body part.
You can realistically expect that the eye of a human will be much different from the eye of a creature that could never support something that large. It is true that there are elements of the human eye that you just can't make all that much smaller. An insect couldn't support a human type eye, and neither could a microbe.
Anyway, so far everything I've said supports your point. Now here's what I have to say to refute it. First, the unicellular organisms we're talking about here are likely on the same size scale. There's no reason to believe that organelles that perform the same function will be of greatly differing complexity. In the manner of evolution, they should tend towards being whatever gets the job done simply, while also being efficient (evolution doesn't neccessarily pick the most efficient overall method for doing things, it doesn't do long term planning, but, when it decides on a method, it refines that method). Second, what are the available materials? There are materials other than magnetite that are magnetic, sure, but not as available or easy to process, and usually not as powerful as magnetite. It's unrealistic to expect that evolution would develop a creature that makes its own rare earth magnets through biological processes, for example. In any case, these structures are basically just some kind of vacuole where the organism stores and concentrates magnetite, with some sort of method for detecting the orientation of the vacuole. The only thing that's actually left are miniscule grains of highly concentrated magnetite. What else do you expect from an extra-terrestrial organism. Does it have to use some hitherto unknown element instead of iron? Does it have to arrange the magnetite in some structure other than a tight grain? Does it have to be shaped into a torus or maybe a label with the words "Made on Mars"? What exactly are you looking for?
By the way, you showed that your reasoning doesn't work very well in this case when you said that, by observation, you wouldn't think that a bird and a bee came from the same planet. This doesn't make sense if you're going to require that dis-similarity with existing Earth life-forms be a criteria for extra-terrestrial origin.
You're right. I actually meant to say low gravity. I don't know where the thin atmosphere bit came into it. Muddled mind.
The fact that Mars doesn't have much of a magnetic field isn't really curious or odd; IIRC, Venus doesn't have much of one either, and neither does Luna.
The current theory suggests that a dynamo effect is set up by a planet's core being molten and spinning (like Earth's); bodies without such a core wouldn't be expected to have much of a field.
There are the pyramids on Mars and there are the same pyramids on Earth. What's the possibility that they are related?
Er, it doesn't work that way.
There are pyramid-like formations on Mars and on Earth (called dreikanters). These are due to the wind depositing particles (sand or fines in the case of Mars, usually snow in the case of Earth) in the same spot from more or less the same direction over time. No LGMs or ancient astronauts needed.
As you said, it isn't impossible. But it's highly unlikely that they're the result of intelligent intervention. Pyramids on Earth are created either by natural processes (dreikanters) or by artificial ones (Aztec and Egyptian pyramids). The Martian ones seem to be entirely natural in origin.
Not to burst your bubble, but...
None of the things you mentioned require a trip to Mars to discover/employ/whatever. Spending a lot of time in a high Earth orbit could do it.
I'm not saying this to shoot the idea down (far from it--I rather fancy the idea of going to Mars). But we don't *have* to go to Mars to do that. We can stay here.
But I get annoyed at people that act and talk like they have a reason to think their life has any purpose when they've wholesale accepted the idea that a wholly natural, mindless chance process made us what we are.
Evolution is not simply the result of random chance, and one wonders why this assertation keeps coming up even after it has been so thoroughly dealt with. You might be interested in taking a look at the Evolution and Chance FAQ.
With regards to thinking that a person's life has a purpose, I don't see what role evolution plays in this at all. If you personally require some sort of an external crutch in order to justify your existence, then that is your business.
Um, it's only really dark *part* of the time, cobber. Half of every lunar (about two weeks), it soaks up solar energy. And the sun isn't particularly dim when there's no atmosphere in the way. But for the two weeks when you can't see the sun--then I imagine you'll have pretty good seeing.
OTOH, it would probably be cheaper to loft another Hubble-type 'scope (build it right this time!) and put it in an orbit that keeps it in shadow. Your only limit on mirror size then is the mass restrictions and so forth for launching the thing (this isn't as much of a problem if you assemble it in space).
Still, I do like the idea of going to Luna. It appeals to the exploratory side of human nature.
was even an idea. SCC was just way too damn
expensive (in the tens of billions range, IIRC), and
at the time there have not been any significant
discoveries in physics for about a decade.
Now, of course, when the investment in physics
is starting to pay off, the EU with CERN is
way ahead of the US. BTW, CERN is about to be majorly expanded
in the very near future, while the only thing
the US has is Fermilab.
"Chance" isn't used in this case to refer to pure randomness, because we're all intelligent enough to know such a thing does not exist. It's used to refer to a general result, and it's still appropriate for the purposes of discussion.
But even if we talk about it all as pure order, where does the order come from? Or do we just assume it's there? We have to believe it's there, or science is a farce, and there's no point in discussion or anything else. We have to believe it's there, or we don't function. Sounds like the definition of a crutch to me.
Those of us who are amateur astronomers would kill to be able to set up our scopes on Mars. Thinner atmosphere, far fewer clouds, no urban light pollution or ultrabright moon .. excellent seeing conditions! You'd just have to make sure to stay inside during the dust storms.
.. right? :-)
Hey, a guy can dream
Firstly, not all stars evolve into red giants, some tur into black holes. Although I guess it's a lot more complex.
// mayhexx (forgetfull coward)
Secondly, arent red giants colder than yellow stars? Wouldnt this give us a longer time?
Thirdly, how long have life existed? How long has larger landbased organisms existed? A couple of hundred million years. It would seem to me that the inhabitable earth is middle aged. And you shouldnt forget either that the earth was uninhabitable for billion of years before the right conditions appeared. And we shouldnt forget that there are chances that completely different forms of life might evolve instead.
These tiny grains, made of a material called magnetite, have a very specific size and shape. They are also very pure - far purer than magnetite grains that occur naturally.
If these things are presupposed to have evolved, then they ARE occuring naturally. Evolution doesn't leave room for anything else but nature (plus time, plus chance).
I've recently been reading about mars and one of the interesting things is that you can't really use a compass because the magnetic field just isn't there. This is curious.
Hit Mars with a big asteroid. The asteroid is
slams into the surface with a speed equal to or
greater than the Mars' escape velocity. (This
should be blatently obvious... if not, take an
AC's word for it, or derive it yourself.
If it hits with escape velocity, it imparts huge
amounts of energy in to the crust, blowing
material into the sky and causing all sorts of
other bad things to happen. Since the asteroid
came in with escape velocity, it is actually very
easy to get some of the blown into the sky to have
orbital and escape velocities.
(Big impacts throw huge chunks of rock to the
opposite sides of planets... this requires
velocities quite close to orbital velocities, and
therefore on the order of escape velocities.)
By the way, just so you know, there is no
question whatsoever that some meteorite are from
Mars. Some have been conclusively identified as
Martian, and this is widely accepted be
scientists.
By the way, I assume you know all of this, and
just wanted to get a fight going, but I was scared
some people might read your post and get silly
wrong ideas into their heads.
Isn't Mars's gravity a lot less than ours? I'm not that bright; however, it's feasible that this rock did come from Mars.
There gravity is less, so a smaller force is needed to send it out of their atmosphere. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but they have a lot of explosions due to heat and trapped gases. Just like our volcanos, rocks can get thrown into air; a decent size explosion could have sent it towards our planet.
The rock may have been much bigger when it began the re-entry phase; however, the heat could have broken away parts of it. Or, many other parts may still be surviving and remain unfound. It's very possible that it did; however, it's also very possible that it didn't.
In otherwords, it's not stupid; however, very puzzling.
Hmmm... doesn't this magnetite thing qualify as a form of tool making?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
This gesture of using Mars as an escape from the perils of modern American civilization is an interesting one.
... so there's not much hope of revolution there, not if you've got to get your hardcore problems solved back on Earth by science and engineering 'assets' of multi-national no-government organizations.
There's not much land-mass left in the world for new colonists to establish themselves, so we've had idea's like Oceania and such spring up from various patriotic types over the years, as people attempt to solve the problem of a dwindling democracy in the form of the American system. (Which, by the way, is more of a result of world banking restrictions than *anything* else).
So, we look to Mars as a solution, which it isn't.
A Mars colony won't get there if it isn't for the freedom and new ideas that resulted in the birth of the American space program. The hardcore science involved in establishing a Mars colony will have come as a direct result of Earth science, which by the time we have a Mars colony up and running will consist of very closely guarded commercial secrets (as if they aren't now already) being held onto by multi-national conglomerates born from the ashes of the American democratic system. And those multi-nationals bow to the alter of the World Banking System, as we all know too well...
I find it hard to think that with all of the resources to be plundered on Mars, the world banks would allow a remote colony on Mars to be anything other than an extension of an existing government nation that can be subjected to some form of financial/economic restrictions to prevent instability in world banking economies.
So for the first 20 or 30 years or so of the existence of a Mars colony, it's sure going to be made dependent on Earth science and resources in order to survive
Any form of colonization is definitely going to result in a trade system, and since its so far away, Earth is going to be providing Mars with a whole lotta tech in exchange for whatever Mars resources have to offer.
So, Earth will definitely have the Mars colony in check, and it's leash will be science information since its going to be a *long* time until Mars would have any form of scientific organization worth even 1% of what the Earth would have.
Unless we start planning for it, and take the science/technology we've got right here and now, and make it available for future Mars colonists in some form or another...
I guess Open Source software is a start...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
What you're referring to is media simplification for the masses...
If the media were going around saying "potential prokaryotes, not necessarily of the bacteria phylum", nobody'd pay attention because they'd be asleep by the 2nd word.
Much easier for Johnny Newsboy to call it 'bacteria' because "it looks like a squiggly bacteria" than get really scientific about it...
Anyway, you can't complain. Just choose your media to match your intellect.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
If you don't speculate, how can you plan for contingencies?
What you're basically saying is that you're tired of waiting, and want a Mars colony. I do too.
But since it takes a hell of a lot more than just saying "do it" to get up there, big corporations are ultimately involved.
Not having an understanding for those big corps, and the world banking/economic controls in place, how can you adequately plan the path to get a viable Mars economy set up?
Speculation can result in engineering. And engineering can result in opportunities for further speculation...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
So as to conserve oxygen.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Go read `Heart of the Comet', by Gregory Bentfor (sp?) and David Brin, then answer your own question.
As a quick summary, who's to say that the earth bactiera that used magnetite didn't originate from that meteorite? (I'm not saying they did, either)
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Also, I bet his peers will make comments about the high gravity, low atmospheric pressure, high oxygen content (assuming it's still there, it is a biological by-product)...
BTW, I beleive X maxes out to 6 for billions of years (the sun will go `pfft' around then)
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
According to widely accepted estimates, the average distance between civilizations in our galaxy would be on the order of 200 light years... radio waves have only been traveling from earth for 50 or so years... so odds are no civilization that can hear our signals has had the chance yet.
:wq
Their metabolic processes should be sufficiently divergent from what evolved on Earth to not prefer digesting or infesting human organic tissue... or so we hope :)
:wq
No flame, just the funniest topic I've seen in a long time...
This comment could just as easily have been aimed at 1960s computers, and see where they've taken us. Quite often, something is just so newfangled that even though no one quite knows what to do with it, once its built new techniques and applications will be invented for it. I'm sure that the concept of /. itself would sound as ludicrous 40 years ago as space technology 40 years hence sounds now.
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
NASA if far too concerened with public image. It's projects are almost allways run for the benefit of the media, not the amount of science that gets done.
Point in case with the ISS - when it started to become obvious that it was going to be neccessary to bail out the Russian end of the project on a periodic basis, the US congress cancelled the super collider. LHERC would have cost $8 billion and left CERN for dead. Frankly, I'll take LHERC over the ISS any day. On a per dollar basis, it would have produced just as many technological spin-offs and a whole lot more useful science.
I certainly agree that the real problem is beurocracy and unfortunatly that's what NASA is - an entrenched beurocracy.
As for a telescope on the dark side of the moon - most definatly, especially if it's built as an interferometer. We could probably do that now, and for a lot less than the ISS is going to cost. With a large enough baseline, we could probably image terrestrial planets around other stars. In addition to that, being on the moon ( no atmosphere ), we could even detect the spectral signature of gases such as CO2, H2O and O3 on any planets of this type that were discovered.
Not much chance of that though while the ISS is sucking up the money for the next ten years, and human crewed flights to Mars sucking up the money for the next ten after that.
Just my several billion dollars worth of ire gang.
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
/.
I know *exactly* what your talking about. Hate the damned thing.
The term that allways cracks me up is 'L', the lifetime of a space-faring species.
The only way that you can reliably estimate this factor is by a statistically signifigant collection of data on the lifetime of intelligent space-faring species.
In short, you can't calculate it until you have actually met a large number of such species ( or estimated it by examining the archeological remains of such species ).
This tends to defeat the whole purpose of the exercise, and of course explains why it is so popular with some people. Essentially, it amounts to an argument of "You can't calculate the values, therefore your not allowed to disagree with my fantasies about a universe filled with intelligent life".
As for the other terms in the equation, I'll give them a miss. I'm still cleaning the charcoal of my asbestos long-johns from the flaming that I got the last time that I brought that subject up on
The Drake equation is acceptable for late night speculation over the coffee table. It's not acceptable as serious science.
Personally, I believe that there is almost certainly intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos. I just don't believe that it's very common.
Unfortunatly, Sci-Fi needs E.T's for interesting plots. Without them, it tends to go flat fairly quickly.
"Space, the final frontier. These are the voyagers of the starship enterprise. It's five year mission, to seek out new bacteria. To boldly examine geological features never examined by humans before...".
Hardly the sort of thing to make for a very exciting weekly episode.
Mr Spock: "It's igneous rock Jim, but not as we know it".
Don't get me wrong gang - I actually like Sci-Fi. The problem to me is that too many people arn't very critical in their thinking and as a result of that, they end up taking it far too seriously.
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
One of the problems with biogenisis here on Earth is that life appeared fairly soon after the crust solidified. Not only that, it appears to have made the transition from self-replicating molecules to simple cellular forms fairly quickly.
Because of this, the physicist ( and sometimes Sci-Fi author ) Fred Hoyle suggested that life may have actually begun in space and then been seeded on Earth by asteroids and comets.
While there is no conclusive proof for this, the fact that debris ejected by impacts on planets such as Mars can travel to Earth is highly suggestive. In addition to this, we must also consider the possibility of the reverse as well. Namely, that life may have been transferred by a similiar process from the Earth to Mars ( and possibly elsewhere within the solar-system, such as Europa and Titan ).
If such a transfer of living micro-organisms occured in the past when Mars had a denser ( and warmer ) atmosphere and surface water, then it is not inconceivable that such life-forms may have established themselves on the Martian surface.
So even if we discover life elsewhere within the solar-system ( either existant or in the form of micro-fossils ), this would not constitute proof for a seperate occurence of biogenesis. Before we could make such an assertion, we would need to demonstrate a fundemental difference between such life and terrestrial life ( such as differences in chirality or the basic amino acids used to store genetic information ).
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
*Ahem*! Excuse me jumping in, but's that not the only question. Even if a planet has the conditions that allow for the biogenesis of life, the other question is - how long can it maintain stability?
Most educated people these days know that stars eventally turn into red-giants.
What a lot of people overlook is that stars get hotter even before they reach that point.
As a result of the infall of asteroids and comets into second generation stars like our own sun, these stars gradually accumulates a small but signifigant proportion of carbon during their life-time.
As a result of this, the proportion of energy that it produces by carbon catalysed fussion increases over time. While the increase in luminosity is slight, it has far reaching consequences.
Specifically, because of the gradually increasing output of energy from the sun, within 100 - 150 million years, the atmospheric circulation of water vapour on Earth will begin to carry water above the ozone layer.
Once this state is reached, the water will undergo UV disociation into hydrogen and oxygen. Because of it's low molecular weight, the hydrogen will escape into space.
In short, the Earth will begin to dehydrate at an accelerated rate, and will become uninhabitable within about a furthur 100 million years.
So contrary to the opinions of many people, the Earth does not have 5 billion years to go. It only has about 250 million years of life left to it. In this respect, our planet is not "middle aged", but actually close to retirment.
Work on this subject ( by physisicts such as Dr David Brin ) has indicated that this is the probable fate of all life bearing planets long before their parent star leaves the main sequence and becomes a red-giant.
So even if we assume that the number of planets that are *initially* capable of supporting life might be quite large, the number that are able to retain stable conditions for life to evolve to any degree of complexity ( including intelligence ) may be microscopically small.
In short, lots of protoplasm but very few beings that you can have a conversation with.
Sorry to "pick nits" over such a small point within your posting, but it's something that is often overlooked. It's relevent to some of the other postings on this page, but it's kind of hard to work out where it should go exactly...
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
Yes, most certainly. I don't want to repeat what other posters furthur down the page have already pointed out, but Mars seems to be somewhat deficient in heavier elements. Consider the density of the inner planets in gramms per cubic centimeter (from the "NASA atlas of the solar-system").
Mercury 5.4
Venus 5.2
Earth 5.5
Mars 3.9
I'm sure that this is pretty obvious. Mars is obviously fairly low in heavy elements ( such as iron and nickel, at least within it's interior ).
Most of the internal heat generated within the Earth comes from the decay of long half life materials such as itotopes of aluminium. Mars seems to be rather short on these.
A few other points that may be of interest to people on this thread ( I apologise, but it would take forever to reply individually. I hope no one will hold that against me, especially craw ).
1. Mars does not apear to be tectonically active. All major tectonic activity seems to have ended at least a billion or more years ago. The last big spurt of activity resulted in the formation of Olympus Mons. This estimate is based on the re-surfacing of the planet by internal lava flows and the count of craters over these re-surfaced areas. Because of it's smaller size and low density, while we can't be certain at this point in time, it does look as if the Martian core froze some time ago ( sorry craw ).
Still, look on the bright side. Because of the high internal temperature of the Earth, a Jules Verne "Journey to the center of the Earth" won't be possible for a long time. If Mars's core has indeed gone cold, a "Journey to the center of Mars" might be a different proposition.
So even though Mars is somewhat deficient in heavier elements, it may turn out that it will become a primary supplier of heavy metals and radio-actives to human settlements around the solar-system over the next few millenium if we can mine it's core.
2. Life and magnetic fields. That's one that I was able to recently discuss with some fizzy-cysts ( sorry, temporary mental block - it's that damned "nothing is slowing us down banner..." that Rob's got up at the moment. I just can't spell that word right now... ). No dice. Even without a magnetic field, the Earths atmosphere is quite capable of sheilding us from the solar-wind and cosmic radiation. There is hard evidence to prove that mass extinctions of micro-biota ( and probably macro-biota as well ) occur during magnetic field reversals here on Earth, but increased levels of cosmic-radiation because the magnetic field has collapsed doesn't fit the known stopping power of atmospheric gases.
On the basis of estimates quoted to me at the time, even a few meters of air at sea-level are sufficient to stop most of the interstellar radiation ( high speed electrons, protons and alpha-particles ) that is normally deflected by the Earths magnetic field.
So as in the case of Lord Kelvin ( a very droll historical comparison, and one that I'm sure you can appreciate ) we are therefore left with something of a mystery on the point. Obviouisly, the two events ( magnetic field reversal and micro-biota extinctions ) are related, but not in any simple or straight forward manner. Does anyone have any suggestions on this point?
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
...would be a profound moment in the history of our species.
In some ways, I'm not sure of how to respond to the questions that you raise.
"Do we lose anything for believing there exists life outside our planet and solar system?"
Ok, I'll admit, that's a tough one. Essentially, your asking "...how unique is life...".
To me, I tend to take it for granted that life *is* important. This bizare and ridiculous self-replicating system which we know as "life" strikes me as having a purpose and a role within the universe of "dead matter".
For that matter, I couldn't help but notice that some of your questions furthur down this page are framed within a "religious context" ( ie, within the context of a concept of a "supreme being" ).
To me, these arn't the important questions. For me , personally, the important issue is what my role in all of this is. Whatever the universe ( or it's maker ) is up to doesn't bother me. I just do what I feel needs to be done.
At this point in time, that amounts to making people aware of certain possibilities ( such as the re-engineering of planets from uninhabitable dirt-balls to living planets ).
I'm sorry that I can't give you a better answer than that, it's just that here and now, that's my role.
So while I often become frustrated or exasperated with the current situation, I remain philosophical. In many ways, the universe is still very young, and what it will eventually become may be largely under the direction of intelligent species ( such as our own species ).
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
I'm not sure I can take your theories seriously, but they are certainly entertaining!
Have you ever considered writting book? The idea of a bunch of "spiritually enlightenend" alians who drop in to take microbes of to nirvana would certainly be good for a laugh.
As to your idea about volcanic erruptions, yes, we would expect that to show up in the fossil record. It's unlikely, but I might go and have a dig in the reference library to see if there are any factors of this type related to microbial extinctions. If nothing else, it will give me an excuse to bone up on the posibility.
> think I'll check out real estate elsewhere.
When?
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
--
Python
Python
As a practicing astronomer, I can tell you how great it would be to put a nice big dish or optical telescope on the dark side of the moon. Just think of all the wonderfully unobstructed skies! And how big you could make your mirrors (heck... lenses!) on the moon (less gravitational distortion) and you would have the resources there to do it. What a great place to do some serious science!
You could automate the station, but it would make alot more sense to send the scientists there to maintain the station (everything breaks...).
I hear what you're saying, we spend so little on good research and seem to squander it on seemingly ridiculous jaunts into space - but its those jaunts that keep the tax payers interested in paying for the BORING research. And very now and then you can couple the two. You have - or the money just won't flow.
And NASA does sometimes blow money on projects just because it has it (as in the Space Pen project... the Russians used pencils! It cost us a million bucks to develop a pen that could write in space - and the Russians solved the problem for free by using PENCILS!) But this problem is, IMHO, caused by Government bureacrats and the convulted process the government uses to "solve"
problems.
--
Python
Python
I think by now we know there's bacteria in the sample. We don't need magnetic crystals to prove that again unless you're trying to get a research grant. For last couple years the problem has been whether the sample was contaminated by earth organisms but I don't think their funding grants to study that one.
I think that post was intended as humor. I hope.
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Flame me, please!
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
AC sez:
>B:) We will send people to Mars over my dead body.
Cool. That can be arranged.
Face it-- NASA has added *way* more to the economy than we've ever put into it. NASA's budget for a decade doesn't even match Tang revenue, let alone the computer advances directly attributable to the space industry. More money goes into making bad movies about space than actually goes into space.
Space exploration is more than just flicking mass into space. It's about research, exploration, and adventure. Yes, other research projects need funded; the US govmnt doesn't give a tinkey-winkey about science. ALL research needs more money. Knowledge is our only path to salvation; that, and Oreo cookies and hot chocolate (the kind with the mini-marshmallows).
I'm wondering if X million (or billion) years from now some green alien from Venus will inspect a meteorite from earth and find remnants of bacteria Will he conclude that there was life of Earth or will he be shouted down (it's too cold there, and not enough sulfur in the athmosphere)?
--> Any fool can criticize - and many do --
"So tell me who's the real patriots --
...
the Archie Bunker slobs waving flags?
Or the ones with the guts to work for some real change?
Our land, I love it too
I think I love it more than you
I care enough to fight"
Dead Kennedys -- The Stars and Stripes of Corruption
It always annoyed me that the presumed Martian life forms are called "Bacteria". Assuming they are not just artifacts, all we can say is that they appear to be single celled. We don't know if they are prokaryotes much less the particular group of prokaryotes called "bacteria".
Star Wars doesn't count--since it was a false alarm. :-)
Get off my lawn.
Whether there were primitive microrganisms on Mars is still "up in the air", and I am glad to see some more evidence support that there was life there.
Supposing there was life on Mars, every known constant of the equation used to determine hoe much life there is out there is very high, which means it is very likely there are aliens. Which leads to the next question. Why haven't we met them? Or have we??
- Sam Trenholme
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Let the war rage again! 8)
The original announcement, in 1996, sparked
almost violent arguments among planetary
scientists. Recent press on it has declared
the subject as "dead". I guess this reopens the
debate.
Personally, I think that the evidence is strong,
despite some inconsistencies in the original work.
I'm waiting for the sample-return mission in 2005
to really have a conclusion, though.
Even then, we'll never be able to prove that there isn't/wasn't
life on Mars, only that we can't find the remains of it.
Check panspermia.org for more info.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
The chances that Earth bacteria infiltrated the meteorite once it landed here are pretty slim, as the distribution of the bacteria-like structures are mostly concentrated around the center of the meteorite. But you're right, there is still not enough convincing evidence either way. Check out the URL above for lots of more info on this subject.
Dan
NASA *does* send machines to Mars already. (One every 26 months.) The reason that a lot of scientists want to send humans is because there is a definite limit as to how smart a machine can be. You can only program so much AI into a given rover or probe.
So you might suggest to operate the machine via remote control instead of letting it run around with its own AI. Sure, operating it remotely via telepresence sounds nice, but that's not very viable when it takes over 20 minutes for a round-trip signal to go from earth to Mars. Try playing Quake with multi-minute lag, and then imagine trying to drive a rover or drill for samples. It would take a very, very long time to get anything useful done.
So the solution is to send humans. Even if the humans are merely in an underground living area on Mars driving rovers and digging for samples remotely via telepresence, that would work very nicely. And then they could even take the rocks to a Martian lab and analyze them right then and there, instead of having to fly them all the way back to Earth.
So basically, there are a lot of benefits to sending humans to Mars instead of just machines. Yeah, it's expensive. But I think it's worth it.
Dan
You're right. Rocks don't just fly away from Mars or any other planet. But when there is a huge impact on the Martian surface, all kinds of debris is thrown up into the atmosphere. And Mars has a weak gravitational field, so some of it is bound to escape. And then some of it might even find its way to other planets, like Earth.
Dan
I found this Q&A (and many others) at the URL above:
x .html
QUESTION:
How do you know that the meteorite came from Mars?
ANSWER from Cheick Diarra on September 19, l996:
Most Martian meteorites are 1.3 billion years old or less, much younger
than typical igneous meteorites from asteroids which are 4.5 billion
years old. They also have higher contents of volatiles than igneous
meteorites. The conclusive evidence that this meteorite originated on
Mars comes from the measurement of gases trapped in its interior. The
trapped gases match those that Viking measured in the Martian
atmosphere.
For more information, go to URL
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/flash/marslife/inde
ANSWER from Jeff Plescia on March 10, 1997:
There are now about a dozen meteorites we believe came from Mars.
All of them are igneous rocks (which means they formed by the
cooling of molten rock - either lava erupted onto the surface or
injected into the subsurface).
We believe they are from Mars for a number of reasons:
1. Age. These meteorites solidified from a liquid state between about
200 Million years ago to over 4 billion years ago. The younger age
(200 Million years) indicates they come from a body that was able
to produce lava that recently. Asteroids and the Moon are geologically
inactive 200 million years ago, which suggests are large planet (but
not necessarily Mars).
2. Trapped Gas. When they rocks were ejected from Mars, some of
the atmosphere was trapped in the rocks. When the meteorites were
studied on earth it was discovered that the gas had a composition
identical to that of the Mars atmosphere (as indicated by the measurements
from the Viking lander missions in 1976).
3. Isotopic Composition. Each element has a specific set of cousins which
are very similar, have the same basic chemical properties, but are slightly
different in mass (in this case the number of neutrons) - these different
cousins are called isotopes (e.g., oxygen 16, oxygen 17, oxygen 18). The
ratio of the various isotopes in the martian meteorites was different from
any earth rocks or any of the lunar samples or any of the other meteorites.
All of this led to the conclusion that these rocks came from Mars.
ANSWER from Bruce Jakosky on April 27, 1997:
There are twelve different meteorites that are thought to have come
from Mars. Two of them have strong evidence tying them to Mars. In
these two, there is a glassy component of rock that is made up of rock
that was partly melted by the force of the impact that must have
ejected them from Mars. There is a gas trapped within this glass, and
this gas has a composition that is identical to the composition of the
martian atmosphere and different from any other source of gas in the
solar system. This gas is thought to have been "implanted" into the
glass, also during the impact that ejected it from the martian surface.
The presence of this gas is a very convincing tie to Mars. In fact, if
they turn out not to be from Mars, then there is no place in the solar
system where they can be from--there are only a few planets big enough
to have had active volcanism so late in history (and these rocks are
pieces of volcanic rock), the Earth and Moon are ruled out by the
meteorites' chemical behavior, and Venus (the only other possible
place) has a very different atmosphere.
So, what about the other ten meteorites (since only two of the twelve
have the trapped gas)? They are tied to the first two by their
composition. It is very likely that they come from the same planet,
but not absolutely certain.
Um, now how did these rocks escape the gravity of Mars?? I think the idea that a rock from _ANY_ planet could just "fly away" is simply stupid.
(Flame proof underware ON)
--fatboy
And do you really think ANYTHING could live through re-entry????
--fatboy
I said the _IDEA_ was stupid. Possable yes, probable? NO Think about people. How many moon rocks have they found?? THINK ABOUT IT! :)
--fatboy
Show me the crater. I want to see it :) It had to leave a mark, correct??? I guess I just want proof. I want to see the math. I want someone to talk about it in those terms. Your turn AF type person BTW: This is in light hearted fun (I hope)
--fatboy
Don't forget heat produced by radioactive decay when considering how much time it takes to cool. There was a classic debate during the 1800's between geologists and physicists as to the age of the earth. The geologist asserted that the earth had to 100's of millions year old, while the physicists (especially Lord Kelvin) claimed less than 100 m.y. (based on simple heat conduction loss of an initially molten body). Then radioactivity was discovered.
Except for this, I believe that everything else you wrote is correct.
sounds like my b.s. detector went off.
Here it goes. It's Mars round two.
Surveyor started the remap, Scientists revive the old-good theory. And we soon are going to start digging on photos and gathering all wiednesses and wild theories.
But I wonder. Will Surveryor end its mission in a much like Pathfinder one? A few frames for the public and a nearly silent death?
Will these British guys get on the same luck as their American colleagues? Downplays, rumours, discreditation and once more silence?
Will such guys, from serious scientists like Molenaar or Van Flandern, through McDaniel down to Vanisko, Olaf or me, jump into the bandwagon of possible life, seas, civilization, catasthrophes, scientific alternatives? And then get fire from all sides who consider such crazy ideas should be silenced?
And then will they let Hoagland create havoc once again?
And you're quite right not to be convinced. There are a few serious problems to consider them from Mars. Some years ago (before this bulaboo about ALHA 84001) I read on a very serious book that all suppositions that this rock came from Mars is because most scientists believed that such rocks could not come from anywhere else. The rock presents properties that shows that it was formed in a Earth like planet abundant in water.
However the fact that there we know only two such planets does not force to consider only Mars. In fact the writer warns that this and similar rocks do not fully fit Martian Geochemistry (and much less Earth)
:)
About meeting them. Maybe they are we? In fact we may come all from Mars... Remember that phrase?
Goodness gracious, the "censor" seems to have no sense of humour. My post was *tongue* *in* *cheek*, a *parody* of the nonsense posts that go up whenever Sengan puts up an article.
Anyone notice the "smiley" at the end of my post?
I think the theory is that Mars used to have a magnetic field (if in fact it doesn't now). To have a magnetic field the core needs to be molten or in liquid form and I believe Mars' core is currently not very molten. However, in the past, becuase of the volcanoes, it's obvious that the core was much more molten. Is molten the right word?
I'm not a geo-scientist, so it's fair to ignore my opinion.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
I haven't read about it lately but I thought I remembered reading somewhere that they'd disproved the pyramid story. Wasn't it just weird shadows or something?
Sooo... If I just gather up a whole bunch of dirt, pack it all together, and fling it at another country, it'll be like launching a nuke at them? (sorry, couldn't resist)
I hope to die peacefully in my sleep like grandpa, not screaming like his passengers.
Actually, if you want possible proof of life on Mars, the Viking missions in the 70s already provide some. Viking (I think it was Viking 2) included two tests for life in the Martian soil. Test A reported that there was life, and test B reported that there wasn't. Now, either test could have malfunctioned, so NASA also tested Viking in Antarctica. Antarctica is as close to Martian conditions as you can get on this planet, but there is definitely life (bacteria as well as insects, etc.) in Antarctica. The results? Test A found that there was indeed life in Antarctica, but test B concluded that there was not.
Were the tests invalid? Possibly. I know one of them involved mixing some soil into a growth medium and measuring the opacity of the solution over time, to see if any bacteria grow and cloud the water. I don't remember what the other test was. I don't anyone can really decide for sure until we have a permanent research institution, or several, on Mars.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Pretty interesting....but its just bacteria. But then again, bacteria can be really cool. I wonder how deadly (if its deadly) this stuff can be?
natas
Natas of
-=Pedophagia=-
http://www.mp3.com/pedophagia
Also Admin of
http://loki.linuxgames.com
Yeah, let's go back to the trees... no wait the trees were a bad idea too, let's go back to the oceans.
Most of the research NASA needs to do these days needs to be done in space, hence the need for the station. PLUS it will allow us to better explore the solar system, and be our first step into a much larger world.
People like you just don't get it, and probably never will.
Bacteria infiltration could concentrate in the middle if the middle contained something bacteria like. Perhaps the outer edges was ruined by heating as the meteorite fell trough the atmosphere.
life everywhere != intelligent life everywhere
:-)
intelligent life everywhere != radio using life everywhere
And even if intelligent life is everywhere AND they are all using radios AND they don't use compression or spread spectrum AND they happen to congregate around 1400-1800 MHz they might still just not be bothering to transmit actively in the same way are. Maybe we haven't met them because they just really don't care about talking to anyone else.
And all of that is even if you believe the proposition that life is out there. Last time I checked it was based on a formula that Frank Drake wrote up that had mostly guesses and wishes rather than actual (omigod) scientific, empirically derived numbers.
Kinda hard to get your hopes up about that
And what are we going to do when we get there? Why should my tax money pay for someone to dig up Martian dirt? Seriously, I'm not trying to be argumentative just curious what the Mars advocates answer is.
Or is this more of a "manifest destiny" kind of thing that just can't be explained in terms of logic?
Raccoons are curious. Are they intelligent? My cat is curious sometimes too. Does that mean it is intelligent sometimes too?
Some people suggest that even though neurons are biologically "expensive", it may be easier to develop greater intelligence than new physical adaptations. If this is indeed the case then intelligence has nothing to do with curiosity whatsoever.
I think equating intelligence with curiosity is just another example of how we anthropomorphize intelligence and change it to mean "human intelligence".
I am confused about how a program virtually guaranteed to be massively funded by government(s) and multinational monopolies is going in any way to be affected by free market forces. Especially since they are going to be a welfare colony for a good long time.
If you want free market forces to determine the fate of Mars then I have to ask, "What are they going to sell to Earth to pay their way?" (Oh and don't forget to subtract launch and retrieval costs, risk, and time of transit. By the time that He-3 has arrived maybe the world market for energy crashed and it's worth about four cents a ton.)
Terraformed dirt? The rich people who could afford land on Mars can already afford land on Earth. It's the poor (and increasingly middle class) who can't afford housing in modern America. Perhaps corporations are going to give the land away to them? Or maybe you think the rich and spoiled will really give up their society life, their parties and galas, their fancy sports cars, their palatial estates, their gardens, their transcontinental jet setting, and all the other perks of wealth so that they can get a little more land on Mars? Gonna be one tough commute from Mars if you want to hang out at the Oscars.
All of the technological developments that people claims will develop from going to Mars are a) contigent benefits and b) not limited to just Mars. I would bet that an orbital lab would result in virtually the same developments at a much lower cost.
So far I haven't heard a single reason why we should send people and start a colony on Mars. Virtually everything of worth we could do on Mars can be done, cheaper, faster, and more efficiently by robots.
People don't say, "Hey let's colonize the inside of a volcano! Just think, a new land of liberty. All those technological developments. Lots of land. And then we could terraform it and sell hotel rooms to tourists!!"
The only problem with this is that during a "flipped" period, as opposed to a "flopped" period, there is still a field. It's not as though it goes away for X years, and then comes back for Y. Instead, it's a polarity reversal. For X years, compass North is North, and compass South is South. then it all flips. Compass North becaomes South, and compass South becomes North. If Mars were to follow the same pattern, then there would be some form of magnetic field, whether it be "normal" or "flopped", but the strength would not change.
(thanks to Geology 117, at UIUC, where I skipped more than I should have)
But it would offer us non-creationists and scientists a chance to observe how similar or different said life form is. Would they use the same DNA bases? DNA? Amino acids? Etc...
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
A theory tossed around is the meta-stability of a liquid core inside a solid shell;
It's very high momentum rotation won't allow it to stop or change directions, in a way very similar to a gyroscope, but perhaps because there is a fluid layer between the core and the shell, one of the two just flips around because of metastability.
Imagine an eggshell with its liquid center. You could toss the egg in the air, and it would spin, but it's interior would not because there is a relatively low friction between the yolk and the shell, which could also account for the 'flip' as evidenced by the earth every couple aeons or so.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
That's where the real mysteries of science comes in my friend...
If we can get the funding to go to Mars, and we do find evidence of bacteria and magnetosomes, the question is why are they so similar? Maybe it is because they came from the same place; maybe it means something else. It isn't hogwash until we know they do or don't exist. It would be stunning to find out life somehow migrated from one planet to the other.
We don't even know that Martian life uses DNA, or the same set of amino acids we do... Thus the interest prompted by the Martian metorite...
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
That is the whole reason and push for a mars exploration movement from Nasa, right?
To find out more about life, Mars, etc.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Not horribly so.
Escape velocity on earth is like 11,000kph or something like that. If there were just an asteroid sitting on earth's path, the earth's velocity while orbiting around the sun is much greater than 11,000kph, so the asteroid itself will be able to reach escape velocities, and any chunks of dirt it dishes out will be able to leave with escape velocities.
On Mars, since it is smaller and less massive, has much lower escape velocities. It's very easy to imagine chunks getting knocked out into orbit; some believe Mar's moons are just this type of remnant, either pieces of Mars, pieces of asteroids caught by Mars, or pieces of asteroids that bounced off Mars. In a similar vein, some believe the moon is a result of an extraordinary impact with earth and a large fast asteroid.
While getting it into space is easy enough, getting to earth is the hard part. While not easy to imagine, much more coincindental things have occurred, like the earth getting hit by an asteroid. In fact, the probabilities are the same, since anything that leaves Mars is an asteroid, and the probabilities may be higher because Mars is closer than all the asteroid belts.
Nothing needed to live through reentry if they were fossilized remains inside the rock. Likewise, they probably didn't survive escape from Mars either, except that they were protected as fossilized remains in the rock.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
As cool as a pencil in space is, I've heard plenty of good arguments that pencil shavings, graphite, and eraser dust would be pretty bad contaminants in zero G.
Of course, a wax pencil would probably be that much better than either.
I'm not sure I believe the quote of a million bucks for the Space Pen, though I'm sure it cost quite a bit...
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Gosh I wish I could find your email and have a constructive conversation rather than some pointless rant where you aren't even guaranteed to see or read it...
The problem with science, research, and results is we don't know that we will ever get anything useful. Period. Research by its very nature is experimental and untried, with a high probability of failure. However, without it, we would still be using wooden tools and stone implements, and probably even less.
You're arguments as such are true, but they are also not the real benefits of space exploration and research.
Space exploration demands, screams for, requires new materials. However, if we don't build things like space stations, new materials don't get researched, and these materials never get used here on earth. Like titanium golf clubs, or aluminum coke cans, or millions of other products of our past space programs. Fullerines, super-conductors, super-ceramics, super polymers, and many other wacky things get worked on while designing a space station, for insulation, strength, durability, stress, radiation protection, etc. All of the above also have uses here on Earth, and are far from useless.
There is also biological information ready to be harvested from an extended space trip, such as info about human physiology, health, and maintanence. Ecosystems and recycling of wastes and other things also need to be figured out as well. Who knows but the next great advance, such as an anti-hangover pill, or a anti-alergy medication, or a preservative that keeps food fresh for weeks, or whatever, can't be found because of the space program?
Personally the space program has value in of itself, for the exploration, the barriers, the newness, the excitement. But I guess for you, and other's like you, I have to dish out explanations of convenience, worth, and viability.
Heck, what better use do we have for some of our money than space?
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
There is fairly good evidence that it is a Mars rock.
Isotope distributions match fairly closely to Mars
Atmospheric makeup of gas trapped within glass bubbles also match Mars; note that Venus has a hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid atmosphere..
Mars is more CO and CO2, I think.
Jupiter is also hydrogens and ammonias, with some water.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I'm surprised no one has mentioned any of the real value of scientific exploration...
Imagine the medical, technological, computing, materials science, and engineering innovations inherent in a trip to Mars!
Diet, medicine, and exercise need to compensate for the zero G environment. This also happens to translate directly into the Earth's environment, with bone loss and bone density issues of the elderly and those suffering from osteoperosis. Likewise information about our daily cycles(what without the normal day-night cycle for extended time), and about our relationship to gravity, in the zero G environs.
Technology: Too much to talk about! Imagine the compounds we would discover to facilitate travel! Radiation shielding, new super strong, super light, super hard, super everything ceramics, plastics, metals, and fibers! Energy and solar efficiences, new solar panel technologies, new high efficiency batteries, or fuel sorces, or power plants! Or superconductors? Or new polymers?
How about computing? Simulation demands, new processes to deal with the high radiation environments of space? These can also be applied to new microprocessors perhaps.
Not a very coherent reply, but I think you get some idea... Besides just the coolness factor.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Don't get me wrong gang - I actually like Sci-Fi. The problem to me is that too many people arn't very critical in their thinking and as a result of that, they end up taking it far too seriously.
It's probably related to the US's abysmal science education in school. Most people have no clue what science or scientific thought really is, I'm sure.
Do we lose anything for believing there exists life outside our planet and solar system? If we don't all we lose our hope, and that's just a shame, so for all extents and purposes, we want to act as if the next mission, the next study, the next survey will discover intelligence of life, no?
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Just as many people shoot down a space station as they do Mars, so whichever comes first gets the most technical prizes.
You're right about spending much time in space, but that requires a space station, and the only difference at that point is aim and control. Once you fire something off in the right direction, it will keep going in space, so there is little functional difference between a space station orbiting the Earth or something flying to Mars... Landing and getting off Mars is different, but a small module designed for such a purpose who probably accomplish that.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
What are the chances that two completely separate evolutionary paths would develop these magnetites? That's like assuming that all the aliens we meet have two arms, two legs...
Bees have wings. Birds have wings. They were developed through two seperate evolutionary paths. The reason they both developed the same function independantly is because both were in an environment where it was useful.
Whatever reason it's useful to have magnetsomes on Earth, it probably applies to Mars as well.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Hows this for a theory?!
Mind you this theory is not based on any scientific investigation... There are the pyramids on Mars and there are the same pyramids on Earth. What's the possibility that they are related? High.... If this is the case then it may be possible that people from Mars colonised the Earth. It's not impossible... We're trying to colonise the Moon...
I'm open to discussion on this issue because it opens up profound thoughts.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not the responsiblity of the user, as I probably stole them anyway
It was intented to get some bites... and it worked. It's amazing how many people on here think that they've got all the answers.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not the responsiblity of the user, as I probably stole them anyway
Just out of curiosity, from whence comes your assertion that the core of Mars has solidified? Isn't Olympus Mons like the biggest volcano in the solar system? Whether it's extinct or not is something I've yet to find from a concrete source.
Thanks,
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
I say let Hoagland create havoc. He hit the nail on the head in the '70s, though popular scientific opinion damned him to obscurity. Now his theories about Europa are being touted as new and wonderful.
Hoagland might be a latter-day Galileo. Let him stir up trouble where he may. I'll get a kick out of it.
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
Okay, assuming that I make these calculations, that suffices for a planet with a totally static surface (i.e. no tectonic activity). I don't know enough about Martian geology to ascertain the correctness of that.
Certainly our moon aids in the tectonic renewal cycle of our planet and, while none of Mars' moons are as large as ours, certainly they exert some strain on the planet.
I have a couple of issues with the "nuclear reactions" line of thought, though. I find it hard to believe that there are nuclear reactions (which to me leads to "explosive nuclear force") going on at the core of the planet, which is a solid iron-nickel mass, from all that I have read.
I can fathom the idea that the gravitational forces from the sun and the moon which drives the tectonic activity on Earth also causes enough internal stress on the planet to keep the mantle liquified, and that the core is solid because of the pressure exerted on it, but it's hard for me to conceptualize nuclear reactions at the core.
Anyway, do you have any links to post where I could find out more?
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
I'm all for NASA trying to find ways to convince the government to budget more funds for space exporation (grin), but this isn't going to do it.
Okay, there's a rock from Mars. And it's got similar cell components to some things on Earth. Nifty. Who's to say that rock hasn't been sitting in Antarctica long enough for Earth bacteria to say, "Hi, I like this location. We'll put up some drapes and a few magnetized iron chunks right after we move in."
Now assume the magnetites *are* from Mars. Why would naturally occuring ones be less pure than organically made ones? Scientist's answer: Because on Earth, that's the case. Well, wouldn't it be possible that, since Mars has a pretty high iron content on the surface that their naturally occuring magnetites are rather pure?
Another point: What are the chances that two completely separate evolutionary paths would develop these magnetites? That's like assuming that all the aliens we meet have two arms, two legs, and a head in reasonably the same locations as we do. And, that they "see" the same spectrum as we do. And can "hear" the same sounds. Life which has evoloved in other systems than our own little biosphere probably won't share anything recognizably in common with us, unless of course they're carbon-nitrogen based and have some familiar looking amino acids.
-Chris
Well, there's probably a lot of UV radiation on the surface of mars. That wouldn't be very helpful for the flash memory in your rio. Nor the controller in your cd player.
Entertainment system of choice on mars? Records!
-Chris
I knew the little homologous structures thing would come up after I posted. :)
Bees wings and birds wings: sure, they're both "wings" that are used for flying, but that's where the similarity ends. They aren't structurally the same, as the magnetites from "mars" and the ones from earth are.
My arguement: A bee and a fly have the same kind of wing. If you saw a bee and a fly next to each other, it would be pretty easy to say "hey, these things probably came from the same planet." If you put a bird and a bee next to each other, even though they both perform the same function, there is no evidence pointing towards evolutionary influence. Here, we have two very similar parts which are assembled the same way, of the same material, and used (presumably) for the same purpose. I'd accept this as a sign of extra-terrestrial life if they were made of a different arrangement of iron or something, but since they are so similar, I interpret them as coming from the same place.
-Chris
> Now, who should be nominate for this mission?
Modern science fiction authors. And everyone who mentioned them on the threads here.
-Chris
I appreciate what you're saying, but I fear that conclusive evidence for life on Mars would just be one more thing for creationists to denounce as part of their supposed "evolutionist conspiracy".
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?