Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: FUBAR-BDHR on June 20, 2008, 11:52:29 pm
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It eveporated which means it's most like ice. It still doesn't mean it's water ice but anyway if it is where there is water there usually is life. If there are signs of life past or present Will the government cover it up? Will they try to explain it away to satisfy religious factions?
And now for the major question if it's producing hydrocarbons how long before the oil companies land there? :D
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Link to the news ?
And I thought they always knew about the ice on mars.
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Call me when they find a sentient lifeform, especially if its found on Earth.
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http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2008/06/20/phoenix-straight-up-on-the-rocks/
Not sure if that is the right link. Earlier today they had an article with a picture of where the lander dug with white crystals that later evaporated.
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Call me when they find a sentient lifeform, especially if its found on Earth.
Sentient is one thing. Intelligent is another.
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If an intelligent being is found on Earth, I would be able to divide by 0.
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If an intelligent being is found on Earth, I would be able to divide by 0.
That explains the hole in reality engulfing the planet. Damn you. :P
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Wait ... does that mean ... There's an intelligent being on EARTH ??? NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
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Some say that the Viking test results were misinterpreted on purpose, and that Viking did actually find traces of life...
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I can assure you that I've never been to Mars and that they never found me there :D
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I didn't know about any ice :nervous:
I guess I'm just that cool :lol:
oh...
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I just saw that, and to me it looks like the first substantial clue they have to go on. The only thing is, I doubt it will amount to much.
And if it evaporated, couldn't it be another liquid?
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I was under the impression that we already knew Mars had ice, we just didn't know if it had water.
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Ice is water, technically speaking. It means at some time in the past, there was life on mars, possibly. Which means at this point there is the possibilty of life on Mars still, albeit it'll probably be single celled.
Or underground.
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Microbs do not live in solid ice. We already knew Mars had ice, so why do we care that we found ice?
Now if they found even a trace of liquid water, then I'd be impressed.
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That's not true. They found some microbes on Earth in Antarctica that were living in a block of ice or something.
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And they've also found microbes on comets.
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And they've also found microbes on comets.
Then why doesn't that count as extraterrestrial life?
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Dunno. Maybe because they're not planetoids?
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And they've also found microbes on comets.
No they didn't, http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/alien_bacteria_001127.html
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That's not true. They found some microbes on Earth in Antarctica that were living in a block of ice or something.
Yep read about that one too...microbes seem to be able to survive and even thrive in just about any environment. Not sure if they will have them in this ice on Mars. We know that Mars has its own polar caps but I think they wanted to know exactly what it was made of and if there was ice elsewhere. I believe the lander is in a non-polar region and so the discovery of ice just beneath the dirt is nifty.
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I thought it was on a polar region...
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I think it's in a polar region but not on the ice caps.
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Even if they find some bacteria or larger, you can be sure you'll never hear about it.
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Ice is water, technically speaking. It means at some time in the past, there was life on mars, possibly. Which means at this point there is the possibilty of life on Mars still, albeit it'll probably be single celled.
Or underground.
Possibly? we're almost certain of it dude...
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There's a growing belief that if it is at all possible for life in some form, even incredibly basic, to develop in the Universe, it will get there, and it will hang on tooth, claw and tentacle once it arrives.
It's what Terry Pratchett once referred to as 'bloodymindium'
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Oh I'm sure there's life out there somewhere in the big universe we live in i do believe there was life on mars at one time back when it had an atmosphere. how knows we humans might be from mars
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If we were, it would be, at the very best, back in the stages of single-celled life, anything larger would be poorly adapted to Earth's ecology even if Mars did have an atmosphere, the odds of it being exactly the same composition as Earth's is slim.
Anything too developed arriving in our atmosphere would, most likely, either die of oxygen poisoning, or suffocate, and even if they didn't they would then have to compete against animals that have had millions of years head-start them. I suppose it's possible that micro-organisms could have drifted here, but personally, I doubt it, we've got a perfectly good Ecology for life to develop in, so why start looking elsewhere for the source? ;)
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Er, Mars has always had an atmosphere, just not terribly thick. We're still not sure how dense and of what composition the earlier atmosphere was, but judging from the plentiful signs of massive amounts of liquid water that must have once flowed on the surface, it's a fair bet that the old atmosphere was capable of supporting life. Getting life transported from Mars to Earth, though, is a really big stretch. We've found martian meteorites, but those are one in a million, and the odds of having genetic material withstand being excavated from Mars, traverse the inner solar system, be subjected to all that radiation, and finally impact on Earth, is beyond miraculous.
IIRC, the more central purpose of the lander was to determine if there was sufficient water ice in the polar regions to be a viable water source for future human inhabitants. We already knew there was CO2 ice at the poles, and we've imaged water-ice in the form of frost from previous landings, but here we can actually see what appears to be significant amounts of water ice just under the polar soil. (It's actually quite similar to subsurface permafrost on Earth).
If they find signs of life I suspect it's most likely little more than simple microbes. It'd be awesome as tits if they do. :) And I actually highly doubt that they would hide this information from the public if they found anything definitive. What would anyone gain by keeping such knowledge from us? Besides, only extremist religious folk would be likely to raise a hissy-fit over it.
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If they do find any intelligent life here or on Mars, you can count on the american government to nuke it...
Though if Nuke himself goes there, thats not so bad...
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If we were, it would be, at the very best, back in the stages of single-celled life, anything larger would be poorly adapted to Earth's ecology even if Mars did have an atmosphere, the odds of it being exactly the same composition as Earth's is slim.
Anything too developed arriving in our atmosphere would, most likely, either die of oxygen poisoning, or suffocate, and even if they didn't they would then have to compete against animals that have had millions of years head-start them. I suppose it's possible that micro-organisms could have drifted here, but personally, I doubt it, we've got a perfectly good Ecology for life to develop in, so why start looking elsewhere for the source? ;)
That much is almost certain. Single celled organisms seem to be the best able to potentially travel between planets. Given that we've got life teeming on our planet from top to bottom (some bacteria and the like exist at extreme altitudes) its not a huge stretch that they can catch a ride somehow and float off to another planet. My feeling is that it may be that there are tiny microbes and the like living on many of the planets and moons in our solar system and that we just don't have the ability to look behind every rock and crevice on our neighboring planets like we can on Earth. Not yet anyways.
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That's not true. They found some microbes on Earth in Antarctica that were living in a block of ice or something.
****, they've found more than microbes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_worms) living in ice.
if there was life on mars, there is life on mars. it finds a way.
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ive seen those before, they rather cool and they melt if you touch em. tiny little critters.
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if I lived in Alaska I don't think I would be able to resist keeping a few of those in my fridge.
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That is amazing :eek:
I suppose the reason the scientists can't determine how the worms drill through the ice is because they have a lot of difficulty inspecting the worms directly?
How would life live in a low pressure CO2 environment?
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Great, now we're going to have giant inteligent ice worms on mars speculation, arn't we? :rolleyes:
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theres pics of the little critters here
http://www.nichols.edu/departments/glacier/iceworm.htm
im not sure if the mendenhall has ice worms, though its a pretty beefy glacier as far as glaciers go so id be surprised if we didn't have any. one of these days i should hike out there and see if i can find any. the worms i seen were at a visitors center up at portage glacier near anchorage, someone went out and collected some to put on display, they were accompanied by a sign that said dont touch they will melt, curious i poked one with my pinky, it melted. pretty ****ing cool i think.