New Mars Forums

Hi RobS!
    You make the points that the martian surface is cold, dry, and UV-drenched, which you use as evidence to support the idea that the soil is sterile and that the apparently positive Labeled Release (LR) results were due to peroxides.
    Recent data suggests that the top 1 metre of martian regolith is rich in water, even at the equator where it may consist of 2% water ice. Martian soil is evidently not as dry as we used to think. The fact that evaporites have been found indicates that water on Mars must be briny and may therefore remain liquid at very low temperatures and pressures. (Minus 20 deg.C and 1 mb, according to Dr Chris MacKay.)
    During at least some times of the year, in many places on Mars, the surface temperature rises above 0 deg.C for a few hours each day. This makes the likelihood of liquid briny water in the soil very high during much of the year over large areas of Mars - at least in the daytime.
    In addition, on Earth, some extremophile organisms such as halophilic bacteria have an exceptional resistance to solar radiation. How much more specialised in the field of UV resistance would we expect martian halophiles to have become under the high-UV conditions on Mars?

    My opinion is that our understanding of the martian environment, together with our newfound knowledge of just how tough bacteria can be, make the 'positive' results of the LR experiment much more interesting. In fact, all of the barriers to those results being of biological origin have been effectively removed by new data.
    Since there is now no reason why bacteria should not survive in the top 30 cms of martian soil, there is no need to devise complex oxidising soil chemistry to explain the results. Occam's Razor tells us to choose the least complicated of two possible scenarios.

    Now that we have methane, and probably ammonia, in non-equilibrium concentrations in the martian air, both being gases difficult to account for by any means other than biological, it seems the case for a biosphere is becoming difficult to deny.
    What do you think?
                                                 ???

Rik:-

    You're right, I agree.
                                     

[Mighty nice of you to consider something I wrote worth making into your sig. ... I'm very flattered! Thank you.      ]

Hmmm.
    And as for the 'not worrying' bit, I suppose it is a sliding scale, isn't it?
    Given your reservations about terraforming, the more concern there is about atmosphere-creation being futile, the more worry there is for the likes of me and the less worry for you! And vice versa.

    Ah well ... c'est la vie!   

I couldn't get Corona Australis to appear but learned something about Saturn, Jupiter and brown dwarf stars.
    Thanks, Cindy!
                                           

I once saw Carl Sagan in a particularly dismissive mood, referring to humans in hollywood movies and T.V. shows mating with aliens.
    He said a human would have a much better chance of mating successfully with a petunia than an alien from outer space!
                                           :laugh:

Cindy, I understand your slightly cynical, or should I say strictly scientific, attitude to this latest discovery. There have indeed been many false hopes in planetary science over the years.

    Your attention to the details of the revelation does you credit because the findings certainly are described as "tentative" and we should be wary of any scientific data that haven't been confirmed.
    I suspect that the data must be fairly reliable or they wouldn't be publishing them soon. But science leaves no room for interpretation when it comes to the burden of proof and no single set of data, however compelling, can be allowed to stand unless it can be verified by independent researchers.

    There can be no doubt I've popped the champagne cork a little too early in this matter and that your reservations are quite correct.
    With any luck, we won't have to wait too long for confirmation, one way or the other.
                                             

Now ammonia.
    The evidence to back the logic is mounting. Simple deductive reasoning has indicated for some time now that Mars harbours life.
    If you stand very still and keep perfectly quiet, you can feel the paradigm shifting!   

    I still find it remarkable that America closed the book on 'life on Mars' after some positive indications from Viking, and hasn't sent a single life-detection device to Mars in the quarter-century since. I guess there are good reasons for this bizarre behaviour but they're not immediately obvious to me and they're great fuel for conpiracy-theorists' speculations!
                                         ???

So, it looks like my impressions of European behaviour are fairly mainstream; most people seem to see it the same way.
    Thanks, people, for the specifics to my generalisations!
    And yes, Cindy, your analogy about left-over resentment in some American States, dating back to the Civil War, does help to provide some perspective on European relationships. For example, the French and the British have been at war with each other, off and on, for literally centuries. When I lived in England, there was still a kind of bland simmering animosity towards France, just under the surface; the attitude being: "You can have a jovial productive relationship with the froggies but keep your wits about you and never turn your back to them!". It was like everybody was happy enough to live side-by-side with France but that it was a slightly uneasy truce and, if the Brits found themselves at war with the French the following weekend, nobody would be the least bit surprised!   
    Just some personal impressions of the situation as I remember it.

    This is the reason I find it difficult to imagine an efficient and genuinely pan-European cooperation in space. But then, my impressions of European attitudes are some two decades old now and things do change.
                                               

I don't think there's much we can do about Mars gradually losing any atmosphere we may create around it. Losses due to Mars' relatively low gravity would be very slow by the standards of human existence, though 'sputtering' would tend to worsen that situation.
    The lack of a global magnetic field, responsible for the vulnerability of the upper martian atmosphere to direct erosion by the solar wind, would mean the occasional massive impact of a CME, too, which would no doubt accelerate the atmospheric loss during those events.

    But even taking all this into account, a 500 millibar atmosphere, say, would still take many millions of years to lose a significant percentage of its bulk.
    I don't know how often we can expect a CME event to hit Mars head-on, maybe nobody knows for sure (?), and it's clear that an artificial magnetic field would maximise the longevity of our newly-constructed martian atmosphere. But I think we're going to have plenty of time to develop the technology we need to make a magnetic shield for Mars or, at least, figure out ways to 'top up' the air as it leaks oh-so-slowly into space.
    After all, our species is only about 200,000 years old and may not last much more than another 200,000 in our present form (who knows?). As I've mentioned before, the average species lasts about 4 million years before evolving into something different or going extinct. Compared to these time scales, our new martian atmosphere will probably still be in fine form millions of years after we're gone.
    So why worry?
                                             

Still, 2.7 billion Euros is roughly equivalent to USD 3.3 billion.
    And, according to Dr. Zubrin, that much money per annum over a ten-year period would place on Mars a Hab, an Earth Return Vehicle, an In-Situ Propellant Plant, a nuclear reactor to power everything ... Oh, and 4 humans to run everything!
    Some spare change!   :;):

[I guess it depends who's organising the budget.]

Hmmm, yes, I suppose we're bound to employ Occam's Razor in explaining those streaks and, if dry avalanches are perfectly able to explain them, then that's where we'll have to leave it until better evidence becomes available.
    Thanks, Atomoid!
                                  :up:

Yes, Rob, I agree with your comments.
    The question of whether or not Mars had clement conditions long enough for life to evolve there is indeed an extraordinarily fascinating one, deserving of major expenditure to answer because of its far-reaching implications.

    Thanks for stating your opinion that, regardless of the indigenous evolution of life, it's probable that terrestrial life found its way to Mars and survived during the earlier, wetter times.
    Either way, as you say, it's difficult to imagine how life could have failed to survive into the present, given our knowledge of how robust it can be.

    It's looking like more and more of us are coming around to the idea that Mars probably harbours life today.
    Given this change in outlook, as our knowledge of Mars gradually increases, and given the acute vision afforded us by virtue of our retrospectoscopes (!! ), does anyone here feel the need to revise their opinion of the results of the  Viking life-detection experiments?
    In other words, should we be re-visiting those results with a new attitude, especially in view of the fact that the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer, used to quash the tentatively positive outcomes of the life experiments, has since been found inadequate for the job?
                                        ???