The landscape looked lifeless. But satellite images from orbit identified geological formations containing minerals that microbes sometimes like to nestle in, and scientists dispatched a small rover to look at the rocks up close.
Life on Mars? Could be, but how to tell?
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Interesting article. I always believed in the existense of aliens, even if in this case is nothing more than some bacteria. Even these bacteria (ir proved to exist over there) is enough to change the pulic opinion in the existense of sentient beings in some other planet, far, far away.
The best way to find life on Mars is to send people there. Even if they don’t find any indigenous life, there will still be life on Mars: them.
And this piece of news is on OSnews.com because these lifeforms in Mars are writing a new OS?
No, but because there is already such a topic:
http://www.osnews.com/topic.php?icon=54
If not on Mars then somewhere.
It life exists on mars then it would be cool. Though technology currently present is not good enough. If we want to send humans then communication & overall travelling speed needs to be increased (I’ve heard that it takes something like 8 min to receive data from mars)
But life forms on other planets definetly exist. Saying we are only life form in universe is like saying something like I am only human on earth if you find yourself loked in room…..
its plain stupid
…between bacteria and sentient life. Let’s reserve the judgement that there’s “sentient life” on other planets until someone hails us using our own crude 21st century communications systems 😉
Prove it. Can’t? Then don’t say definetly.
I’m not saying they don’t exist, but don’t assume, it’s really bad form. At best you can say is some theories lend to the existance of extraterrestial beings, but we don’t have conclusive evidence to prove it one way or the other.
I’ve read quite a bit on the topic, and depending on who you ask, you can find convincing arguments that we are the only life in the universe on one end of the spectrum to aliens are observing us for unknown reasons on the other end of the spectrum.
But I’m hoping Mars is lifeless. How many complications will be solved if we don’t have to worry about killing or hurting indigenous life when we settle the planet?
But I’m hoping Mars is lifeless. How many complications will be solved if we don’t have to worry about killing or hurting indigenous life when we settle the planet?
Umm, none, because no one will care if we kill some bacteria. Except scientists who will save some samples in labs somewhere.
I like these little diversions from OS flaming.
Let’s see if I remember my basic science. Earth has lived out 90 percent of its time in the solar “life” zone. Human life is fragile.
Do we deserve to “find” life on another planet when we slaughter it for our food every single day?
Montana Dan: But I’m hoping Mars is lifeless. How many complications will be solved if we don’t have to worry about killing or hurting indigenous life when we settle the planet
Matt: Umm, none, because no one will care if we kill some bacteria. Except scientists who will save some samples in labs somewhere.
There’s also the problem of alien bacteria somehow infecting anyone who tries to settle on Mars.
New Mexico Linux User: Do we deserve to “find” life on another planet when we slaughter it for our food every single day?
Would we deserve to find life on another planet if we didn’t slaughter it for our food ever single day?
Aditya: But life forms on other planets definetly exist. Saying we are only life form in universe is like saying something like I am only human on earth if you find yourself loked in room…..
its plain stupid
What if all the other people on earth had been wiped out by a plague that you didn’t catch because you were in a locked room?
We don’t know if there was once alien life in the universe. We don’t know if there is alien life in the universe. And we also don’t know if there will be alien life in the universe tomorrow.
There’s NO POSSIBLE way you could increase the speed of communication…
“There’s NO POSSIBLE way you could increase the speed of communication…”
What about: spooky action at a distance?
Two entangled photons can be millions of miles apart and yet, if the spin of one photon flips, the other will flip simultaneously. The two photons are communicating at superluminal speeds. Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance.” As far as I know, we haven’t figured out how to harness this potential yet, but we might.
The Aspect experiment revealed no means of faster-than-light communication as while the measured spins of the photons are the same, they are always random.
However there’s been a great deal of interest in using this approach for streaming OTP… John Bell’s hypothesis and Aspect’s experiments showed the measured spins should and do have the properties of ideal random numbers (an even 50/50 distribution between clockwise and counterclockwise), whereas for the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen explanation to be right one of the values would have to be favored over the other.
We wont harness this potentiall: it’s impossible to transmit any information faster than light in this way.
We wont harness this potentiall: it’s impossible to transmit any information faster than light in this way.
and why are you so sure? We are making many breakthroughs in the field of quantam entanglement. The speed of light is only a limit in classical physics.
“Montana Dan :Prove it. Can’t? Then don’t say definetly.
I’m not saying they don’t exist, but don’t assume, it’s really bad form. At best you can say is some theories lend to the existance of extraterrestial beings, but we don’t have conclusive evidence to prove it one way or the other.
I’ve read quite a bit on the topic, and depending on who you ask, you can find convincing arguments that we are the only life in the universe on one end of the spectrum to aliens are observing us for unknown reasons on the other end of the spectrum.
But I’m hoping Mars is lifeless. How many complications will be solved if we don’t have to worry about killing or hurting indigenous life when we settle the planet?”
I am assuming this only because saying something like we are the only ones in such a huge univers which we don’t even know 0.00000001% about is height of stupidity
and if mars if lifeless then it will create more problems as we have to search for another planet which can be our home in future as over soem years inorder to survive we have to go to other planets. and if life is formed on mars, our type of life carbon based (who knows there can be other life which will be based on completly different element) then it will be very easy for humans to migrate to mars, and not necessorily bacterias found on mars have to be killed instead they can be used to study evolution of life
“Deletomn:What if all the other people on earth had been wiped out by a plague that you didn’t catch because you were in a locked room?
We don’t know if there was once alien life in the universe. We don’t know if there is alien life in the universe. And we also don’t know if there will be alien life in the universe tomorrow.”
the real point is we don’t know!
there might exist or there might not exist! its a 50-50 ratio. everyone have their sides i am for positive half. also we haven’t seen elctrons or even inside nucleus where neutron exists but everyone still belives that they exist. Few years ago no one belived in it but once proved everyone did. same with earths rotation around sun, earth being flat there are lots of such examples
Moon up for grabs http://www.lunarregistry.com/
have a look!
As if the gods where cosmonauts 🙂
trekkies, hush
Lets get them to use linux before Microsoft gets there
http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~doron/wateronmars.JPG
OK, i go out —> []
It’s just the NASA wants to send people on Mars to prove that it can be done. Europa is *frozen* ice, and scientists believe that because of the heat in the center of Europa it can’t be that all Europa is frozen ice. Some ice the guess has to be melted and be water. So In the surface it’s frozen water, but under it it must be a very cold ocean. So we’re talking about an OCEAN here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_%28moon%29
Any serious scientist should know that sending people to Mars has less chance on finding life, than sending robots to land & cut the ice in Europa. Now because of Bush saying he wants people on Mars, NASA had to postpone such a plan for Europa. Hopefully together with ESA (European Space Agency) or ESA alone can send such stuff in Europa and I’m confident they will find life. I want to live that day to see religious people once-again re-giving “new meanings to human religions”. It’s like the 7 days becase 7 epocs etc.. but more difficult this time
hehe
“Prove it. Can’t? Then don’t say definetly.”
We are the aliens – so it is proved; when you go on Mars and look back at Earth, what do You see ? – aliens. It is just a matter of point of view. Of course it works untill you claim, that Earth is different in some way from each and every one planet in the universe (which is most likely, due to the recent scrutiny of anisothropy of background microwave radiation, endless). We have more or less 400 billion stars in our gallaxy, hundreds of billions of gallaxys in our line of sight (which is about 13 billion light years). Assuming that we even could be the only presence of life is unwise. The only question is how much do we want find it, how much do we want to spend on it, and…who really cares – there is difficulty finding “intelligent” life here on Earth. German goverment made a decision of exchanging every nuclear reaction based power plant in favor of coal based, becouse organisations that claim having vital interest in natural environment protectoin sad, that coal based power plants are safer for the environment (which is obviously not true). Nasa chose to build a space station (claiming that the potential science benefit far exceeds the cost, which is…about 100 billion dollars – and i NEVER heard of a science work derived from the reaserch on this station)- it is political choice and nothing more. And it always will be political. Political mixed with romantic vision of uneducated people, who preffer dreaming instead of understanding.
I agree with one of previous posts – Europe should be now in the center of interest (when it comes to planetary mission comparison). Why it is not – it’s beyond my comprehension.
I bet they said that with the 75 baud modem. It’s all about compression baby.
Since 2000 many people have been claiming that Mars is ready to dominate the solar system (hey it’s our only hope when Earth is uninhabitable,) however total solar system market domination by Earth, and it’s anti-competitve practices, such as hording most of the water and breathable air, have prevented wide spread Mars “mind share.”
Some look to other alternatives such as Venus, but it’s entirely too hot for humans, even though proponents say: if it’s too hot then move to the darkside of the moon to fit your needs, or other gems like, Venus is meant for Power Humans, if you want an easy to live on planet, stick with Earth. Apparently those people prefer to create their own water, food, atmosphere, trees and animals as opposed to what’s already available on earth, because by being forced to create their own environment, they “learn” their environment better than other humans.
Note, this article makes no direct references to solaris, linux, windows, or gentoo. I don’t know what you’re thinking.
If there’s real estate on Mars, I can’t wait to see the prices…
Contrary to what is stated in article, the Viking mission back in 1976 provided evidence for life on Mars.
The two Viking probes contained Biology experiments – the Labelled Release (LR) experiment from the NASA Viking mission biology group headed by Dr. Gilbert Levin. The experiments worked like this:
A Martian soil sample was added to a container with a soup of radiolabelled racemic mixtures of amino-acids and sugars. The experiment measured the evolution of radiolabelled carbon dioxide. The experiment yielded positive results in both probes. These results were so astounding that rightly scientists began critically looking at the experiments for chemical rather than biological explanations of the results. It was proposed that the results could be explained by superoxides in the soil reacting with the radio-labelled nutrients. Also the chemistry experiment using a small mass-spectrometer was unable to detect organic compounds in the soil. This group for this experiment was headed by the leading mass-spectrometrist in the US, Professor Klaus Biemann. So it became generally accepted in the scientific community that the Viking biology experiment results were a false positive.
However neither Levin’s group nor anyone else were able to reproduce the Martian results using superoxides or any other suggested chemical agent. Also his group were able firstly to demonstrate a negative result on Moon rock from the Apollo missions using the LR technique, and secondly to get positive results from Antarctic ice cores by LR which were also positive for micro-organisms using conventional culture techniques. These ice cores contained too little organic material for it to be detectable by the mass spectrometric techniques Biemann used (I know as I am a mass-spectrometrist). Consequently there is strong evidence that the Viking probes detected the existence of microbial life (probably in a dormant state) in Martian soil.
Obviously these results need some confirmation and Levin has proposed a Chiral LR experiment which could give conclusive results, but as yet this has not been adopted by NASA.
I refer you to Dr. Levin’s website on Martian life:
http://mars.spherix.com/index.html