Mars; Is finding life really that hard?

We look for the nuances of life on Mars through microbes and infinitesimally small ore samples and off gassing of organics using these multibillion dollar rovers and the like. Often times ignoring Occam’s razor theory because of …..????

www.foxnews.com...

Why can’t we just develop and send a rover or rovers to those sites where geometry is aghast with signs of an understanding in mathematics and astronomy and architecture?

Rhetorical of course.

It would seem to me with the SAT imagery used to discover the long buried archeological sites we are now finding in Egypt, South America, Bosnia, China and other places around the world we could do the same for Mars.

www.bbc.co.uk...

news.discovery.com...

www.thelivingmoon.com...

www.themistsofavalon.net... in-the-tunnels-under-the-pyramids

Alaskan Pyramid

Just to answer the title, I am no rocket scientist but just getting a rover to land and actually do it's job proper is extremely hard. So finding life, I would imagine, would rank up there pretty high for difficulty.

Its really "hard" for these guys to find some sort of living creature because they know there isn't any life up there. They had over 30 years to figure the answer out and nothing. Why have people running around on an Easter egg hunt for something that is not there.

Now if someone can prove otherwise fine but I personally think there is nothing up there but rocks that looks like rats!

I figure it's as maddening for everyone else as it is for me to see them work soooo carefully and soooo slowly. Why not just throw that sucker in gear and get to moving to good stuff?

Well.. There is a factor we need to consider and it's a giant one I'm not sure is being taken into account. They need to get the job done but they also need to play it 100% safe. The latter conflicts with the former and damn near makes the mission impossible, but they seem to do their best anyway.

Why so safe? If they so much as drop 1 wheel into an odd shaped chuck hole that it gets stuck in? The WHOLE mission just ended. The cost of the rover... the flight... development... mission crews and staffs back here? All of it for nothing more than proving that hurrying in a place where help is simply never coming is a horrible idea.

Imagine how we'd call for their heads if they went to check out one of those Lava tube openings, as the best comparison I can think of for the "cavern openings" spotted. They get right up to take a peak ...to find it's nothing but a pit and trick of the light. Right before the side wall gives way and performs a perfect imitation of a Rover booby trap. I think ATS would demand resignations over such pure stupidity.....only after it failed.

What I can't get my mind around is how Gilbert Levin can be so adamant that they found life in the initial viking experiment. If it weren't for that and a few other things popping up now and then, I'd be with NASA 100%. Part of hte problem is I'm not in the "loop" nor do I have hte science background.

Here're a few links about Gilbert Levin and his experiment:
www.gillevin.com - Dr Gilbert V Levin - Research on Mars...
phys.org - Viking landers did detect organics on Mars...
www.ndtv.com - Scientist claims Mars has 'contemporary' life...
www.spacedaily.com - Viking Data May Hide New Evidence For Life...
spaceflightnow.com - Signature of life on Mars found in decades-old data...
(quote below is from the preceding link)

.........
Eventually, NASA was able to recover the data from printouts, luckily preserved by Levin and Straat - and so, Miller was able to pore over the numbers. There were a lot of them - in fact, their analysis is still underway. But even after having crunched just 30 percent of the experiment's data, Miller was able to find something remarkable - something, he says, that went unremarked-upon in the original papers. "The signal itself not only had a circadian rhythm," declares Miller, "but it had a precise circadian rhythm of 24.66 hours - which is particularly significant, because it's the length of a Martian day."

More specifically, says Miller, the fluctuations in gas emissions seem to be entrained to a 2 degrees C fluctuation inside the lander, which in turn reflected not-quite-total shielding from the 50 degrees C fluctuation in temperature that occurs daily on the surface of Mars. Temperature-entrained circadian rhythms, even to a mere 2-degree C fluctuation, have been observed repeatedly on earth.

As for the original concerns of the dubious chemists, who thought the same sort of signal could simply be coming from highly reactive, non-organic compounds in the soil, Miller says such a scenario would be almost impossible to imagine. "For one thing," he explains, "there has since been research that shows that superoxides exposed to an aqueous solution - like the nutrient solution in the experiment - will quickly be destroyed. And yet, the circadian rhythms from the Martian soil persisted for nine straight weeks."

"There is no reason for a purely chemical reaction to be so strongly synchronized to such a small temperature fluctuation," he adds. "We think that in conjunction with the strong indications from Mars Observer images that show water flowed on the surface in the recent past, a lot of the necessary characteristics of life are there. I think back in 1976, the Viking researchers had an excellent reason to believe they'd discovered life; I'd say it was a good 75 percent certain. Now, with this discovery, I'd say it's over 90 percent. And I think there are a lot of biologists who would agree with me."
...........

Here's another link about Joseph Miller and his research:
news.nationalgeographic.com - Life on Mars Found by NASA's Viking Mission?...

What I want to see happen is for Gilbert Levin to step out and say he's wrong. Stop the charade. Just admit that viking did not detect life and that the latest experiments on Curiosity show only trace amounts of organics and the unfavorable conditions prove life is at least not on the surface.

In fact, NASA has already stated their opinion, in part based on curiosity, here:
www.wired.com - Mars Rover Finds Good News for Past Life, Bad News for Current Life on Mars...

Gilbert's effective response is here:
www.gillevin.com - Evidence for Microbial Life on Mars...

In other words, Gilbert is still not being honest. It irritates me.

I can't wrap my head around those scientists at MSL.

So as we know for life to exist we need water...

Water on Mars - check...
Flowing water on Mars - check
Minerals on Mars - check

Since we yet didn't spot traces of advanced life (civilisation) on Mars, we need to look for primitive life over there.
How are we going to look for primitive life? Well, the same as we look here on earth.

Send the damn MICROSCOPE to Mars!!!

Originally posted by bkfd54
Why can’t we just develop and send a rover or rovers to those sites where geometry is aghast with signs of an understanding in mathematics and astronomy and architecture?

Because astronomers see no such sites on Mars.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
I figure it's as maddening for everyone else as it is for me to see them work soooo carefully and soooo slowly. Why not just throw that sucker in gear and get to moving to good stuff?

Because the rover can only move so fast due to low power consumption. If you can design and build a rover that cruises around, and still has power for several years of operation, well, more power to you.

Originally posted by zilebeliveunknown
Flowing water on Mars - check

Only in the distant past (as far as we know). It's difficult to imagine life existing on the surface of Mars in the present conditions (extremely dry and very very cold). If life still exists there, it's probably in some caves or underground lakes, where water is kept liquid by the pressure of the crust.

And to answer the OP: from what I gathered, NASA want first to make sure Mars was habitable in the past (Curiosity's mission), then their next mission will look for the signs of past life. I think only when such signs are found, NASA would venture (and get funding for) a mission to look for signs of current life.

Methane can be a sign of life.

"We observed and mapped multiple plumes of methane on Mars, one of which released about 19,000 metric tons of methane," said Dr. Geronimo Villanueva of the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. Villanueva is stationed at NASA Goddard and is co-author of the paper. "The plumes were emitted during the warmer seasons -- spring and summer -- perhaps because the permafrost blocking cracks and fissures vaporized, allowing methane to seep into the Martian air. Curiously, some plumes had water vapor while others did not," said Villanueva.

www.nasa.gov...

No, it's not hard to find life if it's there. Land in the most inhospitable place on Earth, and you'll find life in less than 30 seconds. Why? Because that's how life is. It's adaptable and pernicious and will squeeze into every little available crack.

The adaptability of life -- the same argument used to claim the universe is probably teeming with life -- is the same argument you can use to show why Mars doesn't have any. If it was there, we would have found it by now.

Originally posted by zilebeliveunknown
So as we know for life to exist we need water...

Water on Mars - check...
Flowing water on Mars - check
Minerals on Mars - check

Life also apparently needs some other thing in order for it to exist. Call it being lucky enough and having enough time for the minerals and water to form into functioning DNA, or call it intelligent design, or call it temporally non-linear contamination of life or morphic resonance from the future. Whatever you want to call it, looks like Mars never got it.

reply to post by wildespace

They know briny liquid water probably exists on Mars right now:
www.abc.net.au - Is this water on Mars?...

This is not exactly a lake or a river of water we're familiar with, but it's liquid. Of course, NASA officials have commented that it's too salty to support life, so the point is mute.

This covers where we're at - overall - on this issue:
today.ucla.edu - Top scientists debate whether life could survive on Mars...

Here's another good rundown on what's going on:
astronomyaggregator.com - Perchlorates Common on Mars...

Note that the viking life detection only failed because they did not detect organics. If perchlorate is hte reason they did not detect organics, then perhaps they did detect life.

Bottom line, I believe life could exist there, but based on what I know, it won't be complex. Rather, it'll be an extremophile. So odds are that any life will not be multicellular, either.

reply to post by wildespace

Hm *wildespace*, I thought you already knew that there's water flows on Mars.

NASA MRO



Anyways, I'm still wondering why NASA didn't send microscope to Mars, and/or why didn't they send Curiosity where water is. I cannot see any logic there.

reply to post by zilebeliveunknown

If Perchlorate caused the failure to detect organics, it shows that the amount of organics on the two viking sites was different. So it can vary from place to place how much you find.

Note that Perchlorate is toxic to humans.

(i blurted the above to show how different sites have different characteristics)

I think they're not just trying to find life, but they're also trying to learn about the martian past. I think they landed curisity in an area that'll teach us about its geologic and watery history.

This goes into more detail about the site selection process for Curiosity:
www.rockhounds.com - The Landing Site - The Geological Jackpot at Gale Crater ...

Here's an image detailing the geological diversity of the site:
www.nasa.gov - Geological Diversity at Curiosity's Landing Site...

What this all highlights is that Mars is not an Earth. It's not friendly. Life, if present, is not at first obvious. I mean, we're not going to easily "see" extremophiles, I think. If and when we finally prove they exist on Mars, we will, with hindsight, be able to "see" them in past observations.

reply to post by bkfd54

Mars; Is finding life really that hard?

Both MER rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) returned imagery that 'could' have been taken as evidence of past life in the form of fossilized remains.

Of course, none of it means a thing when your people at NASA direct their rovers to grind them to dust or just drive by...

Does this mean there was past life on Mars? No... but it does suggest, rather strongly, that those in control of the search appear simply either afraid of such discovery or pre-prepared to bypass it,

Originally posted by zilebeliveunknown
reply to post by wildespace

 

Hm *wildespace*, I thought you already knew that there's water flows on Mars.

NASA MRO

Anyways, I'm still wondering why NASA didn't send microscope to Mars, and/or why didn't they send Curiosity where water is. I cannot see any logic there.

Nope. There is a guess that those may be water flows, but there's also a possible explanation that they are sand flows, or caused by dry ice. No one can say with any certainty that there are flows of liquid water on Mars.

www.astrobio.net...
www.technologyreview.com...