So I have been reading a lot about the subjects lately and it seems that their is pretty good evidence that Mars did have massive Oceans, that and the bacteria that may have been found during Viking is even more intriguing. I started to think about the ocean that may have been there and the life that may have been there. So if Mars once supported life it would be pretty cool if we ever found any fossils of any animal that may have lived there. Is this even remotely possible? How far do even the most liberal scientists think life may have gotten on mars?
I could see the seeding earth theory with a meteor hitting mars and the rocks that blow off land on earth with Martian bacteria spreading life on earth, etc. But than what would have killed all the life on Mars? What happened to those supposed oceans? After watching Life After People it shows what can really happen to a planet after a long period of time.
I doubt very much you’ll find any one suggesting more than microbial live developed on Mars. That said, we’ve never really looked so we really don’t know. I think the expectation would be that we might find something like stromatolites.
Why Mars lost it’s surface water is a bit of a debate. Some argue that it dissociated away - water breaking down into oxygen and hydrogen in the upper atmosphere and the hydrogen effectively bleeding out into space. Some argue that there are vast reservoirs locked in as permafrost or some such.
I heard the Martian’s built a giant ship and took one family and a bunch of paired animals and crash landed in some mountains. Might have been during a flood.
Simple question: Could we easily send a probe that could scoop up some rocks/sand and return? Could it be done with a single launch (toward Mars) or would it have to be something assembled in low earth orbit?
Obviously Mars has a higher escape velocity than the Moon, but since the vehicle would not be carrying people (and all the supllies that they would need) it would probably be a lot lighter that the lunar ascent module? (Just thougth: Did the lunar ascent stage have enough thrust to send it out of lunar orbit–not that it was a vehicle that you’d care for atmospheric reentry.)
Yeah, with the will and a big enough budget. There are a few NASA and ESA proposals floating around, usually requiring two or three heavy launchers from Earth. No need to assemble the whole thing in LEO, just do that around Mars. One launch would park a Mars-Earth return vehicle in orbit around Mars. Another would send the lander to take samples and launch them into Mars orbit for the return vehicle to take them back to us. Or, potentially add a third launch so you can send some bigger rovers and launch a bigger payload up to Mars orbit.
Apollo’s lunar ascent stage only had enough juice to meet up with the orbiting command module, and it was discarded to save weight for the trip back to earth.
There are robotic missions to Mars every couple of years or so (every time the orbits are right for cheap launch opportunities). The latest round haven’t gotten much attention, since the Spirit and Opportunity rovers are such a resounding success and still hogging the spotlight, but Mars isn’t being neglected.
Since life appeared on Earth about 3.8 Bn years ago, before the oceans and atmosphere of Mars disappeared, doesn’t that mean that life on Earth was not seeded from Mars?
I don’t follow. There’s no reason life couldn’t have come from Mars to Earth before the Martian oceans disappeared. In fact it would be a lot easier that way than for it to happen after the Martian oceans disappeared.
A lot more difficult, don’t you mean? Because any escaping material would have to escape through Mars’ atmosphere, and impacts on Mars that would knock material free without destroying life would be severely attenuated by the atmosphere and the oceans.
Maybe, but if you destroy the oceans first, you’ve likely destroyed most or all of the life in the process, too, so there wouldn’t be any left to send to Earth.
One thing that we do know is that some meteorites found in Antarctica originated on Mars. CITE
It is possible that some amino acids or maybe even bacterial spores made it inside one or more of these objects. That may have been the original template for life on Earth but it seems highly unlikely. It also begs the questions as to where life on Mars came from in the first place. It can’t be ‘turtles all the way down’ after all.
I REALLY love the idea of Phobos being an ancient spacecraft.
Wouldn’t that be the coolest thing ever?