Possible Evidence of once life on mars?

I logged out of my hotmail account and seen this headline.
According to the article, a scientist studied silica formations that were found by the spirit rover.
Said scientist went to other places on earth that had these types of deposits.
After careful study and im sure much deliberation, he came to the conclusion - theres a possibility that mars ONCE was called home to some forms of microbes similar to ones found on earth.
I figured some might find it interesting to read the article.


www.msn.com...

a reply to: Macenroe82
Hey OP, nice link. I think this is a keeper? Why so confident? Because this pleases everyone. It allows the anthropocentric to maintain their world view, yet also gives the universalists some air.

This would support the view ET life might be common, but complex life rare. The idea is it's easy for it to emerge, but difficult for it to survive. Survival is necessary for it to evolve and become complex.

I of course am only referring to the "catchability" of it. Similar to a hook and its ability to hold a fish. This idea would catch good. To the contrary, other things might not catch well. Not finding life at all wouldn't be popular to people with their minds on far horizons. As well, finding abundant life and intelligent life too would be uncomfortable to those who view the world through the actions of human beings.

How catchable something is shouldn't affect its capacity to be legitimate, but I wonder if maybe it does? If something is the least uncomfortable to the most people it'll receive more funding and support? It's a spotlight effect. We look first where the spotlight is because it's easiest. Darkness is difficult. We, in miniature, are like bacterium surrounding a new piece of food which presents the least frustration.

originally posted by: Macenroe82
After careful study and im sure much deliberation, he came to the conclusion - theres a possibility that mars ONCE was called home to some forms of microbes similar to ones found on earth.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the claim that "it is possible that mars once had life" what they have been saying for years now?

here's a quote from the article:

The link is far from conclusive, and although the Martian environment can be compared to areas on Earth in some ways, the two are still very different.

So it seems we're no further than where we were before, unfortunately. At least there's more evidence to suggest there was once life.

originally posted by: jonnywhite
a reply to: Macenroe82


This would support the view ET life might be common, but complex life rare. The idea is it's easy for it to emerge, but difficult for it to survive. Survival is necessary for it to evolve and become complex.

I like the idea that there is a "complexity continuum" along which life in the universe can be mapped, and I wonder if we ourselves might be somewhere in the middle of it.

What might it mean for there to be examples of life in the universe that exceed us in complexity to the same degree that we exceed bacteria?

a reply to: BiffWellington

Then we are, for the most part, beneath their notice.

a reply to: BiffWellington

Any measure that we are all ready at the middle of, must have a bloody tedious top end.

I really hope there's more than that out there, but I am also an empiricist where matters such as these are concerned, so I am glad this announcement was made with the correct grammar. There may have been life is all we can say until we find fossils, or bacteria trapped in ages old water ice, or something similar.

The universe is probably crawling with bugs..Would You like To know More?.

a reply to: BiffWellington

Thanks for making my half drunk mind ponder those kind of "what ifs"...

I mean of course, the idea always existed in my mind that our existence has a good chance of being inconsequential to something " above us" so to speak. But something about the way you phrased it into a question is bothering the depths of my thought calculator.

Conjecture overload. You can take the "may have's" and "may been's" pretty far if you want, but that means little in solid scientific terms.

They aren't even sure if the cauliflower-like protrusions on earth-based minerals were produced by microbes or not. If they weren't, then even the whole guessing is moot. Those protrusions could have been produced by geisers themselves. Geisers on Mars are a pretty exciting idea anyway but, sorry, it's not pointing to the past life.

If there is bacteria and limited resources, then wouldn't that lead to rapid evolution as they try and eat each other? Having mobility would give one an advantage over others. Being able to form large colonies that could move rocks and pebbles around would also help. If complex life can live underground in earth, why not the same on Mars?

a reply to: stormcell

The circumstances in which subterranean life on Earth finds itself, are very different from the circumstances that lifeforms inside the planet Mars would experience.

Here on Earth, both the life forms under the ground, and those living on the surface, benefit from the geothermal processes occurring inside our planet. Although volcanism, quakes, and the like can cause harm, they also provide heat, and on the ocean floor, life from the bacterial, right up to complex lifeforms, have been observed feeding on the mineral deposits spewed out of what are called black smokers, columns of deposited material from places where the molten sea of rock that our continents float on, pushes gases and material outward in a steady flow, into the ocean. These deposits are fed on by the hardy creatures who can survive that otherwise hostile environment. There are even bacteria which, although only recently discovered, can allegedly process radiological material, into a source of sustenance.

No matter where you find volcanic activity, there is always some mineral given off that might sustain one or another invisible critter, and perhaps some complex, multicellular life as well.

However, from what we understand of Mars so far, it has little to no active core. That is to say, that it has no geothermal process at work, which means that:

A) There is no material being deposited from within the interior of the planet, to the crust or any layer thereof, and therefore any lifeform which is analogous to those I describe above, will find slim pickings when looking for a life sustaining snack.

B) There is no heat being exchanged between the interior, and the exterior of the planet, which in turn means that no heat is being provided to life forms in the crust, or any layer thereof, and that presents a whole other range of issues. Life at the very small scale finds it hard to provide its own heat sources, lacking the space within its construction to store vast amounts of burnable energy for later. It often relies therefore, on a higher ambient temperature environment, in order to flourish and grow, or even simply get on with the business of being a living thing. Heat is basically an expression of kinetic energy at the molecular level, and without it, life is difficult to maintain.

C) All of this means that if there IS life on Mars as we speak, it must be very simple, and virtually unrecognisable as being life at all from our limited perspective, not to mention hard to locate. The reason I say this, is because any lifeform that can survive with virtually no volatile chemical input, heat, light, or other consumable source of energy, must have a VERY slow metabolic rate, and therefore must output very little waste gas, or other trace which might give it away.

It also means that life would have to be in isolated pockets, around the solid mineral versions of the sorts of compounds and elements which make for good nosh for lifeforms. Although we have not the knowledge base yet to know what is POSSIBLE in terms of life, and how it CAN form, we know which compounds are easiest to convert into energy using bio processes on Earth, and so we have to extrapolate from those, which are more likely to represent a food source to a lifeform on or inside Mars. Because there is no vegetation on Mars, the sort of stuff you find in fertiliser (which is a GREAT food source for bacteria and other tiny critters), is not going to be knocking about in massive quantities, so the raw mineral versions of the contents will have to be located, and investigated to see if they are home to swarming islands of bacterial life.

It will be interesting to find out though!

According to my theory and experiments, life started on the palnet once it passed thru the clouds of Naphthalene(which are common in space). Than thru photocatalytic reaction (UV) on the surface of silicates those rings starts to opening up attaching Nitrogen. I was able to make an amino acids in the lab under closest possible enviroment as early planets do. Of coarse i been ridiculed, suppressed and forgotten.
Thank you

a reply to: boomstick88

Well I won't forget you boomstick88
Your nick is synonymous with Ash...the Evilist of Dead...err living... You get the point

I was hoping more would have chimed in.
Yes it is very controversial and yet so similar to everything we have heard before.
I was happy to see my friend TrueBrit comment here.
That In itself is a win!
Always level headed and always thorough in your answers TB.
Great to hear from you my friend!

One thing that you can say about life on Earth is that once it got a foothold, it spread everywhere. Whether it's fossils from the past or stuff that's living and dying right now, life has a tendency to inhabit every nook and cranny such that it's really not that hard to find pretty much everywhere even though the surface is continually recycling.

On the other hand, you've got Mars, where there's basically little or no evidence of life anywhere. No recognizable fossils of anything, and certainly no large clusters of fossils left over from a couple billion years ago or later when there used to be water. Nothing being exposed by slow erosion forces on Mars.

Considering Mars was warm enough to have liquid water and sunshine for a billion years or so, it doesn't do much to encourage the notion alien life is bound rise up given those kinds of circumstances. Looks like Mars is cold and dead and always has been.