Intraterrestrials: Mars Life May Hide Deep Below 79
astroengine writes "Almost every month we see news dispatches from the Mars where the nuclear-powered rover Curiosity finds water-bearing minerals in rocks and other circumstantial clues that the Red Planet could have once supported life. But in terms of finding direct evidence of past or present Martians, the rover barely scratches the surface, says geochemist Jan Amend of the University of Southern California. Using Earth life as an example, some species of microbes live miles below the surface, without sunlight or oxygen, metabolizing chemicals that are the result of radioactive decay. Most intriguing of all is the microbe Desulforudis Audaxviator that dwells nearly two miles down, a life form that would feel right at home inside Mars' crust. 'This organism has had to figure out everything on its own,' says Amend, 'it splits water into hydrogen and oxygen for metabolism.' Amend hopes to drop probes deep underground in some of the world's most inhospitable locations over the next few years, creating a possible analog for future Mars subsurface studies."
"intraterrestrial" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This would be the least interesting Martian lif (Score:5, Insightful)
Life happened when Earth was in general far far less comfy to life than it is now. Mars likely had similar conditions very early on, but for a number of reasons (lower gravity, lack of magnetic field), it lost the thick atmosphere that would have made liquid water possible for extended periods of time on its surface. The hypothesis is that Mars may have evolved a biosphere during that period when it possessed a dense atmosphere and liquid water. In that case, even after most of the atmosphere disappeared, some portion of the biosphere that had adapted to living deep underground would have continued on even after the surface of the planet had been rendered completely uninhabitable.
And, of course, we do not know for certain that the entire surface is uninhabitable. We have a damned small sample size, and have landed no probes in places like Valles Marineris, where the atmosphere is considerably denser and liquid water may last longer (we have observed fog there). If I was looking for life closer to the surface, I'd bee doing it in the deepest points of Valles Marineris.
Re:Jesus Christ (Score:4, Insightful)
It's called investing in the future. I'm sure that building all those aqueducts in various Roman provinces cost the Republic, and later the Empire, vast amounts of coin that if it could not be directly gained, had to be borrowed. The plus side was prosperous cities that were major economic generators. This idea that the only thing any state should worry about is the nebulous creature known as "fiscal responsibility" is pretty strange, first of all because the term has real meaning. Borrowing money to build infrastructure like highways will certainly throw major liabilities on a government's balance sheet, but no one seriously says that the only measure of fiscal responsibility should be liabilities.
Look at this way. At some point in the next century or two, the major industrial powers will likely begin some sort of race for solar system resources. But that race will not be built out of nothing. It will be built out of a whole series of major investments, many (if not most) by governments. Each one of the stepping-stone advances may seem on paper at that moment to be an utter waste of time and money, but at the end of the day, being in that race is only made possible by having made those other investments along the way.
If the US wishes to sit it out, that's fine. In short and medium terms, it will be a net gain, and give some temporary economic advantage over the Europeans, the Chinese and the Japanese (and, pretty soon, Brazil, I'll wager). But at some point, when they've made advances far in advance of the Apollo program, the US will have to rebuild what it gave up in the name "fiscal responsibility", and it may find that that is a lot easier said than done.