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NASA Rover Finds Active and Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars

jpl.nasa.gov

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Re: NASA Rover Finds Active and Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars

#71

Post by givan »

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #69
Thieum22 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be comforting that considering the Great Filter theory ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter ) finding life on mars might actually be bad news.

One of the so called "Great Filters" is our Moon. It is providing Earth's metal core with constant moving force and refreshing the dynamo and keeping our atmosphere and water not blown away by solar winds. Since the size of Earths satellite is far from ordinary, this instantly reduces chance of advanced life appearing elsewhere. And if the theory of the source of Moon is right, it formed after collision with object o…

We have bacteria that live inside volcanoes or on the bottom of the ocean in extreme conditions, life adapts, without the moon life would only look differently there is no proof that without the moon life on earth would not be possible, looking at life in the universe from a human environment point of view is flawed.

Re: NASA Rover Finds Active and Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars

#72

Post by gojomo »

raverbashing wrote: post #70
gojomo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a respectable contingent of scientists that believe Martian microorganisms were already confirmed 38 years ago by the Viking Lander experiments: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/04/120413-nasa-... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_lander_biological_experi... A future mission should definitely include a biologically-useful microscope, as suggested by USC neurobiologist Joseph Miller in the Nation…

However, the discovery of perchlorates severely weaken the results of that experiment

The Wikipedia language suggests the existence of perchlorates (discovered in other Martian soil in 2008) could have destroyed organics during the 1976 test heating, thus explaining some of the negative results from Viking – leaving the positive 'Labeled Release' result more credible. That's the interpretation of the paper described at:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100904081050.ht...

That article is currently footnote #28 of the Wikipedia article, describing the 2010 paper referenced as footnote #25. Another footnoted reference from 2011 (#29) disagrees. But presumably, all that perchlorate-related reasoning was available to the authors of the 2012 paper defending the positive result.

Re: NASA Rover Finds Active and Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars

#73

Post by palmer_eldritch »

greggarious wrote: post #6

Here's a fun exercise in speculation: How long does HN think it will be between confirming life (e.g. bacteria), confirming life (e.g. mammals / bugs), and confirming intelligent life? (Never is an an acceptable answer for all 3, but please state why you hold your position)

1. Before the end of century, there's probably some around the solar system 2. Never 3. Never

I don't think we'll ever go beyond the solar system and that the only place with complex life in the solar system is the Earth.

Re: NASA Rover Finds Active and Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars

#74

Post by raverbashing »

gojomo wrote: post #72
raverbashing wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, the discovery of perchlorates severely weaken the results of that experiment

The Wikipedia language suggests the existence of perchlorates (discovered in other Martian soil in 2008) could have destroyed organics during the 1976 test heating, thus explaining some of the negative results from Viking – leaving the positive 'Labeled Release' result more credible. That's the interpretation of the paper described at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100904081050.ht... That article is cu…

This is an interesting interpretation

The chlorometane results were a true result after all.

However, I have the impression that, organics, in contact with perchlorates (or any strong oxidant) will result in CO2

Also, it was repeated one week later, with no results

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_lander_biological_experi...

Re: NASA Rover Finds Active and Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars

#75

Post by FranOntanaya »

snowwrestler wrote: post #23
greggarious wrote: post #6

Here's a fun exercise in speculation: How long does HN think it will be between confirming life (e.g. bacteria), confirming life (e.g. mammals / bugs), and confirming intelligent life? (Never is an an acceptable answer for all 3, but please state why you hold your position)

I think we will confirm life within 50 years by reading the spectra of distant planets and finding free oxygen in the atmosphere. As far as we know, that can only happen if living creatures are replenishing it. I think it's unlikely that we will find life anywhere else in our solar system. It's possible that we'll evidence of past life on Mars, but not current. Basically, it's just way too cold or way too hot everywh…

> Basically, it's just way too cold or way too hot everywhere but Earth.

That's not really true. Only a thin layer of Earth's crust and atmosphere are great for life. Such Goldilocks layers aren't that uncommon if we look at all boundary climates on each body (subsurface sea boundaries, polar boundaries, higher atmosphere boundaries, etc), and not just the boundary analog to Earth's.

Even Mercury has free standing water ice. Somewhere between that ice and the scorched plains there's going to be a somewhat comfy place.

Re: NASA Rover Finds Active and Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars

#76

Post by maaku »

lumpypua wrote: post #62
maaku wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what aspect of my post you are arguing against? I guess there could be different definitions at play here, but I was talking about a hypothetical developmental stage where most civilizations destroy themselves. E.g. nuclear war, climate change, etc. Regarding how common life is in the universe, I wasn't talking about non-intelligent life. I fully expect that we will find signs of such life elsewhere in t…

I agree with your overall statistical/singularity argument, but that's not reason enough to call a great filter nonsense. The biology of a great filter is at play along with the overall cosmological context. "Power, Sex, and Suicide" argues that eukaryotic (and thus multicellular) life is basically a fluke—it is the great filter. The tumblr link Lost_BiomedE gave takes a while to get to that punchline but it's worth…

I should have said "the great filter explanation of the Fermi paradox is nonsense." There may be one or more great filters. There may be an early filter, or a late filter, or both. But that issue is orthogonal to why we see an empty sky. We see an empty sky because the amount of time between observing an extraterrestrial intelligence and being absorbed by it is so short that we should expect to exist in an empty-sky universe, regardless of how common life is.

One might then argue about the prevalence of extraterrestrial intelligence based on the age of the universe and the fact that our light cone apparently does not contain any other intelligent life. IMHO a sample size of 1 isn't that interesting however.

Re: NASA Rover Finds Active and Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars

#77

Post by Mahn »

Houshalter wrote: post #58

If life is discovered on mars, would we be allowed to colonize it?

Colonization is probably not the motivation for finding some microbial life there at the moment, but provided we wanted and could colonize, I'd guess we would just do it.

Re: NASA Rover Finds Active and Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars

#78

Post by minikites »

givan wrote: post #71
cLeEOGPw wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the so called "Great Filters" is our Moon. It is providing Earth's metal core with constant moving force and refreshing the dynamo and keeping our atmosphere and water not blown away by solar winds. Since the size of Earths satellite is far from ordinary, this instantly reduces chance of advanced life appearing elsewhere. And if the theory of the source of Moon is right, it formed after collision with object o…

We have bacteria that live inside volcanoes or on the bottom of the ocean in extreme conditions, life adapts, without the moon life would only look differently there is no proof that without the moon life on earth would not be possible, looking at life in the universe from a human environment point of view is flawed.

But we only see complex life in a narrower range of much milder conditions. I bet there's lots of space microbes but I agree with the parent to this comment that complex, intelligent life is probably pretty rare.

Re: NASA Rover Finds Active and Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars

#79

Post by givan »

minikites wrote: post #78
givan wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have bacteria that live inside volcanoes or on the bottom of the ocean in extreme conditions, life adapts, without the moon life would only look differently there is no proof that without the moon life on earth would not be possible, looking at life in the universe from a human environment point of view is flawed.

But we only see complex life in a narrower range of much milder conditions. I bet there's lots of space microbes but I agree with the parent to this comment that complex, intelligent life is probably pretty rare.

Milder conditions relative to our environment? this is subjective, where do you see complex life and how do you know that complex life requires "milder" conditions or that is rare if we only have ourselves as an example that happen to live in such an environment?

What stops bacteria that live in harsh environments to evolve even if probably slower? harsh meaning hard/impossible for ourselves or for life as we know on earth.

Re: NASA Rover Finds Active and Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars

#80

Post by pdabbadabba »

tomrod wrote: post #50
pdabbadabba wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native U.S. English speaker here: we do use the word "shame" as GP describes. We use "shame" both to say that someone should be ashamed and also to express general disappointment. (Though we would not use the word to talk about something that's merely adorable.) To my U.S.-English ears, swombat's use of the word "shame" seemed clearly of the "general disappointment" variety.

In the U.S. don't we generally use "for shame" when berating?

Yes. But here the writer simply began a statement with the word "shame" and proceeded to give a sober explanation consistent more with disappointment than outrage. In this context, I think the better interpretation of the writer's sentiment is to read "shame" as, essentially, short for "it's a shame" rather than "for shame!"
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