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

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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

#191

Post by marcus_holmes »

amingilani wrote: post #62

> Inexplicably, over the 43 years since Viking, none of NASA’s subsequent Mars landers has carried a life detection instrument to follow up on these exciting results I'm very surprised by that. Especially since, as the article says, "NASA maintains the search for alien life among its highest priorities". I thought that would obviously translate to sending life-detection instruments to B̶a̶r̶s̶o̶o̶m̶ Mars.

So what happens if we do discover life on Mars?

Popular sentiment would quickly swing (or be swung) towards leaving Mars alone. "We've f*d up one planet, let's not destroy two!", "leave Mars to the Martians", etc.

Vested interests opposed to the space program would get legislation passed that declared Mars indigenous life to be a protected species, and interference with a planetary ecosystem a criminal act.

That would be the end of any exploration or settlement.

But if they don't include life detectors, and declare that "no life has been detected there", then discovering that they were wrong will happen once the colony is already in place. Too late, the ecosystem is already altered, might as well keep going and study it.

Better to ask forgiveness than permission.

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

#192

Post by em-bee »

mnky9800n wrote: post #177
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.

I think it's because when it is actually alien life the expectation is it will be obvious. If we are splitting hairs to find it we probably haven't found it yet.

the keyword here is expectation. that expectation may be misguided.

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

#193

Post by marcus_holmes »

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…

TFA was written by a NASA team member, and is literally saying "we did discover life on Mars". If that's not "leaking" then I don't know what is.

Yet here we are, discussing it as if this is fake news. I don't think we need to call this a "conspiracy", just the lack of official confirmation makes anyone saying that there's life on Mars sound like a crackpot.

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

#194

Post by vbezhenar »

PopePompus wrote: post #89
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...

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.

Why would anyone care about Martian ecosystem?

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

#195

Post by em-bee »

aflag wrote: post #184
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.

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

the reverse side of this argument is that the human immune system may not be able to protect against alien bacteria.

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

#196

Post by keithnoizu »

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.

it's not even entirely a given that we are the first, as it's unlikely any evidence of a small tribe of sentient dino villagers for example would persist to the present day.

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

#197

Post by pavelrub »

ianai wrote: post #123
powerbroker wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is life on Mars -- JPL just doesn't want to tell us. Follow this logic: 1) two planets in habitable zone - both spontaneously cause life; 2) then many or most habitable zone planets have life; 3) Of the trillions of stars in our galaxy, there must be multitudes that have hosted intelligent life; 4) we don't hear SETI signals; 5) that means SETI must have snuffed themselves out with some super-technology; 6) erg…

We already know we’re all doomed. The sun bakes us in somewhere around 5 billion years.

That’s more than enough time to colonize most of the galaxy.

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

#198

Post by pharrington »

mnky9800n wrote: post #177
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.

I think it's because when it is actually alien life the expectation is it will be obvious. If we are splitting hairs to find it we probably haven't found it yet.

Obvious? A colony of fungus setting up a new home on your own foot isn't even necessarily obvious—humans are constantly surprised by what turns out to be terrestrial life, so it's completely unreasonable to expect extraterrestrial life to be obvious when we see it.

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

#199

Post by pharrington »

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.

The author of the article has, quite literally, seen all of the relevant data we have on this. Yes, I am making an argument appealing to authority.

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

#200

Post by andrekandre »

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.

those “worms” if real, seem pretty convincing though [1]

[1] http://www.leonarddavid.com/curiosity-mars-rover-investigate...

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