Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says • Hacker News Board

Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says

#151

Post by Havoc » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 11:52 PM UTC

mirajshah wrote: post #138

crusso wrote: post #12

R.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…

>The amount of armchair condescension on HN is appalling.

The irony is strong with this one.

Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says

#152

Post by jkaunisv1 » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 11:57 PM UTC

outworlder wrote: post #82

jkaunisv1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we don't have the capability to land something on Mars with enough fuel for it to take off again.

Its a hard engineering problem, yes - but not that far-fetched. It's an even harder political problem, though. It's hard to justify the required R&D expenses without appealing to emotion (such as sending humans).

Oh, I wasn't discounting the future possibility - there's definitely nothing impossible about it, and in fact I agree it's quite doable. Just that we don't have it yet.

Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says

#153

Post by Havoc » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 11:58 PM UTC

mapt wrote: post #44

crusso wrote: post #12

R.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…

All equipment designed for landing on Mars in the modern era is extensively sterilized. The concern is that given what we've learned about microorganisms in space, this may not be enough; "Extensively sterilized" is never "Perfectly sterilized", at least, not without building it out of solid metal and annealing it in space. There was also a last-minute variance granted to the drill bit on Curiosity, which was contami…

What is the real contamination risk though?

Suppose some biological particle makes it to mars. Then we pick it up, discover that its very dead already, DNA sequence it and find that it matches the common flu. Write it off as contamination, rinse & repeat until we find something that is alive & looks like green men.

Or can science genuinely not distinguish earth contaminants vs alien life?

Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says

#154

Post by semi-extrinsic » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 11:58 PM UTC

trose wrote: post #114

WalterBright wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point we'll either have to either stop worrying about life on Mars being hidden under a rock somewhere or forever put a "humans keep out" sign on Mars.

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.

In that scenario you're saying that the Martian landscape itself is not worthy of preservation, while any microorganisms could be. Both amoeba and rocks have no claim to consciousness etc., so why is one worthy of preservation while the other is not?

Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says

#155

Post by jkaunisv1 » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 12:06 AM UTC

wtracy wrote: post #120

jkaunisv1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we don't have the capability to land something on Mars with enough fuel for it to take off again.

We don't need to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#Manufacturin...

You're right! Even though I cited the Sabatier reaction to a coworker today when discussing the news, I didn't really think about it when answering. Also, for some reason I thought it wasn't yet a technical reality.

I guess also wrapped into my statement was the thought that to be able to launch something back it would have to be landed very well and require some very complex machinery to prepare for launch, given the success rates of just being able to land something on Mars without it breaking. I went with the first reason off the top of my head :)

Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says

#156

Post by mattmanser » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 12:26 AM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #153

mapt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All equipment designed for landing on Mars in the modern era is extensively sterilized. The concern is that given what we've learned about microorganisms in space, this may not be enough; "Extensively sterilized" is never "Perfectly sterilized", at least, not without building it out of solid metal and annealing it in space. There was also a last-minute variance granted to the drill bit on Curiosity, which was contami…

What is the real contamination risk though? Suppose some biological particle makes it to mars. Then we pick it up, discover that its very dead already, DNA sequence it and find that it matches the common flu. Write it off as contamination, rinse & repeat until we find something that is alive & looks like green men. Or can science genuinely not distinguish earth contaminants vs alien life?

I know little about this stuff, but my impression is that there are so many different variations of life and also so many variations that can live in the most bizarre conditions, that we haven't even scratched the surface of classifying them all.

Something could survive the trip, grow, be found and still be entirely unknown to us. And it probably wouldn't be all that unlikely.

Take this study, that swabbed people's belly buttons and found thousands of unknown bacteria, bacteria only found before in foreign countries the person had never visited and "extremophile bacteria that typically thrive in ice caps and thermal vents"

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/1-458-bact...

Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says

#157

Post by InclinedPlane » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 12:34 AM UTC

crusso wrote: post #143

mirajshah wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are literally strolling into a subject you know nothing about and putting forward an opinion that amounts to "wow, these guys sure are dumb, huh?" It's a very common way to comment on science stories and it's absolutely infuriating.

Why not this?

"So, I don't understand what's going on here, this seems weird because of X, Y, or Z, can someone explain what's going on?"

Or this?

"Is NASA really so dumb that they would do X, Y, and Z given that A, B, and C seem to be at odds with that?"

Instead we get: "Hah. NASA is so dumb." Even though we live in 2015 and the results of even 15 minutes of effort involving google and wikipedia could clear up a lot of these misconceptions.

Why are people so heavily invested in maintaining their own ignorance? Why do people insist on jumping to the conclusion that thousands of top tier scientists couldn't POSSIBLY have thought of the same things that occurred to them in the few moments spent thinking about it before deciding to make a post?

Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says

#158

Post by bglazer » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 12:34 AM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #153

mapt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All equipment designed for landing on Mars in the modern era is extensively sterilized. The concern is that given what we've learned about microorganisms in space, this may not be enough; "Extensively sterilized" is never "Perfectly sterilized", at least, not without building it out of solid metal and annealing it in space. There was also a last-minute variance granted to the drill bit on Curiosity, which was contami…

What is the real contamination risk though? Suppose some biological particle makes it to mars. Then we pick it up, discover that its very dead already, DNA sequence it and find that it matches the common flu. Write it off as contamination, rinse & repeat until we find something that is alive & looks like green men. Or can science genuinely not distinguish earth contaminants vs alien life?

One possibility, perhaps very unlikely and perhaps somewhat likely, is that Earth life could actually survive and adapt to Martian conditions and subsequently destroy existing Martian life.

That seems almost comically improbable, but given that we've found that lichen can survive in the vacuum of space for a year and a half [1] and the mere existence of life on hydrothermal vents and inside Chernobyl[2], I think we can safely say that life is surprising.

[1] http://www.astrobio.net/topic/origins/extreme-life/lichen-or... [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20080424001002/http://www.science...

Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says

#159

Post by InclinedPlane » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 12:35 AM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #153

mapt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All equipment designed for landing on Mars in the modern era is extensively sterilized. The concern is that given what we've learned about microorganisms in space, this may not be enough; "Extensively sterilized" is never "Perfectly sterilized", at least, not without building it out of solid metal and annealing it in space. There was also a last-minute variance granted to the drill bit on Curiosity, which was contami…

What is the real contamination risk though? Suppose some biological particle makes it to mars. Then we pick it up, discover that its very dead already, DNA sequence it and find that it matches the common flu. Write it off as contamination, rinse & repeat until we find something that is alive & looks like green men. Or can science genuinely not distinguish earth contaminants vs alien life?

You make the process seem a lot easier and foolproof that it actually is.

Re: Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says

#160

Post by cloverich » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 1:37 AM UTC

crusso wrote: post #143

mirajshah wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FWIW its how your original post comes off. It may not be an accurate representation of your beliefs or intentions, but it is a reasonable interpretation of your words: "Seems like someone in NASA needs to work out this conflict."