

Liquid Water Recently Seen on Mars - rogercosseboom
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/17161866.html

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swombat
Are perchlorates conducive to life?

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Daniel_Newby
The oxygen in Earth's atmosphere is not especially conducive to life. It took
a lot of evolution to develop tolerance to it. Perchlorate should be similar.

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rogercosseboom
Reminds me of one of my favorite passages from Jurassic Park:

"Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a
metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first
produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years
ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were
polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an
atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of
itself."

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Silentio
That book is so incredibly good. When my kids are the right age I am going to
give them that book to read so they will get hooked on science. It should be
required reading in high school biology classes. Think about a class centered
around that book where students do little experiments related to passages like
this one. That would be amazing.

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rogercosseboom
When I was in the 8th grade and I wrote my first program in BASIC I came home
from school and told my mother "I want to be a programmer- like the guy in
Jurassic Park, but not fat."

I'd say I was about 75% successful

