Ammonia Could Indicate Life On Mars 409
Young Master writes "Just seen this story on good old Auntie Beeb, apparently traces of ammonia have been found in the Martian atmosphere. Ammonia doesn't last long on Mars, so it must be constantly replenished - it could be active volcanoes (none yet found), or it could indicate life..." Along with the detection of methane, Mars is starting to look a lot less dead than had been supposed.
Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ammonia is not a stable molecule in the Martian atmosphere. If it was not replenished in some way, it would only last a few hours before it vanished.
An underground lava theory seems much more plausible than microbes hoarding nitrogen. Underground lava beneath the extinct volcanoes could be releasing the ammonia into the atomosphere and thus explains how it is replenishing so quickly. Without other specific evidence of microbial life I really think we should just not get our hopes up, at least not yet.
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:5, Informative)
I don't buy the life explanation either, though. Whenever there is chemistry going on in a planet that we don't yet understand, there's this natural tendancy to yell "it must be life!". There are many reactions which can produce ammonia gas. For example, there's the decomposition of ammonium salts by alkaline hydroxides or lime, the decomposition of magnesium hydroxide with water, etc. I'm not sure if any of these processes are applicable anywhere on mars, but "life" is not the only way to make ammonia.
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:3, Interesting)
Thus spake the BBC =p
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:5, Insightful)
Tendancy? We've only seen chemistry on other planets (& moons) a handful of times, and I don't remember anyony yelling 'it must be life!' This is one of the grossest over-generalizations I've read all day.
I don't know where the ammonia is coming from on Mars. If there even is any; from the article: "Ammonia may have been found in Mars' atmosphere" But to just not buy an explanation, because you think it is just too implausible or because it turned out not to be false in another instance is just stupid.
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, speaking of the viking biology experiment, lets not forget that it showed processes that we sometimes view as life occurring in the sterilized sample, aka, abiotically.
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait, that's not it. The explaination is this: We detect ammonia on Mars so we obviously jump to the conclusion that it's "the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water", whilst completely missing the ammonia factory constructed by "intelligences greater than man's" to generate fuel to propel pods to planet earth!
No that's not it either. I was just testing the the combined intelligence of Slashdot mods to see if they would spot a HG Wells quote hidden in the middle of otherwise unrelated material.
Actually it was a warning that as we busy ourselves about our affairs on slashdot and and looking through microscopes at soda pop, we are being watched by martians. But don't worry, if you manage to find an old enough home made soda pop in your basement and open it in the martians face, it'll defeat him everytime.
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:3, Informative)
But do we have any proof of -current- volcanism on mars?
Granted Olympus Mons is the remains of the biggest volcano EVER, but it's extinct, and there is barely any seismic activity on Mars...
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not absolutely sure about the chemical composition; but should there be increased dust that can be identified as coming from the interior, along with other elements like sulphur? I know sulphur may also be present in the case of life, but there must be some compounds which exclude one or the other possibilities.
If ammonia is alone, then it would confirm the life hypothesis, I expect.
On a side note, if there IS life over there, it may be the biggest news and the greatest gift to mankind ever: It might serve to finally get nations and peoples to realize that provincialization is stupid, and we're all in this together.
Good lord, I've never prayed God and asked him to grant me a wish, but in this case, I do.
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:3, Interesting)
A martian volcano can't burn off local forests, but should be like an earthly one in kicking up dust from shockwaves, and like an earthly one, this should happen both during actual eruptions and outgassing. What we don't really know all that well yet is how long such d
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:2, Informative)
I thought many astronomers felt that Mars' core had cooled, since it did not have a dynamo driven magnetic field.
Life vs. the Volcano (Score:5, Insightful)
While it would be far more exciting to find life then lava, I'm not sure the data backs the assumption that volcanoes are far more common then life.
We know there are only 2 planets/moons with volcanoes, making them a little rare. We know there is 1 planets/moons with life and serveral unknown. Our very palimerary evidence suggests volcanoes are twice as common as life.
We have evidence that life appeared on Earth as soon (by geological time scales) as it was possible to sustain it. There is debate on whether the life experiments on Viking come out positive or negative. Now we have methane and ammonia in the atmosphere.
Perhaps it is our arrogance that insists that we are so special, life of other planets is unlikely.
Re:Life vs. the Volcano (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't use the Earth as a data point for existance of life alone, because Earth has no option of being dead: if the Earth was dead, we would not be here wondering about it.
Re:Underground lava seems more likely.,, or... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Underground lava seems more likely. (Score:5, Funny)
Ain't that something? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe they clean windows with Linux (Score:3, Funny)
Ammonia and methane? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ammonia and methane? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ammonia and methane? (Score:3, Funny)
Oh no! They've already got politicians up there!
Re:Ammonia and methane? (Score:2)
What were you expecting, to say "He did it!" in a high pitched voice and a thumb on your forehead?
Re:Ammonia and methane? (Score:4, Funny)
How do we know? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How do we know? (Score:5, Informative)
It has a magnetosphere (Score:2)
Take a tour [ucar.edu]
Re:It has a magnetosphere (Score:5, Informative)
The magnetic field of Mars is 1/800 as strong as Earth's and was first recorded in 1997 by the Mars Surveyor probe.
That's barely a magnetosphere. It is there, but it's not exactly substantial...
Re:How do we know? (Score:2)
Re:How do we know? (Score:2, Interesting)
Do we have any idea, assuming for a moment that there was once a tremendou
Of course (Score:5, Funny)
Methane and ammonia: What we know about ... (Score:4, Funny)
Gassy neat freaks.
Re:Methane and ammonia: What we know about ... (Score:2, Informative)
ammonia and methane, eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Its not that exciting (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Its not that exciting (Score:2, Funny)
Yet those bastards won't wipe off the rover solar panels for us.
Don't mind that.. (Score:5, Funny)
But... (Score:4, Funny)
Who knows what evil lurks in the shiny surfaces...
Re:But... (Score:3, Funny)
now if venus... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:now if venus... (Score:5, Funny)
I'd remind that any technical device sent there by man has very short estimation of uptime there..
life indicates life (Score:5, Interesting)
i've been disillusioned by all the rumors since the face hasn't lead to any big breakthrough.
http://www.matrixofcreation.co.uk/mars/face-on-
Re:life indicates life (Score:3, Interesting)
Nor should you be. Scientists aren't convinced there's life. This is just a possible clue.
Re:life indicates life (Score:3, Funny)
Face hell, I'm still pissed off over that whole canal fiasco!
Re:life indicates life (Score:4, Funny)
Funny you should mention that. Euro coins have an map of the EU [fleur-de-coin.com] embossed on them.
There's a reason we wish Norway would join already.
Life was inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not at all suprised at this. I always regarded life on Mars as being inevitable for the following reasons:
That the meteorites found in Antarctica contained fossil bacteria only makes the case stronger.
Re:Life was inevitable (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Life was inevitable (Score:2, Interesting)
True, the escape velocity of this planet is higher than that of Mars but that only means that it would take a bigger meteorite strike to kick a chunk toward Mars. We have evidence of plenty of strikes big enough to have done so, however.... Chicxulub springs immediately to mind.
Once at escape velocity, the odds of any given rock hitting Mars are low but given 4 billion years (the oldest fossil evidence for life) a lot can happen.
Re:Life was inevitable (Score:5, Interesting)
But 4 billion years IS a long time. I'd be surprised if we ever found an earth rock on mars, but maybe, just maybe...
Re:Life was inevitable (Score:3, Interesting)
There's approximately half a ton of material from Mars that falls on the Earth every year [ucsd.edu]. Even though it takes more momentum to leave the Earth and more chance to fall back on Mars than the opposite, that's way too much to neglect.
Re:Life was inevitable (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Life was inevitable (Score:2)
Re:Life was inevitable (Score:3, Insightful)
1. There are places on earth where there is no bacterial life: try the upper atmosphere and farthest reaches of antarctica at the moment (both places as cold as Mars).
2. A human being has trouble surviving a re-entry inside a spaceship covered with heat-resistant tiles, do you really think a bacterium sitting on a rock that is heated up to a few thousand degrees has a chance in hell of surviving the trip?
3. Not all rocks of Earth origin contain bacteria, again those in the
Re:Life was inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
2) some microbes live IN rocks, some very deep, so the outer layers of rock could protect an atmospheric entry. Especially since rock-loving microbes aren't bothered by extreme temperatures, the center of the rock could still be cool enough not to cook them.
3)Not all rocks, but way more than you'd expect.
4)No argument.
Yes, I believe it could since microbes were discovered on the moon landers after they'd been sitting on the moon for a few years. Also, earth rocks blown off that later re-enter and land have microbes that could survive. There's no event in your scenario that some microbes couldn't survive.
Re:Life was inevitable (Score:3, Interesting)
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast01 s ep 98_1.htm
Excerpt:
The Surveyor probes were the first U.S. spacecraft to land safely on the Moon. In November, 1969, the Surveyor 3 spacecraft's microorganisms were recovered from inside its camera that was brought back to Earth under sterile conditions by the Apollo 12 crew.
The 50-100 organisms survived launch, space vacuum, 3 years of radiation exposure, deep-freeze at an average temperature of only 20 degrees above absolute zer
Re:Life was inevitable (Score:5, Informative)
That won't kill all the spores, which is why autoclaves operate at higher temperatures for much longer periods. And Oceanic vent-dwelling bacteria would find it posively chilly.
Re:Life was inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
I've heard of bacterial capture as high as 50,000 feet. Do you mean higher than that? Like the 100 km altitude that Space Ship One went to?
And the same about Antarctica. How absolutely sure are you that you can't find some sort of bacterial remains or transport of some kind that can litterally be found in the middle of Antarctica? That is even ignoring the Antarctic research stations where I'm sure you can find bacteria in abundance. I've seen bacterial growth on alpine glaciers high on mountain tops, that live in conditions that are very similar to Antarctica. Antarctica is a big place, and to totally rule out anything living there is just too absolute.
Also, if you think boiling something for a few minutes in water at 100 C is going to kill bacteria, you really don't understand food science at all. What that normally does when you cook is kill bacteria and other organisms that are harmful to people. An autoclave does a much better job, but that is not normally something you would stick a chicken sandwich into.
One reason why it is suspected that bacteria could survive in space is because of Apollo-12 [nasa.gov], where the Surveyor probe, launched several years earlier, was "accidentally" contaminated before it was launched. Parts of this space probe were returned back to Earth in sealed bags, and it was detected that several bacterial cells survived not only the spaceflight to the moon, but "lived" on the moon for several years before coming back to the laboratories on the Earth. Nobody is claiming that they thrived and multiplied into huge numbers on the Moon, but they were able to survive and when put into a much more hospitable environment (like a petri dish full of agar in an Earth-based lab) they did thrive and begin to reproduce again.
Also, micrometeorites that are the size of a pin-head or even somewhat larger have been known to survive reentry without burning up from re-entry. It is not that difficult to bring things to the Earth that could survive, and certainly something the size of a bacterium could enter the Earth's atmosphere without heating up to several thousands of degrees C.
The only reason reentry is so difficult for spaceflight is because it is a cheap and easy way to reduce speed without having to fire rockets to reduce velocity for a safe landing. This has no relationship to small grains of sand that are orbiting the sun. Even a large rock will only get heated so much coming into the Earth's atmosphere, simply because the entry won't last that long. A very hard landing, but relatively quick transit time through the atmosphere. How many G's of force do you think a bacteria could take? I bet it is quite a bit more than a person could take, by about 1000x.
Re:Life was inevitable (Score:3, Interesting)
Possible, but if there was an exchange of biological material, it is more like to be bacteria from Mars making it to earth (do to the relative depth's of their gravity wells).
Re:Life was inevitable (Score:3, Interesting)
A recurring theme (Score:5, Interesting)
Again and again, life has proven itself to be a real beyutch to kill. Bottom of the sea near lava vents. Antarctic wastelands which are the driest places on earth. I believe I once read about viruses which had survived in space for years as well.
I think the notion of panspermia (if I have the terminology correct) - that life first arrived on Earth after having been blown off the surface of Mars by an impacting meteor - is one of the most interesting theories out there.
Re:A recurring theme (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A recurring theme (Score:2)
Hence, wouldn't their presence indicate the presence of living cells, if not now, then at least at some time in the past? It seems that finding viruses would be tantamount to finding living cells, don't you think?
Re:A recurring theme (Score:3, Funny)
I'm sure that when amoeba tell horror stories to each other, it all involves viruses taking over amoeba-kind.
How did life get on Mars? (Score:2)
Re:A recurring theme (Score:2)
Not a flamebait, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not a flamebait, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless new taxes are inacted to go to mars, then all Mars mission resources will have to be "redireced" from other places (Or no mission at all).
Re:Not a flamebait, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not a flamebait, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, here's some "Flamebait" (aka anything a half-cocked moderator disagrees with) for you: Bush doesn't have a Go to Mars space program. He has a pretend to go to mars campaign program.
I agree that new resources should be created for a new project, but Bush has been too busy trying to ban gay marriage (the senate shot the latest attempt down, thank goodness.)
We're ready to hear the truth (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:We're ready to hear the truth (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the scientific community is pretty divided pretty significantly on that.
OT: Clouds as bacterial colonies? (Score:2, Interesting)
Anywho, seeing as how we have little clue how earthly clouds develop, some are theorizing that certain bacteria are necessary for cloud formation. What if the whole cloud is a bacterial colony? Clouds have an organic shape, and certain patterns seem similar to
Re:OT: Clouds as bacterial colonies? (Score:3, Informative)
What I don't accept is that clouds themselves are a product of bacterial colonies other than as a by-product from releaseing water vapor from inside their cellular structures. Water clouds would form even if the Earth were sterile of life.
You can also find
Bias? (Score:2, Informative)
Or mars is starting to look like it has a lot more volcanoes (or similar activity) than previously reported. But why assume some crazy thing like that when we can just assume there is life on Mars?
Very interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Christian fundamentalists will end NASA (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember Galileo Galilei. It can happen again!
Re:Christian fundamentalists will end NASA (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's far more likely that Christians will say "see, God is omnipotent and created life there too".
You've got a couple different types: the ones that believe the bible is the end all, be all, written word of the almighty God himself; and the ones who believe the bible is something of a history book, with some metaphorical science sprinkled in genesis and whatnot.
Your second group is likely to believe that the so-called God, in creating the heavens and earth, is responsible for our entire universe and any other life that may exist. The first group will tell you the Earth is 6,000 years old, dinosaurs never existed, and the rest of the universe has no life and is otherwise unimportant.
It's the first group that fights against the theory of evolution, but I think both groups (and me) are concerned about the ethical implications of stem cell and cloning research. I've heard that we no longer have to murder babies to harvest the stem cells -- something about taking it from umbilical cords. That's a good first step.
It's better to be extra careful when fiddling with the very keys to our existance. Does this mean this research shouldn't continue? No. But I'll be pretty pissed (until I'm dead), if some airhead in a lab makes a mistake and wipes out mankind.
Re:Christian fundamentalists will end NASA (Score:3, Insightful)
You also need to realize that it was scientists who came up with this procedure, not religious nuts. What have religions done for us other than caused death? Not to say scientists are off the hook on that one (given the rapid advances in military technology), but I'd say science is about even on the moral scale. Religion has a major deficit.
Life expec
Re:Christian fundamentalists will end NASA (Score:3, Insightful)
How's that working for ya? Has the tiny violin army fixed the homeless problem? I think I'll put more "faith" in
Re:Christian fundamentalists will end NASA (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with much of your post, but that's a very silly statement. What about stem cell research? What about the John Scopes Monkey trial, which some (in the south) still insist isn't over? The Big Bang (somehow opposed to creation)?
It's really not hard to find examples of religion opposing science, especially when you talk about religious groups that take the bible literally.
off-topic troll-feeding (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, please! Nobdy murders babies to harvest stem cells. Harvesting stem cells is an added bonus to murdering babies! It's like, hey, I got that baby murdered (awesome!) and then I get free stem cells to boot (woo-woo!) It's win-win!
Re:Christian fundamentalists will end NASA (Score:5, Informative)
Please don't confuse the term "Luddite Maniac" with "Christian".
Re:Christian fundamentalists will end NASA (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Christian fundamentalists will end NASA (Score:3, Informative)
I think
Re:Christian fundamentalists will end NASA (Score:3, Insightful)
That's fine. I believe that the Bible is the word of God. Having read quite a bit of it, I don't recall seeing:
Show me where Jesus said that the world was created in seven 24-hour periods and I'll reconsider. However, I'm fairly certain that you won't find it.
Re:Christian fundamentalists will end NASA (Score:3, Interesting)
However, if humans have been abducted and taken to live on other planets, that is a different situation altogether. *smirk*
If t
Re:Christian fundamentalists will end NASA (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't Xtreme Bible Thumping (XBT) where pairs of bible-thumpers work together to get the thumping done more quickly? They subsist on Mountain Dew and Snickers bars? I think there's an O'Reilly book or two on it...
The answer...cats (Score:5, Funny)
There will never be proof of anything. (Score:3, Funny)
For the conspiricist:
Was there a sinister (living) payload in the polar explorers? There is a lot of funding to be gained.
Nice job Mods (Score:3, Funny)
Active Volcano? (Score:3, Interesting)
Meteors and Comets (Score:3, Informative)
"There are no known ways for ammonia to be present in the Martian atmosphere that do not involve life," a US Space Agency (Nasa) scientist told BBC News Online.
--
That's just bunk. Ammonia is a very common compound in the outer solar system. Ammonia can get formed like crazy without life being present; it's a very simple chemical to create abiotically.
A decent sized comet impact could deposit enough ammonia in the soil to account for the amounts being detected just from simple outgassing.
Judging from the smell... (Score:3, Insightful)
--QTone, not French [gay.com]
The source (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Enough Already (Score:3, Interesting)