Is There Life On Mars?
by LoveUniHateExams 23 Replies latest social current
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stan livedeath
i hope theres no life on mars...
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smiddy3
I wouldn`t object to a Mars Bar or two on Mars
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Disillusioned JW
Science news article: "Bacteria could survive underground on Mars for hundreds of millions of years, new study finds". The article is located at https://www.livescience.com/mars-microorganisms . It says in part the following.
'New research suggests that signs of ancient Martian life could be out there – or rather, hidden just beneath the Martian surface, safe from harmful radiation.
... As Elton John once sang, "Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids; in fact, it's cold as hell." But new research suggests that Martian chill could allow bacteria to survive for up to 280 million years below the planet's surface.
The finding raises hopes that traces of ancient life — or even viable organisms in suspended animation — could be found on the Red Planet someday.
In the study, scientists found that an Earth bacterium, Deinococcus radiodurans, is so resistant to radiation that it can handle the equivalent of 280 million years of the radiation present 33 feet (10 meters) below the Martian surface. The plucky little microorganism, which has been found thriving in nuclear reactors on Earth, could even last 1.5 million years on the Martian surface, which is constantly bombarded with cosmic and solar radiation.The key to this survival is Mars' dry, cold environment. When desiccated and frozen to minus 110.2 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 79 degrees Celsius) — the temperature of dry ice and the higher-latitude regions of Mars — D. radiodurans "become phenomenally, astronomically radiation-resistant," said study senior author Michael Daly, a geneticist and radiation biology expert at Uniformed Services University in Maryland.'
See also the article called "Caves of Mars Project" located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caves_of_Mars_Project and see the article called "Martian cave entrances may offer a life-friendly radiation shield" located at https://www.newscientist.com/article/2288037-martian-cave-entrances-may-offer-a-life-friendly-radiation-shield/ . The latter article says in part the following.
"However, images of the planet from orbit have shown what appear to be entrances to caves, and the insides of these caverns could be protected from those harmful rays.
... The consequences of this are twofold: caves may be safe locations for human explorers to hide from the extreme conditions at the Martian surface, and they may also be some of the best places to search for signs of life on the Red Planet. No lander or rover has ever visited a cave on Mars, but doing so would be the best way to figure out whether they really are habitable, says Viúdez-Moreiras."
These reports are great news folks, and they give great support to my idea which I posted a year ago on this topic thread!
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Disillusioned JW
NASA News: "NASA and ESA Agree on Next Steps to Return Mars Samples to Earth". The article is located at https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-and-esa-agree-on-next-steps-to-return-mars-samples-to-earth . The article says in part the following.
'The next step in the unprecedented campaign to return scientifically selected samples from Mars was made on Oct. 19 with a formal agreement between NASA and its partner ESA (European Space Agency). The two agencies will proceed with the creation of a sample tube depot on Mars. The sample depot, or cache, will be at “Three Forks,” an area located near the base of an ancient river delta in Jezero Crater.
... This strategic NASA and ESA partnership would be the first mission to return samples from another planet and the first launch from the surface of another planet. The samples collected by Perseverance during its exploration of an ancient river delta are thought to present the best opportunity to reveal the early evolution of Mars, including the potential for life. By better understanding the history of Mars, we would improve our understanding of all rocky planets in the solar system, including Earth.'
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Nathan Natas
LoveUniHateExams, spherical objects can have inorganic origins. A metor crash can easily raise temperatures to the melting point of silica, and the molten blobs can harden into spheres if they spend enough time in the atmosphere. Until we collect some of those spheres and examine them, we cannot know how they formed.
Personally, I believe that as we extend our exploration of the solar system we will find that any planet or moon with liquid water we will find life. Even on Pluto, with its suspected water and obvious reddish-brown "tholins".
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Jeffro
Did any real newspapers run this? Daily Mail is well known for publishing misleading or outright false sensationalist nonsense.
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Disillusioned JW
Jeffro, which news item are you referring to? Are you asking about the Daily Mail article mentioned in the first post of this topic thread? Or are you referring to the one which said "Bacteria could survive underground on Mars for hundreds of millions of years, new study finds"? The latter article was reported by a real online news agency and it gave Astrobiology as its source. A number of other news sources also reported on the same subject. For examples see the following.
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthly-microbes-might-survive-on-mars-for-hundreds-of-millions-of-years/ . It gives some additional details and it says the following. "The study is detailed in a paper published Tuesday (Oct. 25) in the journal Astrobiology."
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/conan-the-bacterium-has-what-it-takes-to-survive-on-mars-180981019/. It says in part the following. "The chance of discovering microbial life on Mars might be better than scientists expected, suggests a new paper published Tuesday in the journal Astrobiology. Researchers say there’s a possibility that ancient, dormant bacteria still exist beneath the Red Planet’s surface."
- https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/world/ancient-bacteria-mars-subsurface-scn .The article is called "Microbes may have survived for millions of years beneath the Martian surface". That article says in part the following.
'Conan the Bacterium’s genomic structure links chromosomes and plasmids together, meaning the cells stay aligned and can repair themselves after radiation exposure. And if a microbe similar to Conan evolved on Mars billions of years ago, when water still existed on the Martian surface, the bacteria’s dormant remnants might just be slumbering deep in the planet’s subsurface.
“Although D. radiodurans buried in the Martian subsurface could not survive dormant for the estimated 2 to 2.5 billion years since flowing water disappeared on Mars, such Martian environments are regularly altered and melted by meteorite impacts,” said study author Michael Daly, a professor of pathology at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and member of the National Academies’ Committee on Planetary Protection, in a statement.
“We suggest that periodic melting could allow intermittent repopulation and dispersal. Also, if Martian life ever existed, even if viable lifeforms are not now present on Mars, their macromolecules and viruses would survive much, much longer. That strengthens the probability that, if life ever evolved on Mars, this will be revealed in future missions.” '
There are also various non-English language news articles which report on the same finding which was published in the journal Astrobiology.There is also a related article from August 26, 2020 in "New Scientist" magazine called "Radiation-resistant bacteria could survive journey from Earth to Mars". It says in part the following.
' “If bacteria can survive in space, [they] may be transferred from one planet to another,” says Akihiko Yamagishi at Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences in Japan.
“We don’t know where life emerged. If life emerged on Earth, it may [have been] transferred to Mars. Alternatively, if life emerged on Mars, it may [have been] transferred to Earth … meaning that we are the offspring of Martian life,” says Yamagishi. If the journey is possible, then the probability of finding life on planets outside our solar system increases, he says.
Deinococcus radiodurans bacteria are naturally very resistant to radiation, because of their extraordinary capacity to repair their DNA when it gets damaged, says Yamagishi. He and his colleagues wanted to investigate whether this might enable them to survive in the harsh environment of space, where levels of radiation – particularly in the ultraviolet range – are extremely high.
Yamagishi and his team sent Deinococcal cell clumps of various thicknesses to the International Space Station, where they were placed on aluminium plates and attached to the outside of the spacecraft for three years. Samples were taken each year and sent back to Earth for analysis.
Within the clumps that were at least half a millimetre thick, the researchers found surviving bacteria – even in the samples that were left outside the space station for three years. “Ultraviolet light in space is so strong and was expected to kill bacteria. We were surprised to see the surviving bacteria within the cell pellet for up to three years,” says Yamagishi.
Although the bacteria in the outer layer of the clumps were destroyed by the UV, these dead cells seem to have shielded the bacteria in the innermost layers, which survived. These surviving bacteria were then able to repair their DNA from damage and could be grown in the laboratory.
... Journal reference: Frontiers in Microbiology, DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.02050 '
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Disillusioned JW
Jeffro, regarding the Daily Mail article referred to in the opening (first) post of this topic thread, the title of the article is "Mushrooms on Mars? Scientist dubbed the 'Space Tiger King' claims to have found evidence of FUNGI on the Red Planet - but NASA says they're just rocks". As a result though that article is sensationalist it does does have a disclaimer in that "it says that NASA says they're just rocks". The article says the following regarding NASA's view.
"But scientists at NASA have poured cold water on their claims.
Andrew Good, a spokesman for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told leadstories: 'Needless to say, no, this is not evidence of fungi on Mars.
... 'The images that are being posted are from the Opportunity rover, which discovered mineral spherules that were nicknamed 'blueberries' based on their size and shape. Scientists didn't rely solely on visual information to identify them; they used instruments on the rover to measure chemical and mineral information within these spheurles, confirming they were in fact minerals that formed in the presence of water.
'The blueberries are one of the best-known discoveries of the Opportunity mission, something countless Mars scientists from around the world would be familiar with and have studied the data for.
... 'The authors ignore other data that easily disprove their claims; for example, many features claimed to be biological are known to typical martian rocks, sand, dust, and ice that change in appearance due to weather, lighting, or rover interactions. Other features superficially resemble fungi but actually are commonly observed, abiotic features in rocks that occur from geochemical changes or by erosion from wind.' "
The article also says the following.
"Wei, Armstrong and Joseph have been sifting through NASA images of Mars for years and have shared their many dubious 'discoveries' with the world on numerous occasions.
... Joseph has made headlines in the past when he sued NASA in 2014 demanding they examine a 'putative biological organism' which he says he saw in Opportunity rover images.
The alleged organism later turned out to be a rock.
... The researchers point to 'araneiforms', dark channels in the Martian soil, seen by Curiosity, as evidence of black fungi, mold, lichens, algae and other sulphur reducing species.
... NASA has previously stated that these massive araneiforms are the result of the thawing of seasonal carbon-dioxide ice."
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Phizzy
As to the Abiogenesis Hypothesis, this from an answer on Quora :
" Four billion years ago, the Earth’s atmospheric and surface conditions were dramatically different from what they are now, so we wouldn’t expect to see abiogenesis occurring today. But what we WOULD expect to see is that prebiotic conditions should be able to create the basic building blocks of life.
So researchers did exactly that. They used a reducing atmosphere—containing ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, water, etc.—and combined it with the expected temperatures, atmospheric electrical activity and ultraviolet light of an early Earth, and let them “cook” for a while. They found that even under a wide variety of different prebiotic conditions, it only takes a few days to spontaneously form dozens of the complex organic molecules essential for life. The repeated heating, cooling and irradiation of these molecules, as would be expected on a prebiotic Earth, can also cause the spontaneous formation of ribonucleotides. And ribonucleotides exposed to certain natural clays can spontaneously assemble into strands of RNA. Not only is RNA capable of self-reproduction, which is a fundamental requirement for life, but it’s very close in structure to DNA, which is the genetic blueprint of almost all life. Furthermore, the most primitive life on Earth is actually based on RNA, so finding a natural pathway to the formation of RNA is a huge step. Not only that, but simple fatty acids that also form naturally in prebiotic conditions AUTOMATICALLY assemble into structures resembling cell membranes. And under the right conditions, DNA inserted into those cell membrane-like structures can successfully replicate.
This does not mean we have figured out the entire process that led to the formation of the first life—at least not yet. But since all of the critical initial steps occur automatically under natural conditions, this is powerful evidence that we’re on the right track. Thus, abiogenesis is INCOMPLETE, not failed."