NASA Rover Finds Active and Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars
jpl.nasa.gov
jpl.nasa.gov
> 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.
Poor word choice. There's no shame in being careful about the science and trying to represent it carefully in your press releases.
Many non-science types do not know that organic molecules can exist without life and will already be jumping to conclusions.
'Shame' as used here is shorthand for 'that's a shame,' which used colloquially to express disappointment colored with sympathy and understanding, does not imply that any of the nominal subjects is being criticized.
Source: I'm a native English speaker.
It's used to express disappointment – with or without blame.
Beyond our solar system the best data we have are shadows blocking star light that indicate an exoplanet sometimes they are false alarms being just star (sun) spots, radio waves are something we use at this point in our very young civilization, there is no indication that this is a standard or efficient way of communication to associate missing radio data to absence of other civilizations.
In conclusion we have no data about life in the universe to jump to such conclusions or any conclusion, the only thing we can do is continue exploring and speculate on the question if there are advanced civilization capable of contact why aren't they contacting us?
And there only has to be one civilization that 1) can and 2) does create such probes. If spacefaring civilization is common, it seems awfully unlikely that none of them have done so yet.
We don't know that, there is no way to detect that with our current technology unless one of the probes land on earth and the government/military agrees to disclose and confirm the information, maybe this already happened but nobody wants to see it because they are afraid of the implications http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Lights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_UFO_wave
Based on what? How did you estimate the probability of a random intelligent civilization sending detectable (from Earth) Von Nuemann probes into the universe? For a probability of 1/1000 there could be hundreds of intelligent civilizations within our galaxy without any such probes, and the probability can be much lower than that.
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.
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.
And what would that probe look like?
For it to be a useful to the sending civilization, it needs to go out, replicate, and send information back.
The first two are easy. Send out lots of meteorites with bacteria on them.
The third is not so easy. Creating a self-replicating machine which can then transmit back across interstellar distances or store information in its replication program and then send more of itself out is hard.
Or, you help life evolve and then wait for the results to reach the point where they can send out their own probes and signals...
And more importantly why would anyone send anything to anywhere?
I never understand the argument people make about probes spreading across galaxies. If we assume they are at least as intelligent as we are, then purposelessly wandering in the universe would be least of their goals.
I can understand if probes have military goals. Like for example to evaluate threats to them. But like us here on earth, and with their technology would be carried out at a technical sophistication we have no remote capabilities of detecting currently.
You're assuming everyone is rational. For instance, if I were a future billionaire I'd totally do it... knowing I'd never see even a glimmer of return on the investment... just cause.
I guess once you have the money you also develop a sense of responsibility about how you wish to spend it. Every thing in the universe, even if we imagine unlimited resources at one's disposal- Every project has its costs. It might be time, energy, or other manual resources. You have to continually trade one for the other based on the goals you have currently.
We are assuming that life forms will just build probes and let them wander for some remote chance of another life form to see it.
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.
Hah, hilariously ironic. "Where is alien life in the universe? Are we the only ones?" continually bemoan the descendants of the organic probe sent to Earth to populate it with intelligent life.
How do you know that it has not? I'm not seriously asserting that it has, mind you. Just noting that there could be a swarm of radio-silent probes in the Kuiper Belt, in which case we would have no clue whatsoever.
One'd expect self replicant things to grow into every available ninche, however irrelevant it is. Thus there's no self replicant thing consuming our galaxy (or there is, but it's incredibly new).
Another idea is that basic game theory and physics applies to everyone. It's virtually impossible to defend against attack by objects accelerated near the speed of light. The only way to be safe is to destroy potential threats before they destroy you, and be very very quiet.
> Intelligent life is far more of an aberration than we realise.
The filter is between "smart mammal" -> "human-level smarts." So there's lots of planets with lions, tigers and bears, but not talking dinos (or whatever).
> 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.
The filter is between "21st century humanity" and "interplanetary/interstellar civilization." The universe is full of ruined planets, noticable because they've got transuranic elements floating around they shouldn't have.
> Intelligent life tends to succumb to dysgenic fertility, and ceases to be intelligent.
The filter is somewhere between "human-level smarts" and "interplanetary civilization." The universe is full of Morlocks.
We want the filter to be behind us. If it's actually "life is nearly impossible" then we're golden. Life on Mars 'pushes' the possible 'locations' of filter further forward (so life is probably common). If it's multicellular life, that pushes the filter further again, etc.
Someone didn't take the Internet away from them when they were young, so they grew addicted to it. Bunch of navel-gazing nerds.
> 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.
Looking at the Homo "Sapiens" species with a critical eye, I fear this is the most likely explanation.
I agree with your last point; however, I believe this is actually a virtual school rather than a "sim".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power,_Sex,_Suicide
It is a possibility that there is a relatively small window where single celled life has the opportunity to become multicellular life. As one amazon review summed it:
'After the origin of life, the next big step on the way to us was the origin of eukaryotes. These are all the organisms - including people, trees, mushrooms, and slime molds - who package most of our DNA into chromosomes in cell nuclei. Mitochondria, the "powerhouses" of eukaryotes, are descended from bacteria which took to living in a very close relationship with another type of one-celled organism; in fact they came to live inside the other. Nick Lane argues that this merger must have preceded the formation of the nuclear membrane.' *
The great filter is stronger and weaker in argument depending on where you place the filter, but the idea in general remains the same.
*more info here but less than the book, via an article in new scientist by the author: http://ronbarak.tumblr.com/post/25996121029/life-is-it-inevi...
Regarding how common life is in the universe, I wasn't talking about non-intelligent life. I fully expect that we will find signs of such life elsewhere in the cosmos in the next hundred years, either on Mars, Europa, Titan, Enceladus, or perhaps in the atmospheric spectra of some extra-solar planet.
No, I was talking about intelligent life, which if iot exists has a very short gestational period before transforming into lasting intelligence(s) expanding into the universe at close to physical limits. In particular the window between development of technology detectable from distant observation (e.g. radio) and a runaway singularity pushing that civilization's expansion rate to light speed limits is so small that regardless of the prevalence of intelligent life in the universe, we should expect to see an empty sky. Why? Because for most of the history of the cosmos we see an empty sky in our light cone. Then suddenly the most distant stars start to go dim with strangely shifted spectra, in an expanding wave that flows through visible star systems at >0.9c until it hits us, and ... well who knows what happens then.
The Fermi paradox is: "if there are so many intelligences, why can't we see them?" The transhumanist response is: "if we could see them, we'd be dead." By the anthropic principle we can only expect to exist in the time period where we are alive, not dead, so we should expect with very high probability to see an empty sky, and with very low probability the coming onslaught of darkness.
"Power, Sex, and Suicide" argues that eukaryotic (and thus multicellular) life is basically a fluke—it is the great filter. The tumblr link Lost_BiomedE gave takes a while to get to that punchline but it's worth a read.
One might then argue about the prevalence of extraterrestrial intelligence based on the age of the universe and the fact that our light cone apparently does not contain any other intelligent life. IMHO a sample size of 1 isn't that interesting however.
The great filter is very likely the evolution of multicelluar life and animals, which are unlikely to be found on mars. If we found living animals on mars I would be very concerned about the future of the human race.
If so then we should expect many of those worlds to evolve intelligent life, and some of those worlds to still be around in the present day and colonizing, building stuff, or possibly even contacting us.
And yet there is no sign of any intelligent life out there despite intense scientific effort to search for it. This increases the probability of the hypothesis that most intelligent life goes extinct, which means we will probably go extinct.
The conclusion is we better start working on colonization techniques, because chances are that the future of life in our galaxy is in our hands.
What stops bacteria that live in harsh environments to evolve even if probably slower? harsh meaning hard/impossible for ourselves or for life as we know on earth.
http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
> That would mean there were 10 quadrillion, or 10 million billion intelligent civilizations in the observable universe.
>Our sun is relatively young in the lifespan of the universe. There are far older stars with far older Earth-like planets, which should in theory mean civilizations far more advanced than our own.
I think intelligent life is pretty special/rare, given the evidence.
We can't initiate contact because of primitive technology, we barely made it to the moon with huge costs.
Why aren't advanced civilizations that can reach us contact us? we don't know, there are many theories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Explaining_the_pa... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_hypothesis
You might be conflating this with the theory that the Moon stabilizes the Earth's rotational axis and prevents it from wobbling too strongly, which would cause unpredictable summers and winters, kind of like the ones described in A Song of Ice and Fire.
Yes, the Earth-Moon system probably has some uncommon features, but let's not make the mistake to postulate that a world has to be precisely like Earth in order to support intelligent life. It's not at all obvious that our ecosystem represents the only possible solution for an environment that can produce intelligence. All we know is it is one solution.
> The conclusion is we better start working on colonization techniques, because chances are that the future of life in our galaxy is in our hands.
I agree!
I think the salient point here is "once had".
The Earths' core remains molten.
Some of that is latent heat of formation, some nuclear decay, some tidal stresses. I don't know the contributions of each. Contribution from Earth-Moon tidal stresses isn't insignificant though.
We _do_ know that tidal stresses can be hugely significant -- Io and Europa are thought to be heated (to differing degrees) by the stresses of orbiting Jupiter. Also one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, which shows signs of volcanism with ice plumes.
The thought occurs to me that moons of a large gas planet could also harbor formation of life, though they'd have to be rather closer to their parent star than the Solar System's giants are.
> moons of a large gas planet could also harbor formation of life
Indeed, and the fact that there are at least two ways to convey energy to an ecosystem should increase the prevalence of life in general. Moons are an excellent spot for life, in some ways maybe even better than planets. They are more numerous, they can be cozy even outside of the Goldilocks zone, to some degree they can be protected by the magnetic field of their gas giant, they are never tidally locked to the star, and they might have a better chance for volatile chemicals on the surface than your average rocky planet.
Since the thread was originally about the Fermi paradox though, one has to wonder about the likelihood for bearing technological civilizations. How fruitful are ocean worlds for bringing forth tool users? Intelligence may in fact be common, but how conducive is this environment to science and engineering? We don't know.
> though they'd have to be rather closer to their parent star than the Solar System's giants are
If they're experiencing enough tidal stress, such as Europa is, they don't have to be close to the star at all.
I also suspect that while life could develop within, say, an ice-covered sea on an outside-the-Goldilocks-zone gas giant's moon, that the total available energy flux would likely not be sufficient to support a large or diverse population. Even absent the problems of developing a technological society in an aquatic (or analogous liquid) environment, total biomass, competitive pressures, diversity, and similar stresses which gave rise to humans and intelligence seem unlikely.
Instead I was considering a world with surface conditions similar to Earth, but itself the moon of a larger world.
I've also been reflecting on filters, and one thought that's been occurring to me is that many worlds may simply be subject to sufficiently frequent catastrophes that intelligent life never developed. In the case of humans on Earth, there was a planetwide catastrophe -- the Chicxulub impactor, 66 million years ago. Humans themselves split from their common chimp ancestors 2 million years ago. And complex life emerged about 500 million years ago, after first emergence at least 3.5 billion years ago.
There have been numerous perturbations of terrestrial conditions over that period, but it does suggest that over various intervals, certain degrees of stability are required. Asteroid impacts, nearby supernovae, climate disruption, widespread volcanism, orbital disruptions, variations in solar intensity, and other factors could all reset a nascent emerging life, complex life, intelligence or civilization. There are a lot of opportunities to get it wrong.
At the same time, various stresses also seem to have contributed to humans being, well, human.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Moon http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/moon_formati...
Otherwise, yes.
We should go boldly where man has not gone before. Fly by the comets, visit asteroids, visit the moon of Mars. There’s a monolith there. A very unusual structure on this potato shaped object that goes around Mars once in seven hours. When people find out about that they’re going to say ‘Who put that there? Who put that there?’ The universe put it there. If you choose, God put it there..
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_%28moon%29#Proposed_miss...
Meanwhile, here on Earth, we thought until recently that deep sea vents were sterile. If we didn't know life's limits here, we certainly can't claim to know them on Mars.
(Never is an an acceptable answer for all 3, but please state why you hold your position)
Or it finds us.
Intelligent life, though...that's tricky. Given the size of the universe, it is almost certain that there is other intelligent life but who knows whether or not it survives long enough to come into contact? Discovering another civilization would be one of the most incredible experiences I can imagine, so I certainly hope it happens (peacefully) within my lifetime.
To be clear, microbial life in no way entails higher life. It's only by the insanely chance event of the eurkaryotic cell emerging that sophisticated multicellular life became possible on earth. Even if life is common in the universe, sophisticated multicellular life is extremely rare.
The selective pressures on bacterial life favors small size and rapid reproduction, jettisoning any unnecessary genetic material.
Mitochondrial ancestors relieved those pressures in a couple ways. Once the eukaryotic cell developed, multicellularity has evolved several times. All the cool things (multicellularity, eyes, flight) have evolved independently a bunch of times, and the eukaryote has happened only fucking once. Here's a deeper explanation of why it's so rare: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/368/1622/2012...
Even if life is common in the universe, multicellular life is extremely rare because the evolution of eukaryote-esque organisms is extraordinarily rare and chance.
Edit: That is to say, there's a strong case that step 4 is the Great Filter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter#The_Great_Filter
Honestly, me neither. I'm just a software engineer who is excited about space and hopes for the best. =)
> but it would be fucking awesome.
Wouldn't it? Holy hell, that would be wonderful. I hope it happens soon. Discovering life on Europa would be our generation's moon landing.
Thanks for the clarification. My knowledge of biology is limited, so I imagined each step (crude self-replicating molecules -> sophisticated DNA -> the cell -> etc.) being roughly as unlikely as the next. I had no idea eukaryotic cells were such a massive jump.
Earlier today I was watching a documentary about the Kepler telescope's search for exoplanets[0] that estimated the number of planets in our galaxy at 10^19. So many of those planets are unsuitable for any life, microbial or otherwise, but such a large number fills me with hope that the unlikely miracle of eukaryotic evolution could happen more than once. Then again, there are very plausible interpretations of the Drake equation[1] that pin the number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy to less than 5...maybe even 1...so who knows?
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD6QHP9ouuU [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
http://ronbarak.tumblr.com/post/25996121029/life-is-it-inevi...
Also, those rovers did a really wide range of things for their cost. From driving around 40km and taking pictures to analyzing chemistry and even testing for "wobbles" in the planet's rotation that would indicate a liquid core. Sure, they cost ~500 million a pop, but compare that to 100's of billion for a manned mission that might never reach Mars and things don't look so hot.
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.
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).
I think the outlook for intelligent life in the solar system, other than us, is very bleak for them. If there are whales on Europa, Titan, or Enceladus then it would seem easier for us to damage their ecosystem than the other way around. Unless, of course, they've infiltrated our political systems and are steering us towards self destruction.
That's not really true. Only a thin layer of Earth's crust and atmosphere are great for life. Such Goldilocks layers aren't that uncommon if we look at all boundary climates on each body (subsurface sea boundaries, polar boundaries, higher atmosphere boundaries, etc), and not just the boundary analog to Earth's.
Even Mercury has free standing water ice. Somewhere between that ice and the scorched plains there's going to be a somewhat comfy place.
If they will find us and this only means more advanced intelligent life then this obviously can happen any time or might already happened and can be delayed by us not being considered ready/worthy for contact or according to many conspiracy theories our governments considers we are not ready.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/04/120413-nasa-...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_lander_biological_experi...
A future mission should definitely include a biologically-useful microscope, as suggested by USC neurobiologist Joseph Miller in the National Geograhic article linked above. Miller, also a former NASA space shuttle program director, is one of the proponents of the idea that the 1976 Viking results already demonstrated life.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100904081050.ht...
That article is currently footnote #28 of the Wikipedia article, describing the 2010 paper referenced as footnote #25. Another footnoted reference from 2011 (#29) disagrees. But presumably, all that perchlorate-related reasoning was available to the authors of the 2012 paper defending the positive result.
The chlorometane results were a true result after all.
However, I have the impression that, organics, in contact with perchlorates (or any strong oxidant) will result in CO2
Also, it was repeated one week later, with no results
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_lander_biological_experi...
With enough perchlorate, it will. But with smaller amounts of it, there's a huge number of possibilities, including products that are more complex than the reactants.
I don't think we'll ever go beyond the solar system and that the only place with complex life in the solar system is the Earth.
> 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?
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.
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 ;)