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More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)

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Re: More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)

#31

Post by tsunamifury »

sgt101 wrote: post #27
nkrisc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why? Why would there be no money for that but there’s money now when there’s no conclusive evidence of life, past or present, on Mars? It makes no sense.

Because looking for life on mars sells. "Why are we not spending that money on more social housing?" : Because this is the greatest mystery of our time... (nods all round) "Why are we doing science?": I don't know and I don't care, cut my taxes! (Cheering and mocking comments about nerds.)

This is where we are at on HN.

Conspiracies that NASA already found alien life and is suppressing it to continue funding.

Or you know the far more likely case:

No one has ever found any evidence of life anywhere and exaggerating tiny findings adjacent to it keep funding flowing.

No it couldn’t be that.

Re: More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)

#32

Post by skulk »

londons_explore wrote: post #25

It is quite remarkable that the question of life on mars (or not) hasn't been answered conclusively despite a lot of human effort to get an answer.

there probably never was any there for a meaningful amount of time, but it's incredibly hard to prove a negative.

Re: More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)

#33

Post by GolfPopper »

mbil wrote: post #26
timmg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangential to your tangential: The era of AI makes me realize that if we ever get visited by aliens: it will probably not be actual aliens -- just an AI probe. And the idea of it really intrigues me. Imagine some LLM that is many generations ahead of Fable -- but from a different world -- visiting us. It would be amazing. And it would likely be better at figuring out how to communicate with us (than the human-equival…

You might like Blindsight by Peter Watts

There's a fan-made short film/trailer for Blindsight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkR2hnXR0SM

Also, "just an AI probe" and "It would be amazing" in the context of Blindsight... .

Re: More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)

#34

Post by thegrim33 »

londons_explore wrote: post #25

It is quite remarkable that the question of life on mars (or not) hasn't been answered conclusively despite a lot of human effort to get an answer.

NASA intentionally completely gave up on trying to answer the Mars life question for multiple decades and only very recently has come back around to the idea of doing life finding missions.

Re: More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)

#35

Post by GolfPopper »

sgt101 wrote: post #9
hughw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they found actual life on Mars the NASA budget would multiply many times, so I don't understand your thinking.

I think the opposite - unless the discovery of life was preceeded or coincidental with the discovery of some other hyper interesting thing (for example, if Martian life has some sort of utility for medicine, maybe) then I think that would be that for Mars exploration missions. Of course there would be many announcements and excited political agreements around "continuing to explore the new frontier" but I think that…

You have to admire the discipline, willpower, and solidarity of all those scientists. Any one of them could prove the existence of life on Mars at any time, win a Nobel Prize, become the the most famous scientist since Einstein, put themselves on the gravy train for life... but they all hold out, keeping their decent, upper-middle class jobs, hiding one of the greatest discoveries in history, so that their colleagues don't have to find potentially slightly less lucrative or interesting jobs. That's dedication!

/S

Re: More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)

#36

Post by timmg »

lelanthran wrote: post #30
timmg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangential to your tangential: The era of AI makes me realize that if we ever get visited by aliens: it will probably not be actual aliens -- just an AI probe. And the idea of it really intrigues me. Imagine some LLM that is many generations ahead of Fable -- but from a different world -- visiting us. It would be amazing. And it would likely be better at figuring out how to communicate with us (than the human-equival…

> Imagine some LLM that is many generations ahead of Fable -- but from a different world -- visiting us. It would be amazing. Why? Why would you expect it to be any more benevolent or any less murderous than the actual aliens visiting? Presumably it would be trained on their values, not ours.

I wouldn't expect it to be less murderous than the aliens themselves. That wasn't my point at all. I'd expect it to contain all their knowledge and be able to live "forever".

But I generally wouldn't expect aliens to be "murderous" at all. Why send a group or probe lightyears away just to kill or enslave a primitive species? If they have the ability to do that, we wouldn't really have anything of interest for them.

Re: More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)

#37

Post by sgt101 »

tsunamifury wrote: post #31
sgt101 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because looking for life on mars sells. "Why are we not spending that money on more social housing?" : Because this is the greatest mystery of our time... (nods all round) "Why are we doing science?": I don't know and I don't care, cut my taxes! (Cheering and mocking comments about nerds.)

This is where we are at on HN. Conspiracies that NASA already found alien life and is suppressing it to continue funding. Or you know the far more likely case: No one has ever found any evidence of life anywhere and exaggerating tiny findings adjacent to it keep funding flowing. No it couldn’t be that.

Well, Viking carried an experiment that tried to detect life. Now, the consensus is that it failed, and that the experiment was incapable of creating a useful result given the chemistry of the soil. Some people argue about that, but I am in no way qualified to take part in the debate, so I would back the consensus here.

What is odd is that there hasn't been a single other mission that's carried any experiment that has the objective of creating that result.

If the objective is to find life, why isn't anyone actually looking?

Tell me if what I've said above is in any way factually incorrect.

Re: More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)

#38

Post by sgt101 »

GolfPopper wrote: post #35
sgt101 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the opposite - unless the discovery of life was preceeded or coincidental with the discovery of some other hyper interesting thing (for example, if Martian life has some sort of utility for medicine, maybe) then I think that would be that for Mars exploration missions. Of course there would be many announcements and excited political agreements around "continuing to explore the new frontier" but I think that…

You have to admire the discipline, willpower, and solidarity of all those scientists. Any one of them could prove the existence of life on Mars at any time, win a Nobel Prize, become the the most famous scientist since Einstein, put themselves on the gravy train for life... but they all hold out, keeping their decent, upper-middle class jobs, hiding one of the greatest discoveries in history, so that their colleagues…

>>Well, Viking carried an experiment that tried to detect life. Now, the consensus is that it failed, and that the experiment was incapable of creating a useful result given the chemistry of the soil. Some people argue about that, but I am in no way qualified to take part in the debate, so I would back the consensus here.

>>What is odd is that there hasn't been a single other mission that's carried any experiment that has the objective of creating that result.

>>If the objective is to find life, why isn't anyone actually looking?

>>Tell me if what I've said above is in any way factually incorrect.

So... you tell me. Why no experiment? Not one in 50 years?

In the meantime we've learned a lot about the Martian atmosphere, it's climate, it's history, it's geology, the evolution of it's surface. I would argue that if a Viking 3 had flown with a revised kit that produced a definitive signal we wouldn't have got any of that.

Re: More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)

#39

Post by roenxi »

lelanthran wrote: post #30
timmg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangential to your tangential: The era of AI makes me realize that if we ever get visited by aliens: it will probably not be actual aliens -- just an AI probe. And the idea of it really intrigues me. Imagine some LLM that is many generations ahead of Fable -- but from a different world -- visiting us. It would be amazing. And it would likely be better at figuring out how to communicate with us (than the human-equival…

> Imagine some LLM that is many generations ahead of Fable -- but from a different world -- visiting us. It would be amazing. Why? Why would you expect it to be any more benevolent or any less murderous than the actual aliens visiting? Presumably it would be trained on their values, not ours.

Our values are murderous, I wouldn't want to be visited by aliens that shared out values. A galactic version of human society would quite reasonably identify that earth couldn't fight back then special interests would have our planet liquidated for its natural resources without making headlines in space-news. Possibly colonise us, kill all the humans then offer an apology a few generations later and maybe a small local holiday to commemorate the process.

Regardless, there aren't that many possible values aliens could have. It is hard to come up with something outside basic game theory - you can see how most religions tend to converge on the same practical principles over time, like basic property rights and not causing trouble pointlessly.

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