NASA to annouce life on Mars

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie
What says any possible micro organisms on Mars would be bacteria? They are probably a class of organisms not really applicable to our known terrestrial classifications.

Non-cellular life is either impossible or extremely unlikely and inefficient. If it's a cell, and it doesn't have any membrane-bound organelles, it's a bacteria.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Possibly, though the classifications we have now is rather complete.

I beg to differ

However, most of the incompleteness really has to do with sorting out some polyphyletic groupings (for example, say species B and C were both descended from species A, but not from each other. A group that included just B and C would be polyphyletic).

[Seeker]

This thread raised my expectations unfairly!

I demand a refund!

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk


Most asteroids do not remove more mass than they add -- otherwise, planetary accretion would not occur. In fact, mass removal is extremely rare once you get above a certain size, and Mars is well above that size -- hell, the moon is well above that size.

As for "burning up"...the mass is still added -- or do you think it converts 100% to energy?

Nope, of course not,
but it deems me more likely that, if an Asteroid burns up
(and its mass therefore will be a part of the atmosphere)
there might be a higher probability that its materia might get into Space again

[The Mad Monk]

That might be true, were the body in question composed of carbon and other light elements. Since most bodies that make this close to the sun are either really big or composed of silicates or metals, that usually isn't the case. When a silicate or metalic body "burns up", the ablted oxides form dust particles fairly quickly, which then slowly fall to join the planet.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Tripledoc

---
It has been shown that when a batch of microbe, bacteria for instance, are starving; they mutate rapidly, by for instance shedding some of its advanced characteristics. It might very well be that starvation would lead to cannibalism, the other bacteria would be eaten, and subsequently only the very hungry would be able to propagate. The less hungry would fall by the wayside. Their specialization would ignore other survival skills, such as adaption to temperature shifts, in interplanetary travel through sunstorms or asteroids. Which is why they have as of yet never made it to earth.

Imagine if a cannibalistic microbe was carried to earth. This is of course a worst case scenario. It should be considered nonetheless. If all other bacteria are rendered dead, humans would no longer be able to digest food properly, for instance. ---

Cannibalism is defined as eating other specimen of your own species. A pike eating a perch is not a cannibal, while a big perch eating a small perch is (both are species of fish, for those who didn't know).

A colony of microbes going cannibal would implode and the last survivor would starve to death, unless it can go to sleep until it finds more food. A predator microbe on the other hand...

[Sandman]

It's virtually impossible to significantly increase Mars' mass by crashing asteroids into it.

Mars had water for millions of years. We don't need to increase its mass, it'll be just fine the way it is. In the time it'll take for a renewed Martian atmosphere to wither away, we'll probably be able to come up with a method of preserving it for much longer.

[Ned]

Sandman, I think the better question might be whether and how we could get Mars' magnetic field back.

[Urban Ranger]

Why do we need that back?

[Japher]

[quote]"a little"- how exactly would we add tens of billions if not trillions of tons of materials to a planet?[quote]

A few more rovers should do it

[MrBaggins]

Or a big garbage catapult. Hey... no more Earth-based land-fills, or nuclear waste dumps. There... one environmental problem solved

[The Mad Monk]

The last thing we need on Mars is a Terran environment. It would negate many of the advantages of colonizing Mars in the first place.

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Why do we need that back?

A magnetic field, along with a thicker atmosphere, blocks a great deal more radiation (both from the sun and open space) from reaching the ground and cooking anything on it.

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
The last thing we need on Mars is a Terran environment. It would negate many of the advantages of colonizing Mars in the first place.

What are the advantages of the Martian environment? Just curious.



If we where to do any terraforming and if it were possible in our lifetimes, I'd rather the atmosphere be thickened to emphasize the presence of Carbon Dioxide. Mars is unlikely ever going to be warm enough to have Earth-like tropics; the closest it will get are the rainforests along the Pacific Northwest of North America (Oregon/Washington state through Canada and into southern Alaska). Reaching Siberian climate would be somewhat habitable. It simply isn't receiving enough solar radiation to make steaming wet jungles possible. Of course, nothing will happen or be permanent unless there are the beginnings of an ocean in the northern hemisphere of the planet to act as a heat sink. At first it will ice over, but as CO2 is built up along with other gases, melting will occur albeit slowly.

[The Viceroy]

Mars has no ozone layer .. so if you think you get a bad sunburn during the summer, think again about what that will do !

You can't remove the CO2 and replace it with O2, without plunging the planet into an even deep ice age, the CO2 is keeping what little heat is captured from the sun there. One idea was to substitute it with even more powerful greenhouse gases, then introduce oxygen.. afterall, you only need 20% .. problem is, the planet can't hold it .. so you'd need an ongoing process of adding oxygen to replace the lost oxygen.

No nitrogen whatsoever .. but not being a biologist, I couldn't really say what the effect of this would be .. any ideas ?? something tells me, it may not be too healthy.

Mars does have 2 moons, Phobos and Diemos and does have seasons like the earth .. Thats why it has poles which shift in size from north to south.

I think trying to terraform mars is a really on to a big loser .. best concentrate on using the resources you have for the sustainability of habitable zones, which would have oxygen taken from the CO2, ozone protection from the sun .. and a good central heating system Energy could be produced by directing sunlight onto the surface, which is collected and turned into electricity.

Another hazard is the dust storms .. they can cover the entire planet from time to time, and wouldn't make it at all pleasant for anybody.

The idea of moving asteroids is fanciful .. i think by the time we have technology to do that, we could probably handle mars without much problems.