They've seen seep-like events in craters and canyons for over ten years. This study determines it to be water and not something else.
Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says
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Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says
#142Solar system life may turn turn out t chemically similar. That is because it arose on one body, then cross-infected other other bodies by meteorite transfer over many millions of years.
Mars became geologically stable before Earth, so it could have been the earliest place for life. Then Martian meteors infected Earth.
Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says
#143R.S.L.s are treated as special regions that NASA’s current robotic explorers are barred from because the rovers were not thoroughly sterilized We're not going to sterilize our research equipment going to Mars and we're not going to search likely sites where we could find life because we don't want to contaminate them. And yet, looking for signs of life native to Mars (or even water which might support life) is the to…
The amount of armchair condescension on HN is appalling. According to the reddit AMA, NASA does do some amount of sterilization before going to Mars, it is enough to justify the exploratory mission. More sterilization would probably take more man hours, more $$$, which would delay the mission to account for an (estimated) low probability of finding water. It seems like they've chosen to iterate instead of getting it…
Please don't invent hostile motives in my post when none were being offered. I was simply pointing out the impasse expressed in the article. This isn't NASA's internal blog of scientists, so I'd think that possibly dumb speculation could be offered.
The iteration explanation makes some sense, although these seem like very expensive iterations.
Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says
#144Solar system life may turn turn out t chemically similar. That is because it arose on one body, then cross-infected other other bodies by meteorite transfer over many millions of years. Mars became geologically stable before Earth, so it could have been the earliest place for life. Then Martian meteors infected Earth.
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Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says
#145R.S.L.s are treated as special regions that NASA’s current robotic explorers are barred from because the rovers were not thoroughly sterilized We're not going to sterilize our research equipment going to Mars and we're not going to search likely sites where we could find life because we don't want to contaminate them. And yet, looking for signs of life native to Mars (or even water which might support life) is the to…
Agreed. I heard a guest on NPR address this and he made two points: there's likely already been plenty of material transferred between the two planets; and human arrival will guarantee the transfer of biological material.
Another take @ http://www.marssociety.org/home/about/faq/
Q: What are the risks of contaminating Mars with Earth life forms, or vice versa?
A: Actually, it is arguable that this has already been happening for billions of years. During his study of known Martian meteorite ALH84001, Cal Tech's Joseph Kirschvink showed that large parts of the rock were never heated above 40C (104F), proving the theory of University of Arizona researcher Jay Melosh that it is possible for rocks to be ejected from one planet's surface and land on another's surface without being excessively heated. More importantly, this discovery showed that not all rocks ejected from either Mars or Earth are sterilized -- a fact that, when combined with the known ability of microorganisms to remain alive in a dormant state for millions of years, means that Earth life has probably already traveled to Mars, and if life ever existed on Mars, it has already traveled to Earth.
Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
And suppose we do find some biological slime there? Does that then make Mars off limits to all of humanity for all time?
It's time for us to accept that we implicitly modify everything we touch. Prime directive needs to have some detectability metric by which we decide it's OK for us to go gangbusters. If the native martian amoebas cannot survive with us present then they lose the evolution race, sorry. Besides, if there are primitive life forms on Mars, it's quite presumptuous of us to assume we could so easily wipe them out.
I seriously doubt anything at all will be found living on Mars, and if there is, it'll be primitive slime.
Mars becomes infinitely more interesting if it can become a host for terrestrial life.
Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says
#147Maybe arsenic-based life too? This special announcement for merely "signs of" (instead of corfirmation) speaks of PR and the need to secure next years budget...
Currently the mainstream opinion is that the bacteria didn't use arsenate, but were very good at using the small amounts of phosphate that was still present in the experiment. And that the experimenters were not very good at cleaning all the phosphate out of the growth medium.
So the highly publicized 2010 study is now pretty much falsified.
http://www.nature.com/news/arsenic-life-bacterium-prefers-ph...
Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says
#148Would that mean that this water have a very high salt content since it is not frozen?
Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says
#149R.S.L.s are treated as special regions that NASA’s current robotic explorers are barred from because the rovers were not thoroughly sterilized We're not going to sterilize our research equipment going to Mars and we're not going to search likely sites where we could find life because we don't want to contaminate them. And yet, looking for signs of life native to Mars (or even water which might support life) is the to…
What would you do if you wanted to postpone, as long as you possibly can, the disclosure of discovery of life on Mars? Exactly. Ridiculous question, of course, how do I even dare to have a thought like that here on HN, the bastion of reason. Unless there are reasons to suppress everything that would somehow threaten the status quo. Pause for a second and ponder the inexplicable urge to downvote this comment, which is…
You have to question the motives of an agency which needs half a century of spaceflight and trillions of dollars to admit water on a nearby planet.
Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm kinda of this thought process as well. If there are hospitable conditions there and we haven't found microbes after a while, I think we should just start dumping tons of them over there. We need something to put some atmosphere there for us. Algae seems to be a really good bet.
And suppose we do find some biological slime there? Does that then make Mars off limits to all of humanity for all time?
I always thought that the main reason for being careful about bringing microbes to Mars is so that it is easier to tell whether any microbes we find on Mars evolved there. I thought that being careful about bringing microbes to Mars will stop being important to most of the people who currently care about it after we determine where any microbes we find there evolved. Was I wrong about that?