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Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars, Study Says
- eddd 11y agoI know that without water life would have never begun, but I still don't fully understand why it is necessary. It is still big discovery though, if life is that common I think we should be more careful during migration there, "Marsian" common cold could wipe out the entire human colony.
- dangrossman 11y ago> I know that without water life would have never begun, but I still don't fully understand why it is necessary. "Life" is a bunch of chemical processes. A necessary prerequisite is therefore a solvent in which those chemical processes can occur, and which can move substances around, whether it's within a cell, an organism, or an environment. Of all the potential solvents, solids can't move stuff around, and in gases, only volatile and highly concentrated substances would have a chance to react. It's also too easy to move around in a gas: potential gas-based "life" would just...fall apart. So the solvent and carrier being a liquid is also likely a prerequisite for life. It also has to stay a liquid at a relatively wide range of temperatures, and be abundant enough so that all the rare coincidences that might lead to life have a chance of happening and perpetuating. Water is the only molecule that fits the bill, and happens to be the second most common molecule in the universe.
- eddd 11y agoI am not good at chemistry, but liquid methane–ethane wouldn't fit the profile?
- eddd 11y agoActually I found comprehensive answer here if anyone is interested: http://www.space.com/13639-alien-life-methane-habitable-zone.html http://www.space.com/13639-alien-life-methane-habitable-zone...
- VLM 11y agoIt doesn't really say "why". Water ionizes really conveniently so you can make it an acid OR a base (which is sorta unusual and it can talk to acidic or basic things), and is polar (its got a + and a - electrical side, more or less, so it can talk to + or - things), and has hydrogen bonds (so you get liquid lifestyle at gas temps) For one why, look up amphoteric and zwitterion. Water has a super convenient pH range where about a ten millionth of pure water self ionizes aka ten to neg seventh or pH of 7, and all kinds of super convenient reactions occur above and below that pH and its really easy to manipulate ionization rates around that level without using too much. You don't need just a liquid but one where you can really screw around with something like amino acids by easily and cheaply changing the ionization rate of the liquid. So there are super convenient chemical reactions that depend on the ionization level of the liquid and its really easy to manipulate water. Conveniently water "just works" without having to add tons of other stuff to it. Liquid methane isn't polar enough to really be useful when messing with ionic substances (table salt, etc). Whatever you use for a liquid, it needs to be polar so ionic stuff like salts can dissolve. It turns out that interesting chemistry doesn't happen with non-polar substances at normal temps; thats why when you bury stuff for a couple million years the only thing left behind undecayed (more or less) is non-polar hydrocarbons (crude oil). Ammonia is polar but has other issues. The hydrogen bonds are important. Water should be a gas at room temp. Really, it should, looking at bonds and molecular weight and stuff. Yet the hydrogen bonds that form keep it liquid at room temp. So you get "gas speed" chemical reactions at "high" room temperature, yet its liquid to a ridiculously high temp. Maybe some custom liquid silicone with some bolted on weirdness could make a useful artificial blood plasma or "stuff" for life to live in. How it would make it without the chemical plant being made first is mysterious.
- cLeEOGPw 11y agoSometimes I wonder that not only it is not possible for other forms of life to exist that wouldn't use water, carbon and others, but that we have life just because it so happened coincidentally that our universe were created with the exact properties needed for the laws of physics to support life for a short while in some places.
- maaku 11y agoThose are non-polar, so would not work as a liquid environment for Earth-like biochemistry. Doesn't rule out the possibility of different forms of life ... but there is a high prior against it.
- logfromblammo 11y agoI'd order the candidates for the basis of lifelike chemistry complexes as follows: H2O, NH3, SO2, HCOOH, CH4. A lot of the common molecules aren't good solvents or react too readily with other common elements or molecules, like oxygen or halogens. And molecules that are good solvents just aren't common enough to dissolve much of anything. Methane would probably only work in an oxygen-deficient environment, and ethane wouldn't form enough by coincidence to be a meaningful solvent in comparison to methane or other simple organics. And it just so happens that H2O is very common and a great solvent, so any other potential solvent would probably have a little water in it anyway. And if it's there, a lifelike chemistry complex would probably make use of it in some way.
- comboy 11y ago"Water is the only molecule that fits the bill, and happens to be the second most common molecule in the universe." [citation needed]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dangrossman 11y agoWhat an annoying meme. What part did you find so surprising that you want additional references, but couldn't find a better way to ask for them? As to the first part, there are uncountable examples of water-based life, and zero examples of non-water-based life. That doesn't rule out its existence, but basic chemistry makes it unlikely, and it won't look anything like life as we know it. No other liquid has the properties needed for any kind of life observed. As to the second: https://www.google.com/search#q=%22second+most+common+molecule+in+the+universe%22 https://www.google.com/search#q=%22second+most+common+molecu...
- akiselev 11y agoHe's likely asking for a citation that shows that water is the second most common molecule in the universe, which is a quite a claim to make based on our understanding of astrophysics and astrochemistry. The most common molecule is diatomic hydrogen and the second most common is helium. That'll likely be true for hundreds of billions of years, if not trillions, due to the way stars burn their atomic fuel. Even if you don't include atomic helium as a molecule, the second most prevalent would likely be the most reactive combination of hydrogen and nitrogen/carbon.
- dangrossman 11y agoAtomic helium is not a molecule. Oxygen is significantly more abundant than either nitrogen or carbon in the universe. In the interstellar clouds that give rise to stars, hydrogen runs into a lot more oxygen than carbon or nitrogen, so you're going to end up with more water than any other molecule but hydrogen gas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements#Abundance_of_elements_in_the_Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elem... Also see this delightful comment by logfromblammo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10292067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10292067
- danenania 11y agoWater is necessary for all "life as we know it". There could be configurations we don't know about that allow life to form from radically different constituents. The universe is big enough to allow for the possibility, but it's so theoretical that we have no framework for understanding how these kinds of exotic lifeforms would work or how to look for evidence of their existence. So while we shouldn't exclude the possibility, "life as we know it" is the most sensible place to start.
- maaku 11y agoEarth life is aquatic. Our chemistry happens immersed in water. When life left the oceans, living beings like you and I took the water with us. We are walking bags of water: approx 75% by weight. Of course martian life could be different than terran life, and that would be interesting too. But there are reasons to suspect that liquid chemical reactions was necessary at the genesis of life, and water is a uniquely optimal liquid for this purpose. A martian virus is unlikely to do anything to your immune system. For one thing it is unlikely that the virus would even use the same genetic codes (A C T G) as terran DNA, unless we share a common ancestor, and even in that case it wouldn't do anything against you & your immune system would eventually create an antibody and wipe it out. We fear things like bird flu and swine flu because they develop in close proximity to humans in analogous systems, honing attack vectors specifically targeting some weakness of the animal body. An alien virus would likewise be good at attacking aliens, not us.
- eddd 11y agoI would rather say, that the fear of the unknown is playing major part. Any maybe too much sci-fi movies.
- jerf 11y agoYou know that science fiction trope of the deadly planet full of life where every last life form is trying to kill every other life form, and they've evolved a frightful array of offenses and defenses to do it? That planet is Earth. The real Earth. We perceive our ecosystem as friendly only because we've co-evolved with it. It is in objective terms a vicious, vicious place, with every cubic centimeter of any useful resource contended for by thousands or millions of organisms, fighting each other in every conceivable chemical, biological, and physical manner, and in particularly sophisticated corners of the Earth ecosystem, even social manners. It may look peaceful from the apex, but it's not when you get close. The likelihood of some sort of Martian bacteria getting here and causing amazing problems can never quite be eliminated, but it's very, very low. Plus, if Martian life ever existed, it actually won't be entirely disconnected from Earth life due to what you could call "transpermia": http://users.tpg.com.au/users/horsts/swaprock.html http://users.tpg.com.au/users/horsts/swaprock.html In fact if life is discovered on Mars, the next question is whether it is just Earth life that hitched a ride and managed to adapt to conditions that aren't necessarily all that much harsher than conditions we've found life on here on Earth. It's interesting either way, but the implications are hugely different between some hitchhiking Earth life vs. life that clearly came from a different abiogenesis event.
- charleywolters 11y agoI mean that's great news but didn't they announce this like 10 times before? Isn't there a meme about this, that NASA announced they found water on Mars like once a year?
- peter303 11y agoSoem of the times were for ancient water. But they have shown evidence of recent water before too.
- kenbellows 11y agoMy understanding is that current liquid water has yet to be found, and this is the best evidence of it we've ever had. Am I on the right track?
- madhurbehl 11y agoSo where is the liquid water coming from ? and as per the article if the evidence suggests that water would have flowed just 'days' before, is it in the realm of possibility to detect actual water from MRO ?
- coryfklein 11y agoFTA > “There are two basic origins for the water: from above or from below,” Dr. McEwen said. The perchlorates could be acting like a sponge, absorbing moisture out of the air... The other possibility is underground aquifers, frozen solid during winter, melting during summer and seeping to the surface. Although "rain"/humidity is unlikely, the article also discusses why it can still be considered a possibility since we don't have good humidity measurements at the surface.
- coryfklein 11y ago> For the water to be liquid, it must be so salty that nothing could live there, he said. “The short answer for habitability is it means nothing,” he said. This dose of realism dampens my enthusiasm slightly, but if we can find such clear signs of water via satellite image I think it is a great indication that water is more present at the surface than previously thought.
- smchang 11y agoAlthough, just a couple of paragraphs down >“If it was too salty, they would be flowing year round,” Dr. Stillman said. “We might be in that Goldilocks zone.”
- brianstorms 11y agoDumb question probably, but here goes: Given the latest NASA news about water on Mars, as in, “flowing water on today’s Mars,” I am still trying to figure out how that would work. If water boils at 79ºF when the atmospheric pressure is lowered to 0.5psi, what would it boil at given Mars’ atmospheric pressure of 0.087psi? How could Mars, which barely has an atmosphere, support liquid water? Why would not the water basically evaporate quickly if not boil off almost instantly?
- barkingcat 11y agoThose numbers are for pure water. If water is mixed with something, salts (not just sodium salt, but salts of other elements as well), etc, that changes the properties of the resulting mixture. The water on mars is probably "salty" mixture, maybe slush, but we don't really know what it's consisted of unless we have measurements / spectral analysis of the water mixture.
- m-app 11y agoIndeed. NASA showed the following slide, comparing the different temperatures: http://snpy.in/NdFEnS http://snpy.in/NdFEnS
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- skrisman 11y agoIt's a very briny water which can radically shift the phase diagram. Just like adding salt to boiling water in a pot changes the boiling point.
- Retra 11y agoYou can also have temporary streams that flow while they're evaporating. It just means you won't have long-term pooling anywhere.
- beambot 11y agoThey won't explore the water-flowing sites to: "minimize the chances of life inadvertently crossing the solar system." So let's just spread life intentionally. It seems like that is one of our goals anyway -- not necessarily for governments (ie. NASA), but certainly for private space flight.
- rm445 11y agoThe aim is to settle the question of whether life exists on Mars, or ever has, before clouding the issue with modern contamination. I say modern just in case of various panspermia-type possibilities. That doesn't preclude eventually spreading life to Mars. Even if living indigenous bacteria, or even plant life(!) were found - I think this is the most ambitious scenario now conceivable, the 'Mars mat' of fiction suviving in caves - it likely wouldn't be an argument to stop colonisation, though it might have bearing on arguments about terraforming.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tomkwok 11y agoNASA's 'Mars Mystery Solved' Press Conference starts at 11:30 a.m. EDT. Live TV: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/
- sjg 11y agoSeems like the the NASA TV Site is not loading for me here. http://www.ustream.tv/NASAHDTV http://www.ustream.tv/NASAHDTV is working however.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- empressplay 11y ago'sploded =(
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- aidos 11y agoI'm so confused. "Definitive signs"? Is this the Nasa announcement or something else? I thought it didn't start for another 15 minutes.
- barkingcat 11y agoThis is most likely the Nasa announcement. Remember folks! Science doesn't happen in a vacuum. The scientific papers that outline this analysis was already available in astronomy circles - the Nasa event is the press conference letting the bigger community know. It's not like it's a secret! All the measurements were already made by the Orbitor and is presumably analysed by researchers around the world prior to this unveiling.
- netcraft 11y agoThe first I have heard of Don Juan Pond (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Juan_Pond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Juan_Pond) although I wouldn't say it looks like a swimming pool (http://www.lakescientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/don-juan-pond.jpg http://www.lakescientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/don-...). Edit: Here is an article from brown that also draws parallels between Don Juan and Mars: https://news.brown.edu/articles/2013/02/antarctica https://news.brown.edu/articles/2013/02/antarctica
- coryfklein 11y agoWell, I definitely wouldn't choose that picture if I was trying to convince somebody to swim in it. This one looks better, although still not sure I could actually "swim". http://www.worldalldetails.com/article_image/natural_phenomenon_854341.jpg http://www.worldalldetails.com/article_image/natural_phenome...
- carrja99 11y agoIt once looked like a swimming pool. From the wikipedia entry you linked: "According to the USGS topographical map published in 1977, the area was approximately 0.25 km2 (62 acres). However, in recent years the pond has shrunk considerably. The maximum depth in 1993–1994 was described as "a foot deep" (30 cm). In January 1997, it was approximately 10 centimetres (3.9 in) deep; in December 1998 the pond was almost dry everywhere except for an area of a few tens of square meters."
- arethuza 11y agoPretty sure it features in Kim Stanley Robinson's Antartica (AKA "White Mars") - where an unfortunate character takes a taste of the pond and everything tastes of salt for quite a while afterwards. NB I learned about the nearby Airdevronsix Icefalls from Antartica - they are really quite impressive: http://www.wondermondo.com/Countries/An/Antarctica/Antarctica/Airdevronsix.htm http://www.wondermondo.com/Countries/An/Antarctica/Antarctic...
- dsfsdfd 11y agoNot so long ago it was stated frequently and with certainty that there was no liquid water on Mars. That there could be no liquid water on Mars. Which having read into the topic I thought was obviously non sense. Now every one is like there's water on mars, we've know for a while - you can see the flows. In fact we deliberately don't go to places likely to be wet for fear of cross contamination. I feel like I have been fed spin. Why don't other people see this and more importantly why aren't other people angry at being mislead? I feel like there is a consistent attempt to manipulate the truth before it is presented for public consumption, in many spheres of life. Who are these people that deem themselves entitled enough to decide what is known and what is unknown?
- mspokoiny 11y agoThis is amazing!!!
- crusso 11y agoR.S.L.s are treated as special regions that NASA’s current robotic explorers are barred from because the rovers were not thoroughly sterilized We're not going to sterilize our research equipment going to Mars and we're not going to search likely sites where we could find life because we don't want to contaminate them. And yet, looking for signs of life native to Mars (or even water which might support life) is the top reason we're there, judging by the headlines. Seems like someone in NASA needs to work out this conflict.
- goatforce5 11y ago> Seems like someone in NASA needs to work out this conflict. Perhaps it's not so much of a conflict as a multi-staged approach... The non-sterile equipment is currently roaming around and has just said "Hey! There's probably water and maybe life over there!" and now we get to build something to go poke at it with a sterilized stick.
- mapt 11y agoAll equipment designed for landing on Mars in the modern era is extensively sterilized. The concern is that given what we've learned about microorganisms in space, this may not be enough; "Extensively sterilized" is never "Perfectly sterilized", at least, not without building it out of solid metal and annealing it in space. There was also a last-minute variance granted to the drill bit on Curiosity, which was contaminated between sterilization and launch by briefly opening the box in a lower-spec clean room. http://www.space.com/13783-nasa-msl-curiosity-mars-rover-planetary-protection.html http://www.space.com/13783-nasa-msl-curiosity-mars-rover-pla... As we enter an era of inexpensive launch capacity, the sterilization step is actually so expensive it may exceed the cost of the launch vehicle. There is a case to be made for dropping these protections: They're a barrier in the way of a widespread robotic exploration mission, and a manned mission is going to be implicitly contaminative, since you can't run humans through an autoclave. The most conservative route to detecting life before sending humans is years and years of robotic launches to a variety of regions, with several sample returns. It's arguable, but I'm not sure we have the stomach to do that before the 2030's, there's no sign of the major expansion of NASA funding that would be required for the decade of exponentially escalating robotic precursors to a human mission, on the horizon. Given that we're apparently not going to protect Mars from life, that brings into question why we should bother pretending that's what we're doing today. There have already been substantial transfers on previous landers and impactors.
- nsxwolf 11y agoLatest incarnation of the perennial headline... Best evidence yet of water on Mars! I've been enjoying these all my life. This and "Nuclear fusion created in a laboratory for the first time" headlines. My favorite best-evidence-yet-of-water-on-Mars was that time the Phoenix robot scooped up an ice cube and took a picture of it.
- ForHackernews 11y agoThis finding is about contemporary, liquid, water.
- nsxwolf 11y agoNot a new discovery in itself, either.
- kenbellows 11y agoyes it is...?
- zokier 11y agonot really, these dark lines were identified like five years ago or something and flowing water has been number one explanation ever since. > NASA Spacecraft Data Suggest Water Flowing on Mars > 08.04.11 http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro20110804.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro20110804.html
- coldtea 11y agoYou haven't been following these news very closely, do you? 2008: NASA Spacecraft Confirms Martian Water, Mission Extended http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/jul/HQ_08_195_Phoenix_water.html http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/jul/HQ_08_195_Phoenix_w... 2009: Meteorite Impacts Expose Ice on Mars http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/24sep_martianice/ http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/24... 2010: NASA Trapped Mars Rover Finds Evidence of Subsurface Water http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2010-355 http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2010-355 2011: Observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed possible flowing water during the warmest months on Mars. http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04aug_marsflows/ http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04... 2013: Curiosity's SAM Instrument Finds Water and More in Surface Sample http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/curiositys-sam-instrument-finds-water-and-more-in-surface-sample/#.Vgn9dKZrjdQ http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/curiositys-sam-instrumen... 2014: New Evidence for a Mars Water Reservoir http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/19dec_marswater/ http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/19...
- Tinyyy 11y agoYoutube Live link, works reliably: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDh4uK9PvJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDh4uK9PvJU
- mkobit 11y agoAnother link/stream/mirror (for those using Ctrl+F) - http://mars.nasa.gov/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1856 http://mars.nasa.gov/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=Show...
- exodust 11y agoSound kept cutting out for me on youtube, I had to go back to the ustream site for reliable.
- coldtea 11y agoMaybe arsenic-based life too? This special announcement for merely "signs of" (instead of corfirmation) speaks of PR and the need to secure next years budget...
- pfortuny 11y agoThis is exactly what I was thinking... There was such a hullaballo about arsenic-based life just some years ago and then it happened not to be that after all. Mmmmhh... Since when does NASA need a press conference?
- sampo 11y agoCurrently the mainstream opinion is that the bacteria didn't use arsenate, but were very good at using the small amounts of phosphate that was still present in the experiment. And that the experimenters were not very good at cleaning all the phosphate out of the growth medium. So the highly publicized 2010 study is now pretty much falsified. http://www.nature.com/news/arsenic-life-bacterium-prefers-phosphorus-after-all-1.11520 http://www.nature.com/news/arsenic-life-bacterium-prefers-ph... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFAJ-1#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFAJ-1#Criticism
- sidcool 11y agoConfirmed! Mars has liquid water.
- nmc 11y agoOfficial NASA announcement: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-th...
- a3n 11y agoIf there is water of any sort on Mars, ice, liquid, salty, whatever, I think finding life on Mars is inevitable. Life is very, very persistent, and niches will be filled. Unfortunately it's also all but inevitable that we'll bring some with us, if we haven't already. Life is persistent, and ever-surprising.
- tempVariable 11y agoInteresting. I read that in Jeff Goldblum's voice as well. Were there any missions that lifted off Mars and came back to Earth ?
- icoder 11y agoI think your parent post was talking about that we may have taken earth-life to Mars (not vice versa)
- a3n 11y agoCorrect. But there are Mars rocks that have been busted loose from Mars, and orbited down to Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite
- jkaunisv1 11y agoNo, we don't have the capability to land something on Mars with enough fuel for it to take off again.
- outworlder 11y agoIts a hard engineering problem, yes - but not that far-fetched. It's an even harder political problem, though. It's hard to justify the required R&D expenses without appealing to emotion (such as sending humans).
- jkaunisv1 11y ago
- sneezeplease 11y agoThe earth is flat and NASA is one of the most devastating fraudulent organizations of all time.
- betolink 11y agoThis is just amazing!!
- leonardzen 11y agoWouldn't it be bad if life forms are found in Mars, according to this? http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
- NhanH 11y agoSpeaking in Bayesian probability, it's bad if life forms found on Mars are more advanced than human, and good if it's much less advanced, or even very primitive (as it means the Great Filter might be at an earlier stage than us right now). And it won't be the former case, for obvious reason.
- thaumaturgy 11y agoFinding life on Mars would still change one of the polynomials of the Drake Equation, which would shift upward the overall expected probability for intelligent life in the cosmos, which is probably what leonardzen means. But "we don't have enough data yet" still seems like a good answer to the Fermi Paradox anyway.
- hanspeter 11y agoIt would shift upward the overall expected probability for intelligent life at our level. However, since we have no evidence of life beyond our level of intelligence, it also increases the probability that civilizations will not survive long enough to become much more advanced than our civilization.
- hanspeter 11y agoFinding fossilized eukaryote cells on Mars wouldn't be the most glaring clue, that we're definitely going to destroy ourselves once technology is sufficiently advanced.
- Houshalter 11y agoYes. See Nick Bostrom's Why I hope The Search For Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing: http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf
- peter303 11y agoThey've seen seep-like events in craters and canyons for over ten years. This study determines it to be water and not something else.
- peter303 11y agoSolar system life may turn turn out t chemically similar. That is because it arose on one body, then cross-infected other other bodies by meteorite transfer over many millions of years. Mars became geologically stable before Earth, so it could have been the earliest place for life. Then Martian meteors infected Earth.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- chadzawistowski 11y agoHow could a meteor have launched from Mars and reached Earth? It stretches my mind to imagine a situation where a meteor drops down, picks up life, then drops it off on the next planet. Are there records of meteoric impacts like that? The best situation I can think of is a catastrophic volcanic explosion which launches a chunk of the planet into space, but that still sounds far-fetched to me.
- cLeEOGPw 11y agoHere's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite) an example how. Asteroid impact.
- iridium127 11y agoWould that mean that this water have a very high salt content since it is not frozen?
- exodust 11y agoThey said "briny water" so yes.
- foota 11y agoDoes anyone else think that the form of life found on Mars would most likely be completely distinct from what is found here, down to the molecular and cell level?
- Wingman4l7 11y agoAlternate possible biochemistries are dependent on the stability & potential variations in bonding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemi...
- mangeletti 11y agoOther than the possibility that the origins of life and potential life on Mars are the same, I think the same thing as you. Imagine it is completely distinct, and doesn't have cells.
- foota 11y agoYeah, I missed that caveat. I'm really excited to see what it might be and how it could potentially change our definition of what's living.
- InclinedPlane 11y agoThat's unlikely, in my opinion. There are some seemingly fundamental aspects to the underlying mechanisms of life as we know it today and some aspects that are mostly just accidents of history. For example, RNA/DNA type systems and polypeptide proteins represent enormously powerful designs which seemingly can be bootstrapped from simpler systems. It would not be at all shocking to see other forms of life based on very familiar machinery. But if there were different details here and there, that too would also not be surprising. Additionally, electrochemical gradients as a means of storing and using energy, and amphiphilic bilayer based membranes both seem to be incredibly fundamental, it would be more surprising to see life that was based on other principles than to see life that shared the same design. As for everything else, who knows? It's likely there are a ton of alternative design choices for a lot of different aspects of cellular machinery on up to large scale structures of plants, animals, fungi, etc. But overall I'd rate some of the more "out there" notions of things like silicon or sulfur based life, or merely carbon-based life that was utterly different from our nucleic acid/protein/membrane based life as being comparatively unlikely.
- codecamper 11y agoThis is good news for Apple. Liquid Spill Indicators will generate revenue on Mars too!
- amai 11y agoIf there would be signs of oil the US would invade Mars tomorrow...