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Is there any chance they could be plants? relying on underground water reserves and appearing every spring to throw around some pollen before slinking back into
by brador 14y ago
Is there any chance they could be plants? relying on underground water reserves and appearing every spring to throw around some pollen before slinking back into the cool darkness.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoI'm not a xenobiologist so I couldn't quantify the relative chance of them being 'plants'. But this is the kind of stuff we can speculate on. First, we'll need to be a bit loose with our definitions since 'plant' means a very specific kind of thing. So if we define a 'plant' as a chemical process which creates structure in the presence of certain chemicals such that a transformative chemical reaction is enabled whereby energy in the form of sunlight or heat is used to build additional structure. Then we can see if there is a chemical mix that would have this characteristic output. It is critical to note though that this would also classify a stalactite as a 'plant' which converts calcium carbonate into 'structure' (in this case rock) by exploiting a transfer agent (water). Interesting questions would be "Why vanish in the winter?" what ever hypothesis we come up with has to include the observed effect and behaviors. This is my biggest issue with my 'frozen geyser' hypothesis, it seems like they would continue to exist during winter. Finding better imagery from HiRise would be good too, in particular it would be useful to know if these were vertical structures or not. that would show up as shadows. Lots of fun to think about.
- brador 14y agoWhy not literally a plant? Like leafy, relies on water, comes from a small seed, reproduces via pollen/wind, based on a cell structure. We have plants in the desert here on Earth that blossom once every X years or decades. Is there a reason such a "plant" could not have survived the harsh later years of mars post surface water? Bonus idea: if these are plants relying on ground water, their location would give away the position of said ground water. They could be mapped and their spacial density used to find source pools for humans to tap.
- nollidge 14y agoHow would those plants have gotten onto the surface Mars?
- brador 14y agoHow did they get here?
- jlgreco 14y agoIf we ever confirm life on Mars (or anywhere else for that matter), I really hope we don't find that it shares a common ancestor with life on Earth. Panspermia is cool, but two instances of abiogenesis in a single solar system? That is huge. Here's to hoping it's life, but not as we know it.
- its_so_on 14y ago"I really hope we don't find that it shares a common ancestor with life on Earth". Could you give a definition here (of 'common ancestor'), please? I don't have an angle here, I'm just trying to understand your statement better. - tagged #rational
- jlgreco 14y ago@its_so_on: >"I really hope we don't find that it shares a common ancestor with life on Earth". Could you give a definition here, please? I cannot respond to you directly, but sure. When I say I hope there is not a "common ancestor" I mean that I hope life on Earth and life anywhere else we may discover it do not have "common descent" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent). That is strongly believed to be the case with all life we have encountered so far. This is also a pretty good wikipedia page about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_ancestor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_ancestor
- nollidge 14y agoThey evolved. For plants to be on Mars, either A) the immeasurably chaotic process of evolution yielded carbon-based, cellular, stationary, metabolizing, photosynthetic, reproductive things on two planets with vastly different geological and climatic histories, or B) Earth-borne plant material, which has evolved to the point that it can only produce a viable organism in certain rather specific environmental niches on its home planet, has somehow reached a foreign planet and developed into a more-or-less thriving colony of vegetation upon it. Neither of those seems terribly likely.
- keenerd 14y ago> Interesting questions would be "Why vanish in the winter?" Simplest answer would be some seasonal event (either a CO2 snow or annual dust storm) covers the markings.
- k-mcgrady 14y agoThat was my first thought too but the speed at which they appear makes it seem unlikely (I know very little about this stuff though).