Does life exist now on Mars? Evidence points to organisms on Red Planet

[Ian David]

Does life exist now on Mars? Report: Evidence points to organisms on Red Planet
By Jules Crittenden
Thursday, February 17, 2005

NASA scientists are getting ready to announce indirect evidence that life now exists on the Red Planet, according to a space news Web site's report.

Space.com yesterday reported two scientists from the NASA Ames Research Center told a group of space officials in a private meeting Sunday they have strong evidence that life may exist in pockets of water below the surface of Mars or in caves.

NASA scientists Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke are basing their theory on evidence of fluctuating methane levels on Mars that could be explained by biological processes. But past announcements of possible life on Mars have yet to be borne out, and the unconfirmed report was met with some caution and skepticism yesterday.

<snip>

Space.com cited several unnamed officials who had attended the meetings. Stoker and Lemke reportedly told the group their findings are now undergoing peer review and are due to be published in the journal Nature.

More:
http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=68981

[daydreamer]

1. Send all the republicans to Mars

What happened to Bush's idea of going to Mars?

[Ian David]

3. You mean his unfunded mandate, "No Astronaut Left Behind?"

If you want to go to Mars, you have to ADD money to NASA's budget... NOT take it away.

[Technowitch]

4. I think they should be sent to Venus

Where their bodies would be crushed instantly by the atmospheric pressures and then dissolved by the airborne sulfuric acid.

Mars has the potential to be useful, and we shouldn't go littering it with trash.

[stinkeefresh]

5. can we stop associating...

...the idea of going to Mars with Bush? Because A) He doesn't really care about going. It was just a trial baloon/distraction. and B) we ARE going to have to go someday, and I don't want the shuttle orbitor to be named after that asshat.

With all the luck in the universe, the sun will still eventually supernova. Humanity will leave the solar system or die. And leaving will have to start with a successful Mars colony.

[physioex]

13. That may not be for another few billion years....

At the rate we're going, we are doing just fine without any help from the sun....

[stinkeefresh]

Well I'm just trying to plan ahead.

Way, way ahead.

And I don't know, I think humanity may mangage to not destroy itself. There's never been a species that committed suicide of it's entire whole self. Granted, we do have the right tools...

[Mr. Sinister]

30. "There's never been a species that committed suicide of it's entire whole"

Is that true? I think some animals have outpaced their food supply and created the conditions for their own extinction. I would certainly
imagine this to be true of viruses. That Spanish Flu virus hasn't been around for a long time now.

[RaleighNCDUer]

33. No, not a trial balloon or a distraction -- it's a false front for getting

nukes into space. They know that billions in NASA can be shunted off with tech jargon that congress doesn't understand as weapons platforms are put into orbit. The people that vote the money might think they're preparing for a Mars mission, but what they're paying for is the next phase of Star Wars.

[Anakin Skywalker]

38. Can We Leave the Fundies Behind, Please?

They can have their Rapture and have Jeebus whisk them away.

[Deep13]

36. Tell them there is oil there.

That will get the Rs to send themselves.

[Ian David]

2. NASA Researchers Claim Evidence of Present Life on Mars

From Space.com
By Brian Berger
Space News Staff Writer
posted: 16 February 2005
02:09 pm ET

WASHINGTON -- A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.

<snip>

Stoker told her private audience Sunday evening that by comparing discoveries made at Rio Tinto with data collected by ground-based telescopes and orbiting spacecraft, including the European Space Agency’s Mars Express, she and Lemke have made a very a strong case that life exists below Mars’ surface.


The two scientists, according to sources at the Sunday meeting, based their case in part on Mars’ fluctuating methane signatures that could be a sign of an active underground biosphere and nearby surface concentrations of the sulfate jarosite, a mineral salt found on Earth in hot springs and other acidic bodies of water like Rio Tinto that have been found to harbor life despite their inhospitable environments.

<snip>

In 1996 a team of NASA and Stanford University researchers created a stir when they published findings that meteorites recovered from the Allen Hills region of Antarctica contained evidence of possible past life on Mars. Those findings remain controversial, with many researchers unconvinced that those meteorites held even possible evidence that very primitive microbial life had once existed on Mars.


More:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_life_050216.html


See also:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/opportunity_news_040302.html

*
The Rio Tinto Investigation
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_caves_030905.html
*
What Could Live on Mars? Wild Things
http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/050207_extremophiles.html

* Evidence for Underground Water on Mars
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_aquifer_041112.html
*
Evidence for Methane in Mars' Atmosphere
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/express_methane_040920.html

* Special Report: June 20, 2000 Evidence of Water on Mars
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/mars_water_000620.html

* VOTE: The Best Mars Rover Images
http://www.space.com/bestimg/index.php?cat=rover

[Fleshdancer]

6. Does this mean we have to bomb Mars now???

Seriously though, what a cool story. So what happened to Bush's Mars initiative?? I wonder if NASA will recieve enough funding to continue this research.

The religious implications of finding life elsewhere may get interesting too.

[Warpy]

9. The fundies may demand it

Wipe out all life on Mars so that they can be the center of a universe and the pinnacle of creation once again.

So much for biblical inerrancy. You'd think god would have mentioned that life had been created on other worlds, as well. Oops.

[Anakin Skywalker]

37. They HAVE been proven wrong, but

their hubris struts on. Earth was thought by them to be flat as well as the center of our solar system.

[ozone_man]

11. Yes, the religious implications.

I will be looking forward to findings that life is not unique to Earth. But I'm sure some will be rather upset.

[DBoon]

7. "Is there life on Mars?"

ask David Bowie.

[Ian David]

10. Bush finds WMD's on Mars (Slam Dunk)

[slothrop]

8. I guess we have to revise the bible now

[Zenaholic]

14. That's just what I was thinking.

The religious nutballs are going to say NASA is a tool of the devil.

Next we'll be teaching "there is no life on Mars (because the bible say there can't be)" classes, right next to "there is life on Mars (because science says there is)" classes.

What was that Simpsons episode where Flanders say something to the effect of "Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. There are some things we don't want to know. Important things."

[Ian David]

15. Report Fuels Debate on Mars Life

Report Fuels Debate on Mars Life
By Irene Brown, Discovery News

Feb. 17, 2005 —While evidence for microbial life on Mars mounts, far more work needs to be done before any conclusions can be made, the head of NASA's astrobiology center said Thursday.

In an interview with Discovery News, Michael Mumma said he has been unable to find any scientist studying methane readings on Mars who is familiar with a research paper, supposedly submitted to Nature for review, that reportedly concludes there is strong evidence for present-day life on Mars.

<snip>

Though researchers have not found evidence of active plate tectonics on Mars, other non-biological processes may be responsible for the small amounts of methane discovered in the planet's atmosphere by researchers using instruments on Europe's Mars Express spacecraft.

<snip>

The researchers reportedly based their finding, in part, on the discovery of a salt-rich rock found on Mars by Opportunity, one of NASA's two Mars Exploration Rovers. The robotic explorers have been scrutinizing rock and soil samples since January 2004 for signs of past water.



More:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050214/marswater.html

[AngryAmish]

12. Now they REALLY need guitars

[Guckert]

16. How many days did it take God to create life on Mars? 7 days?

Maybe life on Mars was gods first try? Nope, he never makes mistakes. Just look at Bush and how good Gods chosen leader of the world is doing..:puke:

[Ian David]

18. God put life on Mars to challenge the faith of beleivers

That's the same reason why he burried the dinosaur bones.

Isn't post-hoc reasoning wonderful?

[DrWeird]

17. Regardless of the ad nauseum fundie jokes and puns common on this thread..

I'd just like to say: awesome. Now let's divert some really funding into the space program, and let's scrap NASA while we're at it.

[Ian David]

19. I've invested a few dollars in SpaceHab and SpaceDev

Maybe now it will make enough money to pay back the brokerage fees.
(And maybe my wife will stop laughing at me).


What sets SPACEHAB apart from most aerospace companies?
http://www.spacehab.com/

Humankind has an innate need to explore new frontiers and gain benefit from what can be found there. SPACEHAB understands this vital enterprise, and, more importantly, that it should not be limited to the world's governments and the privileged few. As humanity undertakes the bold exploration of our final frontier - space - one trailblazing company is leading the way in the development of a space commerce industry. Through its knowledgeable experts, unique services, and high-value assets, SPACEHAB customers may reap the rewards of this emerging market and exploit the resources that space has to offer. SPACEHAB has successfully anticipated and met the needs of our world's pioneers: governments, academia, and the scientific community alike - clearly demonstrating that We Mean Business in Space.
# Access to space through the use of research and logistics modules and carriers
# Expertise on the habitability and occupational challenges of space
# Facility Operations and satellite processing services
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# Space media, education, and retail goods


---------

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http://www.spacedev.com/newsite/templates/homepage.php?pid=2

SpaceDev (OTCBB: SPDV) creates and sells affordable and innovative space products and solutions to government and commercial enterprises. SpaceDev products and solutions include the design, manufacture, marketing and operation of sophisticated micro and nano satellites, hybrid rocket-based orbital Maneuvering and orbital Transfer Vehicles (MoTVs) as well as safe sub-orbital and orbital hybrid rocket-based propulsion systems. SpaceDev has been awarded contracts from NASA, National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO), Boeing, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Space Authority (CSA) Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) and several commercial customers. SpaceDev is also developing commercial hybrid rocket motors and small high performance space vehicles and subsystems.

SpaceDev has a 25,000 square foot facility in Poway California that includes a Small Spacecraft Assembly and Test facility (SAT) with a 1,800 square foot Class 100,000 clean room, avionics development lab, machine shop, mechanical assembly lab, and mission operations center. This facility gives SpaceDev the capability to save tens of thousands of dollars on a single satellite assembly by avoiding the need to ship components out of state for assembly and testing.

[Ian David]

20. Martian Life -- Now?

"WASHINGTON - A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.

<snip>
Reference URL: More evidence for life

< Comment on this topic > < Add New Topic >

If you were a alien..
By: Jcaputo (Sho'Nuff)
at: 02-17-05 @ 04:11 pm EST


If you were a alien and knew all the shit going on down on planet Earth, wouldnt you hide too?

http://www.aspfree.com/showblog/7966/Martian-Life-Now


More:
http://www.aspfree.com/jump.php?url=www.msnbc.msn.com%2Fid%2F6981361%2F

[Ian David]

22. O'Reilly has the scientist on right now. He just told him to "shut-up"

"If you keep interrupting about methane on Mars, I'm going to cut your mic. Now, for the third time, shut-up and let Anne talk!"

[Zynx]

21. As someone who doesn't take the Bible literally, how does this matter?

I believe in God and always will, though I don't believe the creation stories. However, I do question how this exactly matters to me. This money could be much better spent fighting poverty among other things.

[Ian David]

25. You mean, other than "because it's there?"

For one thing, if Mars once had life, it would be nice to know what happened to it.

And maybe we can use that information to save our own worthless hides.

Secondly, it may teach us about a whole different system of biology.

That could have applications for manufacturing new materials, new medicines, etc. We could perhaps even find organisms that would clean the environment, kill cancer, or save the ozone layer.

Extremophiles on Earth have all sorts of useful applications.

Maybe it just tastes good. Who knows.

Plus, there's this thing Humans like to do called exploring.

It's the second best thing we do, after destroying.

See:

Out of This World - Why Mars Matters
By Dr Craig Rodger, Lecturer, University of Otago Physics Department
18th January 2004

More than 40 years after President Kennedy called for man to go to the Moon, we may be on the verge of another era of amazing space discovery: a person on Mars? A base on the moon? To which people might ask, why bother?

The so-far successful mission of the "Spirit", the US robotic rover that has brought back stunning pictures of the Red Planet's surface, together with the space initiative announced by George W. Bush this week, have inspired a focus on space exploration that has gripped the public's imagination. Decades after the last astronaut visited the Moon's surface, we may be about to take a much bigger and more significant step.

While many may question the motives behind the new US space programme - after all there are minor matters such as the Iraqi invasion, the fractured world political environment and record US budget deficits to contend with - there have never been a shortage of reasons for not committing enormous resources needed for space exploration.

It could all turn out to be a political circus, of course. But from a scientific viewpoint, it will probably be amazing, particularly if a base is set up on the Moon.

More:
http://www.otago.ac.nz/news/daretobewise/marsmatters.html


See also:
http://www.marssociety.org/about/founding_declaration.asp

Founding Declaration of the Mars Society
The time has come for humanity to journey to Mars.

We're ready. Though Mars is distant, we are far better prepared today to send humans to Mars than we were to travel to the Moon at the commencement of the space age. Given the will, we could have our first teams on Mars within a decade.

The reasons for going to Mars are powerful.

We must go for the knowledge of Mars. Our robotic probes have revealed that Mars was once a warm and wet planet, suitable for hosting life's origin. But did it? A search for fossils on the Martian surface or microbes in groundwater below could provide the answer. If found, they would show that the origin of life is not unique to the Earth, and, by implication, reveal a universe that is filled with life and probably intelligence as well. From the point of view learning our true place in the universe, this would be the most important scientific enlightenment since Copernicus.

We must go for the knowledge of Earth. As we begin the twenty-first century, we have evidence that we are changing the Earth's atmosphere and environment in significant ways. It has become a critical matter for us better to understand all aspects of our environment. In this project, comparative planetology is a very powerful tool, a fact already shown by the role Venusian atmospheric studies played in our discovery of the potential threat of global warming by greenhouse gases. Mars, the planet most like Earth, will have even more to teach us about our home world. The knowledge we gain could be key to our survival.

We must go for the challenge. Civilizations, like people, thrive on challenge and decay without it. The time is past for human societies to use war as a driving stress for technological progress. As the world moves towards unity, we must join together, not in mutual passivity, but in common enterprise, facing outward to embrace a greater and nobler challenge than that which we previously posed to each other. Pioneering Mars will provide such a challenge. Furthermore, a cooperative international exploration of Mars would serve as an example of how the same joint-action could work on Earth in other ventures.

We must go for the youth. The spirit of youth demands adventure. A humans-to-Mars program would challenge young people everywhere to develop their minds to participate in the pioneering of a new world. If a Mars program were to inspire just a single extra percent of today's youth to scientific educations, the net result would be tens of millions more scientists, engineers, inventors, medical researchers and doctors. These people will make innovations that create new industries, find new medical cures, increase income, and benefit the world in innumerable ways to provide a return that will utterly dwarf the expenditures of the Mars program.

We must go for the opportunity. The settling of the Martian New World is an opportunity for a noble experiment in which humanity has another chance to shed old baggage and begin the world anew; carrying forward as much of the best of our heritage as possible and leaving the worst behind. Such chances do not come often, and are not to be disdained lightly.

We must go for our humanity. Human beings are more than merely another kind of animal, -we are life's messenger. Alone of the creatures of the Earth, we have the ability to continue the work of creation by bringing life to Mars, and Mars to life. In doing so, we shall make a profound statement as to the precious worth of the human race and every member of it.

We must go for the future. Mars is not just a scientific curiosity; it is a world with a surface area equal to all the continents of Earth combined, possessing all the elements that are needed to support not only life, but technological society. It is a New World, filled with history waiting to be made by a new and youthful branch of human civilization that is waiting to be born. We must go to Mars to make that potential a reality. We must go, not for us, but for a people who are yet to be. We must do it for the Martians.

Believing therefore that the exploration and settlement of Mars is one of the greatest human endeavors possible in our time, we have gathered to found this Mars Society, understanding that even the best ideas for human action are never inevitable, but must be planned, advocated, and achieved by hard work. We call upon all other individuals and organizations of like-minded people to join with us in furthering this great enterprise. No nobler cause has ever been. We shall not rest until it succeeds.

[truthisfreedom]

23. somebody tell David Bowie!

he was wondering, as i recall.

Life On Mars
David Bowie

It's a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling "No"
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she's hooked to the silver screen
But the film is a saddening bore
For she's lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on




Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

It's on Amerikas tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
'Cause Lennon's on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibeza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns
But the film is a saddening bore
'Cause I wrote it ten times or more
It's about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on

Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

[centristo]

31. don't forget the spiders from mars

Also, War of the Worlds is coming out this summer. Could reinvigorate a call to the cosmos for many Americans, who knows. Let's just hope we don't bring back any species-killing bacteria.

[bikebloke]

24. Take it with a large grain of salt.

I know someone with Nature. The paper was never submitted to them, and is thus not out for peer review. At least with Nature.

[Ian David]

26. True. They may end up in the corner with Fleischman & Pons

Point taken

[Mr.Green93]

27. The U..N.

should declare Mars a Biosphere and put a stop to the exploitation and destruction of the Martian environment.

[Ian David]

28. I speak for the Mars rocks for the rocks have no tongues

[Floogeldy]

29. We are all descendants of Martians

We are all descendants of Martians, from the time when the Plaedian colonies fled to the blue planet to avoid the deadly overheating of Mars, which would have wiped out our entire species. It is a memory of ours, from the darkness of time before time; a mere flicker of an engram in our souls, yet a part of us, nonetheless.

[DU GrovelBot]

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[Deep13]

34. Jumping to conclusions.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This theory has yet to be subject to peer review. If there are nonbiological processes that can produce methane, they ought to be seriously considered before assuming it was caused by living things.

[Ian David]

35. True. There are apparently non-biological methane sources on Titan

[NuttyFluffers]

39. cool, so they are going to find the Aihai...

with their martian underground cities. hopefully we don't stumble upon Ravormoros, the stronghold of Vulthoom, though.

so when are we going to find Cthulhu and Byatis here on earth?

:7

[daleo]

40. I don't know if any religion rules out extra-terrestrial life

Certainly the idea has been talked about in the Catholic Church since at least Giordo Bruno. I have no doubt that if Martian life was conclusively proven, every religion would have a way to shoehorn it into their world view in no time. Within a decade most would be pointing to some obscure passage in a holy book, saying that this passage proved that their inerrant God knew about life on Mars all along.

[Deja Q]

41. Oil on mars too, I'd bet.

:crazy:

[banana republican]

42. OMG it's a RED PLANET