Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Traces of ancient ocean discovered on Mars

phys.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–74 of 74 posts

Re: Traces of ancient ocean discovered on Mars

#71

Post by smaddox »

ramraj07 wrote: post #11
mach1ne wrote: post #7

Mars lost all of its (surface) water presumably due to solar wind, and thus never had time to evolve complex life. Earth would have faced the same fate were it not for the fact that the Moon collided with us at some distant point in time, surrendering its iron core to ours. Now, our Rare Earth has an unnaturally large active iron core, resulting in an unnaturally efficient magnetic field which is able to protect our…

I have very little reason to believe life evolved in Earth or even in Mars for that matter. The more likely scenario is that there’s rocks floating around everywhere that have spores of life throughout the galaxy ready to seed a suitable planet in geologically instantaneous timelines. That will explain the extremely rapid emergence of life on earth initially while it took a few billion years to evolve any further. In…

What makes you think panspermia is more likely than abiogenesis?

The only data point we have suggests the evolution of eukaryotic cells and multicellular life is simply less likely than abiogenesis. There are plenty of hypothesis to explain why that might be the case.

Re: Traces of ancient ocean discovered on Mars

#72

Post by smaddox »

yrgulation wrote: post #44
Firmwarrior wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A batch of those people roll through every space related post and downvote things, but then the tide shifts later in the day. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of the users here are strongly in favor of getting humanity into space

> I'm pretty sure the vast majority of the users here are strongly in favor of getting humanity into space How do we turn this into a meaningful political movement? My strongest pro argument in a political context is resource security and not having to rely on adversarial states. Economically, it means and endless supply of sources we need to build our increasingly complex devices. Also jobs. I see this as an existen…

> These days, there seems to be nowhere left to explore. Victims of their very success, the explorers now, pretty much, stay home. Maybe it's a little early- maybe the time is not quite yet- but those other worlds, promising untold opportunities, beckon. Just now, there a great many matters that are pressing in on us that compete for the money it takes to send people to other worlds. Should we solve those problems first, or are they a reason for going? Our planet and our solar system are surrounded by a New World ocean: the depths of space. It is no more impassable than the last. - Carl Sagan

Re: Traces of ancient ocean discovered on Mars

#73

Post by stratigos »

another2another wrote: post #47
ramraj07 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have very little reason to believe life evolved in Earth or even in Mars for that matter. The more likely scenario is that there’s rocks floating around everywhere that have spores of life throughout the galaxy ready to seed a suitable planet in geologically instantaneous timelines. That will explain the extremely rapid emergence of life on earth initially while it took a few billion years to evolve any further. In…

That raises 2 problems for me. 1. How exactly are these spores of life getting into asteroids and being pinged around the Universe? The mechanism seems absurd to me. Earth is teeming with life, but outside of our explorations I believe none of it escapes our planet at all. 2. The life that would reach us would be already specialised for whatever environment it came from, and I would imagine would result a lower amout…

NASA proved in the 70s that some microorganisms survive atmospheric rentry. In fact, they could not possibly be killed by any means known to man, except for some enormous cosmic event with very powerful radiation / cosmic rays. This was done to question the idea of it being "safe" or not to travel in space or other planets, if it is possible to "scrub" our ships clean and avoid bringing germs with us. Apparently thats not 100% possible, some critters survive space and the harshness of re-entry just fine.
Post reply on HN