[HN Gopher] Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial...
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Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial life: study
Author : hhs
Score : 85 points
Date : 2021-04-24 18:42 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.brown.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.brown.edu)
| Daniel_sk wrote:
| There are even mysterious (with hypothetical biological origin)
| geysers on Mars: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geysers_on_Mars
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| To be perfectly honest they're not that mysterious. In the
| Martian science community they're called araneiforms, and the
| biological origin hypothesis is fairly fringe. Lots of good
| reading in these papers:
|
| - "The formation of araneiforms by carbon dioxide venting and
| vigorous sublimation dynamics under martian atmospheric
| pressure": https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-82763-7
|
| - "HiRISE observations of gas sublimation-driven activity in
| Mars' southern polar regions: III. Models of processes
| involving translucent ice":
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001910350...
|
| - "How martian araneiforms get their shapes: morphological
| analysis and diffusion-limited aggregation model for polar
| surface erosion":
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001910351...
| paulpauper wrote:
| For almost half a century, scientists have been speculating about
| sub-surface life on mars. Why with existing technological
| progress can we not just get a yes or no answer about this.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Because determining a yes or no answer requires running tests
| and examinations of Martian subsurface soil samples on Earth.
|
| Part of Perseverance's mission is to take those soil samples
| and deposit them to be picked up and brought back to Earth on
| another later mission.
|
| https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/sample-handl...
| highspeedbus wrote:
| Several experiments have already been carried out, but none
| have been able to fully prove or refute the existence of life
| on mars. There is still room for more evidence and precision,
| but most likely there is no life there.
| adt2bt wrote:
| If I had to guess: planets are big, rocks are hard, and if
| there is life, it's vanishingly rare or hard to find.
| ssijak wrote:
| Google something like "mars viking life experiments"
| freeflight wrote:
| For a moment there I was thinking: "Wait, Vikings have been
| to Mars?", turns out NASA had a Viking program that sent
| two space probes to Mars in the 70s [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_lander_biological_
| exper...
| mrfusion wrote:
| I'll answer your question with a question. Would space
| exploration get more or less funding if we settled a
| fundamental question about the existence of life outside earth?
| eggsmediumrare wrote:
| Probably more.
| NanoWar wrote:
| What happens when we'd put some microbes there now?
| levosmetalo wrote:
| I'm more concerned what happens when we bring some microbes
| from Mars.
| paulpauper wrote:
| things that go to mars tend to stay there
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's changing very soon.
|
| Perseverance's mission includes collecting and storing
| samples for a return mission.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_sample-return_mission
| astroflask wrote:
| And also things that have gone to Mars in the past have
| blasted off chunks of Mars into Earth.
| daveguy wrote:
| Andromeda Strain makes a good story, but viruses and bacteria
| tend to evolve with their hosts and environment. It is
| unlikely that any virus or bacteria brought from mars would
| have a serious impact on humans or our environment. We
| probably aren't good hosts to something that's been evolving
| in martian conditions.
| csunbird wrote:
| We probably have done this already, with the man made machines
| that we had sent. Although the NASA tries to sterilize the
| robots/rovers, I doubt that they can kill every bacteria and
| some of the bacteria are known to somehow survive when exposed
| to space as well.
| Thiez wrote:
| Earth bacteria require liquid water (amongst other things).
| Thus far none of the rovers have landed in a lake, so it's
| unlikely that earth bacteria will be spreading any time soon.
| karmakaze wrote:
| What's more important: knowing if Mars had/has life on it or
| having life on it?
| x86ARMsRace wrote:
| I've been curious about this recently actually. What are the
| downsides of "seeding" a plant with life to study how it
| evolves?
| ben_w wrote:
| Means it's hard to tell, if we find life there later, if that
| life was native or if we put it there.
| anikan_vader wrote:
| It becomes much more difficult to determine whether the
| planet contains indigenous life once you've introduced life
| from Earth.
| greenonions wrote:
| I'm also a fan of this idea. It seems far easier than trying
| to plant humans in giant bubbles with an Earthly ecosystem
| that just happen to be on the surface of Mars.
|
| As other commenters have noted, it's probably not very wise,
| but I imagine it would be the cheapest way to increase the
| chances of the continuation of life (as we know it).
| torstenvl wrote:
| Maybe after initial terraforming you could also seed it with
| a specially engineered retrovirus to help evolution along by
| tweaking genes associated with prosociality.
| quesera wrote:
| Evolution takes a long time. And there aren't many (any)
| environments that we've identified and can reach which are
| conducive to the sort of life we know about. Also it'd be a
| bit presumptuous for us to colonize a hospitable planet for
| our own experimentation.
|
| But it's an interesting question. In fiction, I can recommend
| Adrian Tchaikovsky's _Children of Time_ , and sequel
| _Children of Ruin_.
| jakswa wrote:
| The fear I read is that we might be accidentally eradicating
| any life we don't yet know about, if we introduce life from
| earth.
| pm90 wrote:
| Imagine if an alien lifeform had terraformed earth this way.
| We would not have existed.
|
| (There is a hypothesis that life _may_ have been introduced
| this way to earth, known as the Panspermia Hypothesis
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia)
| throwawayboise wrote:
| There are so many chance events that could have gone
| differently and we would not have existed.
|
| If not for an asteroid, the earth might still be populated
| with dinosaurs. Would they have evolved to our degree of
| intelligence and civilization? Who knows?
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I don't understand the excitement for finding life on Mars. I
| personally really, really hope we do not find life on Mars.
|
| If we find even the most basic microbial life, NASA is going to
| shut down all future exploration in the interest of Martian
| planetary protection. China and Russia probably won't, but the US
| will cripple itself (again) out of caution.
|
| On a more existential level, finding life elsewhere in the solar
| system (assuming it's not diaspora from earth or vice versa) says
| really dark things about our own potential. If life is truly
| common in the universe, the fact that we haven't seen it anywhere
| means that the great filter is still in front of us -- and nobody
| has slipped through.
|
| OTOH, if the great filter is behind is, there's no data about our
| likelihood of killing ourselves before we do manage to explore
| the rest of the known universe. This is such a better outcome.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| Alternatively both instances of life could be linked.
| https://www.space.com/22577-earth-life-from-mars-theory.html
|
| That said my gut says hypothetically talking about the danger
| of a universal great filter is silly when we clearly face near
| term filters of our own design right now (climate change,
| environmental collapse, a nuclear arms race)
| sthnblllII wrote:
| Massive loss of life or economic disruption, while hugely
| bad, is not what a great filter means in this context. If
| earth's climate returns to pre-holocene greenhouse gas
| levels, temperature and sea levels the human race would not
| be cut off from the stars in a fundamental way.
| mulcahey wrote:
| did you read Bostrom's article with the same opinion?
|
| https://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf
| throwawaycuriou wrote:
| first I've seen it but my initial thought is that he does not
| think probable as much as I do that a great filter may exist
| in the practicality of interstellar travel. if so, it's not a
| buzzkill to find pangolin skeletons on mars. we're all in
| this cul de sac together.
| solson4 wrote:
| I think the excitement is that it would give us another data
| point for what life can possibly be like. So far (AFAIK) the
| best evidence is that life evolved once on earth, and so
| everything we see comes from that basic blue print. But does it
| have to be that way? Would alien life also be carbon based, or
| something else? Is DNA/RNA (or a close equivalent) a universal
| feature of life? If not what do they use instead? If so, that's
| also very interesting. There's just so many questions we can't
| answer when the sample size is one. I guess my belief (hope?)
| is that that curiosity would spur further exploration, not kill
| it.
|
| As for the great filter, yeah, it's a bit scary if we rule out
| bio-genesis as an option, but that still leaves the single to
| multi cell jump behind us (and arguably development of human
| level cooperation/problem solving, but I'm less sold on that
| one).
| freeflight wrote:
| _> China and Russia probably won 't, but the US will cripple
| itself (again) out of caution._
|
| Do you have any concrete examples when this happened before?
| Writing (again) implies you think there was already such a
| precedent.
| highspeedbus wrote:
| I'm always on side of knowing than not knowing. Finding truly
| alien life would change society forever, maybe we would get
| more humble. As Carl Sagan put on Pale Blue Dot.
| zopa wrote:
| Pretty confident we'd still explore, just with some
| (appropriate) care. Too many fascinating scientific questions
| to answer once we discover extraterrestrial life. And if Russia
| and China did, the US definitely would too --- what would be
| the point of standing on principal in that hypothetical?
|
| Meanwhile if you're hoping, why not just hope directly that the
| Great Filter is behind us? It's totally plausible that the
| window for multicellular life to survive on a planet is
| generally short, like on Mars, and not long, like on Earth. Or
| a million other possible explanations that we also have no data
| for or against right now. I like to keep my science-related
| hopes on the side of the coolest possible result .
| drannex wrote:
| Perhaps that would be a benefit, it could spur action to focus
| more and create L5 colonies faster.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| The great filter is that tech is to easy, but self-awareness
| and self-discipline is hard. So life presses onwards, demanding
| exponential energy density from tech, to not be forced to limit
| itself and self-discipline itself.
|
| Thus ever more potent tools are handed out to avoid
| confrontation with the "overcome" animal nature - and once that
| equation reaches the end of the line (easy energy and resources
| exhausted), a nearly unchanged animal with exponential power
| tools in hand, reverts to tribalistic warfare. Nothing recovers
| from this.
|
| The greatest damage done, is the lie that life can learn and
| change, which never holds up under stress. The most valuable
| achievement to escape the filter, is investigate our nature
| realistically and apply controlled technological crippling,
| while testing the tools to calm the evil spirits of our nature,
| even under stress.
|
| So technology is the problem and the solution, if applied with
| a real effort to understand humanity, beyond the "I wish for X
| and by the magic of wishful thinking it becomes reality
| instantly". Its hard work - similar to somebody diagnosing ones
| own mental limitations, and building a limited operating system
| for that crippled system. In a way- its the ultimate hack.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| There could be civilizations out there that never developed
| aggression.
| dotancohen wrote:
| If they never developed aggression then they are not eating
| each other. Animals eat other animals because of the high
| concentration of nutrients in living things. Eating highly
| nutritious things allows an organism to develop both
| physically and mentally.
|
| So they either have an abundant source of nutrients that
| has not been depleted for their entire evolution, or they
| are not highly developed, or they have developed
| aggression.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| http://akkartik.name/post/2012-11-21-07-09-03-soc
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Billions of people were just asked to spend over a year
| locked down in isolation, and most did it voluntarily without
| reverting to tribalistic warfare (threats on fringe social
| media platforms notwithstanding). We've also in modern times
| seen what happens when famine strikes. Mostly people just
| suffer quietly and die.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Ah slight economic down-turn sparked a right-wing
| totalitarian resurgence across the whole world.
|
| The lockdown mostly worked, because panem (food) and
| circensis (movie-streams and gaming) were continuously
| supplied. But, yes you have a point, the species behaved
| remarkably well under stress. But then, we also have a lot
| of social implants now too (cellphone-panopticon) and
| crowd-sourced anger-management.
|
| Also its been half a year, since a angry crowd stampeded
| into the capitol building of a nuclear power.
| harshalizee wrote:
| Personally, I don't believe in the great filter hypothesis. The
| universe is incredibly vast enough entire civilizations can
| likely go through millions of years of births and deaths
| without ever having contact with another alien life form.
| Humans have a huge bias to feel "special".
|
| We've only been broadcasting radio waves for a few decades now,
| and even that would just be lost in the background noise at
| large distances.
|
| It would be extremely surprising if we even find any life
| outside the solar system for at least a few centuries.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I don't think this gives appropriate weight to exponential
| growth.
|
| If humans are ever able to leave the earth and even
| theoretically establish permanent habitation, it's
| unthinkable that no other civilization has done so.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Even so the galaxy (let alone the universe) is huge, and
| faster-than -light or extra-dimensional travel is probably
| impossible. Contact with another civilization is extremely
| unlikely even if life is abundant in the galaxy.
| illegalmemory wrote:
| We don't have "full" understanding of human body and working of
| mind. I suspect in future humans who take birth and grow in
| different scenarios like earth natural / earth urban / mars urban
| and so on to have different life spans and body capacities.
| [deleted]
| jonplackett wrote:
| It's strange that we have to speculate about if life could have
| emerged on Mars, without really knowing for sure how it emerged
| on Earth.
| monkeydust wrote:
| Curious, will the samples collected via mars return mission
| provide proof beyond doubt on this assertion?
| zokier wrote:
| As I understand, the samples collected by Perseverance and
| returned by Mars Sample Return will be taken at surface level.
| So they will not be able to tell that much about the sub-
| surface. Also of course that is just one small region that
| Percy is taking samples from, it can not provide proof about
| conditions of other regions of the planet.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| That's the hope! Though the rover should have most of the
| scientific equipment that it needs to run the relevant
| experiments right there on the surface of Mars.
| f430 wrote:
| is anybody going to talk about the numerous and very obvious
| artificial structures on Mars and Moon? Just shut up and chalk it
| up to conspiracy right like a good American.
| ben_w wrote:
| The only obvious examples of either are the ones humans put
| there -- the probes, the rovers, the Apollo Lunar Modules and
| associated material.
| f430 wrote:
| so you mean we've figured out how to build large structures
| outside planet earth without the public knowing?
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| Please link to any of these 'large structures' otherwise
| we'll just continue to assume this is being pulled from
| your ass.
| dvh wrote:
| What structures?
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| I'm a PhD candidate studying Mars, happy to debunk any
| structures you can supply.
| f430 wrote:
| PHD won't save you here.
|
| Literally pyramids and megastructures with uniform and clear
| patterns of engineered structures. There's really nothing you
| can say here to convince me otherwise. There's zero chance of
| a large pyramid structure with accurate math proportions and
| geometric consistencies occuring by "chance"
|
| I don't know about other stuff you are speaking of but
| there's almost no explanation you can give to convice the 47%
| of the Americans that don't believe you.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| Assuming this is even in good faith, can you link any
| images or data of these supposed structures? I spend hours
| a day examining HiRISE/CTX imagery and have never seen
| anything like you're asserting.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Providing the locations of the items in question would
| allow a more fruitful discussion to take place.
| dotancohen wrote:
| How does f430 know this and people who study the Moon and
| Mars as a profession do not know this?
| f430 wrote:
| becaue the people who study Mars professionally will
| never ever be allowed to disclose or deviate beyond the
| tiny bubble of academia Mr. Cohen.
|
| after all, they are just another subordinate of a massive
| defense industry umbrella.
| gaurav_v wrote:
| There is a very good book on the origins of life on earth by Eric
| Smith, called "The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth."
|
| Here's a YouTube talk with some of the arguments:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cwvj0XBKlE
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