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.

Comments

That's great CS boy, but learn some physics :)

[Anonymous Coward]

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. :)

Nice. Very nice.

[Kiwi]

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

Enter the Flame

[J05H]

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.