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Space Science

Life on Pluto? 315

Posted by chrisd from the life-on-earth-to-follow dept.
EccentricAnomaly writes "The BBC is reporting that new models of icy moons in the outer solar system predict that oceans (as in liquid water oceans) may be much more common than previously thought. Even Pluto and Neptune's moon Triton now appear to be good candidates for a liquid ocean under their ice. This is exciting because life has been found on Earth in environments similar to these icy oceans at Antarctica's Lake Vostok."
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Life on Pluto? More

Life on Pluto?

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  • Life (Score:2, Interesting)

    by l810c ( 551591 )
    I think once we finally get to one of these places we'll find that life thrives Everywhere.
    • You've got anything to back it? We got to the moon, didn't find any life there. Why would we necessarily have any better luck elsewhere (not that I wouldn't like and hope for it, mind you)?

      • Re:Life (Score:3, Informative)

        by l810c ( 551591 )
        We got to the moon, didn't find any life there.

        Every place on earth that certain conditions exist, there is life. The moon is sterile and does not have these conditions. We are finding more and more places that harbor life. Thermal vents in the ocean that are greater than 212F. I watched a PBS special tonight that explained how several of the caves near Carlsbad cavern where created by sulfuric acid which was the by product of microbes that ate oil. It's going to be interesting to see what's in the bottom of the lake in Antartica.

        Whether your into Creation, Spontaneous Evolution or Seeding there are places on these moons for life to live and prosper.

        • Well, saying that there are places on these moons for life to live and prosper is a far cry from your earlier claim that life is Everywhere where we would go. Just pointing it out.


      • You've got anything to back it? We got to the moon, didn't find any life there. Why would we necessarily have any better luck elsewhere (not that I wouldn't like and hope for it, mind you)?

        Well, arent you abit hypercritical? I asuem the author you answer to means: everywhere whre live is thinkable will be live.

        Further: no one searched on moon for live. I could imagine that very simple live forms could live in the ice at the polar craters. For that ice we have evidence.

        angel'o'sphere

    • Re:Life (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ScottForbes ( 528679 )
      I think once we finally get to one of these places we'll find that life thrives Everywhere.
      For values of "life" equal to "protozoans," quite probably. There are single-celled creatures on Earth whose metabolisms are so exotic that they might as well be from other planets.

      Think we could send a few microbes to Pluto with a tiny little American flag?

    • Re:Life (Score:5, Funny)

      by Elbereth ( 58257 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @01:12AM (#4371881) Journal
      Yeah, just wait until we wake up one of the Elder Gods imprisoned in a block of ice on Pluto. I bet those stupid scientists won't be so happy to find life on Pluto when they're being eaten alive by Cthulhu.

      • Re:Life (Score:3, Funny)

        by Perdo ( 151843 )
        1d6 investigators die.

        (per turn, about a minute)

        Even Cthulhu couldn't stop us.

        It would take a year and a half just to kill all the slashdot readers, and given the rate of growth for new users, Cthulhu could never kill us all.

        Nyarlathotep, now that would be a different story. It is not just a mindless beast like Cthulhu. Nyarlathotep has cunning, and would figure out a way to put Itaniums on all our desktops, causeing the insidious heat death of the entire planet.
        • > It would take a year and a half just to kill all the slashdot readers, and given the rate of growth for new users, Cthulhu could never kill us all.

          "I find your lack of faith... disturbing..."
          - Dark Lord of the Squidth.

        • Nyarlathotep, now that would be a different story. It is not just a mindless beast like Cthulhu.

          That's strange: the last time I checked [gizmology.net], Nyarlathotep was an Egyptian scientist/magician/1337 hax0r who simply understood time travel. Sure, people who mocked him in his house paid dearly, given his disdain for people, mysterious toys, and contempt for social norms... hmm, sounds like most uber-geeks I know!
          What I love best is the way some people confuse s/Nyarlathotep/programmers with being a Great Old One. Excuse me while I laugh at your^H^H^H^H their insolence - muhahahahaha.
          I feel better already.

          Solomon
          Cult Leader of Great Old Ones reGurgitating Little Excerpts [google.com]

      • Re:Life (Score:2, Funny)

        by NeoSkandranon ( 515696 )
        Damn, someone beat me to theHPL reference =)

        If they find a Shoggoth I'm gonna laugh.

    • Many candidates (Score:2, Informative)

      by Lispy ( 136512 )
      Yes, life seems to be quite common.
      Let me count the potential candidates i heard of so far:

      - Earth [fourmilab.ch]
      - Mars [slashdot.org]
      - Venus [slashdot.org]
      - Europa [slashdot.org] (no, not the continent you US-centric /.ers)
      - and now even Pluto [nineplanets.org]...i def counted this one out.

      My guess was always that life must be a rather common thing. If you look at all the impossible places where life found its way on Planet Earth...
      • I find the idea interesting that live was in this area of the universe long before our solar system even evolved.

        Pluto and Charon are likely (experts dispute) Kuiper Belt objects. That means commet like objects from the remanents of the ice and dust cloud which formed our sund and the planets.

        It is believed that for some million years after Earth was formed commets crashed in hughe amounts onto the planet and brought the water to Earth during this process.

        If Pluto has live, or in better words: if we can proove Pluto has live, then we have to asume that live did not "form" at all on Earth but was brought from outer space.

        This of course leads to the jumping conclusion that life may exist realy in nearly every solar system in the universe wich at least harbours some icy bodies with a molten core.

        Only my thoughts and only a Gedankenexperiment ...

        Anyway I find it exiting.

        angel'o'sphere
  • Sure they have liquid... But I'm gonna make a leap and say it ain't 100% pure mountain spring water direct from the Canadian Rockies bottled for your convinience, thankyouverymuch. Some nasty elements floating around in those wonderful, life sustaining seas of abundance if I remember right...

    • absotiveliy. i remember reading one estimate of the time between water of any great abundance here on earth and the first appearance of life. That is, i can remember reading it, just not how long it was - anyone care to pop in?
    • Just to play devil's advocate - would any of these substances interfere with the polarity of the water?

      As water becomes colder, water and oil become less miscible. Therefore, I'd expect this high-pressure superfluid (is it warmed by by reactions in Pluto's core? Someone else mentioned Pluto's surface temperature,) to be quite free of non-polar contaminants. Polar contaminants are not a problem for a terrestrial cell - they cannot cross the cell membrane.

      Argon is harmless. Liquid argon is very cold, but still completely unreactive.

      So, actually, I don't think the impurities in the water would be a problem. Whatever lives there - if anything does, which I very much doubt - would probably eat whatever chemical impurities were found there.

  • Um (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zapfie ( 560589 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @12:38AM (#4371739)
    This is exciting because life has been found on Earth in environments similar to these icy oceans at Antarctica's Lake Vostok.

    Who's to say ideal conditions for sustaining life are ideal conditions for creating it?

    • Re:Um (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Alexis Morissette ( 211656 )
      This is exactly what I was thinking. If I remember correctly, the main requirements for the creation of life were large amounts of methane, carbon dioxide, and other gasses, as well as sustained electrical discharges over a long enough period of time to form complex proteins. While there may be sufficient pressure and heat far beneath the surface of these places to maintain existing life, I can't imagine the initial requirements existing there now or, considering the vast distance from the Sun, in the past either.

      • Re:Um (Score:2, Insightful)

        by mikerich ( 120257 )
        Studies of the outer bodies of the Solar System suggests that they are rich in organic (in the chemical sense) compounds. It isn't just water ice out there - but ammonia and methane ice and more complex molecules.

        Carbonaceous chondrite meteorites show that very complicated organic molecules were present in the very early period of the Solar System - so there is no reason to believe that Pluto would not have had its share.

        Provided it remained partially molten for long enough, there would have been dilute solutions of all these chemicals slopping round.

        And you can form more complicated compounds such as amino acids without lightning - ultraviolet light and heat can do the same job.

        The question is, is Pluto still partially molten? it wouldn't have much of the radioactives that heat the inner planets - we can see the larger moons of the outer planets have frozen solid and they aren't much smaller.

        The alternative is that Pluto's relationship with Charon pumps tidal energy into the planet - as in Europa and Io. Now these are smaller bodies by far, so the energy would always be much less than those moons - but would anyone like to suggest if tides could keep Pluto warm?

        Best wishes,
        Mike.

        • Re:Um (Score:2)

          by TGK ( 262438 )
          Personaly I'm betting on a few aliens with amnesia sitting around watching sitcoms. I imagine they'll let us know when the stars are right and the Earth is in Taurus.

    • Re:Um (Score:2, Interesting)

      by gangibson ( 82032 )
      Who's to say they aren't? Archaea are simple single-celled organisms that are likely the predecessors to bacteria and eukaryotic organisms (e.g., you and me), and many of them thrive in these sorts of "extreme" environments. After all, Earth's climate, atmosphere, etc. haven't always been as ideal to us as they are now. Having said that though, if they eventually find life on Pluto. . . whoa.

  • Similar? (Score:5, Informative)

    by targo ( 409974 ) <{targo_t} {at} {hotmail.com}> on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @12:38AM (#4371740) Homepage
    Check out this temperature comparison site [lowell.edu].
    Basically it says that the coldest spot on earth is -128 F (-89 C, 184 K), while Pluto's surface temperature is -378 to -396 F (-228 to -238 C, 35 to 45 K), air actually turns liquid at this point.
    So this makes it quite different for any practical purposes.
    The article itself also mentions that the water (if any) is probably under 100 miles of ice, which makes Antarctica infinitely more hospitable and accessible.
    • The two points here -- the cold surface temperature and the 100+ miles of ice, kind of counteract one another.

      The surface of Pluto is certain ly inhospitable, very cold (air is actually a SOLID at this point) and with little atmosphere in summer and next to none in winter.

      On the other hand, under 100+ miles of ice, and heated from below by radioactive decay, there might be a liquid water layer. This MIGHT be
      relatively hospitable to life, using energy coming up from below in vaguely the way that the life at deep sea vents does on Earth.

      Inaccessible, I will give you. First it's a long way away, and second you have to tunnel down through a lot of very cold, very hard ice to get to it.

  • Life on Pluto (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @12:39AM (#4371747)
    Mickey better get the flea powder.

  • Yawn... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jin Wicked ( 317953 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @12:45AM (#4371770) Homepage Journal

    Aren't they coming out with one of these stories every week or so? Pretty soon they're going to just throw their arms in the air and say there's bacteria everywhere. (Isn't there, anyway?)

    Please wake me up and let me know when 1. Someone discovers some exotic alien species of fish, and 2. When I can buy said fish as an entrée at Red Lobster. (Mmm...cheese biscuits...)

    • Re:Yawn... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Goonie ( 8651 ) <[robert.merkel] [at] [benambra.org]> on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @01:04AM (#4371851) Homepage
      Pretty soon they're going to just throw their arms in the air and say there's bacteria everywhere. (Isn't there, anyway?)

      That is a possibility, but we don't know at this point. The only place we know there's life is Earth. We haven't found conclusive evidence of life on Mars, let alone Europa, Venus, or Pluto. This kind of study is useful, however, because it suggests new places we might consider looking for life.

      To your implied question "is finding bacteria on other planets interesting" the answer has to be yes. If we did find bacteria (or something like them) on another planet, we'd either find that a) they're directly related to earthly bacteria, in which case we'd know panspermia works (at least on an interplanetary scale) and would then raise the question of whether the source was somewhere in the solar system or from elsewhere, or b) that life has developed independently more than once, indicating that if the conditions are right it is quite likely to appear. If b) were the case it would seem to raise the odds that extra-solar life (and thus possibly intelligence) is out there. Either way, the biologists, geneticists, biochemists, and so on would give several limbs for the opportunity to examine bacteria from Pluto.

    • Re:Yawn... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @01:40AM (#4371941) Journal
      Aren't they coming out with one of these stories every week or so? Pretty soon they're going to just throw their arms in the air and say there's bacteria everywhere.

      That's why I do when I open the fridge.

      Actually, Jupiter's Big Red Spot is really a giant eye that is staring at you all night, and that is why you cannot sleep.

  • Not so methinks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bravehamster ( 44836 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @12:46AM (#4371773) Homepage Journal
    The problem with using the life in Antarctica as justification for the possibility of life on Pluto is this: the life in Antarctica didn't begin there. It began in a more hospitable climate and adapted itself to those conditions over millions of years. Any possible life in Pluto's oceans would have never had that chance. Just because life can _survive_ someplace doesn't mean it can begin there.


    I'm not saying life can't exist on Pluto, just that the example they used for comparison doesn't work. I think a better example would be the sea life that flourishes around deep sea volcanic vents.

    • Re:Not so methinks (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @01:32AM (#4371919) Journal
      The problem with using the life in Antarctica as justification for the possibility of life on Pluto is this: the life in Antarctica didn't begin there. It began in a more hospitable climate and adapted itself to those conditions over millions of years.

      We don't know that. Life on Earth may have come from space. There is some evidence that bacteria spores can survive for many millions of years inside small meteriods. It only takes *one* working spore to kickstart a planet. Thus, a rock with a million spores may take a beating, but the chances that at least one spore will survive is fairly high.

      Life may have formed billions of years before Earth and blasted this way by comet impacts, nova's, etc. Life may even form in certain types of nebula. Debri blasted from earth may have even seeded other planets.

      We just don't know the true origin or reach of microbe life.

    • Re:Not so methinks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ender81b ( 520454 ) <wdinger@NoSPAm.gmail.com> on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @01:34AM (#4371930) Homepage Journal
      While I agree, in principle, with what you say the simple fact is we have no way of knowing how life on earth started. By all rights earth was a horribly inhospitable place 4 billion or so years ago. Using earth as an example we can say the following things are needed for life to start (here at least):
      • Water, liquid
      • Amino acids
      • Some sort of energy supply - be it chemicals, sunlight, etc
      And that is it. You say life on pluto would never had a chance.. how do we know? We can't go back in time 4 billion years or so ago. Perhaps conditions on pluto where mightly different back then. Also the possibility of life 'landing' on pluto must be considered - in the form of bacteria spores, etc. Right now all that is needed on pluto for life would be a geothermal vent system and some liquid water. Really that's it. Remember in the deep ocean vent communities where bacteria live in water that's above the boiling point? Life adapts and quickly, we have no way of knowing how life started on this planet and to blanket rule out hte possibility of life on pluto just because the conditions aren't exactly like earths is a bit shortsighted in my opinion.
      • So let me get this right...
        1. Water, liquid
        2. Amino acids
        3. Some sort of energy supply - be it chemicals, sunlight, etc
        4. ????????
        5. Profit!
        • Yeah, even God fell for the optimist marketing hype. But after several reverse splits Earth (ERTH) was eventually delisted and its IP slowly sold off to the convicted monopolist, Entropy Corp. (S).
      • earth was a horribly inhospitable place 4 billion or so years ago. As a matter of fact, life has altered our atmosphere among other things. Oxygene in gas form would not be so abundant were it not for life. Some would speculate that there would be more CO2, making the planet a hotter place.

        That brings another point. The temperature range where the chemical reactivity needed for creating life is rather narrow, IIRC. That of course only applies to the chemical reactions we call life. Your extra-terrestial milage may vary.

      • Re:Not so methinks (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Perdo ( 151843 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @03:27AM (#4372177) Homepage Journal
        Pluto is a binary planetoid. Its moon, Charon is almost as large as Pluto itself

        Pluto is 2274 km in diameter, Charon is 1172 km in diameter. They orbit only 19,640 km from eachother around a central point between the planetoids.

        The point is, the tidal forces that they exert on eachother must be tremendous. I think the internal friction caused by the tidal forces might be enough to create some liquid water somewhere, perhaps near the rocks that constitute 70% of it's mass (the balance is water ice and trace methane and nitrogen.)

        I imagine an enviroment similar to the hostile space where a glacier grinds across the ground. Life is certainly abundent there, from worms and ants with antifreeze for blood to fungus, lichen, alge and of course bacteria.
        • The point is, the tidal forces that they exert on each other must be tremendous. I think the internal friction caused by the tidal forces might be enough to create some liquid water somewhere, perhaps near the rocks that constitute 70% of it's mass (the balance is water ice and trace methane and nitrogen.)

          Well, not quite--at least, not any more. Pluto and Charon each show each other the same face at all times, and have for a long while. Any stretching has long since reached a relatively stable equilibrium. Those tremendous tidal forced you allude to did exist when the binary system was first established would have generated heat, but a related consequence would have been a bleed-off of rotational speed. It's the same reason as why the Moon only presents one face to Earth. (Earth's rotation is also slowing, but since the Moon is so much less massive, it is a very time-consuming process.)

          It's probably true that Pluto was a warmer place in the early solar system--or whenever those two chunks of rock first captured one another. And based on Earth's history, it seems that unicellular life can potentially develop quite quickly on a geological time scale.

          But relying on tidal heating to produce liquid water now is a nonstarter.

          • I think this is wrong. Jupiters moon Io, and most other moons in our solar system, have locked faces with their planets. However, the immense tidal forces continue, and that is what is responsible for Io's great vulcanism for example.
        • Hey that's right, i totally forgot about charon. It isn't inconcievable that we could have an Io-Jupiter type effect. Hrm. Food for thought.
    • Just because life can _survive_ someplace doesn't mean it can begin there.

      Why not? Earth may have the ideal conditions for life for us humans, but to life in Antartica and pehaps on Pluto it could seem a not very hospitable climate. Is there an ideal climate for creating life? It depends on what lifeform thats being created - whos to say what life form should be 'ideal' and aimed for by nature or evolution or whatever.

      I'm not sure how life started here, but I think it seems reasonable that if life can exist somewhere, theres no reason it couldnt begin to exist there in the same way it did here.
    • the life in Antarctica didn't begin there. It began in a more hospitable climate and adapted itself to those conditions over millions of years.

      Panspermia is the very old idea that life can get seeded throughout the universe, as some now think Earth life may have first originated on Mars, and been seeded here via meteorites that originated on Mars.

    • 1. Read about lake Vostok... there is volcanic activity there. The bacteria came up through the volcano not down through the ice.

      2. There is mounting evidence that life on Earth may have started in Earth's mantle and later moved into the oceans and then the surface.

      We don't know if there is life on these moons, they just look like good places to look.

  • Is it just me... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Proquar ( 577283 ) <echidna@tig.com.au> on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @12:46AM (#4371774) Journal
    or do we (the human race) go...

    ohhhh... on this strange planet there is this bizaare anamoly... i bet it's life!

    and it is just me, or is that rather naive.

    For me, you want to prove to me there is life somewhere else... don't say, look at the strange gases on Venus (well, der)...or look at the ice-cold water on Pluto... show me a digital watch (and not one Neil Armstrong left on the moon, or a little robot that NASA forgot on Mars)... Or give me an ET encounter... or something that makes you go "Man, that's got some organic extraterristrial backing!"

    In space, strange things happen that we just don't understand.. It's been happening for such a long time without human approval or knowledge... it is such a long leap to go "Wow! This is strange! I bet a life-force is behind it!"

    And please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there aren't aliens out there - I'm just saying it's a lot like whale-watching:
    "Wow, is that a whale?!" "No... it's a rock"
    "Wow, is that a whale?!" "No, it's a wave"
    "Wow, is that a whale?!" "No, it's a weed"...

    Somebody please wake me when there is either a whale or life out there!
  • "magnetic measurements taken as the probe passed
    Ganymede and Callisto suggested the presence of
    salty water beneath about 170 kilometres (105
    miles) of ice."

    Anyone got a spare space-ship with a *REALLY* big freakin' drill mounted on it lying around?

    Alternatively...put your space-ship in reverse and burn a way down :o

    How do we get to this supposed life? And do we WANT to get to it? Seems like a lot of effort for a bunch of alien butt-munchin' microbes ;)

    "What we need is a mad scientist with a gi-ant 'la-ser' cannon!"

    • Re:It's a long way down... (Score:5, Funny)

      by chegosaurus ( 98703 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @06:15AM (#4372448) Homepage
      > "What we need is a mad scientist with a gi-ant 'la-ser' cannon!"

      Do you have any idea how hard it is for mad scientists to get funding today?

      With uncertainty over the economy many mad R&D labs are slicing budgets and indefinitely delaying all but the most mundane of projects. Just how do these people think they're going to conquer the world with an ebola vaccine?

      The situation in government funded labs is little better, as public opinion of all science, and particularly mad science, is at an all-time low. This of course is due primarily to scares over GM foods, cloning and climatic catastrophe: all areas in which mad scientists typically excel.

      In addition studies suggest the intake of mad PhD students is in decline as gifted sociopaths are incresingly drawn towards fields with more immediate financial rewards, most notably, law.

      So please don't point to the mad scientists for the lack of planet destroying lasers. It's the people holding the purse strings who are holding us all back.

  • is it so hard to believe? (Score:4, Informative)

    by geek ( 5680 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @12:50AM (#4371796)
    I don't think life is as rare as people think. I mean even fire by some peoples standards is alive (it eats, breaths and reproduces). Fire is abundant in the univers correct? Semantics aside, it seems to me that life will exist where ever it CAN exist. Life is persistent whether it be conscious or not (plant life). Look at all the seemingly inhabitable place here on earth, bottom of the ocean being just one. Whether it be cold or hot, life finds a way.

    So why is it people think this isn't the case on other celestial bodies? If we were smart we would assume it did exist elsewhere. Our ancestors cynically thought the world was flat, that the universe revolved around our Earth etc.. You would think we would have learned something. Earth isn't special. It's one planet out of trillions out there. We may be the first civilized race in the Universe, or we may be the last, most likely somewhere in the middle.

    How long before we figure it all out? I doubt we ever will.
    • I have to agree with you regarding the abundance of life. We have no reason to suspect that Earth is unique, or even unusual, considering the vast number or star systems in our galaxy alone, many of which have been confirmed to have planetary bodies (something else I believe we will discover to be more common than not).

      I have to point out a flaw in your fire analogy, though. Oxidation, as well as all other nonliving chemical reactions, have no free will. The outcome of a nonliving chemical reaction is based completely upon the location, velocity, and composition of preexisting particles and conditions of the system. Nothing occurs of its own volition in such a reaction, and there is no randomness, which are the defining characteristics of life.

      But I do have to concur with your assessment that life will exist where it can exist, or atleast where it can be created or placed. Evidence shows that life appears on Earth relatively shortly (in cosmic terms) after it became possible for life to exist. I think we will eventually find that to be true in most of the universe, even if it is on the level or virii or bacteria.
      • I don't seriously believe my own point I am about to make.. but let me play devil's advocate for a bit...

        Humans have no free will. The outcome of human life and decisions is based totally upon its location, social status, peer interaction, genetics, and other various functions.

        Its always plausable that nothing is random, and random is a word that should be removed from the language... if we knew enough information we could simulate anything, even what your responce to what I am saying is going to be...

  • A minor tangent (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nugneant ( 553683 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @12:52AM (#4371803) Journal
    I've always been amazed at the arrogance of the human race, the arrogant logic that dictates that because "we" need liquid formed from two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom, that automatically this is a pre-requisite for life. When it comes down to it, who are we to dictate which planets contain life and which do not? We can only percieve things along three, possibly four dimensions. I'm no mathematician, nor can I spell the word properly, but seems to me there's a lot more than just three, maybe four numbers in the numeric alphabet (contradiction intended). Just because we cannot percieve a dimension, does that mean life cannot occupy it?

    And anyone who makes a "tree falling in a forest" reference in this thread is an annoying idiot.

    • Ok, no trees. How about if i don't read your post nor care about you , do you matter to me? there is a difference between non-existent and irrelevant.
    • Well... as soon as you make a little telescope that can see into these other dimensions, then maybe we'll think about a search for life there after you've perfected it so much that entire planets can be detected instead of a few antiparticles in a particle accelerator... ....or we can start with the "easier" task of lookin in our own universe?

      hmm... choices....
    • (after thought), but I do totally agree with you on the arrogance of humans saying that water is NEEDED for life... if we can't imagine a world where, say, silicon is the base for life instead of carbon... then how would we even begin to imagine life in other dimensions?

      Humans have a looonnggg way to go untill we can even begin to comprehend the true atomic (wave/particle duality... if that will even hold true for the next hundred years) systems of our universe
  • I just watched the BBC series on the planets of our solar system, and I have to say, I would now find it really hard to believe that there could be any sort of liquid water on Triton. Triton supposedly has the heaviest winds in the solar system (up to 1000 MPH!) but it also has a solid nitrogen surface. The only geological activity detected was liquid nitrogen geysers bursting through the surface caused by pressure buildup. So if underneath the surface is liquid nitrogen, I don't care how much deeper you go, the planet is not big enough to be able to go deep enough into the core to find temperatures in the range suitable for liquid water.
  • are naive inherently. So we've confirmed that water and oxygen are required for sustaining our own carbon-based lifeforms on this tiny planet called Earth. There's eight other plants in our solar system that may utilize something like, for example, methane in a completely different way that we never would have thought of. Sure we need a place to start looking, but let's also stay open to the possibilities that our conceptions of what life requires may not be the same in every solar system, much less every planet.
  • You know that primordial soup I used to hear about all the time? Okay so I suspect it's soup because there's water in it, but still, is liquid water the only thing needed for life? I didn't think so. I think we've got our hopes up too high when seeking life on other worlds.

    And what are we seeking to prove? That there's no God or something?
    • And what are we seeking to prove? That there's no God or something?

      With these articles on /. that typically seems to be the case. Of course I still haven't heard a decent answer on exactly how existance of life on other planets disproves God . . .
    • And what are we seeking to prove? That there's no God or something?

      That would be hard to do.. the water has to come from somewhere.. and the atoms to make the water and the stuff to make the atoms.. and on and on and on..

      Science better kick it up a couple of notches if they want to try and prove that there's no God anytime soon.
  • ...are there any articles or discussions around that talk about the possibility of us kicking of an evolutionary process merely by landing on a rock capable of sustaining life but currently dead ?

    I know its all sci-fi, but with all the microbes etc. we seem to carry around with us, it'd be almost impossible to land somewhere (say Mars) and not leave something behind...

  • Real life (Score:2, Funny)

    by messiertom ( 590151 )
    Real (productive) life doesn't need water.

    Real (productive) life needs Mountain Dew.

  • Vostok not breached yet... (Score:5, Informative)

    by dargaud ( 518470 ) <slashdot2@gdar g a u d . net> on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @01:41AM (#4371946) Homepage
    Life has NOT been found in Vostok lake (yet). The ice coring has been stopped 50 meters from the lake which is 4km under the ice to avoid contamination until a method can be found to decontaminate the drill.

    Radar images [gdargaud.net] of Antarctica, including Vostok.

  • Disturbing... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Picass0 ( 147474 )
    Pluto is a dog that ownes another dog....
    What is this world coming to?
  • In typical /. style, I have not read the articel, but...

    Umm, the Earth is SATURATED with life so it is not suprising that Earth life has seeped into every cranny this side of a plasma chamber here.

    However, the scant other places we have peeked for life in the rest of our "solar neighborhood", we have observed a distinct absance of life. My gut feeling is that these pockets of liquid water will proove as sterile as a terrestrial autoclave.

  • Mars rock living evidence new (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @02:02AM (#4371985) Journal

    An article [astrobio.net] in Astrobiology magazine seems to suggest that the magnetite found the in famous "Mars meteor" *does* seem to be bacteria-made after all.

    There has been a constant see-saw about this rock for a long time.

    It is kind of a coincidence that the fossils are bacteria-shaped (wormy) and that the magnetite has properties very similar to magnetite-using-bacteria on Earth. IOW, it has both the right look and the right "chemistry". Not proof, but intreeging nevertheless.

    I would also note that the Viking probes picked up life-like signs in the soil, however, it was later determined that inorganic chemistry could possibly emulate the same results.

    But, there are newer claims that one experiment shows "cycadic" (sp?) rythms in the samples. This is the "internal clock" of life that changes their metabolism to match the day/night cycle and/or tides. They did not know about these patterns in microbes much at the time of Viking. This pattern in Viking data is much harder to explain by dead soil chemistry alone.

    The saga continues...

    It has been more than 100 years since the "canali" fiasco started, and we still don't know whether there is life on that stupid orange ball yet.
  • Just to reply to a lot of the threads we've seen around here - yes, it is entirely possible that life, albeight completely alien to us, could florish on pluto, save for one simple fact. Any life form, no matter how alien, must obey the laws of thermodynamics. Simply put, they need *energy*. (Life is orderly, thus energy input is necessary to maintain that orderly state) Pluto has very, very little energy to give. Chemically and physically, it's a dead rock - no molten core, nothing more than frozen chemicals at its surface. Thermally, I think the average temperature isn't too far above absolute zero. Which means that no matter how alien you get, there still isn't much chance of life flourishing there.

  • Microbes would be ... depressing. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pantropik ( 604178 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @02:12AM (#4372007)
    Recently there's been a lot of talk about life on other bodies in the solar system. Yet even the most hopeful proponents of these theories don't truly expect to find anything much more advanced than algae. The upper reaches of Venus's atmosphere, Europa, Ganymede, Triton, maybe even somewhere in Jupiter's atmosphere where the pressures and temperatures are "just right", whatever that is.

    I've read theories that of all places in the system outside Earth, Europa is the most promising. So, maybe there are "hot spots" in the Europan ocean and maybe there is life around those hot spots. Yet, look at Earth's version of those deep-ocean hotspots. The life there is interesting, to be sure, and spectacularly resilient in the face of extreme pressures and temperatures, but it's not spectacularly advanced and there's not a lot of room for evolution in such a system. Tubeworms have been tubeworms for geologic ages, after all.

    So, what if we do move out into the solar system and find life is "everywhere"? Not literally everywhere, but everywhere in the sense that life, after a fashion, will generally show up pretty much anywhere it can. There are organisms (waterbears, for one) on Earth right now that could survive a trip through the vacuum of space. So we might even find that life on other bodies in the system is shockingly similar to life on Earth, perhaps even distant "cousins". Simple life, and abundant; clinging to existence in every nook and cranny where it's managed to take hold.

    How depressing is that? We go to the planets with arms open to greet ... algae and paramecia. Maybe Fermi's Paradox isn't much of a paradox at all. "Where are they?" They're everywhere, maybe. "They" just won't be making any radios or FTL starships any time over the next few billion years.

    Imagine a universe full of lichen and amoebas, riding their respective planets to whatever oblivion awaits in some far-distant future. Imagine humanity spreading, in some distant future, into the galaxy, ever searching for others like themselves. They find instead world after world where any of a hundred (thousand? million?) variables was off by just enough to doom the life there to brainless simplicity. What if we are the aberration? It seems silly, to think all that real estate out there is just a big petri dish, doesn't it? Silly that there isn't someone out there ... somewhere.

    But the universe is big, time is broad, and we as a species are disheartingly tiny when viewed against such a scale. Maybe there were, or will be, beings much like us riding their little worlds round and round some other star ... But how far away in space and time? Long dead, not yet born? In some impossibly distant galaxy speeding away from us at a significant fraction of C? It would need to be only a tiny time differential in the grand scheme of things. The entire sum of human existence isn't even an eyeblink on such scales. It seems silly to think that in all the universe (even the galaxy) we are alone. But does it really matter? We may not in fact be alone, but those "others", if they exist, might well be forever out of reach, perhaps even unknowable. I think that's what we fear the most, that notion that we might pass, not forgotten but simply unknown, out of existence. Why do we really want to find others anyway? Maybe just to shout, "We exist!" at the universe and for the first time know that we are heard. Now that I think about it, it seems that the search for aliens isn't really all that different from humanity's never-ending quest for "god" ... maybe the two are merely differing expressions of the same inherent need -- to be known, acknowledged, and (dare we hope it!) validated.
    • if you look at evolution on earth there seems to be two *big* rate limiting steps to produce us.

      First is the creation of eukaryotic cells. Bacteria seem to have been around just about since the earliest moment we could imagine them being around, but it wasn't until a billion years ago there were any eukaryotes.

      Second is the evolution of multicellular organisms. Again there seems to have been a hell of a long gap between simple amoeba like organisms and multicellular organisms.

      Once over thse two steps evolution looks pretty set up to produce complex ecosystems. The final hitch though might be that intelligence seems to be only weakly selected for. Generally over time brains got bigger, but very slowly and things seem to have got 'stuck' at several points. Who knows how long the dinosaurs would have been dominent if it wasn't for a certain asteroid 65m years ago?

    • Actually, the big reason I want to chat with some space aliens is in the hopes that they can provide answers to questions we can only ask. Therefore amoebas and molds don't much interest me either.

      I guess I might fall into the "searching for god" category. If any ET is capable of travelling between stars and communicating meaningfully with us, they are indeed gods in comparison to humans.

      Vortran out
    • I don't really expect much beyond microbes in this solar system (though Jupiter and Saturn could be real wild cards here).

      But any kind of life would be extremely important. We need to compare out genetic code with one that's evolved elsewhere. If it's the same, that won't tell us too much, but if it's different, it could be extremely important. And even if it's the same, it will have been evolving indpendantly for a nearly maximal amount of time, so that would be important too. (Though not as much so.)

    • They find instead world after world where any of a hundred (thousand? million?) variables was off by just enough to doom the life there to brainless simplicity.

      Sounds like my university [uwec.edu].

  • What NASA has to say... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @02:16AM (#4372017) Journal
    Here's an overview at JPL [nasa.gov].

    Basically, they say traces of water vapor can be found in the Sun, to water ice at Pluto and beyond in the Kupier Belt. Water ice can also be found in comets, and some water on earth is thought to be from such comets.

    However, only liquid water is life enabling, where the best candidates for this are Mars (beneath the surface) and below the icy surfaces on the largest of Jupiter's moons, especially Europa [nasa.gov] (Europa ice crust [nasa.gov]). The reason Europa might support life is because Jupiter's huge gravity likely affects the moon creating great forces similar to the tidal waves on earth, which could warm the moon.

    If you ask me, the Europa shots look far more interesting to me. And Europa is easier to reach than Pluto anyway. :)
  • I can't WAIT to chat with a Plutarian Micro-organism! Oh the stories they must have! Hey, do you think they've found the secret of life yet? A good weight-loss pill? Cure for cancer?!

  • Lake Vostok (Score:2, Interesting)

    by claygate ( 531826 )
    I could imagine opening up a closed source of bacteria and whatever other organisms the world has not had access to in 400,000 years. Think of the diseases we could find, and the ensuing death. Its quite often that in the depths of a rain forest new diseases and bacterias are found, and ones that humans have never had contact with. Just imagine the possibilities. Or maybe its just a big reservoir for drinking water once we use/pollute every other source.

  • Wonder of Wonders (Score:3, Funny)

    by sssmashy ( 612587 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @03:37AM (#4372193)
    I think we'll be amazed at life's ability to develop and thrive in highly "adverse" environments--even a dark, frigid sea beneath 100 miles of ice.

    For instance, the supposed inhabitants of Triton may not have evolved into multicellular life forms, but I bet they have one hell of a hockey team.
  • I would figure that an ocean on any planet would still get a little energy, at least towards the bottom from perhaps geo-thermal radiation or even the shifting of land masses. Sort of like putting a bucket of water outside in the winter time, and regularly shaking it to keep the amount of ice crystals in it to a minimum. Likewise, you could mix the water with certain other chemicals I suspect to at least lower the temperature required for the whole bucket to freeze over, or keep it from freezing altogether.
    Of course, this is just speculation.

    Does it sound outlandish?

    McDoobie

  • Life. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rew ( 6140 ) <r.e.wolff@BitWizard.nl> on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @05:38AM (#4372408) Homepage
    Life develops if there are cycles. Earth has cycles: waves in the seas: 1-10 seconds. Tides: 0.5 days. days: 1.0 days, weather: 3-7 days. moon shine: 28 days, Seasons: 1.0 years, solar cycles: 11 years, climatic cycles: 10000 years. (I probably forgot a bunch!)

    For life to develop, cycles are very important. A cycle at around every "order of magnitude" is almost compulsory.

    Once life is "bootstrapped" in the most ideal place of all those cycles, it will suddenly be able to survive in the weirdest of conditions.

    On pluto, the year cycle is WAY too long, the planet is WAY too far from the sun to experience lots of the influences of the cycles of the sun. etc etc. Nope, Pluto is going to be lifeless, unless we (or someone else) bring(s) it some seeds.....

    Roger.
  • I already know that there's life other than my self, I'm not really fussed if it's on pluto, living up my nose or working in the office with me.

    If life on pluto doesn't provide any further insite into life on earth then why even bother.[there may be life on pluto because it's got a simila environment to place on earth]

  • This is all meaningless (Score:4, Funny)

    by the_Bionic_lemming ( 446569 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @08:56AM (#4372772)
    Actually, you are all wrong. Life does not exist in the Universe.
    From Douglas Adams:
    4 POPULATION: None It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

    Now where's my towel?
  • I don't expect much scientific detail from the BBC, but this was a new low. They say something rather non-intuitive, like scientists expect liquid water on Pluto, and then go on for the rest of the page to babble about what this means for life without ever mentioning the faintest thing about why these particular scientists expect to find liquid water on Pluto (when the surface is at least partially N2 ice).

    Can anyone find a more technical article, please?

  • Let's first find out if life exists in #qmail.
  • It is true that life can survive in such extreme conditions, but what is the possibility of it being CREATED in those conditions??

    As I recall from the many bio classes I have had over the years about the beginning of life on earth, the creation of amino acids and the building blocks of life occurred in very warm conditions with the help of the heat/electron exciting potential from a lightning bolt...

    Yes, it can survive... but how would the CREATION of life occur on pluto?

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