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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)

#111

Post by mapontosevenths »

hgoel wrote: post #105
amarant wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some sci fi author (I forget who) pointed out that in a space faring society, the most valuable materials are biological materials. Once you have access to comets and planets, you'll have, for all intents and purposes, an infinite supply of gold, diamond, ruby, etc. Wood however... You're not gonna find a lot of wood in space.

There is absolutely no reason for alien life to have evolved the same biological materials that we have. But also, a space faring species that can build an AI probe capable of remaining functioning for the many years an interstellar journey takes, is also likely to be capable of building habitats that can grow their biological materials. It'd be much easier than shipping those materials over from another star.

Yep. It's all about mass at those scales. There will never be a time when it makes sense to ship giant habitats full of water, and oxygen, and meat around.

Brains will be uploaded to machines, or human descended AI's will will be built and tasked with exploring the places it's unsafe or too time consuming for us to visit directly. The square jawed men with laser guns will have to stay at home and watch. Maybe those AI's will be built to start cloning humans once they find a good spot or something, but it's never going to make sense to ship squishy meat sacks and the metric tons of accoutrements required to keep them alive all over unless/until we find a way around the speed of light or perfect hibernation.

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

#112

Post by gojomo »

jibal wrote: post #69
gojomo wrote: post #45

I see this author has "12 honorary degrees and is an Officer of the Order of Canada". And CBC is Canada's government-funded national public broadcaster. But it's hard to take them seriously on any particular details given that their article, up for 8+ months (!), mis-describes H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds as a story of the Earth "invaded by benevolent Martians". [emphasis mine] It's a seminal work of scifi, which po…

It's hard to take seriously someone who dismisses the (factually correct) content of a popular science article just because of a typo that has no bearing on that content.

Have you independently checked all the other allegedly "factually correct" info in this article, with other sources that are actually diligent in getting the details right? What's the incremental value of a news source where every detail that you don't already know might be very wrong?

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

#113

Post by gojomo »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #52
gojomo wrote: post #45

I see this author has "12 honorary degrees and is an Officer of the Order of Canada". And CBC is Canada's government-funded national public broadcaster. But it's hard to take them seriously on any particular details given that their article, up for 8+ months (!), mis-describes H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds as a story of the Earth "invaded by benevolent Martians". [emphasis mine] It's a seminal work of scifi, which po…

It was obviously meant to read 'malevolent' and got spell checked to death. That sort of thing happens to everyone, and I'm not sure why you mention the authors credentials like they're a bad thing?

Because I think readers should take this as an illustrative example of how often people/institutions draped in such quasi-credentials are carelessly wrong on basic things.

Even if some typo of 'malevolent' becoming 'benevolent' was how this error initially created – & I have my doubts! – how many people had to be asleep at the wheel for the truth-reversing error to get published, & persist for months? Does no one at the CBC – with pride in its work & any familiarity with these topics – read CBC's slop?

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

#114

Post by voakbasda »

pfdietz wrote: post #62
voakbasda wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What reasons do you think exist that lead you to believe Earth is special for having evolved complex intelligent life?

The Fermi Argument.

That’s actually an argument in support of life existing in many places across the universe.

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

#115

Post by gojomo »

burnte wrote: post #59
gojomo wrote: post #45

I see this author has "12 honorary degrees and is an Officer of the Order of Canada". And CBC is Canada's government-funded national public broadcaster. But it's hard to take them seriously on any particular details given that their article, up for 8+ months (!), mis-describes H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds as a story of the Earth "invaded by benevolent Martians". [emphasis mine] It's a seminal work of scifi, which po…

I got so caught up in that phrase I went rereading the plot summary of WOTW to check my memory. After than I had no interest in the article, assuming it had been written by AI.

War of the Worlds is culturally-prominent enough I doubt any commercial AI would make this same mistake (or let the error slip through, if they'd asked the AI to fact-check the article).

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

#116

Post by pfdietz »

voakbasda wrote: post #114
pfdietz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fermi Argument.

That’s actually an argument in support of life existing in many places across the universe.

I don't see how it could be interpreted that way. Please explain.

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

#117

Post by nephihaha »

seanhunter wrote: post #90
nephihaha wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Viking results were at worst, inconclusive and at best positive. And yet in both cases we have been led to believe they were negative. They are far from the only pointers to life on Mars either, since we've seen pictures of what look like fossilised stromatolites and algal mats, seasonal methane emissions, and discolorations in seasonal flows & ice. Even the rusty coloured surface of Mars may be due, in part, to…

The “face on mars” is an image compression artefact that disappeared as soon as they had high resolution imaging of the area. Seeing it as a face is highly dependent on sympathetic lighting and the right time of day, like lots of similar features on earth eg the “Old Man” of Hoy which I have seen first-hand and you really have to want to see it as a man’s face to do so https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(Mars)

I've heard this before and the pareidolia argument. The fact remains that in certain other pictures you still can see the face. There are some other unusual formations near it as well. The only example that comes close is the Badlands Indian in North America.

I've always found it an extremely weird formation. I suppose it has been explained by frost shattering and ancient floods. If an ancient race were to leave sculpture behind, millions of years would obliterate most of it. Some people have said that probes should be sent to Cydonia. I hope they send some kind of flying probes round there, since the geology alone makes it of interest, and landers/orbiters may not get it.

As for the Old Man of Hoy, that is something different. Old Man (or Bodach in Gaelic speaking areas) was used for a lot of natural pillars and stacks, standing stones and phallic formations. Occasionally for mountains. Old Man/Bodach is/was a euphemism for the Devil who was said to have created many of these things, and that goes way back before the Old Man of Hoy.

In Gaelic, it takes on a phallic quality: "Bod" means "penis" and "bodach" means "old man". Orkney was never Gaelic speaking as such, but in Gaelic the euphemism is more obvious. This usage carried over there and the Old Man of Hoy probably gets that name because it is tall and thin. Maybe the Picts had such notions too.

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

#118

Post by red-iron-pine »

pfdietz wrote: post #107
stackghost wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>impacts would likely have sent life back and forth between Earth and Mars By what mechanism is an impact giving some debris on Mars enough delta-V to reach Earth, without obliterating Mars and also sterilizing the debris due to heat and plasma?

> By what mechanism. Impact spallation. When the strong shock wave generated in rock by an impact hits a rock/atmosphere (or rock/vacuum) surface, it is reflected, producing strong tensile stress. This causes very large acceleration while not subjecting the spalled layer to extreme temperature or pressure. This is the same process that HESH (High Explosive Squash Head) antitank rounds use to defeat tank armor without…

while that's possible, it's also likely to burn the hell out of anything in / on / around.

any would-be hitchhikers would need to be able to survive extinction-ish level impacts on Mars, survive through the vacuum (e.g. months), and then survive atmospheric re-entry and landing.

and then be able to survive in the new ecosystem

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

#119

Post by amarant »

hgoel wrote: post #105
amarant wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some sci fi author (I forget who) pointed out that in a space faring society, the most valuable materials are biological materials. Once you have access to comets and planets, you'll have, for all intents and purposes, an infinite supply of gold, diamond, ruby, etc. Wood however... You're not gonna find a lot of wood in space.

There is absolutely no reason for alien life to have evolved the same biological materials that we have. But also, a space faring species that can build an AI probe capable of remaining functioning for the many years an interstellar journey takes, is also likely to be capable of building habitats that can grow their biological materials. It'd be much easier than shipping those materials over from another star.

Quite right! They probably wouldn't have wood, but we do!

They might want the wood though, and they might not know how to grow it. From there we can see 2 scenarios. The likelier one hopefully being trade: we could probably teach them to grow wood, and also provide them with seeds, perhaps on exchange for some of their space-faring tech.

Alternatively there's the pessimist scenario, where they're not interested in trading for it, we're not willing to give it freely, and so war ensues.

Personally I'd just give them a few pine-cones and explain basic horticulture as a gesture of good faith, I guess the end result is rather contingent on which human they talk to.

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

#120

Post by pfdietz »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #118
pfdietz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By what mechanism. Impact spallation. When the strong shock wave generated in rock by an impact hits a rock/atmosphere (or rock/vacuum) surface, it is reflected, producing strong tensile stress. This causes very large acceleration while not subjecting the spalled layer to extreme temperature or pressure. This is the same process that HESH (High Explosive Squash Head) antitank rounds use to defeat tank armor without…

while that's possible, it's also likely to burn the hell out of anything in / on / around. any would-be hitchhikers would need to be able to survive extinction-ish level impacts on Mars, survive through the vacuum (e.g. months), and then survive atmospheric re-entry and landing. and then be able to survive in the new ecosystem

Certainly a great deal of energy is released. However, on the time scale of an impact, heat doesn't diffuse in rock very far. Even on the time scale of reentry to an atmosphere heat doesn't diffuse far. It's common for a meteorite that has fallen to Earth, despite the surface having been melted and ablated, to have an inside that is still freezing cold.
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