Mars
 

Hopefully.

This is so fucking cool. I vote we inter Stevo-Hawkins in a dreadnought-esque robo suit and send him off to find life and more water on the Martian surface.

Can I repurpose this thread to posting music connected to martians?

TOO LATE




I can't think of more at the moment.

There is no intelligent life on Mars, dummy. Maybe a few worms, but who cares? We have those on Earth. They're pretty boring.

I think it would be a pretty huge fucking discovery if they found live worms on Mars... just saying.

People make fuss about nothing. Didn't they find some fossils at some point in time?

Nope.

Any evidence of life on other planets would absolutely shake our understanding of science to the core. Also I reckon a boat load of religious types would lose their minds...

How so? What's so spectacular about that? There are many thousands... millions... an undisclosed number of planets that have fair conditions to have life on them. I mean, why would anyone think there are no lives besides on Earth? That's superstitious. We're not the center of the universe, we're dust.

They will find another unscientific explanation and will stick to it. It's religion we're talking about.

We should indeed send Bowie to check for life up there for us, but we need to be sure he doesn't forget his protein pills and that his circuit doesn't "die".

Have said planets been confirmed of having "fair conditions to have life on them", or was this a speculation based on statistics?

Not saying there aren't any planets out there that might support life. But that's the thing. Might. I think the moment when there's definitive proof of life on other planets is what the majority of people are expecting from announcements like the current one.

That being said, if it does happen one day, one half of humanity will so shove it into the other half's faces, it'll be glorious. Or infuriating, depending on which side you belong to.

It's only a matter of time until we either discovery life or past evidence of life on Mars. I'm sure of it.

I just hope we'll send people to the red planet in my lifetime. And this new discovery might shorten the time we'll have to wait :)

Speaking of which, I'm actually working on a voiceover translation of a BBC series about a possible mission to Mars, and I've learned that NASA estimates a trip to happen in 2033 at the earliest.

It does look like a difficult mission. It's probably my own ignorance of space stuff, but just watching this 50 minute first episode revealed a lot of difficulties that need to be tackled for a space flight to Mars. The trip itself would take roughly seventeen months, so the spacecraft would need adequate amounts of fuel, sustenance and equipment, which does take up a lot of space. Then there's the question of how should these people preserve muscle and bone mass through the whole mission, in zero-G conditions. How will they preserve their mental health while being confined to a small space with the same group of people for two years or so? Interesting stuff.

What is the gravity situation of Mars? Lighter or heavier than Earth? Still, a mission to Mars in my lifetime would be absolutely amazing to see. It would be the first colonization effort by human kind in history. Even if it's just a research outpost.

Earth : Mars = 1g : 0,376g, apparently. So roughly a third of what you experience on Earth.

The whole point of statistics is to scientifically predict things occuring in the universe without *actually seeing them yet*.

If you want more citation, you can google for "planets with conditions suitable for life". Sadly, I'm not a scientist, that's the best I can offer you.

Imagine me having a rock in my hand, and throwing it in the distance. Then imagine you telling me there are no planets in the universe except this one where I can throw a rock, if I was there, and backing that up by saying that I've never seen or heard about a man throwing rocks on another planet.

What I'm saying is: there is a fine line between what "might be" and what "probably is".

I would be on the side that doesn't really give a shit, because it realised how unimportant the discovery is, after all.

Fair dos. And what I'm trying to say is: people are really looking forward to seeing a picture of people throwing rocks on other planets.


I think that would be excellent material for an intergalactic ambassador if Earth ever needed one.

It will be cool since until now life on other planets has been nothing more than fancy. We can say it would be almost impossible if there isn't but that's about as far as it goes. Even if it's a few microbes it's definitely a milestone in human discovery and scientific understanding.

Varrok: professional killjoy.

Also the discovery seems to be that they found evidence of running water. Which raises the possibility of life existing there.

That, however, is the thing that's statistically implausible. We probably won't meet any intelligent alien race. I mean ever, as a mankind.

Why do people insist that would be that ground-breaking? I mean, on what basis? Let's say they did find water and microbes on Mars, and they turn out to be really similar to what we've got on Earth, nothing that would be really outstanding if it was found here. Will the humanity stand up all together waving hands and shouting "Yay for microbes!"?

*bows*

This mindset absolutely blows my mind. How can you not be even the tiniest bit intrigued about this outcome? A form of life untouched by the planet Earth. Microbes are a hint towards something bigger. The discovery of even the most basic forms of life opens up so many doors.

People who don't get excited about this shit baffle the hell out of me.

Tiniest bit, maybe. Tiniest bit is a very small amount, though.

What about the theory that life on Earth actually comes from Mars? (by a comet or something) Did they bust that already? I haven't heard about it in a while.

Microbes are microbes. Are humans a hint towards something bigger?

I still think you'd be perfect for the job.

"We have decided to reveal ourselves to you, Earthlings, and we are pleased by your admirat-"
"Whatever. The reception's over there. Also, park your ship in the right spot next time."

Oh shit dog, you just stirred up the hive.

Worms are amazing. We know so little about them, including how hardy they can be, how deep they go, what incidental features helped subspecies survive in crazy biospheres...if there were worms on mars, there could be men on Mars in no time at all, growing mars food and shortly pooping mars poops. Worms are quite literally one of the only reasons humans can proliferate so much, worms take care of billions of background processes that we don't have the technology to manage.

Did you know that famed accidental Evolutionary Biologist Charles Darwin spent the majority of his professional career examining and researching different worm species? It's a myth that chopping a worm up into little pieces will produce several equally functional critters, but you CAN remove a massive amount of flesh from a worm and it will keep working thanks it its crazy morphology and motivated little brain.


Seriously, if there were worms on Mars it would blow our understanding on the conditions necessary for life wide open. I was hoping for an Alien Ruins announcement but salt water is just as good.

They found some blobs, but no-one was able prove definitively that they were single-cell creature fossils and not just crystals or air pockets.

There are two possibilities. The microbes might be similar to what we have on Earth (e.g. DNA, RNA, mitochondria, similar chemical structures), which would suggest very strongly that Earth had been seeded from life on Mars (or possibly the other way around). Or it might be completely unrelated, which would be fascinating to learn about and tell us something significant about the probabilities of life arising independantly in other planets.

Isn't it improbable that Mars life would work entirely different, since Mars isn't that unlike Earth? It's not a ball of ice or anything.

There might be just a few worms there, if any. Maybe not enough for any of that things. What if that worms require much more water than Mars offers? Maybe it's just microbes.

And, even if all goes well.

We can't even maintain *this* planet we live in. We're far from it. Like, light years.

"It's a huge step forward but we still have no indication of intelligent life on the Red Planet," Nasa's Larry Surname told HuffPost UK Comedy. "We hope one day soon we will eventually find something of worth on Mars."

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015...n_8208508.html

In the big picture we don't need to maintain this planet so its a non issue ;)

As a person with concerns about the environment I have to disagree.

Maybe he means that in a "We can just ditch this dumpster and find a better planet" way

My issue being that’s an incredibly optimistic outlook when you compare current levels of pollution and environmental destruction versus the progress of spacefaring technology.

A random series of events led to certain self-replicating molecules being created. Those molecules replicated many, many times and occassionally had randomised variations that replicated faster. Then different molecules clumped together to form cells that replicated as a group. Then cells clumped together for convenience, later combining with different clumped cells to produce a larger organism. And so on and so forth until you're sitting there, reading your computer.

But if the first random series of events were different, you'd end up with something completely different. Even if the early conditions were identical, it's ridiculously unlikely for life to have evolved in exactly the same way from scratch. So if there were life on Mars, they'd probably be carbon-based and have similar proportions of Hydrogen, Oxygen, and so forth. But the exact mechanism of DNA and RNA is only going to be in use there if we share a common ancestor.

Or if we can't prove they're related and they have huge similarities to Earth-based life that would also be significant. Whatever happens, if there is or has been life on Mars we're going to learn a hell of a lot about what the spark is. It won't be an overnight realization, but the more we explore and dissect mars to learn about it's geological history to more information we'll have to compare to life starting on Earth.

I'd love for Life to become a significant taxonomic rank. Earth or Mars life, that are totally distinct. Not even a fork in the tree*, but another starting point for a second tree entirely.

*Tree or other more appropriate graph-based representation of the evolution of life on Earth