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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

#91

Post by AndrewKemendo »

mindcrime wrote: post #71
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume for a moment that we did find something resembling simple organic life on Mars and confirmed that earth isn't the only life bearing planet. What functionally changes for our existential understanding of the universe? I'd argue little to nothing. We'd learn a bit more about organic life, but no fundamental philosophical or existential questions would be resolved. Life has been confirmed to be able to thri…

I think it's a shame that you're being downvoted for nothing more than expressing a reasonable, albeit apparently unpopular, opinion. For plenty of us, AndrewKemendo is right... learning that there is life on Mars would not answer any particularly fundamental questions. Maybe because a lot of people simply take it as a given that life exists on other planets (whether or not Mars is one of them isn't really a big issu…

In fact these are the lines of questioning I'm most interested in and nearly none are resolved by the existence of other intellingent life, that is unless they are more intelligent.

I feel like this should be more pervasively held belief to a bunch of people with a higher than average propensity of consuming scifi. Star Trek did a pretty thorough job of showing that the same fundamental questions persist even if we assume there exist more intelligent species out there.

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

#92

Post by gsich »

rgross1 wrote: post #49
defterGoose wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that the jump from 0 to 1 of "knowledge of life on other planets" would be huge. Currently, we have an almost pseudo-religious understanding of what place life holds in the universe, but that's based on the fact that when we've looked up at the cosmos for all of history, it seemed impossibly devoid of anything familiar. The discovery of life on another planet (even if that life somehow originated on Earth),…

Disagree- folks outside of the sci-fi bubble won't appreciate microbes on other planets. 0 to 1 happens when we find multicellular organisms with cognitive capabilities IMO

Doesn't really matter.

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

#93

Post by 01100011 »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #39
01100011 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like one could replicate this experiment on earth and verify non-biological origins for the observed results. I'm pretty sure we're familiar with the composition of martian soil by now. Create a sample with similar composition, blast it with UV rays in an atmosphere similar to Mars, and subject the soil sample to the same test.

Why isn't just a plain old microscope used to detect microbial life?

I'm not talking about detecting life. I'm talking about replicating the experiment which was performed on Mars to see if perchlorates are formed and some other reaction is responsible for the gaseous carbon isotopes.

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

#96

Post by JackFr »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #55
evil-olive wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no fundamental philosophical or existential questions would be resolved If you don't consider "does life exist on other planets?" to be a fundamental, existential question, can you share an example of what you do think is such a fundamental question? Finding life on Mars wouldn't necessarily resolve any fundamental questions, but it would open up a whole new realm of questions. Is it similar to life on Earth? How s…

Sure: Is the concept of objective meaning valid in any possible universe? Is it possible for the universe to be a fully observed deterministic system? Is there a universal objective function motivating what we consider reality? Is it possible to determine with certainty the origins of what we can conceptualize as reality? Is it possible to forecast with mathematical certainty events in future time steps. Basically ju…

Well sure, I take your point. We live, we die. Science tells us how it all happens, but can never tell us why it happens at all.

And yet despite the certainty of death, we, individually and as a group, seem to have an unquenchable desire to know more. To know is to grow, and this collection of processes we call life has never been seen off the planet so yeah, it'd be quite some growth.

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

#97

Post by ALittleLight »

CardenB wrote: post #54
joshmarlow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the life evolved independently of life on earth (ie, no panspermia or anything like that), then it would have philosophical/existential implications because of the Great Filter Hypothesis - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter . Edit for a TL;DR - The basic idea is that, if we don't see evidence of intelligent life in the universe, it must be because star traveling species must be rare. If we find life evolv…

Not necessarily. It just suggests the bottleneck for life lies at whatever point is after mars. Nothing would suggest that complex life gets progressively more difficult to evolve.

Right now there are a few places for the great filter. To my knowledge:

1. Life

2. Multicellular life

3. Intelligent life

4. Interstellar colonization tech

If you make it through all levels you should be colonizing the galaxy and detectable by us therefore.

Finding life with a separate origin than ours removes one of the possible spots for the great filter and makes it significantly more likely that the great filter is ahead of us rather than behind.

This is a question that will help with the survival of humanity.

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

#98

Post by russellbeattie »

aazaa wrote: post #6

> On July 30, 1976, the LR returned its initial results from Mars. Amazingly, they were positive. As the experiment progressed, a total of four positive results, supported by five varied controls, streamed down from the twin Viking spacecraft landed some 4,000 miles apart. The data curves signaled the detection of microbial respiration on the Red Planet. The curves from Mars were similar to those produced by LR tests…

I was curious how they automated all the testing and data sending back then. In Wikipedia it mentions that the Viking landers had 24 bit CPUs with 18K of plated-wire memory and 1280 megabits of tape storage. That's actually not bad!

Think about what you could do with an Apple II (8-bit CPU, 4/8/16k memory), and the Vikings were much more powerful. They were also the size of a Volkswagon, but I'm not sure how much was equipment vs computer.

A software update killed one of the landers by accidentally overwriting the antenna software. (40 years later, not much has changed...)

More info:

https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch5-6.html

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

#99

Post by labster »

eindiran wrote: post #2

It looks like a lot of people think the presence of the oxidizer perchlorate is the cause of the false positive, but there isn't consensus yet. ``` On August 2008, the Phoenix lander detected perchlorate, a strong oxidizer when heated above 200 °C. This was initially thought to be the cause of a false positive LR result. However, results of experiments published in December 2010 propose that organic compounds "could…

Yep, definitely ironic that an oxidant like perchlorate reduced the chance of finding life.

You’ve been a great audience, I’ll be here for the next 7 sols!

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

#100

Post by hanniabu »

ncmncm wrote: post #64
soup10 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

realistically mars is way more interesting if its more than a boring rock

Even with microbes it would be a boring rock. Anybody who thinks they want to move there should camp in Antactica for ten years, first.

And because people settled in Antartica it's no longer the miserable experience it used to be. These are pioneers, they do things that are had, they pave the way for the rest of humanity.
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