New Clue to Life on Mars

September 21, 2004

Concentrations of water vapor and methane gas in certain regions of the red planet strengthen speculation that Mars could be a haven for microbial life. But there are still plenty of questions about the information.

Data obtained by the European Space Agency (ESA) probe Mars Express and the US spacecraft Mars Odyssey show that in some equatorial locations, low-atmosphere levels of water vapor and methane "significantly overlap," the ESA said in a press statement Monday.

www.dw-world.de...

I have heard about the methane gas but not the water vapor, that is news to me.

Is this news dated for this year? i havent got time to read it sorry, but i will do soon.

Ahh sorry 21/09/04.

News from a dutch site.

Course there is life on Mars, NASA's just hinting all the time about this and are letting out small amounts of information to prepare us for "NO, not another type of life as we know it"

It will all come out in the open soon enough.

The possibility that there is bacteria and the like on Mars must be like 90%
and i was watching a program on discovery ages ago about some sort of rover type thing landing on Mars and doing tests on the surface soil for some type of life and 3 results came back which 2 of them were positive.

Theres always a reason for doing something out of the ordinary and we are either going to be living on Mars or they are going to harvest all of Mars Helium-3 as our Earths if severly depleting fast!

Its been speculated at enterprisemission.com since march I believe... So its not really news. Its just that it took them a long while to get off their asses and admit it, heh

Man, it scares me to think they might find microbial life on Mars. I want it to be there but the temptation to bring some of it back to Earth could be a disaster.

I really think the governments of the world should set up some sort of rules governing the retrieval of microbial life no matter where we end up finding it. We have enough problems with microbial and animal life transferring contintents right here on Earth much less it coming from space.

Originally posted by markjaxson
...i was watching a program on discovery ages ago about some sort of rover type thing landing on Mars and doing tests on the surface soil for some type of life and 3 results came back which 2 of them were positive.

Are you talking about the ones done during the previous landing, some years ago or the ones done months ago?

I remember getting positive results of signs of hydrocarbons, fuel, in mars. It turned out to be that those hydrocarbons are from the fuel of the mars landers, not the life hydrocarbons. This happended during the first landing, long time before these landings took place.

Originally posted by Weller
Man, it scares me to think they might find microbial life on Mars. I want it to be there but the temptation to bring some of it back to Earth could be a disaster.

I really think the governments of the world should set up some sort of rules governing the retrieval of microbial life no matter where we end up finding it. We have enough problems with microbial and animal life transferring contintents right here on Earth much less it coming from space.

There already is such rules, in shows on TV scientists (including Nasa) are dubious about transfering materials (landing a sample on the space station was one idea for example).

The real problem is though, Mars and Earth has probably exchanged stones since the beginning. There is a pretty big possibility that it would be similar, thus no more of a threat than bacteria on earth... Then again if it IS similar, it could also affect us instead of just die. But what affects stuff on earth is very specialised... I'd like to see a person catch the Dutch elm disease. Problematic, heh.

Surfup, yeah i mean years ago many many years ago it could be the first one on Mars that took samples and analysed them.

I watched it on discovery but i cant remember what the rover thing were called.

I think it is called MER or MRE, Mars Rover Exploration.

Unfortunatly we contaminated Mars awhile ago...

It may be Earth originated life.

Only the viking landers were sterilized.

Originally posted by merka

Originally posted by Weller
Man, it scares me to think they might find microbial life on Mars. I want it to be there but the temptation to bring some of it back to Earth could be a disaster.

I really think the governments of the world should set up some sort of rules governing the retrieval of microbial life no matter where we end up finding it. We have enough problems with microbial and animal life transferring contintents right here on Earth much less it coming from space.

There already is such rules, in shows on TV scientists (including Nasa) are dubious about transfering materials (landing a sample on the space station was one idea for example).

The real problem is though, Mars and Earth has probably exchanged stones since the beginning. There is a pretty big possibility that it would be similar, thus no more of a threat than bacteria on earth... Then again if it IS similar, it could also affect us instead of just die. But what affects stuff on earth is very specialised... I'd like to see a person catch the Dutch elm disease. Problematic, heh.

Glad to hear that. I had read that that there was one but wasn't sure if it was official.

I agree that Earth and Mars have exchanged rocks for billions of years but if they found some specific, living mibrobial life, I think that would be a different story. Something like that probably wouldn't survive a ride on a rock but it could certainly make it in a petri dish.