Mars Water

Why Jay-water just means that there was probably life on Mars and the end of bible based religion on this planet-at least most of it-gosh what is the big deal-why so gosh darn happy?

Because, think of how exciting a game of hide-and-seek can be now.

There is no reason for any hard core creationist to deny life may or may have at one point exist(ed) on Mars. *don't make me get all religious on your ass!*

I ain't goin' there unless they have chocolate soy milk, though. Water I can get here. The thing that worries me is a serious lack of breathable atmosphere, no ozone layer to keep the radiation out of the water, and not ONE SINGLE Starbucks anywhere (yet).

Religion

Nowhere in the Bible does it say there is no life on other planets. It doesn't even say there's no intelligent life elsewhere. In fact, God says he created the worlds. Plural.

Though I wouldn't get my hopes up about water on Mars meaning there is or was life on Mars. Water is one of the most common things in the solar system. Look how much we have on earth, and nearly all of it came from comets. If comets deposited so much water here, they had to leave water on Mars, as well, and on every other planet with an atmosphere capable of holding in water.

This was always the question. Of course there has been water on mars. It got there teh same way it got here. But did it all evaporate into space, or is the thin Martian atmosphere capable of containing some of it for long periods of time?

Right now, water on Mars just means there's water on Mars. It takes a lot more than water to make life, else the solar system would be neck deep in life.

The best bet for life on Mars is that some form of microbial life once existed there, and might have left microscopic fossil remains somewhere. Still a considerable long-shot, IMO. The most exciting findings to me are the now-undeniable evidence of liquid water flowage on the Martian surface, all over the place, in fact, and at some parts of the distant past, in large quantities, with deposits of sedimentary rocks likely left behind.

caw

See, I didn't read the story and go "Golly! There's life on mars," because I don't buy into the "need water to need life" theory. It's the most narrow-minded thing scientists go after. Honestly, you need water for earth-type life. Who says there isn't a strange flagella creature that's living off of moon dust? There are things stranger at the bottom of our ocean, and they're still earth-based life.

I look at it and go "Cool, colonization attempt time."

Although I think all colonists should have to read Ray Bradbury before they go. And Kim Stanley Robinson.

That means I can go! WooHoo!

PeeDee said:

See, I didn't read the story and go "Golly! There's life on mars," because I don't buy into the "need water to need life" theory. It's the most narrow-minded thing scientists go after. Honestly, you need water for earth-type life. Who says there isn't a strange flagella creature that's living off of moon dust? There are things stranger at the bottom of our ocean, and they're still earth-based life.

I look at it and go "Cool, colonization attempt time."

Although I think all colonists should have to read Ray Bradbury before they go. And Kim Stanley Robinson.

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THAT gets me every time ! They keep going on about water being a sure sign of life - but honestly that only pertains to life as WE know it. If they're thinking "life" in wide, who-knows-what's-out-there terms, then they need to shake off that antiquated notion that water (liquid or otherwise) is needed for "life" to be found.

*grumbling pet-peeve rant over*

It's why I never got very excited or interested when they talked about "the search for life...OUT THERE..!"

You're looking for more people out there. More human beings. The rules that define whether or not something is alive may not even APPLY.

There's still that little "solar radiation" issue. Not to mention a bit of a Hot/Cold thing Mars has goin' on. Oh, and the air's not so great there.


And no Starbucks yet.

Jaycinth said:

I am excited because my son is studying to be an Aerospace Engineer. And ever since he was three, he has wanted to live on Mars.

His whole career choice is based on him hoping there will be an opening for some kind of trained contractor...to help build a colony. He doesn't care is he has to be a janitor, as long as he can go to Mars.

Water on Mars opens the way for long term exploration. I mean why spend a year or more in a round trip if you can only stay there a week?

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Why a round trip? A Mars mission would be much cheaper if it were made one way. Even if you send regular "care packages" of food and whatnot indefinitely, it could still be cheaper than a round trip by humans. A much smaller ship could be sent back with air, rock and soil samples for full analysis on Earth.

Jaycinth said:

End of 'Bible Based Religion'? How so davids? I was raised Catholic, and proof of life on Mars prior to life on Earth wouldn't be a stone in 'our' sieve.

Oh, well maybe for the hard core creationists....but they'd deny there was a Mars landing....if they had to.

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No one had to deny the Moon landing... but some people did.

Jaycinth said:

Anyway..it is exciting to think that there could be a viable Martian Colony before I'm 60.

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I hesitate to ask, but ... (checking profile) I was going to ask your age, but you were 60 back when I was about 11, and watching the first Moon landing! (it was on TV, so it MUST be true!)
Taking into account politics and administration change, I'm guessing a human landing on Mars is about 20 to 30 years away. Heck, by then there's a good chance it will be done by private enterprise.

Ah, but the idea of terraforming Mars is just so totally cool. I read all of Robinson's Mars series (could have done without the smut, mind you), and Spin and half the Mars books out there. I don't know why, but that is one of the ideas in science fiction that excites me the most, maybe because I see it as being plausible some day in the not so very far distant future.

I don't see how life on Mars could have any effect on any sane Religion.

Sex starved space sluts would be a lot more exciting than fungus as well.

I think it's exciting, but I sure hope private enterprise gets into the act, because if we have to rely on NASA to get a colony there, we're going to be old and dead before they do anything.

The only way we'll get there quickly is if Russia or China starts heading there. Thus far, a race and someone going "Nyah nyah" have been the only things that get us up and out quickly.

PeeDee said:

I think it's exciting

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Sex starved space sluts or fungus?

Jaycinth said:

Oh...and the hot/cold/radiation thing can be taken care of with pressurized domes....perhaps tucked part way into a cave.

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They're there I tell ya! Just look at that sentence, it's filled with sexual innuendo. It's a sign!

Wow, how'd you guys go from water to "colonies in 20 years"? I won't be holding my breath until we can get real estate up on at least the moon. NASA and Lockheed have an ambitious plan going with the one thing Bush has done that I can remotely agree with. And even then, the weakest part of the plan isn't the resources available or the trip, but the astronauts:

http://discovermagazine.com/2001/may/cover

And that's only getting there. There's not exactly a Craigslist Mars to find new roommates if the astronauts find their current ones are jerks.

RumpleTumbler said:

Sex starved space sluts or fungus?

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A note: those two may unfortunately go together... but there's probably a shot for that.

From a scientific perspective, there's a lot of smart, credible people on both sides of the water issue. Personally, the most exciting thing for me in relation to Mars is that the old "false positive" readings on the Viking LR experiment have been rethought – they might just be the real thing.

From a writing perspective, where we are now is fantastic... if you've got a story you can dash off in short order. With the unknowns on the issue, anything is possible – and if you do homework, either direction can be believable.

PeeDee said:

See, I didn't read the story and go "Golly! There's life on mars," because I don't buy into the "need water to need life" theory. It's the most narrow-minded thing scientists go after. Honestly, you need water for earth-type life. Who says there isn't a strange flagella creature that's living off of moon dust? There are things stranger at the bottom of our ocean, and they're still earth-based life.

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Yeah, but . . . they, ah, still use water as the central catalytic medium for biochemical reactions. Even anaerobes, which do not use molecular oxygen in their life-reactions, depend on the existence of liquid water for chemical exchange.

The realistic problem with anything other than carbon-chemistry organics dependent on liquid water is that all the elements involved are among the most abundant in the entire universe (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen), AND they function together in a temperature/pressure regime that permits rapid chemical reactivity. Further, these main elemental constituents also readily combine in complex ways with other common elements, iron, sulfur, phosphorus, calcium, sodium. These combinations of elements and conditions ought to be widespread in the universe, so there's no reason to need to postulate some exotically different scenario in which something recognizable as living could develop.


caw

I know the creatures on the bottom of the ocean still use water and everything in it for their biochemical processes. My point was more, they aren't allowing enough for the abstract when they're looking for life. They're thinking too much in terms of how things work on earth.

which isn't really a failing, since that's our starting point anyway. It's just that things in the universe can be a form of life which is wildly different from anything that exists, or could exist, on earth.

Perhaps, but the main point I was trying to make is that the biochemical system we know, in its gross aspects (carbon-hydrogen-oxygen based), is by far the one we are most likely to encounter elsewhere, because its major constituents are supremely abundant and interact chemically within favorable and probably also common temperature/pressure regimes. We are made of this stuff precisely because it constitutes the common stuff of our planet. In particular, liquid water, owing to the peculiar nature of the water molecule, is the supreme solvent/catalyst, permitting complex and rapid chemical reactions in a way that no other common substance is known to do. That's not an accident or a coincidence. It only makes good sense to look for places in which the temperature/pressure regimes would be favorable to carbon-based life, because the carbon-hydrogen-oxygen triumvirate will almost always be there.

As another hint of something to look for: silica in pure form. Frank Herbert didn't have it far wrong in his invention of the desert planet Arrakis, covered by its sand ocean. Silica (SiO2), while not of itself organic in origin, is present in abundance on our planet's surface in the form of widespread beds of sand in deserts, beaches, dunes. It is winnowed from primordial rock through weathering processes that require liquid water, and are a signal both of the presence of water in the liquid state and of an active geological planetary surface. The "sands" of Mars, for instance, aren't silica; they are primarily iron oxides. Mars is not known to have an active planetary crust in the manner the earth does, where both mineral matter and water are recycled many many times, and get to interact chemically to sort and winnow and concentrate various materials. What silica Mars has (and it undoubedly has a lot of silicon and oxygen) is almost exclusively locked up in more complex silicate minerals typical of primordial igneous rocks.

If you can find a place with lots of silicon dioxide exposed at the surface, you almost certainly have a place which has, or had, a long period of atmospheric weathering involving lots of liquid water. In other words, the kind of place to look for carbon-based living things.

caw