Azaran on 29/11/2012 at 03:03
Quote Posted by Peanuckle
Instead they found microbes that could do passably well in an arsenic-based environment, on Earth. They said it was suggestive that life could evolve outside our own setting. Everyone was disappointed.
Those microbes probably evolved from normal, oxygen-dependent life. That and the fact that they were found in a planet that already
has life, makes it a not-so-exciting discovery in the end.
faetal on 29/11/2012 at 11:01
Most microbes evolved from anaerobes, given that before cyanobacteria / plants became wide-spread, the atmosphere didn't contain much oxygen. The reason for the excitement is that they are scientists. Understanding just how complex and unlikely the processes of life are, and the kind of flexibility that is required for it to exist under certain conditions, are requirements for getting excited about the discovery that the planet next door has conditions which can support some life.
Most people won't get excited until something is actually found (and even then, I imagine some people might say "so what?" if microbes are ever found), but it's always disappointing when people call a big discovery a damp squib because it doesn't resemble a defining event in a near-future Star Trek prequel.
mxleader on 3/12/2012 at 07:00
I'm betting the rover just found some Hallucinogenic mushroom spores on the floor of Death Valley. They didn't actually go to Mars.
Azaran on 4/12/2012 at 09:34
They found carbon :rolleyes:
(
http://news.discovery.com/space/curiosity-hints-at-mars-organics-perchlorate-121203.html)
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has turned up tantalizing clues of the planet's complicated chemical evolution, a story that includes carbon, the first detailed analysis of the planet's soil shows.
Scientists found traces of carbon in several compounds detected by the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, instrument. They do not yet know if the carbon, which is a key building block for life, is contamination from Earth, was delivered to Mars by organics-rich comets or asteroids, or arose on Mars.
If indigenous, the carbon could be an indicator of geologic or biological activity.
PHOTOS: Curiosity Flips Powerful Camera's Dust Cap
"We're not really sure of where it comes from right now," the mission's lead scientist John Grotzinger told reporters during the opening day of the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco on Monday.
"Just finding carbon somewhere doesn't mean that it has anything to do with life, or the finding of a habitable environment," he said.
Life as we know it needs three basic ingredients to evolve -- water, a energy source and carbon. Other building blocks include sulfur, oxygen, phosphorous and nitrogen.
ANALYSIS: Mars Mystery: What HAS Curiosity Discovered?
Curiosity, which is four months into a planned two-year mission on Mars, already has turned up evidence that its landing spot on the floor Gale Crater, was once covered in water. Minerals in the soil analysis also show a history of chemical interaction with water.
mars red
WATCH VIDEO: WHY IS MARS RED?
Unlike previous rovers and landers dispatched to Mars, Curiosity contains an onboard chemistry laboratory in an attempt to find the ingredients for microbial life, the environments that could have supported it and places where life could have been preserved.
In a trio of runs, SAM detected signs of an oxygen-chlorine compound, possibly perchlorate, and traces of carbon-containing chlorinated methane compounds.
Scientists specifically chose dry, fine-grained sand believed to be typical to the Martian surface for Curiosity's first soil analysis.
"It's not unexpected that this sand pile would not be rich in organics. It's been exposed to the harsh Martian environment," said lead SAM scientist Paul Mahaffy, with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
"What we're seeing here are some very simple compounds, and it's entirely possible they're coming from the very reactive chlorine that's released and picking up carbon from somewhere. We have to try to understand where that carbon is coming from," he said.
ANALYSIS: Curiosity Finds Some Aloha Spirit in Mars Soil
The rover's prime target is a stack of layered deposits rising from the center of the crater.
"It's a really going to be an exciting hunt over the course of this mission to find early environments that might be protected from this surface Mars environment and see what we can add to the carbon story," Mahaffy said.
"We're starting to find the spices that make a stew tasty," Grotzinger told Discovery News. "There are the basic ingredients that you expect to be there, but it's how you combine them and the minor ingredients that really turn out to be interesting."Renzatic on 6/12/2012 at 22:06
Holodecks aren't exactly something that'd fall under NASA's usual purview.
SubJeff on 7/12/2012 at 01:18
Quote Posted by Azaran
They found carbon :rolleyes:
Quote Posted by Lazarus411
It doesn't take a genius to figure that one of the most abundant elements in the periodic table might be present on Mars as well.
I don't really care, which is why I haven't said anything until now, but you two really come across as the most ignorant and/or young and naive members of the forum. But I don't think either of you are young and inexperienced so that leads me to believe that you just don't, or can't, think that deeply about anything you read say or do. Perhaps it's a choice, I don't know.
This isn't meant as a flame, or an insult, just an observation. Let me frame it like this - both of you are poo-pooing this finding as no big deal. I agree its not as amazing as finding a laser pistol or a carving or even just a desiccated extra-terrestrial microbe, but do you really (really) think that this finding is dull, uninteresting and to be expected?
Let's say, for argument's sake, that it you really do think that. Why do you think such a big deal is being made about it?
To put it another way - is it the discovery that is dull or is it your frame of reference that is skewed?
demagogue on 7/12/2012 at 02:48
As I understand it, most of science is about putting pieces of evidence together coherently to build a bigger profile of what's likely going on. Anytime you see something unexpected, that's a great thing because it gives something you have to account for, so your profile is going to be more fleshed out than if you don't see anything you have to explain over the baseline. Science is often more interesting when it's about nuanced explanations than the big eye-candy anyway.
The breakthrough for a meteor crash on Earth 65 million years ago didn't come from some massive feature but from the thin K-T boundary in mountainsides (I guess now called the K-Pg boundary) containing minute amounts of shocked quartz consistently around the planet. The breakthrough for the Big Bang theory wasn't some grand fire in the sky, but the very faint wisp of background radiation coming from all directions we couldn't even detect until the 1960s. Insignificant features sometimes add up to bigger conclusions better than waiting for some big signpost that leaves nothing to the imagination.
faetal on 7/12/2012 at 13:18
Quote Posted by Lazarus411
It doesn't take a genius to figure that one of the most abundant elements in the periodic table might be present on Mars as well.
No, but apparently it takes a complete fool to not get that "abundant" refers to its status on earth. How can someone be so arrogant as to think, to
actually think that they've considered something which somehow was totally lost on the experienced fucking experts. Unless you're just being a troll.
Briareos H on 7/12/2012 at 14:03
With a 95% CO2 atmosphere, one can safely say that carbon is pretty abundant on Mars.
Organic compounds, on the other hand, not so much. They were only discovered in traces until now and organochlorides, if they were confirmed, would be something very important considering how essential they can be to basic biological chemistry either as synthesis products or reagents.
heywood on 8/12/2012 at 00:41
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
I don't really care, which is why I haven't said anything until now, but you two really come across as the most ignorant and/or young and naive members of the forum. But I don't think either of you are young and inexperienced so that leads me to believe that you just don't, or can't, think that deeply about anything you read say or do. Perhaps it's a choice, I don't know.
This isn't meant as a flame, or an insult, just an observation. Let me frame it like this - both of you are poo-pooing this finding as no big deal. I agree its not as amazing as finding a laser pistol or a carving or even just a desiccated extra-terrestrial microbe, but do you really (really) think that this finding is dull, uninteresting and to be expected?
Let's say, for argument's sake, that it you really do think that. Why do you think such a big deal is being made about it?
To put it another way - is it the discovery that is dull or is it your frame of reference that is skewed?
Quote Posted by faetal
No, but apparently it takes a complete fool to not get that "abundant" refers to its status on earth. How can someone be so arrogant as to think, to
actually think that they've considered something which somehow was totally lost on the experienced fucking experts. Unless you're just being a troll.
Could you guys be any more condescending if you tried?
Carbon is the 4th most abundant element in the universe as well as in the solar system, due to it being the stable end product of Helium fusion. We already knew that Mars has plenty of CO2 in the atmosphere, and have found evidence of carbon removed from the atmosphere and trapped in carbonate minerals. We already knew that some unknown process releases methane into the atmosphere, but it doesn't last long, presumably due to oxygenation or halogenation. One telescope even detected hints of methane plumes. Also, another organic compound, formaldehyde, has been detected in the atmosphere by the orbiters. Finally, through lab analysis of Mars meteorites, we've found large reduced carbon compounds such as poly-aromatic hydrocarbons. These prior findings already confirmed that organic chemistry was taking place on Mars.
Curiosity detected chloromethane and dichloromethane when heating a soil sample. That is not a surprise since chlorine is common on Mars and we had hypothesized that at least some of the methane was being removed from the atmosphere through halogenation. Also, this finding is a repeat of the same finding made by the Viking lander in the 1970s! It was dismissed back then, but as we've learned more about Martian chemistry we've come to accept that the Viking finding was legitimate and not due to contamination. So there's not much to say about this other than we repeated the same experiment made 36 years ago with better instruments and got similar results.
