5 ms·

Per the Great Filter[0], this is really bad news, right? [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

azernik 8y ago
No, whatever happened on Mars has to do with issues of planetary geology and natural climate change that aren't issues for us. i.e. it's a term in the Fermi equation that doesn't apply to us anymore.
- brainpool 8y ago
  What happens on Mars stays on Mars
- henryaj 8y ago
  Sure, but a large body of water makes finding life much more likely. And if we find life on our doorstep, we ought to reduce our estimates of how unlikely abiogenesis is – suggesting the Great Filter is ahead of us, not behind us.
  - 3rdAccount 8y ago
    Still not sure how many planets can form life. We think you need water, certain gases, a stable temperature, magnetosphere to block solar radiation, planet like Jupiter to absorb asteroid like impacts...etc. I'm not sure if Mars ever had all that.
    - vinniejames 8y ago
      That predicate falsey assumes "life" can only survive in earth like conditions
      - 3rdAccount 8y ago
        Nope. I said we "think". So far we have only one data point. No idea if right or wrong :).
aggie 8y ago
Evidence of a second occurrence of abiogenesis would be bad news in that it would significantly lower the probability that abiogenesis is the Great Filter, though it wouldn't rule out a Filter somewhere between abiogenesis and human-level civilization. But this discovery alone doesn't imply much, as we already know the presence of liquid water isn't that rare. We need to examine it first.
tbabb 8y ago
Everything about the Drake Equation, the Great Filter, and the Fermi "paradox" strike me as extremely sloppy logic, from which nothing but unfounded conclusions can be drawn. We have essentially zero data on the prevalence of life in the universe. There is no "absence of life" to explain, because we don't actually know whether life is absent. We more or less completely lack the scientific capability to detect extrasolar life entirely, and have only limited data about life within the solar system-- we have not checked deep in Mars' crust, which will be a comfortable 72F at some depth (and has a good probability of being wet there, too); nor have we checked the oceans of Europa or Enceladus; nor have we checked the methane seas of Titan. We have no datapoints. There is nothing to extrapolate. There is nothing to say. We don't know anything. Anything but the null hypothesis here is bad science. I also don't think the absence of life on Mars (if it is indeed absent of life, and there are no microbes in deep aquifers) would present trouble, because the surface of Mars is uninhabitable even by Earth standards-- it is far worse than even the most hostile parts of Earth, which are nearly devoid of life despite there being about 4.5 billion years for complex life to evolve into those niches, with the leg-up of a more hospitable start. If there were forests at the top of Everest, I might have an easier time wondering why the bone-dry, -200F, 0.006 atm surface of Mars appears sterile, but given where life has a hard time reaching here on Earth, really no one should be surprised at all.
- xelxebar 8y ago
  To my mind, the Fermi Paradox isn't so much about explaining an absence of life. It's the simple observation that, if life were abundant in the universe, the naïve expectation is that we'd see it everywhere, but we don't, so what gives? Intuitively, I see it like a bunch of homemade pickles. Say we have 100 jars of homemade pickles but are not sure whether they actually picked nicely or spoiled. If we try a jar and it's bad, we'd probably expect that a lot of the jars have gone bad. That said, the anthropic principle complicates this intuition. Our sun isn't a random star that happens to harbor life; since we're sapiently asking this question, it's guaranteed to harbor life. It's almost as if someome tested our pickle jars for us and then just told us that at least one of them was spoiled. In this case, "what is the likely number of bad pickle jars?" Anyway, the discussion gets even more nuanced and interesting once we start thinking about the likely futures of human civilization, and factoring that into the mix, but I'll stop here.

azernik 8y ago

No, whatever happened on Mars has to do with issues of planetary geology and natural climate change that aren't issues for us. i.e. it's a term in the Fermi equation that doesn't apply to us anymore.

brainpool 8y ago
What happens on Mars stays on Mars
henryaj 8y ago
Sure, but a large body of water makes finding life much more likely. And if we find life on our doorstep, we ought to reduce our estimates of how unlikely abiogenesis is – suggesting the Great Filter is ahead of us, not behind us.
- 3rdAccount 8y ago
  Still not sure how many planets can form life. We think you need water, certain gases, a stable temperature, magnetosphere to block solar radiation, planet like Jupiter to absorb asteroid like impacts...etc. I'm not sure if Mars ever had all that.
  - vinniejames 8y ago
    That predicate falsey assumes "life" can only survive in earth like conditions
    - 3rdAccount 8y ago
      Nope. I said we "think". So far we have only one data point. No idea if right or wrong :).

aggie 8y ago

Evidence of a second occurrence of abiogenesis would be bad news in that it would significantly lower the probability that abiogenesis is the Great Filter, though it wouldn't rule out a Filter somewhere between abiogenesis and human-level civilization. But this discovery alone doesn't imply much, as we already know the presence of liquid water isn't that rare. We need to examine it first.

tbabb 8y ago

Everything about the Drake Equation, the Great Filter, and the Fermi "paradox" strike me as extremely sloppy logic, from which nothing but unfounded conclusions can be drawn. We have essentially zero data on the prevalence of life in the universe. There is no "absence of life" to explain, because we don't actually know whether life is absent. We more or less completely lack the scientific capability to detect extrasolar life entirely, and have only limited data about life within the solar system-- we have not checked deep in Mars' crust, which will be a comfortable 72F at some depth (and has a good probability of being wet there, too); nor have we checked the oceans of Europa or Enceladus; nor have we checked the methane seas of Titan. We have no datapoints. There is nothing to extrapolate. There is nothing to say. We don't know anything. Anything but the null hypothesis here is bad science. I also don't think the absence of life on Mars (if it is indeed absent of life, and there are no microbes in deep aquifers) would present trouble, because the surface of Mars is uninhabitable even by Earth standards-- it is far worse than even the most hostile parts of Earth, which are nearly devoid of life despite there being about 4.5 billion years for complex life to evolve into those niches, with the leg-up of a more hospitable start. If there were forests at the top of Everest, I might have an easier time wondering why the bone-dry, -200F, 0.006 atm surface of Mars appears sterile, but given where life has a hard time reaching here on Earth, really no one should be surprised at all.

xelxebar 8y ago
To my mind, the Fermi Paradox isn't so much about explaining an absence of life. It's the simple observation that, if life were abundant in the universe, the naïve expectation is that we'd see it everywhere, but we don't, so what gives? Intuitively, I see it like a bunch of homemade pickles. Say we have 100 jars of homemade pickles but are not sure whether they actually picked nicely or spoiled. If we try a jar and it's bad, we'd probably expect that a lot of the jars have gone bad. That said, the anthropic principle complicates this intuition. Our sun isn't a random star that happens to harbor life; since we're sapiently asking this question, it's guaranteed to harbor life. It's almost as if someome tested our pickle jars for us and then just told us that at least one of them was spoiled. In this case, "what is the likely number of bad pickle jars?" Anyway, the discussion gets even more nuanced and interesting once we start thinking about the likely futures of human civilization, and factoring that into the mix, but I'll stop here.