New Mars Forums

Suppose it's a large interstellar spacecraft, carrying aliens, rotating once every 35 minutes or so to create artificial gravity for the journey.
                                      ???      

[At least this hypothesis explains the lack of a star in the direction of the signal ... ]

Thanks, Cindy, for the periodic updates on all things solar!   

    It sure is an amazing coup, to go out and scoop up 'star stuff' and bring it home. And wouldn't those stunt helicopter pilots be excited to be able to turn their skills to something as incredible as this?!!
                                          

Holy moley, Rik!   
    That's not a website, that's an encyclopedia on nanotechnology! 

    Can you summarise the main points in 25 words or less?                   ???    :laugh:

Yes, Falkor. I've seen it before.
    It's an interesting concept and might explain the formations seen in some places on Mars ... except for one small problem.
    Whenever we get higher resolution shots of the same landforms, they don't start to look more like the remains of artificial geometric structures but more like naturally eroded geological features.

    I, too, was intrigued by the Viking images of Cydonia. I was almost prepared to believe I was looking at the remnants of cyclopean buildings and I definitely wanted more pictures. Higher resolution photos taken since then have not reinforced the argument for artificiality but, rather, have served to fatally undermine it.

   [However, I still find the Face worthy of further investigation. Though the likelihood of it being artificial is almost vanishingly small and there are thousands of more pressing questions about Mars I'd rather be addressing.]
                                                 

Magnificent!
    And see!!! The sky is blueish when the air is clear!

[And don't give me a lot of technical hooey about colour enhancement and saturation etc.   "Sufferin' Succotash" ... trying to spoil a kid's fun ... !
                                          :bars2:   ]

Thanks for posting this, Cindy! I had a notion to do likewise but you beat me to it.   

    Something that struck me about Dr. McKay's comments was this part: "Talk about the Magic Carpet just went away. I don't think it should have gone away."

    I think I detect considerable frustration behind these bland well-chosen words! And it's nice to see someone of his calibre sharing in the frustration I've felt for years regarding NASA's oh-so-coy behaviour with respect to enigmatic martian geology. I know it's essential to maintain strict scientific detachment but NASA's unwillingness to discuss their thoughts on things like the Magic Carpet (for fear of stirring up the wild-eyed fanatics I suppose) gives me the feeling we, the public, are being kept out in the cold.
    I wish there were more frank and open talks about the amazing images from the MERs, what they may mean, and how they're shaping future mission architecture.

    On a more positive note, it's gratifying to see Dr. McKay adding his considerable weight to the proposal that Mars may still harbour life. There's no incontrovertible evidence, of course, and he doesn't suggest there is, but his comment: "It's hard to kill off life once it has started" is, I think, fundamental to the argument for life on Mars today. In fact, I couldn't have put it better myself!
                                  

They're a funny shape, I suppose DG, but stones often have weird shapes. There's no rule which says stones can only have certain angles or dimensions.
    If they're not stones, what do you suggest they might be?
                                                   ???   

I tend to agree with Atomoid, at least to some extent.
    While I can see Dr. Levin's point of view about the the surface features looking like they might be mud or ice, I've looked long and hard at the pictures too and I can't be sure it's not all just dust! I can imagine very fine, very dry dust, perhaps cloying together under electrostatic influences, appearing and even behaving somewhat like mud.
    While the photographic evidence is tantalising, on balance I don't think it's conclusive enough to say categorically that we're looking at mud.
    Atomoid's points, while superficially damning for the water argument, don't necessarily rule out mud. Mars may be more hydrologically active than we realise and aquifers may indeed be slowly recharging as outbreaks of water and general evaporation/sublimation occur at the surface to drain them. The amount of evaporation of surface water has been shown by Dr. Levin to be less copious than might be imagined. On Mars, it's as though the stratosphere starts at about 1 metre above the ground. The solar-heated ground warms the air only very near the surface and, although that near-surface air may reach 20 deg.C on a warm day, a metre or so higher, the air may be well below freezing. That cold air at 1 metre altitude is unable to carry significant quantities of water, which means the warmer air below it quickly becomes saturated. This saturated layer can then accept no more water vapour from any liquid water on the surface. Thus evaporation and/or sublimation is slowed dramatically. This effect would probably be most noticeable in craters, where winds would be less likely to disturb the layering of saturated and dry air. In fact, it's quite likely that the near-surface environment on warm days in martian craters could be quite moist and balmy for hours at a time. Bacteria, specially adapted to the diurnal/seasonal cycle, could easily use these relatively clement interludes for metabolism and reproduction, closing down during the frigid nights and local winters.

    I'm on record as saying I think Mars is alive and I've seen nothing that dissuades me from that point of view. I agree with Dr. Levin that it's harder to imagine a sterile Mars than a living Mars!
    But I don't think these photos are conclusive evidence of mud, however much I wish they were!
    We still need an astronaut on the surface to get the evidence we need ... and my bag is packed!!
                                                             

A very good argument, Lunarmark, and I confess it is difficult to refute it.
    You may yet prove to be absolutely correct. And, as I've said before, I'm in the same boat as Rik in hoping, for the sake of human exploration and colonisation in the future, that you are correct.

    However, there may be literally millions of fragments of Mars lying undiscovered on Earth's surface. How many have been found and how many have been minutely examined?
    What proportion of them should we expect to contain indisputable indications of microbial life? Even when NASA scientists announce evidence of life in a martian meteorite, as in ALH 84001, people find ways to explain that evidence without reference to biological processes (as they should - it's part of the scientific method to do so). The onus of absolute proof lies with those claiming biological remnants in the meteorites and, even though their evidence may be good, it can easily fail to provide definitive proof. But that doesn't mean ALH 84001 isn't full of biologically produced material, degraded by billions of years of chemical reactions. It's just that the evidence isn't unequivocal.

    On the other hand, while this onus of proof is onerous, I understand that it has to be that way. Those of your persuasion can hardly be expected to prove the negative.
    But I think you might cut us 'life people' a little bit more slack until we've had a chance to present a better case!

    I still find the idea of a sterile Mars more difficult to swallow than a living one, though again I admit there's no solid proof as yet.
                                 

I still think he looks good in salmon pink.   

I agree, Rik, that there's probably a lot more cold water on Mars than hot water! But I also happen to think, from evidence of volcanism into relatively recent eras, that Mars still possesses a considerable amount of internal heat.
    I think it likely that substantial reservoirs of areothermally heated water still exist in the martian crust and such reservoirs, in light of what we've discovered about terrestrial microbes recently, would be perfectly suitable for archaea and bacteria to thrive - if there ever were any, of course.
    But the site I linked to also discusses the Antarctic Dry Valley life-forms, which appear to survive in conditions remarkably similar to present day surface conditions on Mars (not identical conditions, I realise, but close enough to give us pause for thought).

    Commodore, your point is well taken. We can't have surviving microbes on Mars, precariously hanging onto life in various oases under the surface, if there were never any microbes in the first place!
    However, after more than a century of research and deliberation, we are still at a loss to explain how inanimate matter acquires the complexity and organisation to become living material. There are many partial hypotheses but still nothing remotely complete enough to be called a comprehensive theory, by any means. Yet, it's a demonstrable fact that life exists here on Earth. As to whether it originated here or on Mars, or somehow found its way here from another star system entirely, is an open question. We simply don't know how life arises; it's a profound mystery which seems to become more intractable the more we learn of microbiology.
    What we do know, however, is that life was present on Earth almost as soon as the early hellish conditions here settled down enough to allow it to survive. It almost seems like it popped into existence from somewhere, implying that life is something which just happens as soon as conditions permit it to exist, or it arrived here, ready formed, from Mars, or its spores are everywhere throughout interstellar space (the Hoyle/Wickramasinghe hypothesis).

    Mars was once warmer and wetter than it is now and may well have become conducive to life earlier in its history than Earth did. If it somehow crossed the interplanetary gap, that would explain the surprisingly abrupt appearance of life here on Earth when the conditions were still barely adequate.
    But, if life actually appeared here quickly, of its own accord, then that in itself is an indication that it must be 'easy' for life to form. If it did so here, why not on Mars during its balmier days?
    And, even if life originated quickly here, and nowhere else in the universe, we now know it was almost certainly transferred, intact, between the inner rocky planets on frequent occasions over the eons. The erstwhile concept of planetary quarantine is beginning to fade from the mainstream as impact transfer becomes accepted.

    Given this information, and given that Mars today must still have environments where even terrestrial microbes would thrive, I find it logically almost inescapable that Mars must harbour life.
                                             

[Darn it! I can't even remember climbing up onto my soap-box that time ... I just found myself standing on the damned thing, ranting!
                                            ]

Yes, indeed, Rik!
    Wherever life can find the barest necessities it somehow finds a way to hang on. While many people still find the prospect of life on Mars unlikely, there are others (including me! ) who find the idea of a sterile Mars difficult to believe.
    This is actually an http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news … s.html]OLD SITE, but it conveys the same kind of information as the site you linked for us, Rik.
    To the right-hand side of the main article, there's a narrow panel with additional information about methanogens and an item headed: "Antarctic Microbes Support Possibility of Life on Mars".

    When you see the kinds of conditions here on Earth that support breeding colonies of microbial life, it becomes difficult to imagine that Mars doesn't have regions in its crust which are at least as 'hospitable', if not more conducive to life.
    Note the reference to the Antarctic Dry Valleys, where colonies of microbes were found in salty soil, almost bereft of water, and where the average temperature hovers somewhere around -30 to -35 deg.C.
    Sound familiar?
                                   ???