
Something on Mars Is Producing Gas Usually Made by Living Things on Earth - signa11
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/science/mars-methane-gas.html
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rjf72
One of the many things that really reemphasizes how limited remote technology
such as probes and rovers really are. As the article mentions this has been
known about for about 6 years. Having rovers do what they were designed to do
is very difficult, having them try to explore previously unknown phenomena is
generally just not really possible.

Consider for instance water on the moon. When was this discovery finally
confirmed once and for all? It didn't happen until 2009! [1] And the discovery
of water-ice only happened in 2018. These are 'obvious' surface level
characteristics, yet we're only confirming them some 60 years after our brief
dalliance with manned exploration.

It's incredible to think about all the things that we've yet to discover but
eventually will once we start getting indefinite bases setup across various
destinations.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_water)

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interfixus
_If_ life - present or past - is one day found on Mars, I shall be hugely
surprised if it doesn't share our basic DNA. Interplanetary pollution -
pollination, if you will - or common influx from somewhere entirely else.

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Symmetry
On the other hand we haven't been able to establish a firm minimum amount of
time from when Earth got oceans to when it got life. It took a long, long time
to add photosynthesis to cemosynthesis, a long long time to create eukaryotes,
and a long, long time to create multicellular life. I made a timeline:

[http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-drake-
eq...](http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-drake-equation-
again.html)

Interplanetary pollution seems to happen pretty quickly compared to the
history of life but I'm not sure we can say that it happens quickly compared
to the start of life. Of course for all we know the reason Earth developed
life so quickly was that it was seeded by the quicker-cooling Mars which had
had Oceans before Earth did. More research is needed!

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interfixus
I would not presume to have any opinion on the direction such traffic might
have taken. All I know is the one certain, observed fact in this case is that
pieces of Mars have indeed fallen to the surface of Earth. There is of course
no known reason why the reverse would not have happened.

From your writings (added to feed, thank you) I notice we share a belief: That
life may well be quite common out there, but human level intelligence
exceedingly rare. I somehow believed this from a very young age, long before I
ever heard of Drake or his equation or any such calculation.

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LifeLiverTransp
Imagine there are ozeans, and they slowly dry away, evaporatintg to space. The
water gets more saltier with every season, uvw rays grill what ever is left of
your living space.

All you can do is sleep through longer and longer winters in this brine,
waiting for the sun to thaw the salty mud. Or you retreat, using some weak
smoker in the depths as a provider of energy, following it ever deeper down,
the world freeze drying behind you.

I know its frowned upon by some, but imagine we could create a sort of
floating spirondella, and set them free in venus atmosphere. Venus beeing a
dead planet, cooled by a floating forrest sounds actually more realistic to me
terraformingwise then changing mars.

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m_mueller
The problem with Venus cloud cities is the cost of getting any solid material
and lack of exploration. The technological threshold to reach sustainability
seems much higher, even though initial conditions are better, especially
gravity.

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LifeLiverTransp
I think life would pretty much solve that problem rather quick (on a cosmic
scale) - life has been regulating pretty well here on earth.

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Fej
What's the chances that bacteria from Earth made it over on the rovers?

I understand that NASA takes great pains to prevent this but they can't get
every single one, surely? Especially extremophiles?

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aranw
Space cows

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tyfon
They are called buggalos :)

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sfifs
Maybe something went via the numerous landers that have visited Mars over past
4 decades?

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novaRom
I cannot read this article because of: "You're in private mode. Log in or
create a free New York Times account to continue reading in private mode".

How NYTimes knows I am in private mode?

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wanone
Worked for me in Firefox private browsing

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gibybo
Also worked for me in Chrome's incognito

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throwaway8129
They are A/B testing it, or rolling it out slowly. I saw reports a few weeks
ago, but didn't get hit with it myself until today.

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manjana
Mostly old news really..

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droithomme
Yes, it's been known for decades. Perhaps the new news is the latest sighting
and that now it's accepted as fact.

It peaks in the warmer months.

Many Martian meteorites have been found on Earth, and it's likely that earth
meteorites have made their way to Mars. We know that algae can survive in
space and extreme conditions.

It would be unexpected if simple life from earth had not made its way to mars
from time to time. It would be interesting if it continued to survive there.
The methane and its seasonality is possible evidence of this.

Reasonable targets for future Mars missions are craters where methane is known
to accumulate.

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dekhn
for life to have moved from one planet to another is unlikely: it's the
product of life being on the rock on the source planet in the first place,
multiplied by the probability the rock gets ejected into space, that the life
survives a journal, and that it lands on a planet where it can survive. All of
those are extremely tiny probabilities (but nobody denies the mass exchange
between planets).

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bluGill
Slow down. There is life pretty much everywhere on earth. The probability the
life is on a rock ejected into space is nearly 100%. Only when we get to life
surviving the journey that we have and doubt, but even then there are a lot of
different single cell lifeforms on that rock and we only need one to survive.
If that one survives the space journey odds are it can survive on mars as
well.

