8 ms·
Mysterious Martian “Cauliflower” May Be the Latest Hint of Alien Life
- stcredzero 11y agoSci-fi scenario: We find evidence of microbial life from billions of years ago, when Mars was briefly a warm, wet place. Decades hence, a researcher realizes that Mars still has microbial life, but that it has evolved as its environment has, so it's as arid and rarefied as its present atmosphere, wispy and almost not there. Sadly, she realizes that human activity has already doomed it to extinction.
- Santosh83 11y agoThis is a quite likely scenario since collective human activity has so far spelled doom to most species other than humans and our parasites, commensals and domesticated species. If we are serious about researching or preserving alien life in our solar system, we would have to be very cautious with what we do. But most likely, economic forces will start to dominate our actions in space, as they have always done on Earth.
- stcredzero 11y ago> But most likely, economic forces will start to dominate our actions in space, as they have always done on Earth. Perhaps most advanced intelligence comes in the form of distributed hive minds, and something like a "civilization" is regarded by most sentients as something akin to a pack of wolves or an uncontrolled mob? Maybe we're the ultimate ethical dilemma: All of the bad qualities of a cancer, but you can't ethically kill us because every one of our units is an independent sentience. Our neighbors are quietly watching us, hoping we'll choke in our own industrial effluents and kill ourselves off in the resulting ecological chaos, so no one has to taint themselves with the unpleasant task of sterilizing our system.
- 13thLetter 11y agoHow could aliens have the ability to destroy us if they didn't have their own technological civilization? Manufacturing spacecraft capable of traveling between the stars in any reasonable amount of time, if possible at all, would be an immense industrial undertaking, the pinnacle of not just scientific knowledge but societal complexity in order to coordinate the resources involved. Any alien race capable of doing these things must have also committed the sins that they're smugly damning us for, and to a far greater degree than we have.
- XJOKOLAT 11y agoNot necessarily.
- 13thLetter 11y agoYes necessarily. You can't build an interstellar spaceship without an industrial base, and creating an industrial base is going to have the same effect on the local ecosystems that humanity is being damned for. At best, our alien hive mind is a giant hypocrite.
- lgas 11y agoNot necessarily.
- Aeolos 11y ago> You can't build an interstellar spaceship without an industrial base Starship Troopers.
- stcredzero 11y ago> You can't build an interstellar spaceship without an industrial base, and creating an industrial base is going to have the same effect on the local ecosystems that humanity is being damned for. This only happens because a human being's short lifespan, limited mind, and constricted point of view mans that a human's perceived self-interest is very limited in scope. A planetary scale hive mind could have a much longer lifespan and a (literally) inherently more global view. Externalities arise because of a limited scope of knowledge, and persist because of self-interests of tiny scope. We think markets are so wonderful, because the distributed computational power of many individuals can keep up with global complexity. What if a single hive mind could command the same number of neurons, without the disparate competing self interests getting in the way?
- molsongolden 11y agoThis idea is explored a bit in The Expanse. Without giving away too much... there is some tension between scientists trying to use domes and gear to prevent contamination vs. colonists and miners.
- semi-extrinsic 11y agoA variant on this features prominently (through one of the main characters/factions) in Kim Stanley Robinson's excellent Red Mars trilogy.
- stcredzero 11y agoFrom what I recall, she keeps on going on about the beauty of the empty landscape, and the possibility of martian life is mentioned less often.
- knowaveragejoe 11y agoWho is she?
- arethuza 11y agoProbably Ann Clayborne - the original Red: http://www.kimstanleyrobinson.info/d/content/ann-clayborne-2 http://www.kimstanleyrobinson.info/d/content/ann-clayborne-2
- arthurcolle 11y agoKim Stanley Robinson is a male author.
- maaku 11y agoThat wrote a book with a prominent female character that was concerned with the native Martian environment.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 11y agoKim Stanley Robinson is male.
- 11y ago
- jarmitage 11y agoLook no further than The Mars Trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
- SeanDav 11y agoVery tedious trilogy. It had great potential but just drowned the reader in unnecessary detail on subjects that had nothing to do with the theme of the books(s). As the subject matter is very interesting to me, I started the series with great expectations and positive anticipation. I ended up very disappointed.
- jarmitage 11y agoI'd be interested to know what you think those themes are, and which details were unnecessary. To me the overload/tangential style felt essential.
- SeanDav 11y agoFar too detailed character development on non mainstream characters. Far too detailed descriptions of landscapes and environment. The first couple of times they are great to read, after that, very boring. Far too detailed description of politics. The books could have been half the size and probably would have been better for it.
- jarmitage 11y agoFair enough, but honestly I think he was trying to tell a different kind of story than the one you had hoped for. And I think it was better for it.
- stcredzero 11y agodrowned the reader in unnecessary detail That wealth of detail was the best part for me. If one wants to be immersed in such a world/scenario, then it is a pleasure. It's much the same as savoring the paeans to nature in the Lord of the Rings trilogy books. There's more to some books than the plot and characterizations.
- fein 11y agoSimilar idea, but the Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury touched on this heavily. Although it was humans and humanoid martians instead of microbial life.
- etangent 11y agoAlternative dystopian scenario: we eventually find evidence of (sometimes extinct) life on all planets and moons that had encountered specific chemical conditions for a long enough period of time. We realize en masse (more than we realize now) that life isn't a unique snowflake, but simply a geological process, not that far removed from rocks and volcanoes. The realization causes a broad spiritual/existential crisis and irreversibly changes human culture, mostly for the worse.
- mds 11y agoI don't think you'd have to assume that's a dystopian scenario. The Copernican Revolution and associated existential crises -- that we're not in a privileged location at the center of the universe -- changed human culture mostly for the good.
- etangent 11y agoMy question was "what if we realize that life isn't special?" -- not "what if we realize that humans aren't special?". The fact that three commenters misinterpreted the former for the latter is only a proof of our anthropic bias. We are not at all post-Copernican, strictly speaking. We value living things like we never did before. You occasionally hear discussion about granting rights to non-human animals: dolphins, apes, etc. That almost never happened in human history (save for a few cultures where certain animals are held to be holy). You are talking about moving away from anthropocentrism, while the scenario I'm describing is a bleak world where all life as such isn't valued. In that world, there isn't even any point of talking about "saving the planet," because "for whom are you saving it for? For polar bears? How are they any better than lifeless rocks: both products of geology?"
- narag 11y agoFor me that's a totally alien way of looking at things. It's like projecting caste prejudices to all living thing, that BTW seems much more anthropic biased.
- deleted 11y ago
- dogma1138 11y agoAnd what's wrong with that? Martian life vs colonization is nothing more than an anecdote once we find signs of it it's nice and all but no one is going to go out of their way to preserve it long term if it means that colonization will be affected. Eventually there will be life on mars whether it evolved "naturally" there or evolved just as "naturally" some where else and was brought there doesn't matter if it's a rocket or a comet on the cosmological scale both of those processes are just as "natural". Heck if we find a planet inhabited by self replicating robots they would pretty much automatically count as life, the fact that they aren't made out of some arrangement of self arranging molecules doesn't make it any less "natural" in the grand cosmic scheme.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoWell if it was good science fiction she would discover that the microbial life on mars made it to earth after a meteor impact and by virtue of acting as a virus, infecting pregnant apes who gave birth to what would be recognized as humans. And that human activity on Mars doomed it to extinction, and human activity on Earth doomed humans to extinction, and so we not only killed off ourselves, we kill of our chance to evolve again on earth. Of course that would be a real downer of a story.
- wahsd 11y agoMy guess, efflorescence formations.
- bencollier49 11y agoAbsolutely, this looks exactly like the stuff that grows out of the walls in our local hospital.
- jhou2 11y agoyeah, that was my initial hunch too.
- bmcooley 11y agoI'm taking a class with Jack Farmer right now on Astrobiology. I can't wait to talk with him about this!
- nsajko 11y agoFor those without intuition on Fahrenheit degrees; (-13,113)°F = (-25,45)°C.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- static_noise 11y agoYou might want to use a dot for those non-Germans over here.
- vectorjohn 11y agoIt's a temperature range. You see there four integers.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Rexxar 11y agoIndeed, I think brackets would be more explicit than parenthesis.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- vmarsy 11y agoI think dash would be more intuitive to represent a range here. Your comment about Germans intrigued me so I googled it. If you were referring to a comma as a digit separator, there's about 70 countries that use the comma as a decimal point: most of Europe, Africa, and South America, many more than just Germans :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark#Countries_using_Arabic_numerals_with_decimal_comma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark#Countries_using...
- mattmanser 11y agoI thought most of Europe used commas. They do in Holland.
- maxander 11y ago> “micro-digitate silica protrusions” Or in Thing Explainer-speak, "little rock fingers that stick out." Its interesting that it was Spirit that detected this- big new discoveries are still coming up after driving the same robot around on the planet for years! Humanity has just barely scratched the surface (as it were) of understanding Mars.
- jldugger 11y agoOf course, weather on earth can make complex structures as well from non-organic materials: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_rose_%28crystal%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_rose_%28crystal%29