
Nasa Rover on Mars Detects Puff of Gas That Hints at Possibility of Life - blondie9x
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/22/science/nasa-mars-rover-life.html
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emptybits
As we accumulate small additional likelihoods of Martian life, I wonder if
humans will 1) put more resources into manned missions for intensive and
flexible study to get to the bottom of these mysteries, or 2) defer plans for
manned missions for reasons of environmental preservation/protection (or even
fear) and stick to robotic or other light-touch/sterile explorations for a
while. Just a passing thought.

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nick_kline
They do sterilize spacecraft before sending them to mars, that's a real thing.
I believe we'd very carefully sterilize humans spacesuits and ships before
sending them. I think the likely outcome of this is blind indifference to the
importance of discovering life on another plan. No increase in Nasa budgets or
plans for discovery.

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pmoriarty
_" Rovers scheduled for launch next year -- one by NASA, one by a Russian-
European collaboration -- will carry instruments designed to search for the
building blocks of life, although neither is designed to answer the question
of whether there is life on Mars today."_

I don't get it. You'd think that whether there's life on Mars today is the
most interesting and important question to answer. Why aren't any of these
rovers designed to answer it?

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aasasd
Because you get public support, and hence funding, as long as you _search_ for
life. Not sure that anyone at those organizations cares about that question,
it looks more like an obsession of the public and the media.

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inflatableDodo
Why is it that some people think that scientists are all lying about their
motives for money? Scientists tend, on the whole, to be fairly bright. Hightly
technical people who have money as their objective, are generally not working
at the sharp end of highly speculative research. I know one of the UK experts
on glide characteristics of hypersonic vehicles, he refuses to work military
but sometimes gets consulted by NASA on aerodynamic assisted slingshot
concepts. He makes a living as a driving instructor.

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aasasd
You might want to point as to where in my previous comment I said that someone
in those orgs is not bright.

And then to suggest how, being bright as a thousand suns, you would obtain
fancy space rovers if you say “I want to check out moon chemistry” and the
public goes “pffft.”

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inflatableDodo
You have this somewhat arse about tit. There's a lot more money available for
looking at the moon's chemistry than there is for looking for life on it.

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Abishek_Muthian
News on findings such as these assert my belief that the UFO sightings on
Earth incl. the recent F18 videos have nothing to do with Aliens, because if
it were; why spend Billions to get excited on 'Puff of Gas' on the neighbor
planet.

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garmaine
No one seriously believes the recent UFO nonsense is actually aliens, except
for a clueless representative in congress that keeps pushing for these
reports.

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keiru
The dreadful consequence of finding life on Mars would be that we could never
go back to seeing Mars as just another innocent rock floating around the
neighbourhood.

It would forever become a harbinger, reminder that life can come and go on any
planet.

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heavymark
Curious why that would be "dreadful" and I thought most assumed there is most
likely water and life on mars (microbial that is), but just under the surface
and with the unimaginable number of planets assuming we are the only planet
with life would probably be similar to the early thinking the sun resolves
around the earth.

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dTal
1) it would be a visceral demonstration of the fragility of life on Earth

2) overnight, it would shift our estimate of the likelihood of life forming
into "terrifyingly likely". Terrifying, because if life forms on any planet
even roughly like Earth, the idea of aliens showing up one day and killing us
all is suddenly horribly plausible.

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perl4ever
Although, life on Mars could have a common origin with life on earth. There
are after all meteorites on Earth that are believed to be of Martian origin.
If microbes from Mars seeded Earth or vice versa, then finding life in both
places doesn't mean the odds of it arising are higher than we thought.

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logicallee
Isn't it a foregone conclusion that we'll bring some microbes over sooner or
later? Don't we have lots that can thrive in that atmosphere, there's
sunlight, etc. It just takes a few cells, why should we assume there will be 0
cells in all of Mars, even as we constantly send stuff there?

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Tepix
The surface of Mars is very hostile to life.

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busymom0
Is it though? Isn't our scientists' classification of life limited to what we
have on Earth? What if there is even tinnier or other form of life on Mars? I
am mostly asking because we already know of extremely small bacteria being
able to survive after 32,000 years in ice on Earth. So what if something
similar is there on Mars too?

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acd
The center of Mars is most likely hot that might release Methane produced by
bacteria.

"The core of mars is actually molten. The pressure there is 40 gigapascal. hat
is 400,000 times the pressure of earth’s surface. The core is about 1500
degrees Kelvin, or 1230 Celsius."

There is bound to be an equilibrium between 1230C and the surface temperature

Surface temperature of Mars Celsius −143 °C[12] −63 °C 35 °C

" 6° C per km" [https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/14875/what-
is-...](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/14875/what-is-the-
temperature-55-km-beneath-the-surface-of-mars)

6C*6km = 36C degrees Celsius at 6km depth which would be a favourable
temperature for bacteria.

We have drilled a 12km on Earth in Russia Kola peninsula so we should be able
to build a robotic oil drill platform send it To Mars and drill deep into the
Mars core. The drill will have temperature monitoring sensors.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Continental_Deep_Drilli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Continental_Deep_Drilling_Programme)

"Methanogens have been found in several extreme environments on Earth – buried
under kilometres of ice in Greenland and living in hot, dry desert soil. They
are known to be the most common archaebacteria in deep subterranean habitats.
Live microbes making methane were found in a glacial ice core sample retrieved
from about three kilometres under Greenland by researchers from the University
of California, Berkeley. They also found a constant metabolism able to repair
macromolecular damage, at temperatures of 145C to –40C °"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanogen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanogen)

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jacobush
Mass of Mars robot, 500 kg?

Mass of Kola drill platform? 100 000 tons?

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thechao
If you took the back seat out, that’d save—what?—80lbs. Seems like we’re on a
roll, here; next idea, step up!

