
NASA Rover Finds Active and Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars - dylnclrk
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4413
======
swombat
For those eager to read ahead, they are very, very careful in this article not
to imply in any way that this is definitely from any sort of living sources.

> _Organic molecules, which contain carbon and usually hydrogen, are chemical
> building blocks of life, although they can exist without the presence of
> life. Curiosity 's findings from analyzing samples of atmosphere and rock
> powder do not reveal whether Mars has ever harbored living microbes, but the
> findings do shed light on a chemically active modern Mars and on favorable
> conditions for life on ancient Mars._

Shame. I for one am looking forward to reading about actual life on Mars
within my lifetime. Hopefully active life. We shall see.

~~~
Thieum22
It may be comforting that considering the Great Filter theory (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter)
) finding life on mars might actually be bad news.

~~~
madaxe_again
The great filter theory is subject to our own filter bubble. As I see it,
there are other possibilities -

Intelligent life doesn't want to be found - at least by us.

Intelligent life tends towards simulation, rather than expansion.

Further to the above, we are the only intelligent life in the simulation in
which we reside.

Intelligent life is far more of an aberration than we realise.

Intelligent life is actually very dumb on a macro scale, and falls prey to
Malthusian collapse, either by falling into a significant energy gap or by
destroying their biosphere.

Intelligent life tends to succumb to dysgenic fertility, and ceases to be
intelligent.

Therefore the discovery of life on other worlds means little for the Fermi
paradox, as our model may grossly oversimplify or overlook one or more
variables which lead to us, now.

Personally I think we're in a sim and we're about to lose the game, as we're
staring down an energy deficit Malthusian collapse, uh, right now.

~~~
exratione
The important thing to realize about the Fermi Paradox is that all
generalizations about behavior fail automatically as explanatory theories.

It only takes one small group within one species to generate a self-
replicating probe, at which point all of the galaxy is visited in a few
million years.

A solution to the Fermi Paradox has to explain why that event has never
happened despite the fact that some element of our species will do exactly
this at some point in the next thousand years. The laws of physics allow it,
and our psychology is clearly up for it.

~~~
fixedd
The whole Fermi Paradox thing bugs me too, but in a different way. It assumes
we have the capability of detecting the presence of other intelligent life.

The largest radio telescope we have (the 305 meter diameter Arecibo) would
need to have it's sensitivity increased by around two orders of magnitude JUST
to pick up our TV/FM/AM signals from outside the solar system. If we move into
the narrowband signals then, depending on the source-strength, it could pick
up signals at up to a few thousand light years... if it happened to be pointed
in exactly the right direction at exactly the right time. So, our most
sensitive instrument is only capable of measuring a fraction of a percent of a
fraction of a percent of the galaxy.

I just straight-up don't believe that we're even remotely approaching the
capability of asserting that the galaxy is sterile of higher life that's
constantly dumping EM noise... and that's without assuming they've found ways
to transmit data that we're ignorant of or that we've seen it and just haven't
noticed it.

\--

The other thing (and I feel a bit like a religious person saying this) is that
we have exactly zero basis for asserting that the type of machine you're
talking about haven't been here. Given that if one of these machines came
here, and stayed, the Earth itself would annihilate all traces of it
(especially on the surface) within short order we shouldn't necessarily expect
to find evidence of a visit.

Taken to the extreme, you could even reason that all life on Earth could be
the product of one of these machines.

~~~
dhimes
Not only is sensitivity an issue, but also frequency range. I feel quite
confident that more technologically advanced civilizations will communicate at
frequencies we are currently unable to demodulate. It's more efficient. Look
how our frequencies have scaled on the order of a hundred years.

------
pepve
Methane outside of earth is more common than I thought it would be (after
reading the article):
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane#Extraterrestrial_methan...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane#Extraterrestrial_methane)

------
greggarious
Here's a fun exercise in speculation: How long does HN think it will be
between confirming life (e.g. bacteria), confirming life (e.g. mammals /
bugs), and confirming intelligent life?

(Never is an an acceptable answer for all 3, but please state why you hold
your position)

~~~
snowwrestler
I think we will confirm life within 50 years by reading the spectra of distant
planets and finding free oxygen in the atmosphere. As far as we know, that can
only happen if living creatures are replenishing it.

I think it's unlikely that we will find life anywhere else in our solar
system. It's possible that we'll evidence of past life on Mars, but not
current. Basically, it's just way too cold or way too hot everywhere but
Earth.

edit to add: I hope we do not discover intelligent life until we travel to
distant star systems ourselves. If it discovers us here, the outcome will
almost certainly be terrible for us, based on the long Earth history of
species encountering species.

~~~
gloriousduke
> way too cold or way too hot

This isn't as big of a concern as it once might have been. See extremophiles.

> It's possible that we'll evidence of past life on Mars, but not current.

If life takes hold anywhere and has any amount of (geologic) time to spread,
I'm guessing only an extremely powerful gamma ray burst or other high energy
event could completely exterminate it. It might be impossible to sterilize the
earth at this point without completely destroying it, and even then there'd
probably be microbes in the resulting meteors, etc (until our sun dies at
least).

------
r0muald
I totally understand being very cautious about their findings, but the wording
of this paragraph struck me as odd:

> The ratio that Curiosity found in the Cumberland sample is about one-half
> the ratio in water vapor in today's Martian atmosphere

> _suggesting much of the planet 's water loss occurred since that rock
> formed_

> However, the measured ratio is about three times higher than the ratio in
> the original water supply of Mars, based on the assumption that supply had a
> ratio similar to that measured in Earth's oceans

> This _suggests much of Mars ' original water was lost before the rock
> formed_.

So I guess a lot of water was lost both before and after the formation of the
rock, and they only have ballpark figures for the hypothetical amounts?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Correct.

------
dylnclrk
"NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has measured a tenfold spike in methane, an
organic chemical, in the atmosphere around it and detected other organic
molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory's
drill."

------
Houshalter
If life is discovered on mars, would we be allowed to colonize it?

~~~
Mahn
Colonization is probably not the motivation for finding some microbial life
there at the moment, but provided we _wanted_ and _could_ colonize, I'd guess
we would just do it.

~~~
Houshalter
I do remember hearing there was debate if we should introduce invasive
species, let alone terraform, or try to preserve life the way it is. There is
also concern about it going the other way around mar's life becoming invasive
on Earth or infectious to humans.

Obviously neither of our planet's life has evolved to be very fit in surviving
in the other's environment. But evolution often has "arms races" where
organisms evolve highly optimized weapons and defenses against them. It's
possible one planet has evolved something the other has no defenses against
which would give it an advantage.

E.g. on Earth, the cane toad produces a poison that no Australian predators
can survive, and so they all die and the toad overpopulates. Same with many
invasive species, like plants that produce poison that kill all the other
plants nearby, and take over fields and native ecosystems. Or predators
introduced on islands that are much better than the native predators and kill
all the native life.

------
harel
It could also be a case of severe alien flatulence. Sorry, I could not
resist...

~~~
civilian
I think you were looking for this:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/2phv82/nasa_rover_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/2phv82/nasa_rover_finds_active_ancient_organic_chemistry/)

~~~
comex
A similar comment on the other /r/science thread about this was also downvoted
into oblivion; don't make cheap criticism based on stereotypes.

~~~
harel
how is that criticism? it was obviously said as a joke...

------
codeshaman
Totally unscientific impulse based speculation, but here it is, I want to be
the first.

A long time ago (billions of years), our ancestors lived on Mars. The climate
was changing due to human activity and shrinking of the Sun. Shit was getting
serious and humanity needed a way to escape. The third planet from the Sun was
chosen for seeding life into, due to it's proximity to the star and life-
supporting characteristics.

A ball of DNA was sent here to seed the planet. It contained the code for all
living things, including humans with the source code for a consciousness able
to evolve until it finds out the truth of creation. And here we are, close to
finding that out and able to continue what our ancestors left behind billions
of years ago, before going extinct. But that is only Step 1. Step 2 is finding
out who seeded Mars and the Sun and the Universe. Might just be that it was us
all along forever. Good night world ;)

~~~
jackkcaj
That's quite a narrative.

