New Mars Forums

Yep, those extremophile bacteria are hardy little critters, that's for sure.
    One section of the article which caught my attention with regard to Mars is this one:-

    Being curious to know what "the dead of winter" might mean in the Colorado Rockies, I checked on Google and discovered the lowest recorded temperature in Colorado was -61 deg.F on February 1st, 1985 at Maybell, elevation 5920 ft.(http://www.usatoday.com/weather/wcstates.htm]This site.)
    Translating that, we get -52 deg.C. (It still amazes me that America continues to use the Fahrenheit scale - but that's another story we've covered elsewhere.)

    While -52 deg C. is a record low, it at least allows one to guesstimate that "the dead of winter" could easily mean temperatures of -20 to -40 deg.C. (Anyone here who's experienced winter in the high Rocky Mountains might care to correct this, if they think it's inaccurate.)
    And again, it's true that while air temperatures might be as low as -30 deg.C, the niches where bacteria are evidently still metabolising may not be quite as cold(?).

    However, this whole scenario is definitely in the same ball park, environmentally, as equatorial Mars. And, if memory serves, the average day/night temperature of Mars' northern hemisphere in summer is about -30 deg.C, with daytime maxima as high as +20 deg.C. (Minima being about -80 deg.C)
    So, while the lowest night-time temperature in a northern martian summer beats Colorado's record winter low by a good margin, at least any extant martian bacteria get the equivalent of a few hours of Colorado spring weather in the middle of the day!

    If terrestrial bacteria can continue metabolising in Colorado under the winter conditions mentioned, it seems very likely to me that any martian bacteria, adapted to much harsher conditions over the eons, could do likewise.
    This fits in nicely with the recently discovered methane in the martian atmosphere. Some findings, still to be confirmed and refined, suggest that concentrations of this possible bio-marker gas are greatest in low-lying and equatorial regions of Mars, which is where one might expect the greatest microbial activity because the conditions are more conducive to life.

    All very interesting!   

Cindy:-

     :laugh: Ha-ha!!  Nice one, Cindy.

    NA-SA, NA-SA, give us a Mars trip, do.
    I'm fruss-tray-ted; yawning with boredom, too.
    I won't see a martian city,
    I'm old, and more's the pity.
    And circling round, so near the ground, is beginning to make me blue.

  [Sorry .. couldn't resist a reply!     ]

Cindy:-

    Yes. The low-lying sand is so often dark like that. Puzzling .. at least to me!  ???

Thanks, Graeme and Cindy, but I'm not really that concerned about my colour vision in cases like this. You just learn to live with it.
                                             

    On a brighter note, we may be only hours away from learning, once and for all, whether there really are any hydrocarbon lakes or seas on Titan. It seems the data up to now have really been unexpected and totally confusing - always an exciting thing to happen in science.

Cindy:-

    I agree we mustn't confuse a belief in God with the book we all know as the Bible; the two things are not necessarily the same.
    To me, the god of the Old Testament was a very small-minded 'jealous god', fond of spectacular tricks and demanding absolute obedience, lest he 'smite thee with his mighty sword'. The god of the New Testament is no better, obsessed as he is with a 'sin' alleged to have been committed some 240 generations ago.
    The sin is genetically inherited, apparently, and can only be expunged by metaphorically (literally if you're Catholic) drinking the blood and eating the flesh of god's son. We should all have been destroyed for our wickedness by the same vengeful deity who terrorised the Israelites but, through his limitless mercy, we're offered a choice: Accept Jesus as our saviour from this vengeance, or burn in hell for eternity. Some mercy; some choice!

    The Bible, the Torah, and the Koran, for all their deep significance to their adherents, are all just developments of primitive, and usually gory, Middle Eastern creation myths and morality tales. They have no place in science because science has long since outgrown them.
    The cutting edges of cosmology and quantum mechanics, on the other hand, allow speculation as to intelligent design; it's not popular in mainstream science for obvious reasons but such speculation can be entertained, at least for now. It's a case of the god of the gaps being pushed back to the moment of the Big Bang or squeezed down to the infinitesimal scale of the sub-atomic realm but, at least in these areas, it is still possible to speak of God. If history is any guide, God will be hounded into ever more distant and confined regions of the universe as our knowledge grows.
    But, what if the day should ever dawn when science grinds to a halt at a barrier it can't break through? What if the more we learn of how things work, the more we realise the complexity cannot be explained except by intelligent design? I don't mean it can't be explained because we haven't done the experiments yet, I mean it has become apparent after all the experiments are done that something or someone is pulling the strings and always has been - a being made of pure information, if you like. "In the beginning was the Word".

    I don't say this situation is likely to come to pass, it may not even be possible given the nature of science, but I'm just suggesting that, for now, 'intelligent design', as a concept, still has a place in science as a continually falsifiable hypothesis.

    Nevertheless, I believe Biblical creationism is an insidious doctrine, as are all religious fundamentalisms, and I abhor the idea of it being given equal footing with evolution theory in schools.
    If creationists have seized on the term 'intelligent design' because it may appear in cutting-edge scientific speculation, thus giving their cult an air of respectability and allowing it to propagate more easily, then we need to be more vigilant now than ever.
    Every time the words 'intelligent design' are mentioned as a hypothesis, and I don't see why they should enter into highschool science very much anyway (we had plenty to study in my school days, without getting into that much rarified philosophy! ), then they must be couched in terminology plainly identifying them as just one more hypothetical argument and no more than that.

    Just a few of my opinions on the subject .. 'and no more than that'!   

Ad Astra:-

    This would fit in with some substantial evidence put forward in the book "The Hunt for Zero Point", by Jane's Defence Weekly Aerospace Consultant, Nick Cook. There have been persistent rumours for decades about U.S. military black projects concerned with electro-gravitics, the underlying physics for which was reportedly captured from Nazi scientists by American troops in 1945.
    Since any such projects would be subject to the utmost security and secrecy, we can only scratch around the edges for circumstantial indications as to their veracity.
    If electro-gravitics were still part of covert military research today, and more recent rumours about the B-2 bomber seem to suggest it could be, it would explain why the Roswell Incident might still be classified over 50 years later.

Trebuchet:-
    "Instead, we should find some worthless real estate in their solar system - some junk moon nobody cares about - and make it unambigious that something is amiss. Nuke the surface in weird patterns so that the glassy craters make the moon resemble a giant disco ball, give it a funky paint job, dig Mad Grad Student's huge trenches, whatever. THEN you put a giant monolith or whatever somewhere on that moon - preferably of a size visible from orbit or someplace where probes are likely to land while checking out whatever you've done to that moon."

    Always on the lookout for any evidence of Trebuchet's plan having already been carried out by aliens here in our own solar system, I wondered about Saturn's moon Iapetus.
    It's not exactly a "disco ball", but its starkly two-tone appearance has attracted our attention very effectively. Now it's been found to have a string of three mountains spaced quite evenly along its equator.

    Of course, I realise the upcoming higher resolution pictures will almost certainly eliminate any possibility of artificiality but, so far, Iapetus could be interpreted as a possible example of just the sort of thing Trebuchet described.
    A half-white half-black moon, eh?
    A string of three high mountains, eh?
    In a straight line, eh?
    All situated precisely on the equator, eh?
                                          ???       

[P.S. The above picture is taken from http://www.spacedaily.com/news/cassini- … .html]THIS SITE. ]

Cindy:-

    It's not hard to figure.
    Obviously your cat can access New Mars, can read your posts about him, and knows perfectly well what "snip-snip" means.
    He's not stupid!   :;):

Don't run off with the wrong impression, Cindy. Cairns City is actually quite small and vast areas around it are still almost pristine and still very beautiful. But the diesel fumes in town ... oh brother!   

CM:-

    Classic comedy, CM ... I love it!!  :laugh:

You still there, ERRORIST?
    Has Austin's explanation helped you to see what we're driving at, or are you still convinced your 36,000 km siphon will work?
                                        ???   

John:-

    Yes, John. Thanks for the comeback on this.
    I think you're probably right that, if we were to find amino acids which are all left-handed, it would be a very strong indication they were produced by a living system. Even more interesting would be the discovery of exclusively right-handed amino acids!
    I'm just concerned that amino acids have turned up in meteorites and that Dr. Bada's comments about them seem contradictory already. He knows about the Murchison Meteorite amino acids, and says any amino acids found on Mars are a sure-fire sign of life. Yet he doesn't seem to think the amino acids in that meteorite are any sign of life, even though there is a significant excess of left-handed over right-handed forms of the acid.
    I suppose he might argue it's all a matter of context. Life may have thrived on Mars but it could hardly have done so in a frozen comet.

    This is all O.K., as far as it goes, but what I'm worried about is the possible ambiguity of finding amino acids on Mars, if that's the only test you're performing.
    What if past cometary impacts have left a smorgasbord of amino acids in the martian regolith, some of them familiar ones we associate with terrestrial life, many of them not the kind we see used by life here, some of them left-handed and some right-handed?
    The playing field is wide open to various interpretations of that data, including the possibility (probability? ) that life had nothing to do with any of it.

    I think sending the amino-detecting chip is a great idea. But, on its own, I worry that it's not exclusive enough. We could end up with another stalemate, as I said, and a question mark hanging over Life-on-Mars for another 5 or 10 years (or more).
    Send the chip, by all means, but why not send a more refined version of the Viking life-detection equipment, too? Talk to Dr. G. Levin - I've no doubt he has a thousand ideas he'd like to share in this regard!

    I think this chip looks like a concession to the Life-Quest brigade; something to keep them amused for a while longer. It's small, it's light-weight, it won't cost much. And if its results are ambiguous, we can just say: "Gee whiz! Mars is a tough nut to crack. We ask it a question and it answers with another question. Sheesh! What can you do?"

    The most important question we have today about Mars (still! ) is whether or not it harbours life. Yet this little chip is the only attempt to address that question in 33 years!
    It's not enough.
                                              ???

Yep, John Young, what an amazing human being!   

    Of all the astronauts, Pete Conrad sounded like the one I could have imagined getting along with best in person. Sadly, he died in 1999 from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident.

    But John Young has been my other favourite astronaut since the first Shuttle flight in 1981. I still remember that launch and the realisation Young and Crippen were flying an untested vehicle. I was simply astounded at the courage and skill of both astronauts at the time but, remembering John Young's already impressive record, my attention was focused on him.
    Most people with only a fraction of his career achievements behind them would be looking toward a well-earned retirement, basking in the glory of past adventures. But not our John. No siree Bob! He puts himself in the hotseat in the most complex and innovative untested spacecraft in history and flies a perfect mission, touching down more smoothly than the average airline pilot can manage in a 747!!

    Since that time, my admiration for John Young grew even greater and he attained almost god-like status in my eyes.
    What a great man!