Tongue in cheek.
So, who wants to be the first person to drink this liquid?
Let me guess the conversation of those who make it to Mars sometime in the future.
You go first? No, you go first you landed the spacecraft properly. But you were the one who gave the proper co-ordinates where to land.
4
Congratulations to the European Space Agency.
My thoughts are: if one assumes that life is defined as a "thing" that meets our definition of life which is: the thing eats, or takes in energy, reproduces itself, and avoids being eaten, so that its energy intake rate and reproduction rate exceeds the rate that it is being consumed, I can envision and believe it is very likely that there is life on Mars and on other planets in the galaxy. What I am not sure of, is whether water is required to meet the requirements for life? Clearly, curiosity is a characteristic of our homo sapiens species that is how we came to dominate the other species on Earth.
It is my hope that our species also tries to understand how we can save our planet from catastrophic global warming, which has the potential to trigger runaway warming by accelerating the thawing of the Arctic permafrost releasing billions of tonnes of Greenhouse Gases frozen in the permafrost.
James Powell has proposed Maglev launch of a large number of photovoltaic structures to geosynchronous orbit to capture the energy of the Sun and convert it into low-energy microwaves to beam to receiving fields on Earth. This 24/7 energy source could provide the low-cost energy requirements for the 9 Billion people by 2050. Electricity would be much cheaper than fossil fuels, which are finite, anyway, and could be used to provide the World with a high standard of living. His book "Spaceship Earth" is announced on www.magneticglide.com.
14
Very intriguing. It's great there are people able to explore worlds in outer space -- and tell the rest of us about them.
One point: the caption reads "The 12-mile-wide lake is believed to be about a mile deep." Shouldn't "underground" be used in place of "deep."
7
Discoveries such as this one always make me think of our tiny rock in the Solar System. Earth, such a breathtaking planet. Too bad it is inhabited.
10
Water is essential to life as we know it on this planet. It's possible that elsewhere in the universe life may have evolved to depend on an entirely different substance. Or not. Michael Crichton's brilliant book "The Andromeda Strain" dealt with this topic. By far his most intellectually stimulating novel.
Ditto for radiation. Since most of the universe is awash in energy forms that seem incompatible with our living forms on Earth, it's entirely possible that if life exists elsewhere it's evolved mechanisms to deal with the constant bombardment of radiation, microwaves, intense gravitational forces, or the virtual absence of gravity. If the life form is based on DNA it could simply be an exponential uptick in enzymes that repair DNA damaged from radiation. We all have those enzymes, they work to a certain extent until an exposure to certain levels of radiation overwhelms their capacity. Or simply an enhanced or alternate version of melanin, which protects those living nearer the equator from greater amounts of solar radiation. Why a fair-skinned person from Ireland would get severe sunburn walking about unprotected in the midday sun of say Cairo while a dark-skinned African is perfectly fine.
I hope these scientists are thinking outside the box while also focusing on what we assume is essential to life as we know it on this 3rd rock from the sun.
7
Thank you, scientists!
7
Given the the assault of life on Earth, as covered in a front page headline in the NYT earlier this week, regarding the endangerment of the Endangered Species Act ,and the endangerment of Migratory Birds, as Trump and his cronies seek to gut the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, and Medicare, in terms of Trump's proposed flat reimbursement for all office visits, regardless of length of visits and complexity, with the expected result that doctors will flee Medicare en masse, which will result in the extinction of those humans who will be unable to pay out of pocket for life-saving medical care, we earthlings had better hope that there's life on mars, and a way for those who remain to get there.
8
This article is very interesting to me because I love learning about space and how much secrets it holds that we still need to find out about. I believe that aliens do exist and that they do live on mars. I believe they exist because humans and animals can’t be the only thing alive, there has to be other creatures out there that are living. Also, if earth becomes bad then us humans can move there.
4
Saying that finding water increases the chance of life on Mars is like saying the presence of a quarter in someone's pocket raises the chance that he has done a bank robbery. Water is a simple molecule and is present in a lot of places in the universe. That is far from DNA, which is a highly complex molecule with an astronomically little chance of appearing in random places.
@Max4, Do you think the science in the article is wrong or misguided? DNA is just a sequence of amino acids and amino acids are nothing more than Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Carbon. In case, of Mars, water has Oxygen and Hydrogen and the only missing element is Carbon. Go figure.
1
This article interested be because I love to learn about space and science. The article I read about water on Mars, means that humans might be able to live there. This is exciting news, because humans have polluted Earth so much, and at one point it will be inhabitable. If Humans do make it to Mars, there is no telling when the human race will end.
5
@Pat Brown Elon Musk's vision is that "real simple: a multiplanetary species is better than a single-planet species."
4
It has always been my thought that we were formed from the molecules of this planet and therefore of this earth.
Scientist a saying that liquid 'water' has been found on Mars.
But is this liquid conducive to the water we as humans need to survive?
Earth is about 75% water.
But most of the water is not for human consumption.
I'm just as excited as the next person about space exploration, but until we learn to live within the confines of our own solar system, we would never be able to live anywhere else within our solar system.
At least not as we imagine.
It's like when we visit another city or state or country.
They are indeed nice places to visit, but there's truly no place like home.
Another thing to consider about another planet, if one goes there, they might be reduced to something like life imprisonment with no chance of parole, ever.
1
Water is a chemical substance. H2O. Of course it’s the same as our water. The article does say they believe it’s salt water, which means you can’t just drink it, but plenty of other life forms thrive in the water we can’t consume here on Earth.
4
I went to read the comments about this interesting article hoping to better understand this potentially amazing discovery from enlightened educated people with some scientific background and insight only to find the same Political nonsense that permeates our Culture these days.
Sadly, even in the comment section of an article about the discovery of water on Mars people feel the need to use it as a Soap Box for the same boring broken record we hear every second of everyday .
5
"... people feel the need to use it as a Soap Box ..."
Why do you suppose that is?
I hear you. As political a creature as I can be, this isn't the moment. Let's just share a moment of wonder, just as we did in contentious '69, when Apollo 11 touched down.
1
@Ilooboch
The need for more of us to learn more of what constitutes harmony and/or practical problem-solving dialogue remains greater than our collective humanneed to communicate with putative aliens or to promulgate soap boxes to attract infantile billionaires' money to feed fantastic scenarios for using technologies that feed their egos. V2s over London were not a net benefit to humankind without vast amounts of time spent on inducing decently ethical constraints on their technologies' application.
2
Potentially exciting. But the statement "Because water is essential to life," is potentially naive, myopic and presumptuous.
This assumes that all life forms have to be built from the same carbon-based building blocks. Why is that? Is it inconceivable that there might be a totally different form of life out there that finds root in a completely different chemical structure, sustained not by H20 and 02, but by chemistry of a completely different makeup? Life that is created by energy and sustained by energy?
Just a thought to open the mind.
7
There was a cartoon in the New Yorker some time back showing a flying saucer crashed in our desert. In the foreground was a little green man crawling across the sand gasping "Ammonia! Ammonia!"
10
@Creative:
The only elements we know about in the universe are contained in the Periodic Table. Carbon-based (organic) chemistry is a good bet for extraterrestrial life, as carbon is abundant in space, manufactured copiously by stellar nucleosynthesis. Carbon forms strong bonds and ring structures, fundamental to the chemistry of life on earth.
Elements directly below carbon (in its same column or group) have similar chemical properties: silicon and germanium in particular (see JBS Haldane for an early imaginative version of what silicon-based life might look like). But silicon has some problems: it is not nearly as abundant in the universe as carbon (e.g., methane CH4 is abundant but not silane SiH4), and consider respiration for a silicon-based organism -- we exhale CO2, but it would exhale SiO2 (sand), and would literally brick itself in simply by breathing. So carbon and water (H2O) still look best for life (hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, produced in the Big Bang, and oxygen is the most abundant element in earth's crust).
But ordinary (baryonic) matter comprises only about 15% of the observable universe; maybe there are creatures out there composed of dark matter or even dark energy? Who knows? You're right to keep an open mind.
6
Wonderful news.
We should bombard Mars with a radio signal requesting they direct their teleportation beam at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, during the middle of any night, around 3 AM, but first determine a tweet application is active at the location, and thereupon beam the entire calamity and its occupants to a galaxy at the most extreme end of their teleportation device's range, and immediately thereafter erase any record of the coordinates of the calamitys' new location, therefore insuring no chance whatsoever exists that some evildoer might return the calamity to our once lovely planet.
And the now empty property at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, can be made into a special national park, displaying the details of the planet destroying agenda that the Trump creature had sought to impose on our nation, and the world, with a warning, that the civilized peoples of the universe will not permit any such future danger to Life, Liberty, and Justice, to exist again on our planet, or anywhere in the universe.
Wouldn't it be nice if all of us could simply be decent, genuine, just a tad emphatic, and realize that we are all going to die, and that 100 years from now, all of us still alive now, will be dead, and that whatever we did, or didn't do, to anyone and anything, on our planet, will live on, affecting life in ways we rarely considered.
Let's stop and consider, "Practice two things in ones dealings in ones' existence, either help or do no harm to anyone and anything.
14
Give Trump and Putin a one-way ticket to Mars. Problem solved.
7
ALIEN life on Mars???? Quick. Build a space wall!
8
"Water is essential to life...".
One is always dubious as to this statement by scientists when referring to the universe, because the assumption is that alien biology is similar to human and therefore must have water to survive.
Alien beings and plants may be biologically composed differently, therefore surviving on something entirely different from water.
7
'"Water is essential to life...".'
"One is always dubious as to this statement by scientists ..."
That quote is from the Times, not from a scientist. I have some very harsh words for that sort of science reporting, but they wouldn't get past the moderators. The polite version is that science reporters often oversimplify scientific statements.
2
Excellent maybe we can all move to Mars before Trump finishes destroying this planet.
10
I'm sure NASA scientists can persuade Republicans to finance a project to Mars to investigate this site if they call it the "drill, baby, drill" project to Mars.
9
Cut funding on education to send up a(nother) rocket that won't make it past the Van Allen belt up there.
2
But will the alien life like us, or will they offended by the way we've portrayed them over the years in SciFi films & TV?
Enquiring minds want to know.
4
We could send Matt Damon back to find out if this is fake news. But on further thought, there’s somebody else I wish we sent far, far away.
6
@Gary Benton And dont forget the DVDs.
Here we go again. NY Times is helping to drum up funding for NASA with fake reports of water on Mars to support NASA proposals to send people to Mars at fantastical cost to US taxpayers (or at lest much more borrowing from China). Mars has essentially no atmosphere and the surface of Mars routinely is above the boiling point of water (entire surface). So, how does a planet with almost no atmosphere, and, routinely achieving a boiling point above that of water suddenly show up with water? Hoax 2.0.
2
@Michael
The mean temperature on Mars is -65C (-85F).
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/
So much for your conspiracy theory.
7
@Michael This was discovered by an ESA space probe not a NASA one. Your opinion may differ, but I would rather government spend money on NASA's potentially useful exploration of our solar system than on having what seems to me to be an unnecessarily large military. NASA's budget peaked in 1966 at less than 5% of the Federal budget, while our military spending is consuming approximately 54% of Federal budget now.
5
My bet is the next discovery on Mars is that the people are small, green and male.
3
Dan Quayle was not wrong.
Abashment be upon me.
1
Although confusing, the description of the Martian lake being At least a yardstick yardstick yard thick, And yet containing tens of billions of gallons… And then those people at JPL being naysayers might be indicative of the fact that they are secretly going to abscond ALL the water that is there, because those people from LA go through waterLike Kleenex
"Although confusing, the description of the Martian lake being At least a yardstick yardstick yard thick, And yet containing tens of billions of gallons ..."
When the Times says "yard" in a science article, it means "meter".
As for your second point, the article says that the "lake" is "12-mile[s] wide", so there is enough information in the article to estimate the *volume*, if you assume that the "lake" is circular.
See Figure 3 in the linked Science paper for an image of the region, with distance scales.
"... those people at JPL ..."
As the article says, this research is being done as part of "the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission".
I just re-watched Tim Burtons's wonderful Mars Attacks! recently. Who knew how prescient it would be?
We should stop calling the Martians nasty names like "microorganism". It will only provoke them into coming for us sooner.
3
First good news... of any sort... in two years.
3
@Jill and Michael Williams You forgot the launch and landings of the Falcon rockets!
Whatever life is lurking in that lake will surely be more intelligent than anyone currently occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in a certain North American city.
7
I think it's time to go "ice fishing" on the south pole of Mars. While we're there, check out the north pole too.
2
This is wonder news for those, who, like out President, consider our current planet to be a disposable object.
8
Quoting my wife, apparently, Elon is working on the space drill as we speak. :-)
2
Funny...wait, oh, I get it. I forgot.
Elon is now in the tear down phase of his public persona.
You know, the American way - Build em' up & then tear em' down
You would think after finally seeing a good and fascinating story here, anywhere please. That folks wouldn't need to bring politics into even this. ( I agree with most of them, but still, can't we drop it, if even for a few minutes ? )
1
Mars - the next home of the 1% along with all of our medical patents. A new beginning for the human race.
5
Martians, now discovered, prepare to leave the solar system...(future headline)
Congrats to the great scientists and engineers that made this possible.
4
Will we get there, as Cabral got in Brazil and Colombo got in US? I hope so. Unfortunately, I won't be here. Where will I be? Does it matter? So sorry, but it'd be nice.
1
We are looking at lakes under ice caps on another planet when we should be looking down at our own fouled, overheated oceans, with its own floating plastic islands.
3
@J Theyre not mutually exclusive; we're doing both!
Should I bring my bathing suit?
2
Let's hope the Martians are a little more adept at making their pleasure-boat watercraft seaworthy than those Earthlings with their woefully ill-fated tug that went out onto the Branson lake.
1
It's about time we started talking about aliens again! Dear Aliens, please come get me, life over here is terrible.
2
Republicans are getting ready to gut protections for endangered species here on earth.
3
I'm pretty sure any life found on Mars would be more intelligent than the life forms that currently decide America's governmental scientific funding and priorities.
5
Oh good. We can drill into it like Lake Vostok here on Earth.
Because that went so well...
Let's make it possible a Mars colonization in the long run! In the name of the greatest Stephen Hawking if nothing else.
We need to understand the history of life on Mars so that we on Earth do not end up in the same state.
What a great discovery! It shows that we humans are capable of putting our energies, time, money and brain power into something really constructive. By discovering potential life on Mars we open up possibilities, stimulate imagination and creativity, and begin to realize the vastness of the Universe and our place in it. If only we humans would stop hating, fearing, and harming each other and our planet, think of all the other discoveries we could make, the good we could do, the advances we could make! Ah but we are only human and our instincts will find something to fear rather than feel excitement about other life forms on Mars or elsewhere.
1
I admit that watching old Star Trek The Next Generation episodes is helping me get through the Trump debacle.
And given our present situation in the United States, I don't blame the intelligent life in the universe for not contacting us.
Why buy trouble?
5
It's good to know that other planets might have resources we can access and waste. Capitalism is such an amazing, awesome system that we are already running out of resources on this planet (and even faster, places to put our glorious freedom-waste). Our planet just can't handle how awesome our economic system is. How lame. But soon Mars will understand the greatness of Capitalism as we blast, drill, and mine our way through its riches. If only it also had a labor force to exploit. Maybe on one of the other planets...
9
How do we know that alien life forms require water? That's us, not necessarily them.
5
Humans, repeat this: it is not all about us. That is why I so enjoy these sorts of stories.
Look up at the night sky and let it put us in our rightful, and very small, place.
10
Fascinating research.
But please let's not buy the clickbait "live on Mars" meme.
Fact is, it is expensive (billions) and nearly impossible to send one human to Mars and it is misleading to suggest that sustaining life elsewhere is a reasonable goal.
We have studies from near space about a 10% loss in bone density for a stay of under a year. There are unimaginable hazards, such as breathing, food, and hot and cold, in space.
Space travel is fine for fiction, but we cannot escape our habitable earth by "terraforming" somewhere else. It's a whole lot cheaper and more reasonable to preserve what we have here.
I'm not against science or being fascinating by our universe, but let's stop assuming space fiction is going to become real in any foreseeable future.
5
@Susan Anderson Fully agree. However one of the main mysteries is origin of life, and whether Earth's was seeded from space (which, if so, still doesn't quite get to the bottom of the mystery, but helps clarify somewhat). So, if any Martian life, how similar or not to ours?
3
@Susan Anderson Solid comment. We agree on something!
1
@Susan Anderson "let's stop assuming space fiction is going to become real in any foreseeable future."
But it already has- duh!!!
I really wish we would stop with "water is essential for life". Water is essential for life as we understand it, but many scientists have pondered the possibility of life based on other substances, such as silicon, for example. I imagine that what life is and what is essential for it is far more complex and varied than we imagine, or perhaps, CAN imagine.
4
If there is water on Mars, there *could* be life—no doubt about it. But the presence of water doesn't guaranteethat there is life any more than the presence of grass would guarantee that there are cows.
3
@omalansky We already know that
Water and certain chemical elements are not sufficient for the development of biological life. Energy must be harnessed to ensure molecular order can be maintained. Nick Lane writes eloquently regarding this necessary component in his book, The Vital Question. I wonder what he thinks of the possibility of life on Mars?
On Earth we have many bacteria that use chemicals or rocks as energy sources, including those living in lakes under ice in Antarctica. It’s possible something like this exists or once existed on Mars.
1
It's a big Universe folks, with our solar system being vanishingly small within it. Consider the robustness of our planets web of life. It is everywhere we look. I won't be surprised by the probably inevitable discovery that Life, however simple or complex, exists elsewhere. To me it seems a rule that given sufficiently robust conditions life always finds a way.
So given this ,if you allow for a bit of poetic expression, consider the Universe God's playground, with an infinite amount of space (and time) within which to allow all the possibilities of creation to play out while not disturbing each other or any sort of divine plan (if you believe in such). As a higher order organism of some intelligence we may be peculiarly unique, but who can say what else may exist out there in the vast fields of the Creators Paradise, eh?
So shall we all go out and find out? Our scientists, in this instance, are certainly showing us the way, aren't they?
John~
American Net'Zen
1
Not so fast.
Our search for life in the universe is limited by the caveat of life as we know it here on Earth past and present, A definition that has continued to evolve based upon further scientific investigation and research,
So called exobiology is not a science. Since there is no evidence of any life as we know it nor life as we do not know it any where else outside of Earth. What if life else where is not carbon based nor does it require liquid water. What if the universally recognized intelligent life on Earth is limited to the social insects.
What we "know" can be summarized by the Fermi Paradox aka " Where are they?", the Drake Equation aka who, what, when, why, and where are they? and the Anthropic Principle aka it is all about us.
3
Even if the conditions for life as we have on Earth may have existed on Mars in the past, the probability that life existed there are almost null. Consider how scientists have tried to re-create the primordial soup that have rise to life here and never succeeded in seeing life spontaneously arise. Or consider how for billions of years the perfect conditions for life have existed on Earth, and yet during all this time life arose once and only once. It’s silly to hope against all odds that Mars held life just because we find some dust and water on the planet.
3
I think everyone should take a deep breath.
First, we don't know for certain that they have found water on Mars. They have analyzed a signal that is consistent with water, but that signal could be the result of other things -- including some sort of technical glitch -- measurement error.
But let's assume that there is an underground lake. That doesn't mean there are life forms there. It means that a necessary (but not sufficient) factor for life emerging is there.
But let's give the benefit of the doubt and say -- yes -- if we go up there, dig into the lake, we find microbes. But they are not little green men. The are simply microbes. And? I mean it is interesting and all that -- but what does it mean? It doesn't mean that a god of some sort doesn't exist for example. All it means is that -- hey -- some form of life has been found on another planet. But it isn't a civilization as we know it and it doesn't make Mars habitable for us.
This is sort of like the search for earth like planets in other universes. Very likely there are such planets and possibly they have civilizations. BUT, at this point at least, the notion that we could zip to a planet 10 light years away is preposterous given how slow our spacecraft are.
It's all interesting info, but not a game changer for life as we know it.
2
It is truly astonishing what our best scientists are able to learn when working with the best technology. I find it very exciting.
I often think of my grandmother, whose childhood was in a town where there were no cars, just horses, and during her lifetime she witnessed humanity reaching and walking on the moon.
All that said, articles like this also leave me wondering about "life". What is it? Consciousness? Is that what we are looking for?
"Life as we know it" ... with its existence linked to water.
What if there is "life" in a form completely unrecognizable to us, something that evolved to reproduce itself ... in vastly different conditions than what happened here on Earth.
Might we someday stumble across it and not actually realize we're even seeing it? It is so hard for us not to anthropomorphize the universe.
9
@J Jencks yes, I talked to my great grandmother about the same in my childhood. Sweet! She was a horse and buggy person. Great times...
'Might we someday stumble across it ["life" ] and not actually realize we're even seeing it?'
That depends on what "we" are "seeing". Sometimes evidence is ambiguous or insufficient to be convincing:
"Heated disputes are nothing new in the search for the earliest life on Earth. In 1993 J. William Schopf, a paleontologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues found what that they, too, argued were the world’s oldest fossils: chainlike blobs in 3.46 billion-year-old rocks made, they said, by bacteria. Other researchers later argued that the structures were just oddly shaped minerals."
Scientists Say Canadian Bacteria Fossils May Be Earth’s Oldest
By Carl Zimmer
March 1, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/science/earths-oldest-bacteria-fossil...
For more background, see Schopf's book:
"Cradle of Life: The Discovery of Earth's Earliest Fossils" by J. William Schopf.
Congratulations to the scientists. Impressive discovery!
2
Finding small molecules like water and methane says nothing about the potential for life. These are plentiful in the universe because they are so easy to form from elemental matter. From small molecules to DNA is a very steep and rare climb that somehow happened on earth. The next place in the universe with life is nowhere close...
1
@Max4 - Actually, we don't know how close or far it is. There's certainly no harm in looking at one of the places where we can actually see, given that the most likely next candidates are dozens of light years away.
2
Why assume that life on Mars can't possibly exist without the presence of water? Who can really say what would be required for life to exist on another planet? For all we know, water on Mars might be toxic to any life-forms there. Perhaps alien life-forms require only the existence of dust or of some chemical that isn't known here on Earth. C'mon, guys, think outside the box.
15
This is not a new idea. There are several different types of chemistry that could possibly support some type of life.
As I recall they would be in a lot more exotic environments than Mars.
Also stars of different colors could support life also. There is speculation that would involve photosynthesis using colors other than green.
5
Exobiologists are aware of that possibility. But we know a lot about water-based life forms and know many of the signs to look for. That's why the search for life elsewhere focus on familiar possibilities.
5
@stu freeman
Good point, but perhaps we are only interested in life forms that are similar to our own ? Haven't you watched any of the Alien films?
1
With the gossamer thin membrane of life on earth, and our astounding diversity, I believe that we will find a spec of "life" elsewhere.
4
It proves again that Darwin's Theory is not just a theory anymore. Where there is water, some form of life is potentially brewing. Great mind of the likes of Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Leibniz and Einstein.
2
In science, a theory is the highest wrung on the ladder of knowledge. In our common vernacular, we tend to regard a theory as a hunch. In science, a hunch or proposal is known as a hypothesis.
4
@Uly
Darwin's "theory" was never "just a theory". "Theory" does not mean ""speculation". For one thing, Darwin's theory was not that evolution happens - we can see it happening. Darwin, and Wallace, proposed theoretical explanations of why and how it happens.
1
Something has always bothered me about the search for life on other planets. Why do scientists assume that the building blocks of life on another world are the same ones that are the building blocks here on earth?
2
The planet should call a moratorium on military spending and redirect those resources towards missions to Mars.
Our planet is dying. Pure science involving Mars could help our species.
2
@WillT26 The invasive species killing all life on planet Earth is man. Unless homo sapiens are eliminated Earth will become a dead planet like the moon.
@WillT26 What makes you think that a human presence on another planet wouldn't destroy that planet's environment as well?
1
I’ve got water every time I turn on my tap.
Call me when we find INTELLIGENT life somewhere.
And I support space exploration, sooner or later we’re gonna find some stable genius beings out there. Way out there.
1
The discovery of even the simplest microbe on Mars would lead to perhaps the biggest intellectual revolution in human history.
4
Forgive the snark but last weekend I learned from an article in WAPO about evangelicals that they believe heaven is 15,000 miles wide and 15,000 miles tall and that the stars are the floor of heaven. So I have to ask, is Mars in heaven? Perhaps those weren't "little green men" we hear about but rather Uncle Joe, who died in 1937, in his Sunday best.
Congrats to the men and women of science who have studied this and brought it to our attention (and the very real and not fake news for publishing the story). Isn't there a theory that life on earth started by a meteor hitting Mars and deflecting a living organism to earth where it developed and evolved?
4
So sad to see this fascinating announcement greeted with the usual chorus of ignorance (Velikovsky, really?), conspiracy theories (scientists making stuff up) and unfunny jokes. But even sadder is to see people who should be on the side of science joining the opposition. I am a supporter of various green and ecology movements. I despise the anti-scientific stance of the current administration. But hearing “we shouldn’t spend money on this, let’s protect our planet first” makes my blood boil. If you are not excited by the possibility of finding alien life; if you begrudge the money spent on space exploration; if you are devoid of basic curiosity about the universe and our place in it, you are no better than a climate-change or evolution denier. This discovery does not mean there is life on Mars. But as far as I am concerned, we need to keep looking. And I’d rather my taxpayer’s money be invested in this then in saving species that are on their way to extinction anyway.
14
@Mor That's a bit harsh of a condemnation of people who happen to have a different opinion about what is interesting. Not anywhere near the same as science denial. While the likelihood of there being life somewhere else in the entire universe seems high, the liklihood that it is present on Mars seems low. Does it make sense to do an all out effort on trying to prove something that may not be true at the expense of thousands of other interesting and important endeavors? Could be debated.
2
Bravo. It’s important to keep exploring the solar system for the sake of pure science, and for developing new technologies that may benefit society here on Earth. It’s far more useful and moral to explore Mars than to develop new kinds of nuclear weapons, for example.
1
Much as it would be exciting to find carbon- or silicon-based life on Mars, the major stumbling block is the low temperature on the planet surface that would have worked against the chemical reactions between the molecular components of living matter.
Other than that, good luck to all who hope to make contact with Little Green Men ...
Suddenly I feel all the money NASA has spent to come up with moon rocks and space dust is now more than worth it in finally a story in seemingly forever that’s not about Trump. Talk about a godsend.
7
What a wonderful bit of news! Congratulations to the Italian scientists! Bravissimi!
14
What do they mean by life? Does it have to be carbon based, does it have to have the ability to reproduce, does it have to be intelligent?
Or does it include intelligence that is outside of what can be perceived by human senses even when enhanced by modern instruments?
7
Kudos to the chief scientist Mr.Enrico Flamini' reaching the stage of 'inference from the referred ingredients 'about the
presence of water body on Mars. Your assertion, "It is liquid, and it's salty and it's in contact with rocks' is very catchy and my request is to find a correlation by finding an answer to the question, " Why the sand of Mars is Red?".If so,is it possible to conclude the entire soil of mars is red? Are there a series of natural phenomena that are undetectable for its cause with
Radar or the known parameters to corroborate at our end on the earth?. Is it possible for us to correlate any of the UFOs
detected until now has been spewed out from Mars? Is it possible to collect water from Mars and bring it to earth? Is it possible to land our satellite on Mars near the water body (aquifer)near the rock that you could confirm its presence?
1
@Steven Keirstead You almost hit the nail on its head. The reason for the Red soil spread is right.
The space craft ,"Insight"s experiment on its depth and expansion could throw further information on the subject. In addition to the above the fine dust of iron that are incendiary in nature might have caused a frequent deflagration ( a scalar phenomenon) on the surface. According to the Italian scientist,the water temp. is minus 90F and salty. There might be a possibility to find the remains of
the aquatic or amphibians or the microbes of plankton capable of rejuvenate and active in the oxygen rich upper soil. Let us wait for the feedback from the spacecraft, 'Insight',
the robotic lander. Soon, we hope an Apollo11 type but manless spaceflight with three integrated modules would do the job on Mars.
Thanks.
5
@N.R.JOTHI NARAYANAN -Adding further to my above comment, I am confident of expecting further confirmation from the spacecraft, "INSIGHT the robotic
lander of NASA is expected to land on Mars on Nov 26' 2018 would shed more light on 'water in Mars" since it is going to carry out the internal structure of Mars. Is it possible for NASA's 'Insight' to accept the data of the scientist, Mr.Enrico Flamini at this stage and experiment on it after completion of its' already assigned task by NASA in Nov 2018?
Martian surface soil is rich in iron oxides, which is why the surface is red. The lake that may have been discovered is about a mile underneath this surface, however. If there are microbes there, they could be survivors from the planet’s long-disappeared surface oceans, which were lost when Mars’ molten core cooled and solidified. This magnetosphere loss caused the magnetic field of the planet to collapse, which increased the radiation and solar wind from the sun reaching water in the atmosphere. That increased water loss from the atmosphere, as UV light splits water into oxygen and hydrogen atoms, and hydrogen could then escape the planet’s gravity, eventually creating a planet with little greenhouse effect, cooling the climate, destroying the oceans, leaving little water at the surface except as ice. Solar wind also participated in carrying away water from the atmosphere in a process called sputtering. The oxygen being heavier than hydrogen remained on the planet, but oxidation became very strong acting on the rocky surface, resulting in the iron oxide that gives Mars its distinctive color.
I often suspect that life began on Mars, and wrecked that biosphere, then moved to Earth.
4
Congratulations to the Italian engineers and scientists. What an achievement.
5
But with no atmosphere on Mars how is this interesting? We have enough problems here on Earth, with our beautiful atmosphere under seige, that Mars should be of no interest.
1
@Ed I see your point, but "no interest"? That seems a little radical. It's a whole another planet, the most similar to Earth, so of course it is deeply interesting.
1
It's a welcome change to have an orange surface that is interesting.
100
In a related news item, Secretary Zinke announced plans to permit the development of the the lake to promote economic development on Mars. Permits will not be required and any alien life forms are not protected.
13
This an interesting article. However the authors do not clearly explain that other possibilities exist. They assumed water between 2 and 20 percent in the modeling, but did not show the results of a null hypothesis with some other liquids like methane for example. They also assumed a temperature and density profile that may be OK. Their conclusions depend completely on modeling, and I am not sure that modeling gives a proof! But only that such hypothesis may be correct. Could they have used other frequencies to show that the permit invites they used are unique?
1
@George Kyrala
I see that your spell checker turned "permittivities" into "permit invites". Ah, the joys of imperfect machine learning...
It will be interesting to read the article in Science, and the online supplementary materials, to see just how convincingly alternative explanations have been dealt with -- but it is certainly an intriguing observation.
1
It's strange to me that anyone would question life on another planet. Look at what life does. It just happens, given a certain set of circumstances. After five mass extinctions new life forms, exploding out in all different directions, a continuing great experiment. Where humans go wrong is in assuming we are the greatest things that ever happened. I'm not so sure. The more we look at the human race - big-headed primates who became the most invasive species the world has ever known - the more it seems clear that it's entirely possible humans are greatly overrated, especially when you look at what we've done to our pretty blue planet. All of those fossil fuels buried to cool down the climate and then we decide to dig it all back up, burn it and warm the climate again. Maybe by the time we get to life on other planets we'll have learned a thing or two about valuing it.
4
While I'm as excited as anyone else, the headline is doesn't really capture the reality.
This was a radar reflection from orbit, that is merely consistent with what water would show. This reflection doesn't rule out other explanations.
Additionally, this reflection profile was found only after they changed the instrument processing, because they weren't getting the desired results from the original processing. This has yet to be peer-reviewed.
It's a good sign, but it's really nothing more than a sign.
11
I believe the Report published in the journal Science actually would have been peer reviewed. Of course it would be nice to have more ground penetrating radar data or to replicate the measurements with a later space probe.
1
@Steven Keirstead
I'm not sure how well the peripheral data interpretations in the paper would have been peer-reviewed, although I trust Science more than 99% of other publications.
Regardless, as you state, more data is needed. I believe China is launching something in the coming years that will put that new processing method to the test. NASA's own radar results have not been temporally repeatable using a different method.
1
"This has yet to be peer-reviewed."
The Science web site says: "We are committed to bringing the best peer-reviewed scientific work to publication as quickly as possible."
Contributing to the Science Family of Journals
https://www.sciencemag.org/authors/contributing-science-family-journals
Further, if you follow the link in the article, you will see that the paper is a "Report" and that it was accepted 6 months after it was received:
Received for publication December 13, 2017
Accepted for publication June 20, 2018
I love science!! I have always hoped I lived long enough to see us walk on Mars. Exciting news and hoping future explorations confirm findings!
3
How I would love to live long enough (now 73) to know if there is, or was, life on Mars. At the least, let's spend some money and send instruments and astronaut-scientists to try to find out. Hang the cost, and the immediate obvious practicality. Onward and upward is why we climbed out of the first caves and crossed into the next valley to begin with.
32
@James haynes
"Hang the cost." ?!
While Medicare is being gutted? I'd think that someone who is 73 would be concerned about that.
I'm far younger, and I am concerned.
@james haynes
I'd much rather spend our money on this than ensuring corporate persons have more than one yacht.
So comforting to think there may be (or could have been) life on Mars. Ray Bradbury would be proud. I share, however, his fear that if humankind ever made it up there, we'd screw it up. Royally.
21
I think an equally interesting question is, how did life come about on Earth?
Entropy is supposed to be the law, and yet all life on Earth is profoundly enthalpic. My understanding is of life starting on Earth because of a water (or was it methane?) ocean developing amino acids because of lightning. I see no compelling answer to how these amino acids were able to assemble themselves into proteins and then much later the first cell. I also do not understand how the RNA molecule replicates itself. Yes, there are chemical reactions, but there has to be something that causes them to build up in increasingly complex life forms. Random chemical reactions just don't cut it.
Where does the life force come from? We could call it God, or the Astral plane, or a higher dimension that we can't perceive, but it has to come from somewhere. It is not inherently in the molecules themselves.
8
@David
The Entropy argument, frequently cited by Creationists, supposedly proves that life could not have come into being without divine interference. It's an argument for those that lack understanding of entropy, which is a trend--not an absolute prohibition against the development of complexity.
Individual organisms defeat entropy by developing and living for a time until entropy takes its toll as old age. On planet Earth, we have a source of energy that will defeat entropy until it fades: the Sun. Not knowing the complete answer about the origins of life is not an excuse to invoke God. It simply means we need to do more research.
20
@David
You speak of entropy. The whole point of evolution, of chemicals then cells then systems, is that the reaction is driven forward by using energy (sunlight or oil) to increase universal entropy to DECREASE local entropy! That is how cells form!
4
@David
The entropy argument also only applies to a closed system, whereas Earth is constantly receiving energy from outside the system. With the sun's energy input, increasing complexity is not ruled out.
3
The search for life, the search for intelligence life or the search for intelligence? Three different things with three different standards. Life plainly exists elsewhere besides the earth, if not to be confirmed in the coming years. Intelligent life, that's a baffling question. Why haven't we received the trace signals of intelligent post-industrial list elsewhere? Why does the universe appear to be dead in such respects- even latent signals from long dead civilizations? And finally...the search for intelligence itself might not include finding life at all. In fact, I think we are just as likely to encounter machine intelligence as biological intelligence---assuming that ever could happen in the first place given the distances involved. Einstein said we can't go faster than light and still have mass- which we do.
2
Good grief, intelligent life is so extremely rare on Earth, it's a little unrealistic to expect to encounter it on walkabout in the universe... On a more serious note, expecting intelligence to expose itself wafting through interspace signals might very well suggest an alternative scenario that I first encountered in Cixin Liu's science fiction (Three Body Problem, et al): the concept that intelligent life to which we exposed our existence and location might not have the same warm and fuzzy notions about getting together that we currently do... Even on Earth previously disconnected life forms getting together for the first time frequently result in one of those life forms becoming extinct. The fact that they're not broadcasting their presence in no way suggests that they mightn't be out there... and paying attention.
Since there are a trillion trillion stars in the universe, the odds that none of these have planets supporting life, even though the physics and chemistry of the universe is the same everywhere as it is in our own solar system, are (literally) astronomically small. In other words, that life exists elsewhere in the universe is almost a statistical certainty. This would take nothing away from the excitement of establishing as a certainty that there is in fact life elsewhere. Still, it's a little hard to get excited about the possibility that life could have existed once on Mars when we know as a certainty that exists elsewhere. The main interesting question I think is not whether life exists but what form or forms it takes where it does exist. Fascinating as it is, since the nearest star is 26 trillion miles, it seems unlikely we'll ever get an answer to this question, except from the sci-fi people.
12
Great news.
Now we gotta grow potatoes there, and slowly we can make the place habitable.
Congrats to the team on the findings!
4
Given the mathematics, I fall on the side thinking there surely must be lifeforms elsewhere, and intelligent life at that (please, we are intelligent, if not wise). Finding the smallest bit on Mars would be evidence that opens the way to myriad possibilities. I find the idea comforting, and perhaps when proof is absolute, we will be able to see ourselves better in the vast universe, and take a step to a higher plane.
3
We cannot even manage life on Earth. This going to Mars business is an earthly waste of all the resources being devoted to it. The problems of life on Earth MUST be solved before we find ourselves introducing them onto another Planet.
20
@Sir Reginald V. Wedge - Discovering the origins of life, is crucial to our own survival. While unintended consequences for spreading bacteria to other planets is justified, it would have great scientific and philosophical value from a better understanding how we came into being from the earliest stages of evolution and whether nature gives rise to the same pre-life forms under the right conditions.
8
@Sir Reginald V. Wedge
I think that we should continue to explore Mars via robots, but sending a human there is a waste of money, just it was with moon. Great demo of technology, but very little science.
4
Our governments waste far more money and time on their military industrial complexes than their puny expenditures on space sciences. Learning about what keeps a planet habitable means we ought to know more about possible life on other planets an moons int the solar system, then contrast those off world observations with observations of our own planet. This sort of exploration isn’t mere idle curiosity, but could help us discover how to solve problems like climate change here on Earth. I think funding organizations like NASA and the ESA is money well spent.
1
Confirmation of the presence of a significant volume of water on Mars would fundamentally alter the feasibility of manned missions there. Not only would there be a source for human sustenance, but there would also be the building blocks for making fuel to return back to Earth.
11
"... there [would] be a source [of water] for human sustenance ..."
The water is thought to be very salty, so it would need to be desalinated, and desalination is a very energy intensive process.
"... there would also be the building blocks for making fuel to return back to Earth."
What "fuel" are you referring to?
Ah, EN, the egocentric self-serving of the human species. We are determined to wreck our own planet with over population, the destruction of the environment and subjugation of every other species, and you are now suggesting we exploit an innocent solar system.
I wonder if the future will see us wiped out as a scourge of nature. Any species that behaves as we do eventually implodes and destroys itself.
The question is only how long will it take? No matter what harm we do, the earth will survive us as it has so many other predatory species.
@Deirdre Oliver ALL species, whether they behave as we do or not, eventually implode and destroy themselves. It's a complex explanation, but inevitably true. Think about it for a few years.
Just wanted to congratulate myself here too, in the article from about three years ago that was linked at the bottom here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/29/science/space/mars-life-liquid-water....
I went off on how obvious it was that there would be liquid water on Mars, and in all probability life as well. When it's proven that there's life on Mars, I will take time out to pat myself on the back again.
7
@Dan Stackhouse, don’t forget to high five the Martians as well. Last thing we want to do is alienate them right off the bat. One more headache for ICE now.
3
Ahh to be present when the first water sample is drawn and analyzed, or a submersible is sent with a remote camera and lights through a hole drilled in the ice. It whets my scientific and human curiosity just to think about the moment. I only hope I will live to see the day it occurs, or that at least my children will.
35
I wouldn’t be so dismissive at the possibility of microbes not existing in the lake because it is too salty. Some halophilic bacteria here on good ‘ol earth only grow at salt concentrations greater than 2M (117 g/L) and are quite happy living at the solubility limit of NaCl in water.
22
For all we know a Martian microbial community might evolve mechanisms to exploit high salinity as an antifreeze for their cytoplasms.
The sequence of events that made life on Earth possible are so exceedingly unlikely that betting on Martian life is almost as losing a proposition as betting on a budget surplus by the time Trump leaves office.
3
And you're basing this on gut instinct or something? The variety of life on earth indicates that it would arise with ease in a wide range of habitats. Martian life is nearly certain.
8
@Richard Monckton, just how far out in the universe do we have to go to escape Trump, apparently you just proved in a story about Mars than even there is not beyond his reach. The fear of omnipresence suddenly overwhelms me.
3
@John Doe
There is no escape from Trump. I can't get excited about the possibility. that there could be life on Mars, when Trumps has placed the Endangered Species Act and Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 on the chopping block. This isn't academic for me. My life & days are devoted to Migratory Birds. I can't think of life on Mars, when my cherished feathered friends are in such danger, not just on earth, but on the the beach right outside my home.
I'm sorry, but this looks like a lot of wishful thinking here.
First off, just because you maybe found a pond at the south pole does not make Mars an "ocean world." Give me a break.
Second, it says here that the ice has to be "at least a yard thick" and yet there are intense pressures sufficient to cause melting despite a temperature of -90. Where exactly are these intense pressures coming from? Last I checked, Mars has no atmosphere to speak of, and a much weaker gravitational field than Earth... but as long as it's three feet deep, I guess.
It seems to me a more likely explanation of the findings is that if you spend a billion dollars and 15 years of your life on instruments to find water on Mars, you're damn well going to find water on Mars. I mean otherwise, how likely is it that your next grant will get funded? Are you going to listen to the skeptics who say the signals could have been caused by "complex interference" or are you going to publish, publish, PUBLISH?!?!
The one good thing I see here is maybe it will entice Elon Musk to go there... and not come back.
6
I read comments like this and I wonder (since I was born after we first landed on the moon) whether snark would have been prevalent in a hypothetical comments section of the Times in1969. I look at these marvelous discoveries with a sense of awe, and I always assumed that most shared my fascination with exploration. But perhaps there was a large percentage that criticized NASA expenditures even then and lamented the focus on grandiose. I find it kind of sad.
22
@Harpoon
I was a small child when the first men landed on the moon. At the time, it seemed very exciting.
Instead of judging other people who don't share your fascination with exploration, perhaps you might consider that there are those who are older than you who are struggling to survive, who had a sense of awe when they were your age.
"... this looks like a lot of wishful thinking ..."
Instead of critiquing what you read in a newspaper article, you should read the paper. There is a link in the article.
'... a pond at the south pole does not make Mars an "ocean world."'
That quote is from someone (Lunine) not involved in the research. Lunine could mean an "ocean world" *at some time in the past*. The Times should have asked Lunine to clarify his point.
'Second, it says here that the ice has to be "at least a yard thick" ...'
Read the article more carefully. The "yard thick" limit refers to the resolution of the radar: "the lake ... had to be at least a yard or so thick for the radar pulses to bounce back."
"Where exactly are these intense pressures coming from?"
The "body of water" is *underground*.
4
After all the smutty news we have been assaulted with lately, it is so refreshing to have a real piece of news worthy of a banner headline that takes us out of our egoistic preoccupations.
60
It wouldn't be alien life on Mars would it? Indigenous species...
23
@Bob Bacon
Within the universe there is no such thing as "alien" life. But being humans, we can't help but impose that notion.
1
No, but when we went there to observe it, WE would be alien life.
2
This sounds more like they got a signal that they couldn't explain, so let's say its water. no one can prove that we are wrong. :)
3
No mystery to Velikovsky who thought ancient records showed a close encounter between Mars and Venus.
1
Not that I am gainsaying scientists, who are much smarter than me, but why do they always say, ". . . Water is essential to life,"instead of,"..water is essential to life as we know/understand it." Why can't there be an ET out there who's never heard of H2O,and quaffs and bathes in liquid sodium?
9
"Why can't there be an ET out there who's never heard of H2O,and quaffs and bathes in liquid sodium?"
Sodium has a melting point of 98 °C, so that part is consistent with some thermophilic bacteria.
The problem is that sodium is highly reactive, so you would need to explain how any complex compounds could co-exist with it.
1
You're right Joe, and I think scientists often do point out that 'life as we know it' part. Sodium is not a likely medium, but liquid methane has potential (seas of it on Titan and Triton), and maybe there's life in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Could easily also be life out there somewhere based on silicon instead of carbon.
However, with water we know what signs of life we're looking for, and we don't with environments with which we lack experience.
4
Water is common in the universe. Intelligence? Considering the state we are in and our human past, the search for intelligence here needs to continue. Let's start with our representatives and religious leaders.
9
My Very Enthusiastic Mother Just Served Us Noodles. On Mars.
4
We really have to get over this 'water is essential for life' thing.
8
@Jeffrey Why? If you have a rational, scientific reason for saying that water is not essential for life as we know it, please explain.
1
@Jeffrey
True, republicans don't even think that's a big deal here.
1
The southern hemisphere of Mars is the original surface of the Pacific Basin. Search Outer Solar System Origin of the Terrestrial Planets.
@Kenneth J. Dillon Are you referring to https://www.scientiapress.com/jupiter-venus-and-velikovsky
When it comes to astrophysics I believe the consensus is that I. Velikovsky is a crank.
Life on other planets? Slime, microbes, one cell creatures multiplying by splitting in two? Exciting, but when I see life with two eyes, a nose, a mouth, two ears, I will really get excited.
@Nightwood Unless, of course, it eats you.
1
Please pardon me for possibly sounding patronizing, but I've expected liquid water to still be under the surface of Mars for a long time now. I've known Mars had ice caps about as long as I've known Mars existed, and if you go deeper into any planet, it gets hotter. Ice plus heat is water, so this discovery is no surprise.
It does provide a good jumping off point for establishing what we don't know. We don't know if there's any life there, though there is no reason to doubt it. We don't know what that life might be like.
Either it has DNA structure like our own, or something different (any self-replicating chain of amino acids could be called life). If it has DNA like ours, this both implies a common ancestor (microbes carried on asteroids?), and implies potential problems. Mars life sufficiently like ours could get involved in our microbial biome, maybe disastrously.
If it's not like ours, that implies life arises in different ways on planets, which is less potentially infectious but just creates more questions.
Regardless, if there's life there at all, and I strongly suspect there is, it indicates that all dogmatic earthly religions are somewhat wrong. I doubt the faithful are going to be able to accept it, but the rest of us should get ready to reconsider monotheism considerably.
3
"... it indicates that all dogmatic earthly religions are somewhat wrong."
That depends on what religions you consider "dogmatic". The Catholic Church is not:
'"Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God. This is not in contrast with our faith because we can't put limits on God's creative freedom," he said.'
"He" is Reverend José Gabriel Funes, head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict XVI.
Vatican astronomer cites possibility of extraterrestrial 'brothers'
MAY 14, 2008
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/world/europe/14iht-vat.4.12885393.html
1
@Dan Stackhouse Questioning monotheism itself I get. But what does possible life on Mars have to do with discounting the unity of existence?
1
Dear LMK,
Thanks, from this quote it seems Catholicism would be able to accept extraterrestrial life. Fundamentalists would probably have trouble doing so though.
Dear Michael,
It's not the unity of existence that would be incapable of accepting life on Mars, it's the notion that God created Man in His image. Monotheisms all share this conceit, and it would be more doubtful with life proven to be on other planets. I don't think Buddhism or Hinduism would have any trouble accepting extraterrestrial life though.
Scientists also detected amphibious voice traces which appeared to be saying, "My precious."
15
@American Promise
In English? Give me a break.
3
@Thomas Zaslavsky
Well, we have google translate on our computers, maybe there are voice translators available -- possibly on the holodeck.
It was once believed that life couldn't exist without the sun because plants, our primary producers, require the sun for their life-sustaining metabolic process, photosynthesis. Then submersibles made it to the depths of the Mariana Trench. Single cell-bacteria living over five miles below earth's surface didn't need sun at all - they made energy using hydrogen sulfide exuded from the hydrothermal vents. To assume that all Life has to be identical to our familiar small corner of the world is just plain narcissistic. Vive la Difference!
43
Dear Em,
Ah but there's one peccadillo: if the sun didn't exist, the temperature all over the earth would be about negative 270 degrees Celsius, and no life can exist inside a solid. Thus all life needs some heat source like the sun, whether it uses water or some other liquid to sustain itself.
When I read things like this it reminds me of that old Earth First! bumpersticker: "Earth first, we'll ruin the other planets later."
37
Every time I see something like this it always reminds me of those specials about The Loch Ness monster. they spend an entire hour out in the water and at the end of the episode they never find the Loch Ness monster, and they say they'll just try again another time.
4
Are you equating rumors of a never-seen Loch Ness monster with scientific evidence of detection under Mars' surface of one of the most abundant molecules in the universe?
8
@Dirk
There is water all over in the solar system, Comets have a high percentage of water; Having liquid water is just a function o the right temperature and and pressure. Extrapolating from water to life is a long leap of faith
1
@Dirk: They're looking in the wrong place: Loch Ness. They should be looking on Enceladus.
2
A life long astrophile, I still don't understand why the search for life is so sharply focused on looking for building blocks of our sort of life. I'm not convinced that life need be carbon/water based or even that it be recognizable to us.
78
@Renae Gage You're absolutely correct. Human understanding of "life" could be just one of millions of other forms of life in the universe. We're limited to human knowledge and understanding which is most likely very limited in scope.
6
@Renae Gage Scientists have addressed this. The reason is that because earth-type carbon-based biochemistry is the only form of life that we are familiar with and have empirical evidence proving its existence. We have hypothesis about other forms of life, but no proof. We would have to be casting a much wider net trying to detect things we don't even know can exist or not. With earth-type life, we at least have a very good idea what to look for.
24
@Renae Gage - undoubtedly there are other models for "life". We also can speculate on outer boundaries where conditions are not conducive to chemical reactions that may support self-organization (e.g. the sun). What we do have is a model for carbon based life that works and if we find conditions similar to ours, it's worth a hard look.
5
Every now and then I am proud to be Italian. I like it. ;-) For the remaining 99.99% of time I am ashamed or sorry. Well, I think I have to cope with it.
12
@Davidee
An Italian just won the British Open too!
6
Don't feel badly Davide. Italians named this thing "Mars" in the first place.
3
@Davide
Galileo should make you proud, plus Da Vinci and many others.
2
This is jumping the gun. We have one groups interpretation of the data. No other group has been able to repeat their findings. So before we start spear fishing for Martian trout below the ice cap lets be sure we have the facts.
3
@Fred Simkin Where did you read the part about "spear fishing for Martian trout?" There is nothing in the article or the announcement stating there is definitive proof of life, merely increased likelihood. Seems like you've made up your own straw man to knock down.
Given that there was no definitive proof there was even large bodies of liquid water on Mars before this, it is a big step and worth reporting.
8
@citybumpkin: Figure of speech.
Fascinating ... now keep Earth billionaires (Musk, Bezos, Kochs, etc.) from going there (Bezos wants to go, I think Musk, too). Mars doesn't need to be exploited and ruined. Let it stay mysterious and away from Earth.
4
Carl Sagan had it right. Statistically speaking, given the billions of galaxies in the known universe, life must exist on other planets. Let's hope any intelligent life forms out there have a lot better sense when it comes to preserving their worlds than we do.
80
I don't think life "must" exist, it's just likely.
The West's system of justice is based on such a theory of probability.
2
@ALB
It was Frank Drake, whose equation estimated the probability of extraterrestrial life. And his original one may be an underestimate.
1
@ALB - a recent paper challenges the logic behind the Fermi Paradox and Drake Equation (see https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MdGp3vs2butANB7zX/the-fermi-paradox-what...
The essence of the matter is that one should not estimate the probability of intelligent life in the Universe simply by multiplying the (extremely large) number of planets by the (very low) probability that each one harbors I.L.
Instead, one should do Monte Carlo simulations, with the outcome that the probability of I.L. in a universe is actually quite high. This takes into account not just the mean probabilities in the Drake equation, but also their statistical distribution. For example, instead of estimating the probability that liquid water exists on a planet, one should incorporate an estimate of how uncertain we are. The paper concludes that it's quite likely we exist in a universe where only 1 planet has I.L. (ours), despite the overwhelmingly large number of planets.
So "life as we know it" requires water. But what if life as we don't know it doesn't? The camel can survive on way less water than man; who's to say there aren't living things out there that require no water at all?
5
Water is only one of the necessary criterion for life to form. Temperature is also crucial and Mars is just to cold. There is no life on Mars, sorry.
3
@CBH Why is it about the internet that compels people to flaunt their ignorance with such pride? I am not a scientist, but at least I bothered to do a bit of research. First, sub-surface bodies of water will be substantially warmer than the Martian surface. (Hence that water is still liquid, not frozen.) We already have plenty of proof on earth that life can exist is non-freezing subsurface water in the antarctic. Second, we also have proof on earth that life can exist in what human beings would consider extremely low temperatures, even if they are just microbial.
13
@CBH Atmospheric pressure that is just about 1% of that on earth also makes life unlikely
@citybumpkin We are not talking about whether life could exist under these severe conditions, but whether it could originate. As a Biologist I am highly skeptical.
Very exciting news! However, since when is a lake considered "thick," rather than deep? Of course, the DEPTH of the lake is necessary to estimate its total volume, but to speak of the "thickness of the lake" only muddles the meaning here. Perhaps the author meant to imply that the ice atop the like was one mile thick, which would make much more sense, since it is correct to speak of how thick ice may be.
1
'... since when is a lake considered "thick," rather than deep?'
The linked Science paper uses the word "thickness":
"... the large size required for a meltwater patch to be detectable by MARSIS (several kilometers in diameter and several tens of centimeters in thickness) limit the possibility of identifying small bodies of liquid water or the existence of any hydraulic connection between them."
1
I find this comment lacking in depth. Har har.
4
How about we take care of life on this planet? We know it already exists. Instead of looking for "alien life", which, so far, does not exist as far as we know. Just look around you, people. The life on this planet is more fascinating that any alien. Guaranteed.
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@Srini
Life on this planet is being "taken care of.";Trump and his cronies have plans to "take care of"
life on this planet, including those which have been brought back from the brink of extinction by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, and the Endangered Species Act.
I look around everyday.I crawl on my knees on the sand for hours, following American Oystercatcher hatchlings. and their parents ,I'm more than fascinated.I'm in awe .
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@Srini Humans need to know that they are not special, so that they can treat life on this planet as special.
@Srini Why can't we do both?
Mr. Dave on Earth says, "Wonderful."
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Four billion years ago, as the red planet heated and desiccated with climate change, Martians blasted-off into the Solar System thinking Earth might be suitable for colonization...
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While I understand the humor in your post..... if climate change was behind the loss of water it would look much more like Venus, with a thick atmosphere and scorching surface. I believe Mars has little to no geological activity, and therefore no gravitational force available to hold an atmosphere.
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"... the red planet heated and desiccated with climate change ..."
There was indeed "climate change", but not for the reasons you pretend to believe.
After Mars lost its magnetic field, the atmosphere was not protected from the solar wind, so much of the atmosphere was stripped away:
Mars’ Atmosphere Stripped by Solar Winds, NASA Says
By Kenneth Chang
Nov. 5, 2015
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/science/space/mars-atmosphere-strippe...
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@Simone Wilson Ah, while I bow to your scientific truths, I just can't help but imagine the myth-making possibilities!
Life.
"Life"
Life!
Life-That nebulous condition that we try and contain with definitions and scientific boundaries all the while truly unable to irrefutably define it in such a way as to rule our future revisions....
Is a fetus a life? An amoeba? A rat? An ant? A virus? Bacteria? I know what the scientist say....but what do you think?
Is the universe alive?
Are we but a microcosm on an amoeba of an unthinkably larger universe and night that universe be a breathing thinking thing?
Could Mother Nature really be our "mother" and God? Is there no life but our own and the rest is just a giant simulation in our heads?
Or is it all as it seems?
And it all is as it seams then could natural selection really be responsible for the ridiculous level of detail in the DNA of any one of us? Is there a creator? If so, who, why and who created the creator? Is there one creator or many? Did the creator forget about us? Is he or she or it partying now and we are all but forgotten? Has he or she or it moved to better models?
Mind blown.
...,, all of this musings just because water was found on Mars.
I think I'll go get some tea and go pet my dog. Maybe I'll name my next pet "alien" or "intelligence life" and stop reading the science section of the newspaper....
I have a headache.
;-)
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Ok, when is the next plane to Mars. I'm ready!
@Rajesh if you’re waiting for a an airplane to transfer you from earth to mars, you’ll be waiting forever.
Huh...I guess Arnold Shwarzenegger had it right all along.
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I'm still waiting for the discovery of intelligent life on earth. Stress R Us
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@Greeley Miklashek, MD
Intelligent life has been discovered on earth. Dolphins have been found to be extremely intelligent. The extent of this discovery has been limited due to the constraints of human intelligence.
Presumably, dolphins have made greater discoveries and advances, and are publishing their discoveries via sonar .
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Oh God NO! No more human like creatures any where! No!
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No worries at all, Nightwood, while there are many potential life bearing areas in our solar system, none could have anything that was anything like human. Could be octopi or something under Europa's ice, but on Mars it's likely just stuff like tardigrades.
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@Dan Stackhouse But what's outside our solar system? Any how, thank you for your kind reply.
Indeed, outside our solar system, in the vastness of the universe, there is nearly certainly life that is extremely like us.
No, we don't get to live there. We need to protect the earth, home of our gut biome, our illnesses, our DNA, our 3.5 billion year progression of life. Mars is not an option, but funding to live there, while creating a weaponized space army, will be another drag on our sustainability.
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Dear 4AverageJoe,
We do need to protect earth, because we could never relocate the entire population. But someday we will have humans living on Mars, and if we're going to exist long-term, we will have to colonize other solar systems.
And unfortunately we will need a weaponized space fleet. Do you think humans will give up crime, even if they stop nationalistic wars? Do you think all interstellar travelling life will be pacifists? Conflict is an inevitable part of biological life.
I seems that major astronomical news are more frequent than before. I'm just glad to be alive to be a witness of these new findings in the cosmos.
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@Fernando Esté
Astronomers are seeking public funding and that is why astronomical news is more frequent than before.
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No. Astronomers are getting funding. We have better tools. Research is being done. That’s why we’re seeing more wonderful and complex science news. Can’t wait til James Webb launches.
@CD
Are you saying astronomers haven't always sought public funding? AFAICT, astronomical discoveries are more frequent because the taxpaying public is thrilled by each new marvel, and receptive to spending more tax money to discover the next one!
Times: "Intense pressure of the overlying ice would warm the ice."
That doesn't sound quite right. At equilibrium, pressure and temperature are independent variables. From the phase diagram of pure water, there is a small region around 270 K in which increasing the pressure causes ice to melt:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Phase_diagram_of_wat...
Times: "Computer models indicate that temperaratures would be about minus-90 Fahrenheit — far colder than the melting point of water. That suggests that the water is brim full of salts, allowing it to melt."
That would change the phase diagram significantly. The Times should ask the scientists for a proposed phase diagram for the salt water.
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@LMK: The pressure would feed energy into the water, raising its temperature to some degree (pun alert!). There is an ambient temperature at the South Polar ice cap, and the warming would be relative to that. (This is a simplified explanation.)
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@LMK
That phrase stood out to me, too, as wrong.
@Thomas Zaslavsky
Pressure only "feeds" energy if that force acts across a distance -- just standing on a book doesn't make a book warm (regardless of how heavy you are).
TZ: "The pressure would feed energy into the water, raising its temperature to some degree ..."
That's why I said "At equilibrium".
TZ: "(This is a simplified explanation.)"
Give me the hard "explanation" -- and make sure you refer to a phase diagram. :-)
The European mission cost $300 million. The typical US mission to Mars costs more than $2 billion. And they found the water.
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@michjas
Are you implying we haven’t discovered anything on our own? This find, if verified, is of tremendous value, but it doesn’t lessen US achievements.
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@michjas
I found one NASA mission to Mars that hit $2.5 billion which was Curiosity. The Curiosity Rover and the orbital component of the mission are still operational, outlasting the projected life of the rover. The European mission included a rover which deployed improperly and an orbiter that found the water. Curiosity almost five years and is still sending back information. All other modern NASA Mars missions cost between $300 and $800 million. I'm not really sure why you would bash NASA or why you would cherry pick your data to do so.
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@michjas
Aren't you comparing an orbiter to a more complicated lander?
2
I have dreams about life on Mars. Interesting too that they concern life having to move underground because of the intolerable conditions on the planet's surface. Although in my dreams those conditions were caused by a horrific war with yet another alien nation. Who knows, but I've always been cheering for life on Mars. David Bowie too!
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The good news is of course there is life elsewhere in the universe. It's so large, with so many planets and other bodies that could conceivably host organisms that it must be true. The bad news is that we knuckleheads on earth may be the most advanced life form anywhere in the cosmos. What then?
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@mpound Within a few thousand years we will be able to travel at near light speed. Within a few thousand years after that we will have spread to the entire galaxy. This will be practical because the trip to the next star will just take a few years. The distance to other major galaxies is a million times as far. If there were other intelligent life in this galaxy it would have arrived her because of the ratio between the life of the galaxy and the amount of time it takes intelligence to fill it once it emerges. Most likely we are first here, because going to the next star and the next is a no brainer. Making that leap to another galaxy a million times as far is completely different and its not reasonable to assume any intelligence would do it. So while there may be intelligent life out there, it's probably not in this galaxy. Hopefully no life on Mars because then the whole planet would be off limits to development (in coming centuries, not next decade) because we can't corrupt the pond scum.
No galactic wars then
Carl Sagan said the universe may be brimming with life, or we can be alone because we are the first, someone has to be first.
He also said if life is found there, even microbial life, Mars should be left to the martians. No further visits.
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Future newscast from another planet:
“For decades, planetary scientists have pored over the puzzling surface of Earth. Gargantuan canyons, possible shorelines and hints of lakebeds can be seen, but few signs of liquid water exist today on a planet that is cold and dry.”
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"Future newscast from another planet: ..."
I'm not sure what your point is, but after Mars lost its magnetic field, the atmosphere was not protected from the solar wind, so much of the atmosphere was stripped away:
Mars’ Atmosphere Stripped by Solar Winds, NASA Says
By Kenneth Chang
Nov. 5, 2015
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/science/space/mars-atmosphere-strippe...
More like Earth’s ultimate fate is to become hot and dry, like Venus.
Read the Brookings Institution report of the late '50s/early '60s regarding alien life. We ought to consider more specific questions without ridicule.
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It would depend on the nature of the questions.
1
Life on Mars would not be that alien, given that it is the next planet in our own solar system.
With 1 billion galaxies each with 10 billion stars, it seems that there are going to be a lot wierder and more "alien" creatures out there, maybe impossible to find given that the enormous distances are pretty much absolute isolators unless you believe the fantasy known as "warp drive" which I guess implies that they warp space. Even worm holes do not send you to exactly where you want to go, so they don't help all that much either.
All in all, we might as well just pretend we are alone....because functionally we are.
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@Will Hogan
Greater volumes would allow for more variety, I suppose. But nearby or far away the bet would be to find at most single-celled organisms.
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@Will Hogan
Current estimates are over 2 trillion galaxies. There is likely life, intelligent and otherwise, all over the
universe(s).
@Will Hogan. Life on Mars is alien by definition. The measure of alienness is "Is it earth based?" not "How many tentacles protrude from it's thorax?".
Agreed, we are functionally alone, no badly behaved neighbors in this neck of the woods. That is likely a blessing that is wonderful beyond comprehension.
1
I think we will be able to scan for proteins, nucleotides and other complex intermediaries of metabolism that, if present in Martian lakes, could provide enormous insights into how life evolved, whether or not actual life is found. Nature produces these molecules that all of life on earth contains.
5
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." - Calvin and Hobbes
98
It's an important geological and chemical find but I think their years long wish for life there clouds their analysis and they might be cherry picking data to fit a result.
But to prove that I am not this party's pooper, I'll add add that I firmly believe that humanity could, just might have originated from Mars where they came to Earth long ago before their activities resulted in the current Carbon Dioxide atmosphere there. The entire atmosphere is a massive amount of Carbon Dioxide that could be of organic processes origin, but the rational mind tells me it is a result of solar energy.
Let's save Earth in the meantime from a fate that would appear like Mars. There is an abundance of life here.
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@Shakinspear Mars’ current state is the result of being far smaller than the Earth; it cooled to the point that its core stopped spinning enough to generate a magnetosphere, opening the planet to direct bombardment by solar radiation. This slowly stripped away the atmosphere and hydrosphere (also by evaporation as pressure reduced). What is left are not the remnants of an elder civilisation but the result of billions of years of planetary scale processes.
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This is marvelous. Now there is a chance that after we finish destroying earth as a habitat for mankind by ignoring climate change, by removing bothersome regulations to keep water clean and air breathable, by using more and more destructive weapons in the wars we are now threatening and fostering, where allies are made enemies and enemies are trusted --we shall have a place for the survivors , the remnants of mankind to escape to.
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@shimr This notion of escaping to Mars to avoid environmental destruction on earth is a bit preposterous. The earth has an extremely long way to go before it becomes as inhospitable as Mars. It would be fair more rational and economical to preserve conditions here.
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@shir
Since "life" on Mars is not likely to be any kind of complex organism (I have read it may be single-cell, or similar) more likely that Earth will become a second red planet than inhabitants from here will have anywhere to go.
4
Dear Martians;
If you can read this in the NYTimes, then please take heed and do not allow Earthlings on your planet. They will manage to completely destroy it by introducing concepts such as money, religion, race, politics, and wars; they are very greedy and selfish they will pollute your planet with plastic bottles and nylon bags, and destroy its natural beauty; they are so full of themselves that each one believes he/she is better looking and superior to others and deserves more than his share or need.
Please google Earth and check out Wikipedia before you even consider taking the Earthlings in.
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@Sam LOL I love your comment so much! It's so perfectly on point.
2
There was excitement in 1996 with the announcement of possible fossil micro-organisms in the martian meteorite ALH84001, but the public didn't seem to give it much attention (later, a consensus formed that the structures are almost certainly geological, not evidence for past martian life). So we've been here before.
If DNA-based life is found in our solar system, on Mars or elsewhere, we will probably never be able to disentangle its origins. There were simply too many collisions/impacts in the early solar system for us to be able to sort it all out. If we discover non-DNA based life, that would be the holy grail: evidence for a second genesis.
The best prospect for finding extraterrestrial life probably rests with exoplanets. Due to the vast distances between our solar system and the nearest stars, cross-contamination between us and these other solar systems is zero (assuming ETs are not messing with us). If we discover DNA-based life in other systems, the implication is that there is something really special about the DNA molecule for it to have arisen completely separately in two completely different star systems. But non-DNA life would also be an astonishing and revolutionary find. Any life found on an exoplanet would be irrefutable evidence for a second genesis.
So we explore both our own solar system as well as exoplanets. Due to their vast numbers, my hunch is that exoplanets will be where we first find the extraterrestrial life we so relentlessly seek.
17
"If DNA-based life is found in our solar system, on Mars or elsewhere, we will probably never be able to disentangle its origins."
Researchers are getting very good at distinguishing DNA from various sources. The Times has published numerous articles on the analysis of ancient DNA. See, for example:
In a Lost Baby Tooth, Scientists Find Ancient Denisovan DNA
By Nicholas St. Fleur
July 7, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/science/denisovans-baby-tooth-molar-d...
4
@LMK:
Did life originate on Mars and seed Earth (via collisions/impacts early in the history of the solar system) or vice versa, or did life come to Earth from some other solar system object? Good luck deciphering that. We're talking *early* in the history of the solar system (DNA has not evolved much over geological time, but that is irrelevant).
Best bet is for life is on extrasolar planets. But that would be circumstantial evidence (existence of water on surface, in habitable zone, spectroscopic evidence of reducing atmospheric chemistry, e.g., oxygen/ozone or methane present). But we have no way of obtaining spectroscopy that would indicate DNA on the surface of an exoplanet anytime soon. Also exoplanet obliquity and presence of a large moon at the right distance from the planet, plate tectonics for recycling of CO2? Sterilizing stellar flares (M dwarf suns)? Lots of variables to worry about.
One thing for sure -- we need to take care of Earth, Biosphere 1. It's all we've got in an apparently cold and sterile Galaxy/universe.
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