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.
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).
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.
Firefox may be leveraging container functionality for private mode. Firefox containers are fully functional isolated containers of data where regular browser features function like expected.
Even if it doesn't, the Firefox temporary containers add-on would help.
A minimalist browser that ignores everything but the most basic of html works just fine.
I visited using mothra on 9front and was able to view the full article including images with no nag screen or articles remaining nonsense. It doesn't render perfectly but is completely readable. Just text and images with no other fluff to get in the way. I miss the old web.
Whatever they're doing generates a weird reaction in Edge on my computer, where I get the private mode warning in normal Edge and no warning in inPrivate Edge.
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.
History repeats itself. So many times a group of people on earth thought they were alone (a tribe, a region, an island, a continent), they were wrong. Earth is our current island, scale it up. Chances are when we find other life, it will share a common source with us. There's likely other life that doesn't but the closer ones probably do.
Maybe we are the "uncontacted tribe". I wonder at what point when you're observing an isolated tribe do they demonstrate enough advances that it's OK to contact them? Or do you just wait until they discover the observer?
I doubt we are observed. Space is really really big - even bigger than that... Are first radio signals have barely reached 100 light years by now (you a great antenna to received them). All other intelligent beings know about earth is what they can infer from how our gravity changes the sun, and other such indirect measures.
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:
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!
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.
I was just reading about how far out into space the ejecta from the Chicxulub impact went and it really brought home how possible it is that life from Earth migrated elsewhere, Mars being an obvious possible destination. But as one gets further out, it seems less and less likely that any life found has terrestrial origins. I am very much interested in knowing if there is any independently evolved life in the oceans of Europa or any of the other ice moons.
It's an open question, but there is some reason to believe that bacteria can survive a journey through space. Multicellular life would be much less likely to survive, although I'm constantly amazed at how hard it is to kill a tardigrade!
Long journey to Mars in hard vacuum and under UV radiation makes it very unlikely, but bacteria spores are very resilient to harsh conditions. I think it is still theoretically possible. There are a few papers on this.
A tardigrade must first complete cryptobiosis, otherwise they are fragile[1]. Given that it takes time to enter cryptobiosis (maybe 1 hour), it is unlikely that any active tardigrade would survive a meteor impact.
Suppose a tardigrade was in complete cryptobiosis and survived a journey to the surface of Mars. Conditions would need to be favorable if it were to ever regain an active metabolic state.
Is it? Predation, old age (wear and tear), disease (pollution) are the primary reasons that what we consider "living things" die. Space has very limited vectors of death for something like the tardigrade. To some bug dessicated hibernating in a rock, it's not too bad.
> Predation, old age (wear and tear), disease (pollution) are the primary reasons that what we consider "living things" die.
...on Earth, where the multitude of things that make space inhospitable - both objectively, like no atmosphere to protect from cosmic radiation; and subjectively, like vastly different conditions that terrestrial life hasn't evolved for - aren't an issue.
If life is discovered on Mars, I'm going to be waiting to see if it is obviously Earth-based DNA. If so, then as excited as people will be, it won't actually be any particular sort of evidence for wide-spread life. It'd still probably be a reasonable candidate for discovery of the century, but not the millenium.
(We will be able to determine if it is has the same source as Earth-based life, because Earth-based life has a lot of things that seem like they ought to be free parameters, but are highly conserved across our entire ecosystem. This includes certain basic genes and processes and their exact "spelling" in genes, the mapping of DNA letters to proteins, and probably quite a few other things. Can't disprove a common third source that way, of course.)
I've seen the theory tossed out there, but it's hard to do anything about it. We'd need paleontologists on Mars to really be sure (to prove life that predates Earth, as a step 1), and we're a long way away from that no matter how you slice it. But as I understand it, the time scales work; for the same reason that Mars is basically a dried-up, used up planet now while Earth is flourishing with life, Mars was theoretically possibly habitable much earlier than Earth.
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.
It annoys me that there wasn't even a mention of the mere possibility that we may have contaminated the planet with the microbes in question. Sterilizing complex machinery is difficult and absolute sterilization of spacecraft has never been a goal of any space agency. Then we find out the microbes are probably in an area where one of our rovers has been exploring for a few years and you have to wonder. Granted, it does seem unlikely, and perhaps the microbes are indeed under the ice and have been since before we got there. But it seems irresponsible to not even consider contamination as a potential cause when we can clearly connect the dots to how that could have happened.
It could also be other aliens contaminated Mars. Just saying... if we are talking about possibilities rather than probabilities. If it is us, we probably will find out later anyway, no need to get too emotional about an article.
Whatever process is causing the presence of methane can apparently produce hundreds of thousands of tonnes of the gas in a relatively short timeframe.
Considering that spacecraft have only landed on Mars in the last few decades, a contaminant microbe would have to truly thrive in an extremely inhospitable Martian environment, survive spaceflight and decontamination, yet also be undetectable in the places on Earth where the spacecraft was constructed.
Yes, it's possible, but it seems so beyond the realm of probability...
> contaminant microbe would have to truly thrive in an extremely inhospitable Martian environment, survive spaceflight and decontamination, yet also be undetectable in the places on Earth where the spacecraft was constructed
To be fair, if those possibilities are true, they would also be revolutionary and should be considered (e.g., do they imply a mechanism that makes panspemria feasible?).
Likewise for an previously unknown mechanism of methane production - this itself would help us understand the origin of life. (This is one explanation, "geological" one, mentioned in the article.)
"Single celled microorganisms found to exist in conditions on Mars that mirror some of the conditions in which single celled microogranisms exist on Earth", however, seems to be a more boring one - if turns out not to be true, understanding why that happens to be the case, is also valuable.
Had to look this one up. I’m assuming you meant panspermia.
> the theory that life on the earth originated from microorganisms or chemical precursors of life present in outer space and able to initiate life on reaching a suitable environment.
It was measured with at least two different spectrometers: the Curiosity rover measured it with a laser spectrometer, and Mars Express with its PFS. That leaves little doubt.
> The presence of methane is significant because the gas decays quickly.
If there were microbes on these spacecrafts and probes, there would have to be a massive rotting carcass producing a size-able amount of methane sitting right in front of the gas analyzers to throw off the instruments. It's more likely that the measurements of methane on Mars are (A) negligible, and (B) are naturally occurring. Especially given that methane on Earth (at any given altitude) is a about 1800ppb [1]. Contrasting with the probes *average measurements of 4ppb.
I'm no scientist, however I am an avid science reader. Here's a great summary quote from Wikipedia on the chemical relationship of methane and carbon dioxide:
> As methane rises into the air, it reacts with the hydroxyl radical to create water vapor and carbon dioxide. The lifespan of methane in the atmosphere was estimated at 9.6 years as of 2001; however, increasing emissions of methane over time reduce the concentration of the hydroxyl radical in the atmosphere.
That's just the nature of the methane here on Earth. [2] But you can probably imagine the relationship is about the same on Mars. In fact, you can read a summary about the chemical relationship here in this abstract. [3] But I would recommend some serious problem solving to piece together what this piece is trying to communicate...
Consider this hypothesis about Mars:
- Organic matter may have existed > now no longer exists.
- Methane was once at Earthen levels > now no longer is.
- Carbon dioxide was once at Earthen levels > now it exceeds it.
- Methane decays into carbon dioxide.
- Is it possible that organic matter continues to exist on Mars in a seasonal/irregular pattern?
What does the data suggest to you /u/sholladay? That these sensors were broken/contaminated? Or that we are trying our best to parse Mars' veiled past?
It's not irresponsible to consider contamination plainly because it's irrelevant — the tenants of this hypothesis are grounded in chemical observations, not biological observations.
It's meant to be basically impossible because we will did sterilize the landers. We know separately there are already rocks going from mars to earth and earth to mars, because we found some on the earth.
It's not uncommon to find meteorites on Earth that originated from Mars. Some examples are "Northwest Africa 7034" [1] and Allan Hills 84001 [2].
Allan Hills 84001 famously caused some controversy in 1996 when scientist believed it contained evidence for life on Mars, which ended in an announcement from the President. In the end the consensus seems to be that there was no evidence for life.
If life came there on one of our probes, and at least some of it found Mars to be hospitable enough to spread enough to generate gas on this scale, then we can start growing at least some Earth-based single-cellular life on Mars, right now. We might be able to use that to start terraforming Mars, if we chose to do so.
Here, here! I was thinking the same. Ever since they first detected persistent earth-borne little buggers living on the exterior of the spacecraft. [1]
I do think the detection of a methane spike by and orbiter and terrestrial rover within a day of each other, is an anomaly on a scale that doesn't seem to make a plausible for the case for earth-based bio-contamination. Perhaps they should have at least addressed that aspect.
That said, I do cringe everytime I see an animation of a screw (rotating) propeller-based submarine exploring the oceans of Europa. Screw propellers will always contaminate some material (not necessarily biological) and there is a risk of a lot of contamination should a seal fail. Propellers are a poor propulsion choice for exploration of pristine liquid environments, including Earth's subglacial lakes [2]. Instead they should either use seaglider [3], or some oscillating foil propulsion like Thunniform locomotion [4] (both do not require any parts to penetrate the hull nd risk contaminating the environment).
I will say though, that per the article, the findings of methane spike by an orbital craft and a terrestrial craft within
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.
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.
68 comments
[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 129 ms ] threadIt 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.
How NYTimes knows I am in private mode?
Even if it doesn't, the Firefox temporary containers add-on would help.
I didn't get the message in Chrome.
I visited using mothra on 9front and was able to view the full article including images with no nag screen or articles remaining nonsense. It doesn't render perfectly but is completely readable. Just text and images with no other fluff to get in the way. I miss the old web.
Well, not the one you're mentioning.
http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-drake-eq...
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!
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.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/11539977/
Suppose a tardigrade was in complete cryptobiosis and survived a journey to the surface of Mars. Conditions would need to be favorable if it were to ever regain an active metabolic state.
[1]https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-take-to-kill-a-waterbear-...
Is it? Predation, old age (wear and tear), disease (pollution) are the primary reasons that what we consider "living things" die. Space has very limited vectors of death for something like the tardigrade. To some bug dessicated hibernating in a rock, it's not too bad.
...on Earth, where the multitude of things that make space inhospitable - both objectively, like no atmosphere to protect from cosmic radiation; and subjectively, like vastly different conditions that terrestrial life hasn't evolved for - aren't an issue.
[0] https://www.space.com/14268-rare-mars-meteorite-rocks-tissin...
(We will be able to determine if it is has the same source as Earth-based life, because Earth-based life has a lot of things that seem like they ought to be free parameters, but are highly conserved across our entire ecosystem. This includes certain basic genes and processes and their exact "spelling" in genes, the mapping of DNA letters to proteins, and probably quite a few other things. Can't disprove a common third source that way, of course.)
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
Considering that spacecraft have only landed on Mars in the last few decades, a contaminant microbe would have to truly thrive in an extremely inhospitable Martian environment, survive spaceflight and decontamination, yet also be undetectable in the places on Earth where the spacecraft was constructed.
Yes, it's possible, but it seems so beyond the realm of probability...
To be fair, if those possibilities are true, they would also be revolutionary and should be considered (e.g., do they imply a mechanism that makes panspemria feasible?).
Likewise for an previously unknown mechanism of methane production - this itself would help us understand the origin of life. (This is one explanation, "geological" one, mentioned in the article.)
"Single celled microorganisms found to exist in conditions on Mars that mirror some of the conditions in which single celled microogranisms exist on Earth", however, seems to be a more boring one - if turns out not to be true, understanding why that happens to be the case, is also valuable.
Had to look this one up. I’m assuming you meant panspermia.
> the theory that life on the earth originated from microorganisms or chemical precursors of life present in outer space and able to initiate life on reaching a suitable environment.
> The presence of methane is significant because the gas decays quickly.
If there were microbes on these spacecrafts and probes, there would have to be a massive rotting carcass producing a size-able amount of methane sitting right in front of the gas analyzers to throw off the instruments. It's more likely that the measurements of methane on Mars are (A) negligible, and (B) are naturally occurring. Especially given that methane on Earth (at any given altitude) is a about 1800ppb [1]. Contrasting with the probes *average measurements of 4ppb.
I'm no scientist, however I am an avid science reader. Here's a great summary quote from Wikipedia on the chemical relationship of methane and carbon dioxide:
> As methane rises into the air, it reacts with the hydroxyl radical to create water vapor and carbon dioxide. The lifespan of methane in the atmosphere was estimated at 9.6 years as of 2001; however, increasing emissions of methane over time reduce the concentration of the hydroxyl radical in the atmosphere.
That's just the nature of the methane here on Earth. [2] But you can probably imagine the relationship is about the same on Mars. In fact, you can read a summary about the chemical relationship here in this abstract. [3] But I would recommend some serious problem solving to piece together what this piece is trying to communicate...
Consider this hypothesis about Mars:
- Organic matter may have existed > now no longer exists.
- Methane was once at Earthen levels > now no longer is.
- Carbon dioxide was once at Earthen levels > now it exceeds it.
- Methane decays into carbon dioxide.
- Is it possible that organic matter continues to exist on Mars in a seasonal/irregular pattern?
What does the data suggest to you /u/sholladay? That these sensors were broken/contaminated? Or that we are trying our best to parse Mars' veiled past?
It's not irresponsible to consider contamination plainly because it's irrelevant — the tenants of this hypothesis are grounded in chemical observations, not biological observations.
[1] https://www.nova-gas.com/analyzers/methane
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11539176
Allan Hills 84001 famously caused some controversy in 1996 when scientist believed it contained evidence for life on Mars, which ended in an announcement from the President. In the end the consensus seems to be that there was no evidence for life.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Africa_7034 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001
I do think the detection of a methane spike by and orbiter and terrestrial rover within a day of each other, is an anomaly on a scale that doesn't seem to make a plausible for the case for earth-based bio-contamination. Perhaps they should have at least addressed that aspect.
That said, I do cringe everytime I see an animation of a screw (rotating) propeller-based submarine exploring the oceans of Europa. Screw propellers will always contaminate some material (not necessarily biological) and there is a risk of a lot of contamination should a seal fail. Propellers are a poor propulsion choice for exploration of pristine liquid environments, including Earth's subglacial lakes [2]. Instead they should either use seaglider [3], or some oscillating foil propulsion like Thunniform locomotion [4] (both do not require any parts to penetrate the hull nd risk contaminating the environment).
I will say though, that per the article, the findings of methane spike by an orbital craft and a terrestrial craft within
1. https://www.google.com/amp/s/relay.nationalgeographic.com/pr...
2. https://salsa-antarctica.org
3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_glider
3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboTuna
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.
I understand that NASA takes great pains to prevent this but they can't get every single one, surely? Especially extremophiles?