…And people seem to be getting ahead of themselves here. We’re sending unmanned probes to research surface conditions, meteorology and geology, at a much, MUCH LOWER expense in cash and blood than if we were gearing up for a massive exploration/exploitation/settlement timetable, or even if we were giving the astroscientists what they really wanted. “Looking for life on Mars”, as mentioned earlier, is a way to simplify the straight planetary-science research for public opinion.
Any agenda to terraform Mars – and thus to alter any existing ecosystem – is pure SF at this point. It may even come to pass that eventually it is decided there is no need to TF any place, or some other development comes along that makes TF look so slow, expensive and disruptive that it’s pointless to bother with it.
It still stands, that the relatively small amount of resources (in proportion to US/EU GNPs) spent in the sensible parts of space exploration (there are parts that are just make-work public projects, sure) would not necessarily be redirected to “worthier” pursuits. More likely they’d go into some useless pork-barrel project for the legislators’ home districts. (And I don’t fear militarization, either. In and of itself it does me no harm. The Internet was already mentioned as an originally “strategic” project. So was the US Interstate Highway system. So were the first digital computers. And the nav systems high-reliability jet engines, enhanced-lift wings, etc. on the last airplane I rode to my sister’s home, plus the ATC that guided it there and the two conveniently-located airports owed a lot to milspec requirements sometime in the past)
JRDelirious, just for the record, I agree with you. I’m just trying to educate those here about the potential effects of introducing species to alien environments.
Didn’t happen to the dodo. As I remember, the rats gave them a pretty good working over because the dodo wasn’t equipped to combat them effectively. Suppose our hypothetical lifeform lacks the capability to produce antibodies. You’d have the old science fiction cliche: human sneezes, every alien on the planet dies. It’s a more complicated process than “eh well, they’ll adapt.” They will, but they have to survive it first.
Again, that’s assuming that they exist, even if there are Martians, sooner or later, someone’s going to colonize Mars. It may be humans, it may be whatever evolves on the Earth after us. IAC, you can bet that whomever it is, they aren’t going to be too worried about any Martian microbes running about. Because by the time we get to that point, humanity (or whomever) is going to be in desperate need of another planet and they’re not going to let any silly bacteria get in their way. Besides, the dodo was just a giant pidgeon and it didn’t make good eating.
The chance that there is life on Mars is increased slightly by the existence of life on the relatively nearby planet of Earth-
it is unlikely that there has been a separate instance of abiogenesis on our neighbour planet-
(unless the creation of life is a very common occurrence-we have difficulty knowing because of our limited sample of one)
but it seems likely to me that microbes could be transferred from our inner planet to the outer one, perhaps riding tektites or the solar wind.
Some micro-organisms, such as Deinococcus Radiodurans, are surprisingly resistant to radiation, so the transfer through deep space would not be impossible.
So, in my opinion, Mars life would most likely be an extension of the Earth biota. Local panspermia, perhaps.
You might find that any life on Mars is deep underground, just like the deep subterranean microbiota that exists in Earth’s rocks-
we interact very little with these organisms, and we probably could ignore the deep Martian organisms too.
But it would be interesting to find out.
Sorry, I can’t offer any budgetary justification for the expense- it is something we need to know, however, if we are to colonise the galaxy at some point in the future.
That’s as good a reason as any. It’s not that I like extinction, but it is part of the natural order of things to a degree. That doesn’t mean that we should allow animals to become extinct if we can prevent it, but at the same time, we need to look at what the animal is. In the case of Mars, if it’s merely bacterial or similar life, then, who the heck cares? If it’s multicellular life on the level of something like a mouse or better, then by all means we shouldn’t mess with it. However, I sincerely doubt we’re going to find much of anything in the way of life on Mars, as depressing as that thought might be.
Suppose we discover lakes on Mars, with 3-4 feet of ice on top, much like the lakes in the dry valleys of antarctica. NASA decides to design a probe to drill through the ice, and send a small submarine into such a lake. Water samples are retrieved, and brought back to earth…in th water, a strange bacteria is found…eons of tough conditions on mars have made this bacterium impossible to kill. Neither acids, UV radiation,or any known bacteriocide will kill it! A sample of the bacterioum is stolen from a NASA lab…and it is found that the bacteria willinfect all living organisms…it colonizes and kills green plants!
The bacteria is released, and it destroys most of the corn and wheat crops in N America…famine ensues!
Could this happen?
Well, actually, that is a bit simplistic-
-Aeons of time evolving on Mars, would produce a very hardy, extremophile organism-
such a creature would not cope with the high energy flux oxygen rich environment of earth- there are plenty of extremophile organisms on this planet, but they do not run around infecting the green plants or other multicellular organisms.
The Martian microbes would be completely unused to earth-like biota, and would find it very difficult to find an ecological niche in our already crowded and oxygen rich environment.
Okay. Come on over, if you ever visit Southern California…
I’m a creationist and I expect that life will be found on Mars eventually. However I also expect that it will be DNA-based life from Earth.
Btw, a pretty smart guy, Arthur C. Clarke, already apparently believes there is life on Mars just from some of the pictures he has seen. Excuse me. That’s Sir Arthur now!
Actually, at that very small level organisms seem to be little affected by gravity gradients as such, being more affected by surface tension and fluid flows.
But yes, Martian microbes would be well adapted to extreme cold, extremely low barometric pressure, and radiation… but that does not tell us how well could they handle temperatures above 20C/68F while soaked in several thousand times more concentrated oxygen that they’ve ever encountered (or why should they be immune to acids or solvents).
If we want to be ultra-cautious, we could always use an earth-orbital lab as quarantine station.
Actually, we could find out if the dodo’s DNA was valuable since we’ve got samples. That’s how we found out that they were giant pidgeons. As for Martian baterial DNA containing the cure for some Earthly disease, that possibility is even more unlikely than there even being life on Mars.
GOM, I am a firm creationist too, but I don’t think finding life on Mars is gonna happen…
Genesis1:6-8 says~ And God said, “let there be space between the waters, to seperate water form water”. And so it was. God made the space to seperate the waters above from the waters below. And God called the space “sky”. This happened on the second day.
That is where the water on Mars came from: earth. So, in a sense, you were right, GOM. Stuff on Mars came from earth. It just wasn’t animals. And since God created animals after the second day, there could have been no animals in the water that went out into space.
It doesn’t say anywhere that God did this with the animals, however.
Ok, ok, I know… Water just boils away in space because the air pressure is so low…But shouldn’t we give God some credit for who He is? He could make water stay in space if He wanted to…
Ale- I respect your position about IF life will be found…
"Seeing the face expression of creationist if life is found on Mars would make it worth it… "
I’m sure it would. Have fun waiting for that moment… You’ll be waiting for a while.
No proof either way. Yet. At the rate we are going, it will take years…
In my opinion we will eventually find something though:
We have most likely already infected the planet ourselves with microscopic life that hitched a ride on a number of US and Russian rockets.
There is also the possibility that a large meteorite, or comet, strike on Earth could have blasted tiny chunks of matter off planet that eventually landed on Mars carrying microscopic life. Btw, I’m not expecting to find animals, as you mention in your post, but I could be wrong about that. They would have to be very tough to survive on Mars though.
That’s true about the microscopic life coming from the meteorite.
But it would have come from earth, like you said. I’m not sure that scientists would go nuts over that, considering that the life was from earth anyway…
How fast do you think the microscopic life went from earth to Mars? (I am asking this as a serious question, I’m NOT trying to mock you)
Because all life needs oxygen to live, and if the microscopic life forms traveled realtively slow, they would eventually suffocate on their journey.
I don’t even know if scientists are looking for alive life forms or dead ones, or if it doesnt matter… If it doesnt matter we’ll probably find something dead that was originally fom earth, and wasn’t originally on Mars when God created it.
Not all life needs oxygen. Plants life off carbon dioxide and in some parts of the ocean whole biological systems live off hot sulfer compounds or methane seeping from the ocean floor.
I’m not sure why some posters are concerned about micro-organisms from Mars being a threat for life on earth or the other way around. Bacterias which infect us are adapted to us, or at least to earth life forms. If when a conquistador squeezed, millions of indians died, as a poster mentionned, it was because indians were humans, hence a “target” these micro-organisms were perfectly adapted to.
It seems incredibly unlikely that any martian germ would be, out of pure luck (as opposed to as a result of millions of years of coexistence), able to interfere in any way with life on earth (assuming that it would even be able to survive in so drastically different conditions), or the reverse.
And some bacteria can go into a cyst-state only to re-animate when the environment becomes favourable again. If the said is inside a chunk-o-planet (be it Earth or Mars) that gets catapulted into space and conditions are just so that (a) it only takes a couple of years to hit the other planet (b) the inside of the chunk gets sealed from outside environment until landing in the other planet (say, the outside melts and cristallyzes, this sealing the insides, and it’s thick enough to stop radiation and absorb reenty heating) and only cracks open upon impact, who knows. This of course has somewhat worse odds than my hitting a $300 million lottery jackpot, but it’s conceivable.
