# We find life on Mars - do you care? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 25, 2010, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-find-life-on-mars-do-you-care/555005 "2010-09-25T14:45:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![FuzzyOgre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@FuzzyOgre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FuzzyOgre)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-find-life-on-mars-do-you-care/555005/41 "2010-09-27T00:09:27Z")
Discovery of a life time. Greatest discovery in the history of humanity. As for those only vaguely interested in single celled life, you must be informed that the differences between types of them are utterly significant. Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes are both single celled, but divide complex creatures from the simple ones. How alien life fit into that would be earth shaking. ---
**Author:** ![sleeping](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/839c29/32.png) [@sleeping](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleeping)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-find-life-on-mars-do-you-care/555005/42 "2010-09-27T00:13:12Z")
Definitely interesting, but whether it’s find of the century depends the organism’s structure. If it’s similar to the prokaryotes found on earth…meh. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-find-life-on-mars-do-you-care/555005/43 "2010-09-27T08:54:51Z")
I just think “find of the century” is overblown. I think it may be big news for a few years, even decades, but it will fall back to being unimportant unless more life is discovered. There’s just not a lot you can do with a single sample. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-find-life-on-mars-do-you-care/555005/44 "2010-09-27T13:22:01Z")
Find of the century at a minimum. Surely that would cause us to seek a manned mission to Mars, so that these samples could be studied, and we could determine (1) if they even have DNA, and (2) if the DNA has anything in common with ours. No matter what the answers are, it will be a huge leap forward in our understanding. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-find-life-on-mars-do-you-care/555005/45 "2010-09-27T13:44:42Z")
> [@sleeping](#): > > Definitely interesting, but whether it’s find of the century depends the organism’s structure. If it’s similar to the prokaryotes found on earth…meh. Meh?!? Even a highly primitive prokaryote surviving on, say, copper sulfate would be beyond amazing, because we could analyze the monomeric nucleotides and discover what, if any, similarity to Earth-based life existed. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-find-life-on-mars-do-you-care/555005/46 "2010-09-27T20:42:31Z")
> [@](#): > > I suspect we will find evidence of ancient life on Mars. But life most likely died out long ago-anything alive now will probably be bacterial. > Which raises the question: how can we be sure that any bacteria we find are not of earth origin? All life on Earth uses the same genetic code: In other words, we all translate from sequences of DNA bases to sequences of amino acids in proteins according to the same rules. But even if alien life that’s not related to us uses DNA and proteins at all (no way to even estimate the odds), the odds are far beyond astronomical that they’d use the same genetic code that we do. As in, even if the Universe is absolutely teeming with life, I would still not believe that you’d find any two unrelated lifeforms anywhere in the entire observable Universe who coincidentally had the same genetic code. ---
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-find-life-on-mars-do-you-care/555005/47 "2010-09-27T23:19:47Z")
My first thought was about sailors fighting in the dance hall. Oh man, look at those cave-men go. It’s the freakiest show. Take a look at the lawman beating up the wrong guy. The real answer is-- holy shit, find of the millennium, or two. My mind is blown into bitty pieces. ---
**Author:** ![Steophan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steophan/32/9595_2.png) [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2010, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-find-life-on-mars-do-you-care/555005/48 "2010-09-28T22:29:57Z")
I’d expect there to be something resembling life there, but unless it’s extremely similar to terrestrial life how will the rover recognise it? Also, not that excited, as I’d need something larger to feel “not alone”. Finding FTL travel, that would be the find of the century. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-find-life-on-mars-do-you-care/555005/49 "2010-09-29T16:41:20Z")
Find of the century. I’m convinced there must be life on other planets (if not our solar system then others) but the first discovery will definitely be historic. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-find-life-on-mars-do-you-care/555005/50 "2010-09-29T17:11:14Z")
> [@control-z](#): > > Find of the century. I’m convinced there must be life on other planets (if not our solar system then others) but the first discovery will definitely be historic. Except that we know that meteoroids have transferred material from Mars to Earth, and possibly vice-versa. So it if turned out there was microbial Martian life that clearly shared a common ancestor with Earth life, you’d still have a single instance of life, just located on two adjacent planets. That’s why I only voted “pretty interesting”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-find-life-on-mars-do-you-care/555005.md?page=2)