Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

More Evidence for Early Oceans on Mars

Posted by Zonk on Sat Oct 28, 2006 12:35 AM
from the wet-but-no-cigar dept.
Mars Space Science
DestroyAllZombies writes "More news about Mars. The good news: New Scientist reports that more analysis of Rover data supports the claims for widespread oceans in Mars' distant past. The bad news, from the article: 'An ocean of water once wrapped around Mars, suggests the discovery of soil chemicals by NASA's rovers. But the same chemicals also indicate that life was not widespread on the planet at the time the ocean was present.'"
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Mars Rover Reaches Victoria Crater 187 comments
gevmage writes, "CNN reports that the 'Opportunity' rover on Mars has reached the Victoria crater. The rovers Spirit and Opportunity arrived on Mars three years ago with planned mission lifetime of 90 days. The rover Spirit is wounded, having only 5 of 6 wheels functioning, and so it's moving quite slowly. However, Opportunity is still going strong and has been trucking towards the massive crater Victoria for almost the past year. Scientists have been hoping that Opportunity would get there so they can have a look at geologically older areas — and it's finally made it!" See the NASA press release for links to photos of the Victoria crater.
[+] Oceans Empty By 2048? 589 comments
F34nor writes to mention a CBS news article about the depopulation of ocean species. According to a study by a scientist in Halifax, Nova Scotia and assisted by research from all around the world, the world's oceans will be emptied of large lifeforms by 2048. From the article: "Already, 29% of edible fish and seafood species have declined by 90% — a drop that means the collapse of these fisheries. But the issue isn't just having seafood on our plates. Ocean species filter toxins from the water. They protect shorelines. And they reduce the risks of algae blooms such as the red tide. 'A large and increasing proportion of our population lives close to the coast; thus the loss of services such as flood control and waste detoxification can have disastrous consequences,' Worm and colleagues say."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

More Evidence for Early Oceans on Mars 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Bad news? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why is it bad news to learn that there was never any life on Mars? Wouldn't it be much worse news to learn that life was common there and was utterly wiped out?

    I think most people would agree that a planet-wide extinction of all life would qualify as 'bad news'.
    • Why not neutral news?
      What do I care if a whole army of amoeba got pwned by massive climate change?

      Oh... wait.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Yvanhoe (564877)
      I think the crowd here wants to live in a SF universe. I for one, would like to see a contact with an alien civilization in my lifetime, even if I think it is improbable. A Big Question in science is : Is the apparition of life on Earth a common event in the Universe or is it a unique and almost impossible event ?

      Having proofs of ancient life on Mars would have put us a step nearer the alien contact. Of course the crowd here is mostly optimistic about aliens intentions :-)
      • Having proofs of ancient life on Mars would have put us a step nearer the alien contact.

        Only if it could be shown that this life had a different origin from that on Earth.
      • "A Big Question in science is : Is the apparition of life on Earth a common event in the Universe or is it a unique and almost impossible event? "

        Is that really such a question? Given that there are a bazillion (heh, scientific, I know) planets out there, there's a huge number of Earthlikne planets as well, making it likely that there is something similar elsewhere life-wise. Also, once we look past our "Star Trek" prejudices, there's the likelihood of even more different types of life in a variety of ot
          • "The Star Trek universe is actually filled with non-humanoid life; it's just that humans tend to make contact with humanoid life and not interact much with any other life forms."

            I thought of mentioning that, but figured I'd leave it at the more superficial level of Trek, rather than deep Trekkiedom. You know, where the public knows "Star Trek" as a show where starships travel around the galaxy and interact for the most part with aliens that are nothing other than humans with forehead bumps.

            We do only
    • You know that life is extinct on Mars? That would mean that you are the only person on this planet who knows that. The answer is that we do not know if Life does or does not exists on Mars. In fact, I think that we will never know until we go there. The problem is that somebody develops a test and once it is positive, another person will come up with a reason why it is inorganic in nature. That makes us back to square one. The issue is that it costs a lot of money to send up a multi-test machine AND will ha
      • I'm pretty sure there are a few microbes in spore form on Mars: the first few missions we weren't too careful about not contaminating our probes, and so there have been stow-away bacteria on mars (from Earth). I doubt that life has thrived, given the harsh conditions. In fact, they will almost certainly eventually die out and become extinct unless we send more or go down there and change the environment.

      • If hope that life existed on Mars is the major reason for your research, you aren't being a scientist.

        Scientists are human and are allowed to have motivations. They shouldn't let it bias their work, of course, but still. If hope for finding something interesting and exciting got them into science, and keeps them at it, that's fine.
        Also, who restricted this to scientists? You don't have to be a scientist to be interested in whether there had been life on mars or not.
        I think the way "bad" is used in

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ultranova (717540)

        Neither is good news or bad news. Science exists to quantify and explain, not to hope for something. If hope that life existed on Mars is the major reason for your research, you aren't being a scientist. You are being a cheerleader.

        Wrong. Anyone who uses scientific method in his research is a scientist. It doesn't matter if he's motivated by dreams of going Kirk with alien females, or gets his kicks from abstract knowledge; purity of motive is irrelevant. The only requirement is the application of scien

  • Water on earth tends to get "recycled" constantly: sea water evaporates makes clouds which make rain which eventually gets into rivers which go back out to the ocean etc. If Mars was covered with water, where did this water go?

    • Re:If the water was there, where did it go? (Score:4, Informative)

      by THE anonymus coward (92468) on Saturday October 28 2006, @12:52AM (#16619918) Homepage
      Mars doesn't have the same gravity that the Earth does, nor does it have a magnetic field to stop incoming solar wind. The water could have evaporated, and since it is a lighter element (than CO2, which is most of Mars' atmosphere) it could have just blown away.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Firehed (942385)
        Chances are that if Mars is getting a full blast of solar wind, it wouldn't have been too suitable for life anyways.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by aussie_a (778472)
            This is a function of having a molten core, if there is moving metal, there is a magnetic field
            Couldn't that weak field be the residual of one dissapearing or the beginnings of one forming around Mars as a result of a Geomagnetic reversal? Is there definite proof that Mars doesn't have a molten core? Or are we assuming because it has no field?
      • The water could have evaporated, and since it is a lighter element.
        Water is a lighter element than earth, yes, but not fire or air. I would expect those to have escaped first.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Olix (812847)
          What about Milla Jovovich? She is probably heavier than water - does than mean she is still on Mars?
      • If there once were large pools of water on Mars, it's not the question why did it go, but much more one of why did it even form/exist ?

        Was there an atmosphere once ?
      • So water is an element now ?

      • Mars doesn't have the same gravity that the Earth does, nor does it have a magnetic field to stop incoming solar wind. The water could have evaporated, and since it is a lighter element (than CO2, which is most of Mars' atmosphere) it could have just blown away.

        So does that mean Earth is just loosing H2O more slowly than did Mars? Comforting, sort of.

        But I get a kick out of astro-science. We know so little about the universe it isn't funny. We assume the universe is growing, while it may be that we are

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Cadallin (863437)
      Any number of places. A lot of it might be trapped as ice or hydrate crystals underground. At least some of it is frozen at the north and south poles. And as others have noted, Mars has significantly lower gravity than earth (approximately 1/3 gee acceleration at the surface), which significantly impedes its ability to hold an atmosphere (which holds water), and additionally lacks a magnetosphere (through not being geologically active, a metallic core surrounded by liquid layers is necessary for one) whi

  • That doesn't make any sense. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mikachu (972457) <mikazuchi@@@gmail...com> on Saturday October 28 2006, @01:09AM (#16619992) Homepage

    But the same chemicals also indicate that life was not widespread on the planet at the time the ocean was present.

    Whoa whoa whoa... how is that bad news? We're not looking for widespread life, we're looking for life. In general. Any. At all. That sentence implies that there was life, just it wasn't widespread. I think that should have been reworded.

    But disregarding that, just because there was a lot of phosphorus in the water doesn't mean that life couldn't exist there. It just means life identical to the structure of life on earth couldn't exist there. Who's to say that life has to be built just the way it is on earth?
    • They're stacking assumption on assumption.

      I hope we don't find life on Mars, and that it never existed. Why? Because there will be one less argument (however frail) against terraforming the place.

      • While terraforming is cool, there may be severe health risks with finding unexpected life forms [imdb.com].

        But, the cold? Will, a green house effect be enough to heat it? Are there any published estimates of timings and what effects may be had?

        (BTW, who would like to have near Antarctic weather [coolantarctica.com]. Yes. It's cool, but...)

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by timmarhy (659436)
          actually i was reading a post by a pathologist a while ago concerning the fear of alien bacteria, and it's something of a misconception. it's actually very very likely that our bodies will be deadly to any alien life. example. can humans survive on mars unaided? no? so it means anything thats suited to the conditions on mars will die if exposed to our own viable conditions. interesting stuff i never thought it but it's quite obvious when you think it through.
        • (BTW, who would like to have near Antarctic weather. Yes. It's cool, but...)
          Sounds like a perfect place for penguins...
          </badjoke>

    • But disregarding that, just because there was a lot of phosphorus in the water doesn't mean that life couldn't exist there. It just means life identical to the structure of life on earth couldn't exist there. Who's to say that life has to be built just the way it is on earth?

      Physics and chemistry says there is only a strictly limited series of chemical reactions that can drive life - and only a strictly limited series of enviroments where it can arise. (Yes, I know about the various extremeophiles here on

      • Physics and chemistry say no such thing. Biology used to say things like that, then started to find out how wrong it was. Nobody knows which extremophiles are colonists and which ones are the originals who left to colonize other places, like the surface.

        Physics and chemistry point out some things that probably won't work, and a few possibilities for others that could. There's a lot around the outside that we simply won't know about until we find it though.

        We simply look for what we know because that's wh

        • Physics and chemistry say no such thing.

          Um... yes, they do. You won't for example find a life form based on a Helium/Uranium reaction. Or any one of thousands of of other possible reactions. (For example it's impossible to base life around endothermic reactions - there has to be some exothermic reactions.)

          Biology used to say things like that, then started to find out how wrong it was. Nobody knows which extremophiles are colonists and which ones are the originals who left to colonize ot

          • Please. We don't even know that the fuck life even is, every year they come out with a new god damn definition. And this definition as such is based fully on life we've seen on earth. Who's to say that there can't be sentient "ghost" beings that are made out of a carbon/oxygen combination? Just because I can't easy recognize the fact that they are living doesn't mean they aren't. It just means we don't know what we're really even looking for.
            • Ah yes - another handwaver who thinks that claiming virtually anything not proven impossible is possible. He even thinks it makes him look smart - when the actual effect is quite the opposite.
          • You are somewhat correct, physics and chemistry suggest that certain reactions are more likely to form life than others. That still leaves a lot of others that might, only a subset of which are used by life as we know it. That leaves a bunch of others that could be used by life-as-we-don't-know-it. While your original post didn't explicitly say it, in context you were certainly implying that chemistry and physics pretty much rule out anything but life as we know it. You know we don't even have a really
  • Reading the mars trillogy right now, and the whole series is facinating.

    Is there eny evidence of underground aquifiers like in the books?
    • The thinking is that there probably *were* aquifers. Whether or not there still are is the current question du jour.

      There is a story about the possible causes of martian channels over at Space.Com [space.com] that speaks to this.
  • ...is what they said in the article:
    "To a first order approximation, you couldn't have had a biosphere that was anything like the one on Earth," Greenwood says.

    Maybe there was life that created phosphorus instead of converting it, that's what they are saying.

    To the submitter: RTFA
    • From what? Nuclear reactions? The very point is that they think that the amounts found here are consistent with inorganic extraction from minerals. You can of course stipulate that the conditions that made those reactions favorable were created by life, but there is nothing that indicates that. If there was life with a different chemistry, the current results make it just as likely that this form of life was indifferent to phosporus.

  • Arrrr!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by krell (896769) on Saturday October 28 2006, @05:47AM (#16621034) Journal
    And where there be oceans, there be pirates. And where there be pirates, there be buried treasure! Hoist up the sails, me hearties, and set course to Marrrrs!
  • BUT, there is no way we are going to find intelligent life in this galaxy, and life itself is going to be rare.

    To understand why, consider the galaxy is only about 100,000 light years across. Super intelligent species are super intelligent because they crossed biological distances, and the same forces will cause them to cross galactic distances and explore.

    some may say 100K light years is so large as to be impossible to explore. But consider this idea. What these civilizations will do is create cell size
    • I believe in the next 10,000 years exploring the galaxy will be possible after the fashion I suggest above, and it will take about 500K - 1M years to do it.

      You suggest human life will still exist in the 22nd century? Talking about an optimist point of view...

    • You are arguing for the Fermi Paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox [wikipedia.org]
      I find it fairly convincing but many people don't.

      I think the most plausible explanation is that simple life (RNA or equivalent) may be common, but complex life (DNA or equivalent) is very rare. Considering all the things we don't know, though, any particular explanation at this point is probably wrong.
  • Why is this "good news" or "bad news"? It is simply (evidence of) facts. Facts are what they are - there is no "good" or "bad" about them.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.