A Lake On Mars May Once Have Teemed With Life (theverge.com) 71
An anonymous reader quotes The Verge:
Once upon a time on Mars, there was a crater that had a massive lake that may have hosted life. Now researchers are saying that a whole variety of organisms could have flourished there. Sure, that life was probably just microbial, but this is another exciting step toward understanding just how habitable Mars may have been around 3.5 billion years ago. Petrified mud that was once at the bottom of the lake suggests that, at the time, the lake had different chemical environments that could have hosted different types of microbes.
The rocks also show that the Red Planet's climate may have been more dynamic than we thought, going from cold and dry to warm and wet, before eventually drying out. We still don't know whether life once existed on Mars when the planet was warmer and had liquid water. But today's findings, published in Science, give a much more nuanced and detailed picture of what this area of Mars could have looked like through time... "The lake had all the right stuff for microbial life to live in," says study co-author Joel Hurowitz, a geochemist and planetary scientist at Stony Brook University.
NASA's Curiosity rover spent three and a half years collecting data from the crater, and that data now suggests that a habitable environment existed there for at least tens of thousands of years -- and possibly as long as "tens of millions of years."
The rocks also show that the Red Planet's climate may have been more dynamic than we thought, going from cold and dry to warm and wet, before eventually drying out. We still don't know whether life once existed on Mars when the planet was warmer and had liquid water. But today's findings, published in Science, give a much more nuanced and detailed picture of what this area of Mars could have looked like through time... "The lake had all the right stuff for microbial life to live in," says study co-author Joel Hurowitz, a geochemist and planetary scientist at Stony Brook University.
NASA's Curiosity rover spent three and a half years collecting data from the crater, and that data now suggests that a habitable environment existed there for at least tens of thousands of years -- and possibly as long as "tens of millions of years."
Re:Simple question (Score:5, Informative)
How does this affect anyone?
It gives us a better understanding of how life happens, how it evolves. If we find evidence of life on Mars, or if we fail to find evidence, that helps us to understand life on earth. It is hard to point to a direct application of basic scientific research, but it has historically proved to be a very wise investment.
Can anyone justify the value of this research?
The "value" has to be compared against the cost. These unmanned robotic missions are way cheap. If you want to look for poor value/cost, look at the $100B squandered on the ISS.
Re:Simple question (Score:5, Informative)
> The "value" has to be compared against the cost. These unmanned robotic missions are way cheap. If you want to look for poor value/cost, look at the $100B squandered on the ISS.
Which is about the cost of five months of the 2003-2011 war in Iraq.
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Re: Simple question (Score:2)
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the TOTAL amount of money given to NASA for the entirety of its life is less than the Department of Defense got in one year(2016).....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
Re:Simple question (Score:5, Interesting)
> The "value" has to be compared against the cost. These unmanned robotic missions are way cheap. If you want to look for poor value/cost, look at the $100B squandered on the ISS.
Which is about the cost of five months of the 2003-2011 war in Iraq.
Yes... but every 100 billion spent on "frivolous pure research" is 100 billion not spent killing each other.
So whatever science was gained from the ISS can be considered a peace dividend. And the results of pure science always pay off eventually.
Nothing was wasted.
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The ISS served a purpose but no one has had the vision to build on what has been learned. The hardest, most dangerous, and most expensive part of exploring space is getting into orbit. The IIS should have served as the core component of an enlarged orbital construction and vehicle dock. The ISS and the old space shuttle program has provided a wealth of data on orbit repair and construction techniques and the physiological impact of those working for prolonged periods in that environment. We have multiple pr
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The ISS served a purpose but no one has had the vision to build on what has been learned.
There was very little learned from the ISS that we hadn't already learned from Skylab and Mir. We could have kept Mir in orbit, and retrofitted it for 1% of what was spent on the ISS. Instead, deorbiting Mir was a precondition for Russian participation in the ISS.
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"ISS that we hadn't already learned from Skylab and Mir"
The ISS project absorbed the data collected from the earlier orbital stations and then surpassed them in every way. There is a wealth of online information about Mir, Skylab, and the ISS. You best go study up before you make anymore stupid remarks.
"deorbiting Mir was a precondition for Russian participation in the ISS"
It was a "precondition" because Russia couldn't afford to maintain Mir and meet it's financial obligations required to participate in th
Re:Simple question (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a simple question for you Mr Faraday: how do your electrical parlour tricks affect anyone? What possible use can your moving wires have. Surely people must admit that this research serves no purpose for anyone. Can anyone justify the value of your research? I think not.
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Not to mention that Laser thing Einstein dreamed up. I mean, ok, it's fancy, but in the end, what is it good for? Before there's any sensible home application, you'll see at least 60 years go by.
Re:Simple question (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. The wise mandarins running the Ottoman Empire correctly saw that a mechanism for cranking a shaft by boiling water could do no better than replace a little boy, who might be employed, say, turning meat on a spit. What is the point of such things when child labor is cheap, and inattention can be discouraged by vicious beatings?
A more serious answer: if were we to ever decide to create a colony on Mars, what resources exist there would matter immensely. For now, we are going to do no such thing in the foreseeable future. But we might if we learned enough about Martian resources to bring the long term price tag down.
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Re: Turning gold into lead (Score:3, Insightful)
And alchemy led to modern chemistry. Not a bad deal, considering the number of lives enabled by modern chemical applications.
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Bullshit! Chemicals are known carcinogens. They cause cancer, brightboy.
Good lord, do they teach anything in school anymore? This one can spell, or has at least enabled his spell-checker, which is remarkable these days, yet has no basic understanding of chemistry. Got some bad news for ya, bud. You’ve been eating nothing but chemicals your whole life, and indeed, are made entirely of them. But, don’t despair. Many chemicals, such as dihydrogen monoxide, are quite harmless when used properly, and are not known to cause cancer, not even by the State of California.
I
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In a more perfect world, you might be right.
In this world, NASA cuts do not go to the NSF to fund basic research. In fact, savings from NASA are more likely to be scraped together to preserve some DoD boondoggle that should have been axed years ago. Many research scientists see NASA as trying to leverage tie ins to the MIC in order to get some kind of science done, which is expensive PR dollarwise but at least keeps science "relevant" in the public eye. Reasonable people can disagree, but it is not an un
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I think not!
You said it, brother.
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I have a simple question. How does this affect anyone? This is 3.5 billion years ago that we're talking about, on another planet. Whatever might have lived in that lake is long since dead. How is anyone affected by this? Can anyone justify the value of this research? I strongly suspect that I'll be modded down to -1 so people can ignore my important post and pretend it doesn't exist. Otherwise, people would have to admit that this research serves no purpose for anyone. Can anyone justify the value of this research? I think not!
Let me quote an erstwhile editor of New Scientist magazine. "Science is interesting, and if you don't agree, you can fuck off.
Do us all a favour, and fuck off. You're on the wrong website. Bye.
Notice that I pointedly did not address your argument. That's because your argument is worthless and I wouldn't dream of dignifying it with a response.
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"a massive lake that may have hosted life."
As of now, we have zero evidence that the chemical reactions that created life on earth have occurred in a similar fashion anywhere else. There is no real evidence that this lake hosted life, its just interesting speculation. The religious minded could speculate the lake is the lost Eden of the Bible with equal evidence to support it.
But we a pretty sure the lake existed, that is all we need know to write an article about how life might have been teeming in it. And of course, since the lake was on Mars, its almost obligatory to write such an article.
There were once rivers on Mars. They may have been teeming with life. You heard it here.
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As of now, we have zero evidence that the chemical reactions that created life on earth have occurred in a similar fashion anywhere else. There is no real evidence that this lake hosted life, its just interesting speculation. The religious minded could speculate the lake is the lost Eden of the Bible with equal evidence to support it.
Healthy skepticism is what drives all good science, but in this case we do in fact have reasons to believe that it is at least plausible for life to be common wherever in the universe the conditions are suitable. The more we learn about how life has evolved and how it is likely to have started, the more it looks like like is something that is certain to get started when the conditions are right; and the conditions may be right within a wide set of parameters.
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"a massive lake that may have hosted life."
As of now, we have zero evidence that the chemical reactions that created life on earth have occurred in a similar fashion anywhere else. There is no real evidence that this lake hosted life, its just interesting speculation. The religious minded could speculate the lake is the lost Eden of the Bible with equal evidence to support it.
Life arose on earth rapidly after the conditions were favourable. If the conditions were favourable on Mars, it's not a huge stretch to suggest that life could have existed there at the time. What part of that is unreasonable to you?
The garden of eden was made up by bronze age goat herders, I wouldn't compare it unless I was trying to demonstrate that I can't think properly.
...or not (Score:5, Insightful)
It may also have once teemed with aliens from the planet Zardoz. We really don't have any conclusive evidence to say it *didn't*, after all.
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Sometime in the future explorers will find Earth (Score:3, Insightful)
The rocks also show that the Earth's (Red Planet's) climate may have been more dynamic than we thought, going from cold and dry to warm and wet, before eventually drying out. We still don't know whether life once existed on Earth (Mars) when the planet was warmer and had liquid water. But today's findings, published in Science, give a much more nuanced and detailed picture of what this area of Earth (Mars) could have looked like through time... "The lake had all the right stuff for microbial life to live in," says study co-author Joel Hurowitz, a geochemist and planetary scientist at Stony Brook University.
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DNA didn't exist when the earliest life arose. Thanks for demonstrating that you know fuck all beyond mystery-mongering. Let's pop you in the box marked 'last group of humans you should ever talk to about this topic'.
To expect it on Mars shows a real knowledge problem. When people talk about areas beyond their expertise, you get garbage.
Are you trying to punch a hole in reality with sheer irony?
Oh, and it's "hubris".
Finally... (Score:1)
Re:Finally... (Score:4, Funny)
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If your going to speculate
You're clearly very smart.
and a unicorn could've flown out my ass last night (Score:5, Insightful)
Decades of this crap. Show me hard evidence of live (or fossilized) microbes, or give it a rest.
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Is that too complicated for you?
Don't be a jackass.
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Well, the energy density of lithium-ion batteries has gone up by a factor of six or so since 1990, in terms of Wh/kg. And it's gone up by a factor of 10 compared to the crummy Ni/Cd batteries I had when I was a kid... I admit though, I probably only needed to hear the news of battery improvements 5 or 6 times tops over the last 30 years.
would they listen (Score:2)
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No, it didn't. (Score:1)
From a Biblical perspective, the lake on Mars has never teemed with life. This would imply that there is sin and death elsewhere in the universe, other than here on planet Earth. We fundamentalists know otherwise, and thus can say with certainty that a lake on Mars did not once teem with life. And while I'm on the subject, we can also say with certainty that the entire SETI project is a waste of resources as well. :)