Life on Mars Likely, Scientist Claims

Life on Mars Likely, Scientist Claims

Tue Aug 3,12:40 PM ET
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
SPACE.com

DENVER, COLORADO -- Those twin robots hard at work on Mars have transmitted teasing views that reinforce the prospect that microbial life may exist on the red planet.

Results from NASAs Spirit and Opportunity rovers are being looked over by a legion of planetary experts, including a scientist who remains steadfast that his experiment in 1976 proved the presence of active microbial life in the topsoil of Mars.

"All factors necessary to constitute a habitat for life as we know it exist on current-day Mars," explained Gilbert Levin, executive officer for science at Spherix Incorporated of Beltsville, Maryland.

Levin made his remarks here Monday at the International Symposium on Optical Science and Technology, the 49th annual meeting of Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).

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Lots More

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=96&ncid=96&e=2&u=/space/20040803/sc_space/lifeonmarslikelyscientistclaims

to say "I just don't give a shit"

What's important is who gets kicked off American Idol.

I think we should scrap much of the space program, at least the expensive parts having to do with astronauts.

It's cheaper. Sigh.. It's just such a pain in the ass recognizing that we live on a tiny ball in an unimaginably vast universe.. so much easier to forget about it, and certainly not waste all that money trying to learn about where we are and where we really come from and what kind of a universe is out there. Hell, it's so much better- and cheaper!- to rely on 2,000 year old fairy tales to tell us about who we are and what we're doing here... I mean, just look how well those superstitions cause people on this planet to behave towards each other!

Personally, I think money spent on peaceful exploration, science and knowledge is always money well spent. What's beyond me is folks griping about the space program when we spend A Capital-B Billion dollars a pop on stealth bombers that aren't even waterproof.

85 percent of the population was only 'one step out of the cave' so for them it's not far to run back in and hide from the fact that we are NOT the only planet with life in the universe, nor are we the only 'intelligent' (and I use that term loosely, when applied to the general populace) life in the multiverse.

But some people never get over the Santa Claus, Jeebus and Easter Bunny fairy tales, I guess. They prefer to go through life with blinders on, not asking questions, on their knees begging forgivness from an angry god for the very act of being born.

5,000 years of 'civilized' society, and most people are still scared by the shadows on the wall. *sigh*

Edit: Repeating myself, and you, too. Lack of sleep. Feh.

I mean, how can you put a price tag on those images from the hubble space telescope? Every month we're seeing stuff no one has ever been able to see before. That blows me away.

Which is not to say that we shouldn't be spending money to feed, clothe, and ensure decent health care for everyone. Unfortunately, all the resources in the world don't seem to ensure that those priorities are taken care of. The argument that eliminating the meager amounts the space program receives would somehow cause our leaders to direct our resources in a humane fashion- when they've proven totally incapable of doing that over & over again- is just silly, IMHO.

I look at government and I see trillions of dollars being wasted on things I don't think we need at all, or in nearly the bloated state that we have them in... A massively outsized military-industrial complex, a 50 billion dollar a year drug war that serves only to incarcerate an obscene rate of non-violent offenders and perpetuate a ever growing prison industry... It's funny how these things almost never get mentioned in the news with a price tag, but whenever you hear about a NASA probe making brand new discoveries about the universe, there's always the mention of how much the thing costs. Imagine if every single time Bush fired a cruise missile at a mud hut, CNN said "The $50 Million Dollar Cruise Missile missed its target and blew apart a first grade classroom"...

you hear.

Far and away the single largest drain on our treasury. That's where much of the surplus went, and where much of the defecit is going now.

If we stopped trying to be the biggest barbarian on the planet, and focused those resources (lives, energy, capital) on trying to be the most enlightened on the planet, think of what that would do to the world climate.

It takes far fewer resources to explore space and to provide food and housing to those who need it, then it does to kill and maim and destroy, and yet historically, humans almost always choose the latter.

I guess it's like Agent Smith said in 'The Matrix'...

(paraphrased)
"The first Matrix was a perfect world, but you wouldn't accept the program".

Maybe that's the truth. Maybe we're unable to conceive of life in an enlightened world. I guess there's always hope, but the evidence is pretty strong against that. :-(

right here at home. It helps us to understand the world around us better, could provide new resources, provides an environment that we don't have here on the planet for experiments.

The money we spend on space exploration is money well spent.

Its the TRILLIONS spent on the military industrial complex that have put us in a pinch. That's where we ought to be cutting back, IMO.

Was that really entirely necessary?

What am I missing here?

inspires, it entertains, and it satisfies a need in us to explore.

... how come we can't find any intelligent life in the Oval Office right here on Earth?

... in my great vision to send the Republican extremists to Mars before the end of the decade.

greeining Mars far easier... and thanks for the link

I think the pieces of the puzzle are coming together to show that there's life there now. Levin mentions some I hadn't heard yet. In the absence of volcanoes, methane + ammonia = life. The rovers are probably looking at them right now -- they just don't have the microscopes on the ground.

Think of how adaptable life is. If microbes ever existed, it's likely they've adapted to the changes in environment. There's still moisture there, and it's warmer underground.

What will be fascinating is what kind of life is found. I expect they may find, not normal microbes, but the kind of nannobacteris that some scientists identified in the Martian meteorite a few years ago.

And yes, this is very exciting and a very big deal.

We'll soon be able to rationally and factually debunk religous myths about "creation" with hard evidence about how life came to our solar system.

"In a discovery that has scientists rethinking where they came from, a groundbreaking study has revealed that living organisms could emigrate through the solar system in the relatively cool womb of a space rock, spreading life with little more fanfare than the arrival of a shooting star.

The finding, hidden from scientists for more than 15 years in the magnetic structure of a well-studied meteorite found in Antarctica, presents a serious alternative to the idea that life on Earth arose spontaneously out of some primordial soup.

The bottom line: Our ancestors may have been Martians."

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/meteorite_survival_001025-1.html

He posed the question, "Is there life on Mars?"

Setting up labs on the moon just to study Mars rocks there (to prevent possible contamination of earth) may be a good idea in principle, but the costs would be fantastic. One wonders whether the Space Station might not be a better alternative - it could use a real scientific purpose anyway. Any concerns about contamination spreading to earth from studying Mars rocks on the space station would apply to contamination from studying Mars rocks on the moon as well.

The possibility of life on Mars seems quite reasonable to me, and I definitely think it is worth finding out, for scientific and other reasons. Some feel that current religions couldn't absorb such findings - I don't go along with that. Religious belief is infinitely malleable. This subject was first debated in the Catholic Church a good 500 years ago (sure some burning at the stake may have occurred as a consequence, but these were just a few bad apples). Google Giordano Bruno for further information.

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If there is life as we know it on Mars then there is water.
There is water
Therefore the is life as we know it, that would be a fallacy.

The article actually does quote other scientists who recognize this potential flaw. But I think Levins was arguing that if there is water there _could_ be life as we know it.

This becomes something of the search for the holy grail. We _cannot_ prove there isn't life on Mars. Thereby all negative evidence doesn't stand in the way of proposing yet one more search and millions more dollars. Personally I'll be glad when that sort of exploration becomes something like prospecting was in the American west...something to be undertaken at personal risk, but which might yield great national benefits.

Mars, bitches!
(Love that Chapelle)

Before I draw any firm opinion on the theory, but WOW! I didn't realize there was that much of a picture already...

At least judging by what I've heard of him before--he was on Science Friday a while back discussing his results and the unfair interpretation thereof, and doing so in a completely rational, respectful and non-confrontational way, but sticking to his guns. And from what I heard they seemed like pretty good guns. I'd love to see him vindicated. Not to mention it would be a hell of an epochal discovery.

didn't he say he wanted to go?
(now, THAT's some one-way ticket!)

Why should I? How is this relevant to me even if it is true?

We cannot tolerate the existence of beings in the universe who do not know and worship GOD. We must instantly convert them to Christianity or SMITE THEM; yea, they must even render themselves unto our mighty President, for if they not be Republican then they are but DAMNED unto the fires of hell.