Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial life: study

brown.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 128 posts

Re: Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial life: study

#71

Post by gus_massa »

dotancohen wrote: post #50
danlugo92 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There could be civilizations out there that never developed aggression.

If they never developed aggression then they are not eating each other. Animals eat other animals because of the high concentration of nutrients in living things. Eating highly nutritious things allows an organism to develop both physically and mentally. So they either have an abundant source of nutrients that has not been depleted for their entire evolution, or they are not highly developed, or they have developed a…

I agree, but plants are nasty too, just in slow motion.

For example some ficus grow over other trees, and later the roots cover the old tree until it dies. They don't eat the other tree, just "reuse" the wood to have an initial high place to get light. I coudn't find a nice link about this, but here are a few photos https://www.flickr.com/photos/rodolfocol/15129590163/in/phot... https://www.alamy.es/brasil-el-pantanal-parasito-higuera-fic...

Re: Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial life: study

#72

Post by michaelmrose »

jonplackett wrote: post #38

It's strange that we have to speculate about if life could have emerged on Mars, without really knowing for sure how it emerged on Earth.

It's hard to learn something about a class of things while only studying one example of that class.

Re: Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial life: study

#73

Post by alserio »

greenonions wrote: post #24
x86ARMsRace wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been curious about this recently actually. What are the downsides of "seeding" a plant with life to study how it evolves?

I'm also a fan of this idea. It seems far easier than trying to plant humans in giant bubbles with an Earthly ecosystem that just happen to be on the surface of Mars. As other commenters have noted, it's probably not very wise, but I imagine it would be the cheapest way to increase the chances of the continuation of life (as we know it).

But why would we want to continue life? Whenever I read something like that I feel life a sociopath but I don't really understand it. I'd care about the wellbeing of the people, not the continuation of the human species or, as here, of life itself.

Re: Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial life: study

#74

Post by airstrike »

quesera wrote: post #54
x86ARMsRace wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been curious about this recently actually. What are the downsides of "seeding" a plant with life to study how it evolves?

Evolution takes a long time. And there aren't many (any) environments that we've identified and can reach which are conducive to the sort of life we know about. Also it'd be a bit presumptuous for us to colonize a hospitable planet for our own experimentation. But it's an interesting question. In fiction, I can recommend Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time , and sequel Children of Ruin .

Thanks. Just picked up the first one on Audible!

Re: Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial life: study

#75

Post by airstrike »

michaelmrose wrote: post #70
quesera wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evolution takes a long time. And there aren't many (any) environments that we've identified and can reach which are conducive to the sort of life we know about. Also it'd be a bit presumptuous for us to colonize a hospitable planet for our own experimentation. But it's an interesting question. In fiction, I can recommend Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time , and sequel Children of Ruin .

Both great books and a really interesting thought process on what truly alien life might be like instead of just humans with more or less arms.

And thank you as well

Re: Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial life: study

#76

Post by hossbeast »

throwawayboise wrote: post #59
bpodgursky wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this gives appropriate weight to exponential growth. If humans are ever able to leave the earth and even theoretically establish permanent habitation, it's unthinkable that no other civilization has done so.

Even so the galaxy (let alone the universe) is huge, and faster-than -light or extra-dimensional travel is probably impossible. Contact with another civilization is extremely unlikely even if life is abundant in the galaxy.

Check out von neumann automatons. The idea is that once you started colonizing, you'd cover the entire galaxy in ~a million years, aka very quickly on a galactic timescale.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft

Re: Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial life: study

#77

Post by foobiter »

throwawayboise wrote: post #59
bpodgursky wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this gives appropriate weight to exponential growth. If humans are ever able to leave the earth and even theoretically establish permanent habitation, it's unthinkable that no other civilization has done so.

Even so the galaxy (let alone the universe) is huge, and faster-than -light or extra-dimensional travel is probably impossible. Contact with another civilization is extremely unlikely even if life is abundant in the galaxy.

the universe is huge and time is long, there could be millions of civilizations and we could happen to exist at a time that doesn’t coincide with a single one

Re: Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial life: study

#78

Post by conesus »

throwawayboise wrote: post #55
pm90 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if an alien lifeform had terraformed earth this way. We would not have existed. (There is a hypothesis that life may have been introduced this way to earth, known as the Panspermia Hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia )

There are so many chance events that could have gone differently and we would not have existed. If not for an asteroid, the earth might still be populated with dinosaurs. Would they have evolved to our degree of intelligence and civilization? Who knows?

    The universe may
    be as great as they say,
    but it wouldn’t be missed
    if it didn’t exist.”
-Piet Hein

Re: Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial life: study

#79

Post by scrollaway »

hossbeast wrote: post #76
throwawayboise wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even so the galaxy (let alone the universe) is huge, and faster-than -light or extra-dimensional travel is probably impossible. Contact with another civilization is extremely unlikely even if life is abundant in the galaxy.

Check out von neumann automatons. The idea is that once you started colonizing, you'd cover the entire galaxy in ~a million years, aka very quickly on a galactic timescale. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft

A galaxy is very tiny on the scale of the universe.

Re: Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial life: study

#80

Post by 101001001001 »

As soon as the habitation of Mars picks up a little momentum, martians and Mars colonization will be demonized by the media. It will become a political debate that is fueled by the CIA and other entrenched interests. They will paint it as an ethical issue and focus on the immorality of disturbing the native habitat, or something similar to that. Mark my words.
Post reply on HN