I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s • Hacker News Board

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#181

Post by sidcool » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:13 AM UTC

RobertRoberts wrote: post #167

Science becomes corrupted when the research focuses on finding proof of and ideal instead disproving it. There are no aliens. With the money wasted on looking for aliens we could have saved millions of lives with clean water, shelter, food and education. Scientists need to stop deluding themselves and tricking congress into funding pet projects that are so far fetched they border on fraud.

"Ancient explorers should never have ventured on ships to find new lands, for the cost of that could have been used in their countries to better serve the poor" /s

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#182

Post by rightbyte » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:13 AM UTC

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #135

PopePompus wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument can be flipped, though. If life were found on Mars, that might lead to a ban on manned Mars missions, because there's absolutely no chance that a manned mission will not contaminate Mars with microbes from Earth. So to protect a Martian ecosystem, we might have to use only robots to explore Mars.

or rather to protect us from what is coming back; I remember that the Apollo astronauts were kept in quarantine due to that fear. I think it's sort of funny that the effort to make us a multi planetary species might as well doom us if we catch something unusual while on Mars.

Would extra terrestrial bacteria have any chance versus generation after generation of earth specific bacteria in life forms on earth? I mean, wouldn't it be like a baseball team showing up for cricket or maybe slalom?

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#183

Post by aflag » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:16 AM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #115

noetic_techy wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This fact often catches people by surprise when I tell them also. The more conspiratorial theory is that JPL prefers not to include life detection equipment because it would mean the end of robotic missions and more of an emphasis to get humans there to do real biology, which is more the domain of Houston Mission Control. Follow the money...

Cmon folks, let’s be realistic. If someone at NASA had indeed reason to believe life exist(s/ed) on Mars it would 200% have leaked by now. No funding discussion would inhibit someone from leaking this information. It’s the biggest discovery in human history and you think someone’s sitting on it for funding reasons?! Especially since the immediate reaction would be to pour billions into them following up? A big discov…

I don't think that microscopical life in Mars is the biggest discovery in human history. It's more like an interesting trivia. But it doesn't change people's lives any more than the discovery of water on Mars.

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#184

Post by aflag » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:18 AM UTC

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #135

PopePompus wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument can be flipped, though. If life were found on Mars, that might lead to a ban on manned Mars missions, because there's absolutely no chance that a manned mission will not contaminate Mars with microbes from Earth. So to protect a Martian ecosystem, we might have to use only robots to explore Mars.

or rather to protect us from what is coming back; I remember that the Apollo astronauts were kept in quarantine due to that fear. I think it's sort of funny that the effort to make us a multi planetary species might as well doom us if we catch something unusual while on Mars.

It's quite unlikely that alien bacteria would be able to target humans.

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#185

Post by The_rationalist » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:19 AM UTC

kdmccormick wrote: post #90

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming you're being sarcastic. If so it's unfortunate that just answering honestly warrants such hostility.

To say what I think JasonFruit is trying to say, but with less condescension: Your questions are valid and really interesting, but that doesn't make the questions of "Do other planets have life?" and "Where did life on Earth originate?" invalid or uninteresting. Personally I'm interested in all of them.

Do other planets have life? Is a ridiculous question to ask, it is epistemologically one of the weakest hypothesis possible given the scale of the universe and the non singularity of what make earth the earth.

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#186

Post by superhuzza » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:27 AM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #182

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or rather to protect us from what is coming back; I remember that the Apollo astronauts were kept in quarantine due to that fear. I think it's sort of funny that the effort to make us a multi planetary species might as well doom us if we catch something unusual while on Mars.

Would extra terrestrial bacteria have any chance versus generation after generation of earth specific bacteria in life forms on earth? I mean, wouldn't it be like a baseball team showing up for cricket or maybe slalom?

Maybe it would be like an adult soccer team showing up to a 4th grade basketball game.

Does anybody know either way?

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#187

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:30 AM UTC

asdff wrote: post #104

ianai wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear that the “it’s never aliens” credo was taken to the pathological case. Nothing can be life so why look for it? Nothing can be life, so any really complicated scenario not involving life must be true, always.

But they are looking for it. Science demands evidence for your claims. If x could be due to a, but also b, c, d, maybe e, you can't say x = a until you've proved that x ≠ b, c, d, e.

[deleted]

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#188

Post by computerex » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:36 AM UTC

jayalpha wrote: post #175

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary data. We don't have this data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_lander_biological_exper... It is "inconclusive" at best.

> Surface water sufficient to sustain microorganisms was found on Mars by Viking, Pathfinder, Phoenix and Curiosity;

Ultraviolet (UV) activation of the Martian surface material did not, as initially proposed, cause the LR reaction: a sample taken from under a UV-shielding rock was as LR-active as surface samples;

Complex organics, have been reported on Mars by Curiosity’s scientists, possibly including kerogen, which could be of biological origin;

Phoenix and Curiosity found evidence that the ancient Martian environment may have been habitable. The excess of carbon-13 over carbon-12 in the Martian atmosphere is indicative of biological activity, which prefers ingesting the latter;

The Martian atmosphere is in disequilibrium: its CO2 should long ago have been converted to CO by the sun’s UV light; thus the CO2 is being regenerated, possibly by microorganisms as on Earth;

Terrestrial microorganisms have survived in outer space outside the ISS;

Ejecta containing viable microbes have likely been arriving on Mars from Earth;

Methane has been measured in the Martian atmosphere;

microbial methanogens could be the source;

The rapid disappearance of methane from the Martian atmosphere requires a sink, possibly supplied by methanotrophs that could co-exist with methanogens on the Martian surface;

Ghost-like moving lights, resembling will-O’-the-wisps on Earth that are formed by spontaneous ignition of methane, have been video-recorded on the Martian surface;

Formaldehyde and ammonia, each possibly indicative of biology, are claimed to be in the Martian atmosphere;

An independent complexity analysis of the positive LR signal identified it as biological;

Six-channel spectral analyses by Viking’s imaging system found terrestrial lichen and green patches on Mars rocks to have the identical color, saturation, hue and intensity;

A wormlike feature was in an image taken by Curiosity;

Large structures resembling terrestrial stromatolites (formed by microorganisms) were found by Curiosity;

a statistical analysis of their complex features showed less than a 0.04 percent probability that the similarity was caused by chance alone;

No factor inimical to life has been found on Mars.

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#189

Post by philwelch » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:41 AM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #178

philwelch wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all the vastness of the universe, “we were the first” is a stupendously implausible hypothesis compared to “we were the only”.

If "we were the only" is true so is "we were the first" ... However, there exists or has existed one planet with the first civilization ever.

And the odds that it’s us are astronomically even longer than the odds that I’m going to win the next Powerball, and I’m probably not even buying a ticket.

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#190

Post by wongarsu » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:47 AM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #182

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or rather to protect us from what is coming back; I remember that the Apollo astronauts were kept in quarantine due to that fear. I think it's sort of funny that the effort to make us a multi planetary species might as well doom us if we catch something unusual while on Mars.

Would extra terrestrial bacteria have any chance versus generation after generation of earth specific bacteria in life forms on earth? I mean, wouldn't it be like a baseball team showing up for cricket or maybe slalom?

Whatever bacteria might live on Mars had millennia of evolutionary pressure to adapt to an environment with no lifeforms larger than an inch. It seems very unlikely that they will interact with human physiology in a meaningful way.

That doesn't mean they can't be harmful though. Bacteria that quickly eats through concrete for example would be just as bad to bring back.