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Space Science

Water on Mars - Clues to Life? 178

Posted by timothy from the red-juicy-planet dept.
PHPee writes: "Reports of water on Mars say that huge amounts of water gushed through the surface of the red planet fairly 'recently'. (Recently being as little as 10 million years ago) This is big news, because it may lead to finding some simple forms of life on the planet. For more info, check out: (story #1) and (story #2)."
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Water on Mars - Clues to Life? More

Water on Mars - Clues to Life?

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  • Of course - (Score:4, Funny)

    by wirefarm ( 18470 ) <.ten.cdmm. .ta. .mij.> on Friday February 22, 2002 @05:10AM (#3050190) Homepage
    That's what all of the canals were for...
    Duh.
    Cheers,
    Jim in Tokyo
    • That's what all of the canals were for...

      Really? But the biggest canal [nasa.gov] was neither formed by water nor carried significant water.

      Since these scientist chappies are getting so good at finding water on a completely dry planet (and explaining away global floods on another planet which is covered in water to an average depth of 2.7km [edgewood.edu]), perhaps they can figure out where that much lightning [electric-cosmos.org] came from? It certainly explains all of those rocks you see strewn around in Mars lander images.

  • Alien bacteria (Score:4, Informative)

    by Mattygfunk ( 517948 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @05:14AM (#3050199) Homepage
    Wired [wired.com] is also covering the story.

    Apart from being fastinating and a sign that further evolved life forms may exist, are there any potential advantages for finding extraterestrial bacteria?

    • Consider the fact (Score:3, Insightful)

      by HanzoSan ( 251665 )
      That we may find a form of life which simply cannot be classified by anything we have ever seen on earth. What do we do if this happens?

      People expect to go on other planets and find the same lifeforms you see on earth, bacteria, and mammals, and so on, what if you find a lifeform thats unlike anything, like a gas or liquid based lifeform, or something just totally weird.

      Scientists should at least be ready for it.

      • Re:Consider the fact (Score:5, Insightful)

        by skilef ( 525335 ) <flix@nOspAM.vunzzz.net> on Friday February 22, 2002 @07:04AM (#3050414)
        Although we are limited as humans in our theoretical resources, there are strong indications that the chances for carbon-hydrogen based life on mars are bigger than for an unknown form. If you look at Mars' atmosphere, you see a 50x higher concentration of carbondioxide compared to earth. If you combine the fact that life needs some kind of energy (geothermal, sunlight) for its metabolic pathways, and that those sources for energy are available at places where water and carbondioxide are present, carbon-hydrogen based life seems to be the most plausible form. Because of the low temperatures on the surface there is a bigger chance for finding some kind of subterranean thermophilic lifeform than anything on the surface.
        The chance is very small however; therefore, I think it's more important that the presence of water enables us to create colonies on Mars in the near future: water can be used as a source of energy and offcourse to quench our thirst..
        • If you look at Mars' atmosphere, you see a 50x higher concentration of carbondioxide compared to earth.

          Well... not exactly. The CO2 is about 50x more common in proportion, but remember that there is also 100x less pressure [washington.edu] (7-10 millbars versus roughly 1000 millibars [usatoday.com]) so the total amount of CO2 around on Mars is about 1/2. Low atmospheric pressure complicates things even more by boiling off [nasa.gov] most of the volatiles which would generally be considered useful for quite a big stretch along the putative road to life.

          After an initial flurry of excitement, the original Miller-Urey experiments [duke.edu] which produced some amino acids [duke.edu] also highlighted a number of problems on the way along said road.

          • The experiment was highly artifical, not at all a good representation of putative early Earth conditions
          • despite this, we would expect some amino acids to form anyway, due to the chemical potentials involved (there is a dip in the road to life, into which some chemical processes will roll with very little pursuasion)
          • the dip in potential has another side, and that looks kind of like the roads you see in some cartoons, which lead up to the base of a cliff, then trundle straight on up the face of it; what this means in real terms is that not only do some simple atoms/molecules find it relatively easy to become amino acids, but also more complicated molecules find it much easier to relapse to aminoness and it's very unlikely that aminos will self-assemble into anything much more complicated
          • the acids formed were racemised, that is, about half of them were twisted the wrong way; with one exception, amino acids in living beings are twisted left-handed (are said to have left-handed chirality)
          • the putative primitive conditions also destroy even the simple amino acids formed by the experiment very quickly
          • the early conditions involve a heck of a lot of chemicals unlikely to exist in useful amounts on Mars
          • for that matter, there is much evidence that Earth did not have a reducing atmosphere [iinet.net.au] like the one used in the experiment, or at least did not have one for very long.
          I think it's more important that the presence of water enables us to create colonies on Mars in the near future

          Agree. And let's do it properly, by building a Beanstalk [aol.com] now that it is technically feasible [techtv.com]. Or is that the mistake the Babelians made? (-:
        • But in order for us to create colonies on mars, we would have to use that water we find there to terraform the planet. And if we terraform the planet, we the life that may potentially be found there would probably not be able to survive in the new conditions. We should first make very sure that there is no life to be found if we're considering such an act. And maybe it is worth preserving the current state of mars just a little longer so we can appreciate the beauty of this alien planet, before we turn it into earth v.2. take it easy flix
    • Apart from being fastinating and a sign that further evolved life forms may exist, are there any potential advantages for finding extraterestrial bacteria?

      Looking at signs of life that evolved on another planet might tell us a lot about how early life on earth may have evolved. The problem with life on earth is that it's a palimpsest--a tablet overwritten so many times that the original message has been effectively erased. We can be sure that modern proteins didn't just happen by accident, but on the other hand we don't yet know how they did come about. If signs of life should turn out to remain on Mars, particularly if that life took a different turning than life on earth did, it would show us one more trace through the maze, one more way of existing than the one we know about. And we'd learn a lot more about life in general.

      • We can be sure that modern proteins didn't just happen by accident

        How can we be sure of that? I can see a semilogical porcess that could lead up to modern life that occured by accident.

        Dig your user name btw.. what Banks book is that from? Exession?

        • The problem with proteins is that they're rather too complex to have formed by the kind of accident that the creationists (and panspermist steady-staters like Hoyle) like to deride. We do know of some self-replicating short chain and cyclic polypeptides that are candidates for precursors of modern life, for instance. If you're interested, there's a good FAQ on this here [talkorigins.org] A bit heavy on anti-creationist polemic, but it still contains a readable introduction to modern abiogenesis theory.

          Dig your user name btw.. what Banks book is that from? Exession?

          As a GSV I get to choose my own name <grin>. It's inspired by Excession, as you guessed. The conversations between the Minds in that book are very reminiscent of internet/usenet/webforum culture.

          • there's a good FAQ on this here A bit heavy on anti-creationist polemic, but it still contains a readable introduction to modern abiogenesis theory.

            The talkorigins crew repeatedly stuff up bigtime [bearfabrique.org] and would rather crawl up their own asses than admit either error or defeat [bearfabrique.org]. The possibility that Santa Claus exists [uchicago.edu] does not equal the certainty, but that is how their logic generally runs when arguing in favour of one of ``their'' points (for examples of such begging-the-question, where does the hypothetical lipid layer in their non-self-reproducing HypUrCell come from, why does it form a layer rather than disperse, what powers the lipid-generating reaction, how does one get from a fat-bubble to the complex, filtering, active membrane in the prokayote below it, where did the primordial peptide come from, and do they also believe in sympathetic medicine - with which their HypUrCell comparison bears a more than passing resemblance?). Arguments against opposing points are generally pretty abusive. You get a lot of the tone (with the offensive language distilled off) from their article.

            Try this essay [trueorigin.org] for balance. If you enjoy sarcasm, this one is amusing [bearfabrique.org] as well.

            I can't resist my own separate dig at this page, it's just asking for it:

            Even at 1 chance in 4.29 x 10[E]40, a self-replicator could have turned up surprisingly early. [...] So, if on our prebiotic earth we have a billion peptides growing simultaneously, that reduces the time taken to generate our replicator significantly.

            If you covered the entire Earth with amino acids useful for generating Ghadiri's peptides - and never mind sources of raw materials and sinks for elimination, decay and other factors - a nice sticky layer a third of a millimeter deep, odds are even that you would get one after a thousand iterations of the whole planet. If we inject a sliver sliver (and no more) of reality into the scenario, and reduce the total area of entirely-composed-of-useful-amino-acid-only lakes on Earth at any one time to that of the Great Lakes (roughly a quarter million square kilometers vs 500 million square kilometers) we're up to two million planetary iterations per peptide. How fast do these processes iterate? What happens when we account for impurities? How about dispersion in a hypothetically (but not realistically) neutral medium like ocean water? How long does a peptide hold together? How many peptides do we need in order to be useful for the next stage? Note that I'm focussing on just one putative stage, not stacking them as the article accuses all opponents of doing.

            As a GSV I get to choose my own name

            The idea of making GSVs transparent was a good one, I thought. The idea of stations with rank upon rank of GSVs parked inside them was a bit breath-taking... the human mind doesn't accept scale very well, but the Port of Fremantle, just down the road from here, is about the right size to be a GSV docking cradle, and I can mentally replicate that to car-park quantities.
    • I could be wrong, but couldn't discovering ET bacteria lead to new and more powerful antibiotics?

  • yes, life (Score:3, Insightful)

    by I Want GNU! ( 556631 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @05:17AM (#3050207) Homepage
    Indeed this is great, but I wouldn't qualify it as *news*. I thought it was relatively well established that there was proof of water on Mars. Nothing new has happened since then, but hopefully we will go up and take samples sometime.

    Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, is also thought to be one of the prime candidates for life in our solar system.
    • "Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, is also thought to be one of the prime candidates for life in our solar system."

      Yes, but we can attempt no landing there (as we'll be told in another 8 years, apparently).

      (-1, redundant)
      Oh come on, what's a "Life in space" story without a few 2001 / 2010 references?

      Maran
    • The news is that this water was present relatively recently i.e. within the last 10 million years. That's the blink of an eye in geologic terms, and may imply that there's still a lot of water on Mars,

  • Why we look for water and life on Mars (Score:5, Interesting)

    by InfoSec ( 208475 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @05:17AM (#3050208) Homepage
    Truth be told, a goephysicist friend of mine told me why they look for life and water on Mars. It is to estimate the likelyhood of more life in the universe, and to determine the practicality of creating human colonies on other planets. If water and life are common, then the entire idea becomes far more practical. If water is abundant and available, then we can move out among the stars at a much faster rate than current science has estimated.
    • It is to estimate the likelyhood of more life in the universe,

      It is a misconception that water is a requirement for life. Sure, life without water is practically impossible on earth. This is mainly because the melting point and boiling point of water are in the range of temeratures encountered here. That is also where carbon-based lifeforms are usefull.
      Now on a much hotter planet for instance, COH lifeforms won't hack it, as the COH bindings are too weak to hold on at very high temperatures. In such cases it would be wise to adapt a Si-based form, which has quite similar characteristics to C when placed at a higher temperature.
      On the other hand, when a planet is much cooler, water is pretty useless as it's only present as ice. Mind you: ice is no good when you are dealing with cell-like organisms (as we are). In such case another liquid is more practical (maybe some very apolar fluid)

      We shouldn't decide whether something can be called 'life' just because it looks like us. Life should be quantified in terms of energy and entropy instead

      • Re:Why we look for water and life on Mars (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dgroskind ( 198819 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @08:46AM (#3050629)

        In such cases it would be wise to adapt a Si-based form, which has quite similar characteristics to C when placed at a higher temperature.

        The properties may be similar but they are in general still not [sciam.com] the properties needed for life. For instance, when carbon oxidizes it produces a gas, which is a useful characteristic for breathing. When silicon oxidizes it produces sand, which would prevent breathing.

        One could imagine very different organic chemistries but these would might not have anything in common with carbon chemistry and thus silicon would not be relevant. For instance, nitrogen and phosphorous [psu.edu] can form the long molecular chains needed for DNA-like structures.

        Life should be quantified in terms of energy and entropy instead.

        One of the key characteristics of life as we know it is chirality [chiral.com], which is the property of a the mirror image of an object like a molecule to be a different shape from the object. Carbon-based organic molecules have this property but phosphorus-nitrogen ones do not.

        Chirality suggests that organic molecules might need to embody certain mathematical characteristics that are fundamental to life. What we would need, therefore, is a mathematical definition of life.

        • Re:Why we look for water and life on Mars (Score:4, Insightful)

          by meiocyte ( 455845 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @04:06PM (#3053738) Homepage
          One of the key characteristics of life as we know it is chirality [chiral.com], which is...(snip)

          I don't understand this at all..

          First of all, it's very hard for a molecule beyond a certain size to not be chiral - if you have an atom coordinated to 4 different groups, that's all you need.
          And although organisms are full of chiral molecules, that doesn't mean that chirality is somehow a "key characteristic of life" - it's just a trivial consequence of the fact that you need big, complicated molecules to build robustly self-reproducing objects.

          Carbon-based organic molecules have this property but phosphorus-nitrogen ones do not.

          But the polyphosphazene polymers you provide a link to could easily be chiral, if the R groups are different!

          Chirality suggests that organic molecules might need to embody certain mathematical characteristics that are fundamental to life. What we would need, therefore, is a mathematical definition of life.

          But why do we need a mathematical definition of life, or indeed any definition of life at all? It's not as if, should we find something on Mars that reproduced and grew, and had a sophisticated metabolism to extract energy, but didn't fit some dimly imagined 'mathematical definition', we would shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, that's quaint, but it isn't life, you know.. let's ignore it.". The word "life" is like the word "game" - it's a word we have no problem using in daily life, but coming up with a precise definition is both pointless and impossible.

          • I don't understand this at all..

            for I perplex others, not because I am clear, but because I am utterly perplexed myself.

            But the polyphosphazene polymers you provide a link to could easily be chiral...

            I'm following Prof. Robert D. Minard (Penn State Astrobiology Research Center) who says [nasa.gov] they aren't chiral.

            But why do we need a mathematical definition of life, or indeed any definition of life at all?

            I was playing here with the previous post's idea that life might be more fundamental than its chemistry. There's a hint of this idea in Stephen Wolfram's theories [newscientist.com]. Coming up with a precise definition of life would only be pointless if it's impossible. The point would be that a mathematical description of life might give it the same standing as a natural law like gravity or entropy: The Law of Life.

        • 1 + 1 = 3

          p.s. What about those sand people on Star Wars? They seem to be ok with breathing sand.
      • "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it"
      • Life should be quantified in terms of energy and entropy instead

        Yes yes, something like that ... Maybe complexity should be in there somewhere as well ... and something about propagation / reproduction ... err, what would be the definition exactly?

        At what point does matter become organised enough to be called alive?

      • Re:Why we look for water and life on Mars (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        This 'generic' definition of 'LIFE' has bothered me for long while. It neednt be even 'biological' as we perceive it. There are so many 'forms' life can exist as we know and there could be millions of other forms which we dont know. Still, I dont understand why our 'scientists' tend to define 'life' as 'water' based or supported. One may argue this as to looking for our possible habitat. But defining life as something 'water' based or biological is foolish. IMO.

      • It is a misconception that water is a requirement for life. Sure, life without water is practically impossible on earth.

        Do we have any examples of life that does not require water? For all I know, it's more of a hasty assumption than a misconception.

        Water is just *really* strange stuff, and I don't think there's any other substance remotely like it. ('course I'm not a chemist or whatever so there ya go)

      • InfoSec's original post was not questioning whether water is required for any type of life. He was suggesting that for HUMANS (ie, carbon-based lifeforms from the third planet out from our sun) to colonize other planets, we need large quantities of readily available water. Of course the comment Ubi_NL has made may or may not be true (it's a valid theory, anyway), but it has nothing to do with the original post. Nobody can argue that humans will be unable to colononize space very effectively if we have to bring water with us. However, if the Universe is full of water, as Mars suggests, then it will be easy.

        At the same time, presence of water on Mars does not really give us any clue as to whether or not there is water outside our solar system, since Mars and Earth both came from the same primordial mass...
      • There's a reason why water is significant in this case. If there is life on Mars then chances are it shares a heritage with life on Earth and AFAIK all life on Earth requires H_2O
    • ... to determine the practicality of creating human colonies on other planets. If water and life are common, then the entire idea becomes far more practical.

      If life already exists on other planets, we should leave them alone. Humankind has enough of a bad track-record of screwing up one planet – sending countless species into extinction and precipitating environmental melt-down.

      Only if a planet is proven to be free from life should we consider colonising it.

  • Startup Opportunity (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22, 2002 @05:18AM (#3050209)
    Isn't there ice on Mars? Where there's ice, there's usually something frozen (oft water...).

    Who's up for bottling the stuff and reselling it here on Earth?! Forget that $1/bottle outa the New York tap stuff, we're talkin' $5,000 per bottle, extremely limited supply, right off the space ship! Hasn't been touched since man kind migrated off of Mars when it blew out of an opposing orbit from Earth and ... oh I've said too much already...

    Once you sign the NDA, we'll talk... Drop an email to ac1@slashdot....
    • Actually, even at that amount, you'd be tough pressed to make money. Isn't it like $10000/lb to get stuff to orbit? You'd need to do that once for earth, and then once for mars. Plus it would be more expensive since you have to carry fuel to get to and from Mars, etc, etc..

      • Isn't it like $10000/lb to get stuff to orbit? You'd need to do that once for earth, and then once for mars.

        Earth has a stronger gravitational field than Mars, so it takes more fuel to get stuff off Earth than it is to get the same stuff off Mars.

        Plus it would be more expensive since you have to carry fuel to get to and from Mars, etc, etc.

        There is a clever trick to get around this problem: instead of bringing heavy fuel to Mars, bring a lightweight but powerful energy supply and some hydrogen. On Mars, use carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the hydrogen you brought to make methane-oxygen fuel.

        I think the most expensive part of selling bottled Mars water on Earth would be convincing governments that it's safe to drink.
    • I always thought the ice at the caps was determined to be frozen CO2, also known as dry ice.

  • Since its on Mars, theres no telling what kinda lifeforms you may find. We should be very careful, just because the lifeforms in our ocean and on our earth are simple, does not mean what we find on mars will be.

    Second, are we even looking? The only way we will know if theres life on mars and i say this all the time, is to drill. drill several miles into the ground and see if theres water. If there is, you could have a whole ocean of life down there and for all we know it could be intelligent. If not, well then we may not find anytihng but sand, but until Nasa decides to check we wont find anything.

  • Origin of life (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22, 2002 @05:34AM (#3050243)
    There's always much speculation about the origin of live. The three main theories as far as I know are:
    1. Biblical: God created life
    2. Alien: Life came from fragments of comets and meteors travelling
    3. Self created: Life self created from the primal mess, which created the first aminoacids.

    I was thinking, what is your opinion about us, humans being, start launching around organic materials into space. Can we be the creators sometimes? I think our satellites and probes (read, Voyager) are already travelling and carryin some organic residues around, no matter how clean we build those machines.

    Sometimes I stop and I think, in millions of years our propes may crash in some remote plantets. The chances are near zero. But imagine that it crashes, some bacteries or virii survive and start propagating in an enviromentally friendly planet. If they evolve, if they generate intelligent life, will they still look for the origin of their lives, and perhaps contaminate around other planets?
    Vibriting thoughs.
    • Just call me a Self Assembled God :). Good question tho'. The worrying bit is that whenever you put organisms into a competing environment one of them has to die. Either that or they have to coexist. Lets face it the human race doesn't have a great track record on that front. Are we going to destroy any remaining life on Mars when we get there ? ( By the way I'd like to volunteer for the mission ) Or is it going to get us ? Home court advantage vs. technology......

  • Why this news is important. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gopher971 ( 219910 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @05:37AM (#3050250) Journal
    The reason that this news is important is that the time span for geological activity for water movement on Mars has been reduced from around 2 Billion years a few years ago, down to 10 million years. If water was free flowing on the surface of Mars only 10 million years ago than the possibility of finding evidence of life on Mars increases immensely.

    • If water was free flowing on the surface of Mars only 10 million years ago than the possibility of finding evidence of life on Mars increases immensely

      I didn't get the impression that water was free flowing 10 million years ago. The last paragraph makes mention of an ice dam close to the surface, with the built up pressure exploding it outward to create the mesas. That, to me, indicates a surface too cold for water to cut any channels (maybe an ice flow, though -- just a thought). There's an older, interesting article (Nov 2001) [spacedaily.com] that talks about this sort of thing, and refers to the meteriorite found with fossilized bacteria from Mars. Maybe it came from one of these geyser blowouts?

  • Reports of water on Mars say that huge amounts of water gushed through the surface of the red planet fairly 'recently'. (Recently being as little as 10 million years ago)
    So that must make human beings "really recent" and vacuum tube computing "the latest craze." If that's the case, then maybe Windows XP really does incorporate "the latest" advances in security.

    From whose perspective is this stuff written? The Grand Canyon?

  • Mission to fetch our bible. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, that would have been Naoh's flood. Seems when the Bibles were passed around, there was a screwup and we got Mars's bible.

    Of course since they were following /our/ bible, they worshipped the wrong things and had the wrong commandments, and overall just really pissed their God off.

    When they built the great Face, as instructed in page 23 in their bible, and completed orgy ceremony Part B, subsection 42, it began snowing
    carbon dioxide and that was the end of them.

  • Burr said the newest landforms look to be only about 10 million years old - very recent in geologic terms. [...]
    Flood volcanism on Earth occurs about every tens of millions of years," McEwen said. "The last such event was 10 million years ago

    so, what kind of event could have happened 10M years ago, leaving traces of unusual water floods on two planets?

    Perhaps an alien expedition taking samples?

    • "so, what kind of event could have happened 10M years ago, leaving traces of unusual water floods on two planets?

      Perhaps an alien expedition taking samples?"

      Perhaps an alien expedition taking a leak?

      I bet you get a lot of "Last gas for 100 light-years" signs in deep space. Then you've got to put up with the kids crying "Are we nearly there yet?!" every time you go past some insignificant little main-sequence star. Not to mention us men hate asking directions, so before you know it, you're in completely the wrong constellation.

      Maran

    • Re:What happened (Flood vulcanism on Earth) (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The scientist quoted did use an ambiguous phrase, but when mentioning Earth 10M years ago I'm pretty sure he was referring to floods of lava, not water.

      The proposed floods of water 10M years ago at Cerebus Plains on Mars were preceded by large, flood-like flows of lava that left a large area covered with a flat lava plateau. Presumably that volcanic activity provided the energy to melt the ice (or, the water could have come up as gas dissolved in the magma).

      More details in the U of Arizona press release [spaceflightnow.com]

      These eruptions aren't quite like a normal volcano in that they produce such gigantic amounts of highly fluid lava so quickly; doesn't make a cone, it's more like, well, a flood!

      Even if he didn't mean there were lava floods at that location on Mars, what I'm pretty sure he is referring to on Earth is the Columbia River flood basalts, which cover most of eastern Washington and Oregon. They erupted about 12M years ago, and covered that whole region in lava a couple of thousand feet thick. Some flows made it all the way to the Pacific, 300 miles from their source. Even bigger examples are the Deccan Traps in India (65 million years ago), and the Siberian Traps in Russia (250M years ago). Same sort of thing made the "seas" (mare) on the Moon, 3+ billion years ago.

  • So drink your past...

  • White Mars (Score:3, Informative)

    by polkiu ( 561001 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @06:16AM (#3050331) Homepage
    Nick Hoffman of LaTrobe Uni in Melb, Aus. has a "White Mars" model where the active fluid agent is CO2 rather than water. I was impressed by a lecture he gave to an academic audience. I suspect most people (including those who fund space research) would prefer a Mars with water (for existance of life, etc), but an equal (or better) model should get equal an equal chance. Hoffman's website is here [latrobe.edu.au].
  • What are the Polar Ice caps on Mars made of if not water ? Carbon Dioxide ? If so surely that's fairly conclusive proof that there is water on Mars which has to have been liquid or gas at some point.

    • Re:This may be a daft question, but...... (Score:4, Informative)

      by bdeclerc ( 129522 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @06:26AM (#3050358) Homepage
      What are the Polar Ice caps on Mars made of if not water ?
      The South Polar Ice Cap on Mars is almost completely CO2 Ice, and during the Southern Martian summer disappears almost entirely. The North Polar Ice Cap has a large "hood" of CO2-Ice in winter, which disappears in summer, leaving a three times smaller ice cap made of water ice (three times smaller is still bloody big, many hundreds of kilometers across and probable several kilometers thick).
      • Cheers for the info.

        Is there any theory around about how the aggregation of the Northern Ice cap occurred ? It seems that there must have been some kind of precipitation at some time, or at least free water in the atmosphere, to have transported all that moisture to the poles.

        This would indicate ( at least to me ) that the surface temperature of mars was substatially higher at some point in the past. Ergo..Liquid water.
        • Is there any theory around about how the aggregation of the Northern Ice cap occurred ?

          Actually, that's pretty much the hypothesis people are working with today (Mars used to be hotter and wetter).

          It's even pretty much a certainty, considering the huge volcanoes on Mars. While they were being created, they would have been spewing absolutely vast amounts of carbon dioxide and water vapour into the atmospher, and seeing as how the atmospheric pressure and temperatures on Mars are even now not too far away from allowing liquid water, it's difficult to imagine those volcanoes being created without also creating a thicker atmosphere.

          At the bottom of the deepest canyons on Mars, the atmospheric pressure is a few tens of hectopascals (about 1/30-1/50 of sea level earth) and temps can reach above 0 Celsius, enough so water doesn't flash-evaporate, but can remain liquid for a considerable time.

    • dunno, maybe water. but the point is that it wasn't sure if there had been enough water to carve those canals. (the polarcaps dont have enough it seems?)

      and they had not been sure if there had been any water in liquid form(essential for life..)
      now they seem to think so(?):

      "What's different here is that this is very recent, and the water source is nothing like we have on Earth," she said. "The water here gushed from volcano-tectonic fissures. While the fissures themselves may be older, the latest eruption of water was probably only about 10 million years ago."
      i think the above is the thing that matters in the article.
      (hey, i'm not a rocket scientist)

  • contamination (Score:2, Insightful)

    by terradyn ( 242947 )
    We should have some major precautions in case we do find a bacterium or some other such life form when we do begin exploring mars more thoroughly. We can't have something that could destroy mankind taking root here or being used for ill purposes. IIRC, there was something about a location being set up for extraterrestrial life in a previous slashdot posting. Hopefully this spot is set up to be highly secure.

    On another note, it definitely will be strong evidence for life being universal if we find living organisms on any other body outside of earth. It allows us to determine that there are other orbit zones and climates outside of our own to support life. That would increase the number of planets outside of our solar system that we would believe could support life and thus bolster the theory that we are not alone.
    • The security was compremised when the location and its exsistance were revealed.

      If you want something to be secure, then dont announce it. Dont even say it exsists, put the samples in some super secret underground base that no one knows about and send scientists into it, if an accident happens, nuke the underground base killing all the lifeforms
    • We did have a contamination policy for the moon missions. It was completely ignored when the time came. Go figure.

  • Quote from an expert (Score:3, Funny)

    by frozenray ( 308282 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @06:28AM (#3050362)
    "Mars is essentially in the same orbit . . . Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."

    Dan "What a waste it is to lose one's mind" Quayle
    (source) [snopes2.com]

  • Hi-resolution images of the fissure. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mortenson ( 188681 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @06:30AM (#3050367) Homepage
    Here are a few images of the fissure courtesy of the Mars Global Surveyor:
    here [msss.com] here [msss.com] here [msss.com] and here [msss.com]

    No signs of life there, some say that these ones show life: "Banyan Trees" [msss.com], "Hot Spring??" [msss.com], "Leopard spots" [msss.com]

    Personally, at this resolution, they could be anything, but they are still fun to look at.

  • You mean.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by fluxrad ( 125130 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @06:34AM (#3050373)
    we might actually one day hope to find intelligent life in this solar system?

    finally!

  • yeah, but... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Daltorak ( 122403 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @06:35AM (#3050376)

    That's fine and all, but what I really want to know is how these "simple forms of life" end up getting to Earth and acquiring jobs as managers and politicians...
    • They got some VC and hired some people to build them some space ships. Then they conviced everybody else that it would be a good idea to move to earth......Maybe not...:-)

  • wow (Score:2, Funny)

    by nomadic ( 141991 )
    This is big news, because it may lead to finding some simple forms of life on the planet

    Like marketing executives?
  • According to Popper's falsifiability criterion, the claim that there is life on Mars is unscientific, because it can never be disproven. Thus, the only scientific claim we can make here is "There is no life on Mars" and hope that we are proven wrong.

    Just some food for thought...
    • Rubbish

      Neither claim is scientific, the only correct statement now is "Until now we have not found life on Mars", and that will remain the claim until one of two things happen:

      - We discover alien life on Mars

      - We start living there

      In both cases, the claim "there is life on Mars" will be scientifically correct.

      Remember, the existence of life on Mars is not and never will be a hypothesis/theory (which is where Popper comes in), it is either a fact or an unknown.
      • I don't understand. Why can't I hypothesize that there is and never has been life on Mars?

        Would you also say "until now we have never seen anything travel faster than light" and claim that relativity is not a hypothesis/theory? What is the difference?

  • Life on Mars... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22, 2002 @08:33AM (#3050591)
    I still find it cute that certain scientists believe in the possibility/likelihood of:

    1. A bacterium surviving the impact of a meteor hitting Mars. The size of that meteor must have been considerable to survive through the Mars atmosphere.

    2. Some piece of rock being thrown back into space, and at sufficient speed to overcome Mars' gravity and low enough to not melt because of friction against the air.

    3. That piece actually having a surviving bacterium.

    4. That piece actually hitting Earth.

    5. Scientists actually finding that unlikely piece of Mars on Earth, in dirt.

    6. Finding that that highly unlikely piece of Mars contains unknown form of life.

    7. Finding a president who actually believes you are on the right track and is ready to pay for your continued research.

    Out of these I find step 7 the most probable.

    • Re:Life on Mars... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mcfiddish ( 35360 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @10:40AM (#3051087)

      Scientists actually finding that unlikely piece of Mars on Earth, in dirt.


      I believe the meteorite you're talking about was found in Antarctica. I have a friend who was doing research there one season, and she said one of the things they would do when they were bored was look for meteorites. Pretty much anything that wasn't snow was a meteorite!

    • I think its far more likely that the bacterium died and became fossilized deep within the Martian rock long before the meteor hit sent it into space. I doubt any scientist out there thinks the bacteria were alive and survived the space trip to earth, only to die on impact in an ice sheet.
  • Just because there is evidence of a few, "recent", cataclysmic water-flow events on the surface of Mars, why does this get introduced as "evidence of life"? The article says that there was at least one geothermal related surface water flow event 10M years ago. This does not necessairly lead to the conditions for life to develop.
    On earth life developed just a few million years after the planet got cool enough to sustain it, but it still took millions of years. In a stable environment. With liquid water constantly available. And plenty of sunlight to pump energy into the system.
    One flood on Mars, even every million years or so, does not a life-cradle make.
    So there's water on Mars for us to exploit when we get there, good deal. But life on Mars, will have a tough time of it. And, yes, I know that different chemistries might produce life, but for the moment we have a pitifuly small sample size, so I'm going to have to stick with the good old carbon-based model for now.
    Also if there is life on Mars, should we invent our own "prime directive" and leave the planet alone? After all in a few billion years, the stuff could evolve to multi-cellular organisms.
    Given humanity's track record as a whole, I think not. We exploit things to easily to let ethics get in our way. If the first probes in the 60's and 70's had produced evidence of Little Green Men or any civillization at all, we'd be selling them Coke and Beenie Babies right now. To pay for it, we would have negoiated "mining rights" and hauled off all their easily extractable resources.
    So what is all the excitement about? There's not much chance of life even with this latest story, and even if life does exist, we probably will kill it (or at best, put it in a bacterial zoo) the first chance we get.
  • This is sooo not new news.
    Watch any science space TV show about mars or the planets that has been produced in the last two years+ and you will see that we've known this for a long time.

    I can't believe this made slashdot... sigh.
  • Volcanic activity on Earth warms the oceans. It is speculated that there were oceans on Mars but that the volcanic activity was not enough to stop the oceans eventually freezing. So there's probably a great deal of water on Mars under the surface. Most of it's probably frozen but towards the centre things get hotter and ice will melt.

    Maybe this explains the worm trails? ;-)
  • I think a more interesting question might be, where exactly did all this huge quantity of free flowing water go? What cataclysmic thing happened to make it all dry up or freeze underground?
    • thats easy.

      the water had a chemical reaction with the ground (which has a very high iron content) and basically disintegrated it into Hydrogen where it escaped the outer atmosphere (because hydrogen floats to the highest reaches of the atmosphere (being the lightest element) )

      4Fe + 3O2 = 2Fe2O3
      3Fe + 4H2O Fe3O4 + 4H2 !!!!!
    • I think the Martians just got too enamoured with their SUVs and jetskis (on their former canals and lakes). The pollution caused massive global warming. The water and atmosphere evaporated into space, thus removing the planet's 'blanket.' Then everything froze. Now they're living underground driving battery powered golf carts...

  • This is big news, because it may lead to finding some simple forms of life on the planet. For more info, check out: (story #1) and (story #2).


    Why do you people have to turn every astronomy story into a "chance for life in outer space" story? NEITHER of the two linked stories has a SINGLE WORD in it about relating or reflecting life in outer space.


    Frankly, you're never going to find any other life in outer space, so you should just start dealing with it. Even if you disagree with that, at least stop warping every astronomy story that comes down the pike to fit your sci-fi fantasies.

  • i don't know much about astronomy... but i don't know why it's such a big deal if there's water on another planet. An organism will only survive in it's surroundings, and on earth, it happens to be h2o. If life does exist on another planet it will only exist because it's been able to thrive on it's surroundings... whether it be water, gatoraid, etc. So are we only looking for other organisms similar to those on the earth? I believe that life exists on all planets.. but we may just be looking for the wrong thing. Alien organisms are thriving on substances uknown to us. Just an idea..

  • Survivor Mars (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Water on Mars? Now we can send the next batch of Survivor to the Red Planet.

  • We all know why... (Score:3, Funny)

    by samoverton ( 253101 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @01:01PM (#3052190)
    I think we all know why water gushed out on to the surface of Mars; one of the pipes supplying water to the subterranean civilisation must have burst. I think it is obvious from all the facts (ie. 1950s B movies, War of the Worlds, wild speculation) that there are people living under the surface of Mars where it is toasty warm.

    Also, I can bend spoons with my mind.

  • It's an amazingly huge leap to say if there's water there might be life. That "might", when subjected to just a tiny bit of mathematical analysis, is so mind-bogglingly minute that it's not worth considering.

    Look at it this way: the smallest number of different proteins that is guesstimated to get life going is 400 for a minimum cell. Ignoring all the non-protein components of a cell, now consider the amino acids. There are a lot more than the 20 we need for life, but let's be generous and assume that somehow all the amino acids in some lipid-isolated droplet are the 20 we need for life. Since they have to be one enantiomer (aka one chirality) to be in proteins for all but the simplest one of the amino acids, that means you've got 39 possible choices, and you need to get them in a specific order.

    So just one protein of less than average size (say 300 amino acids), assuming there are no other chemicals interfering (i.e, say inside a droplet with exactly the right composition), is going to have odds of one in 300^39. That comes out to one in 10^96. Since there are only 10^78 ATOMS in the UNIVERSE, clearly it is not in the realm of "chance" to say even one protein could happen by chance.

    Then molecular evolution would require 400 more different proteins, each rather specifically structured, to be in the same droplet at the same time.

    And consider further that proteins denature rather quickly outside living cells, when exposed to pH swings, temperature, salinity, and other variations.

    So the odds of finding life arising somewhere by blind chance is, well, so close to zero that it's absurd to consider. Or to put it another way, it takes more faith to believe it happened by chance than to believe in a creator.
  • There may be evidence that there WAS life on Mars, but there's no chance in Ohio that life still exists there. Even if it did, I'd be some little wiggly bacteria thing. Big deal.
    • " I'd be some little wiggly bacteria thing. Big deal."

      I think the discovery of any kind of life, past or present, even some little wiggly bacteria thing, it would be a very big deal. First, it would show that Earth is not unique. If life can gain a foothold on two planets in the same solar system, it could imply that life very common in the universe. Second, the similarities and differences between a bacteria on Mars and a bacteria evolved under similar conditions on Earth could provide insight into the evolutionary process.

  • Life on Mars...no no no no no! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rufusdufus ( 450462 ) on Friday February 22, 2002 @05:09PM (#3054196)
    NASA has dug itself into a huge corner by playing up on layman's desire to find life "out there". The fact is nobody really expects to find life on Mars. Or anywhere else in the solar system. Telling people that they have new evidence for life lets them keep their funding, but does not approach the topic honestly.

    Is finding life "out there" the ultimate goal of space exploration. No! Finding life would be a big deal but it cannot be the driving goal. This is for the same reason that going to the moon cannot be solely for collecting moon rocks. Answering the question would stop the program right in its tracks..now what?

    Finding water on Mars is a big deal because it vastly eases human outposts. Air and rocket fuel can be synthesized more easily, not to mention the need for water itself.

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