Is there life on Mars?

[Al-khiyal]

Is there life on Mars?

Erm..... perhaps there WAS.....but.....

SEATTLE, Jan. 8 (UPI) -- Two 1970s-era Martian rovers may have discovered microbes but killed them by accident, U.S. and German researchers said.

Two scientists said the failure of NASA's Viking probes to find life on Mars could have been based on how life was defined, the Seattle Post Intelligencer reported Monday. Life was defined as being based on water in the mid 1970s.

"It's a plausible hypothesis that explains the Viking results quite well," said Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at Washington State University at Pullman, Washington. He and his German colleague, Joop Houtkooper of Justus Liebig University presented this theory during the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.

Schulze-Makuch and Houtkooper said hydrogen peroxide detected by Viking could have come from killing Martian microbes that use hydrogen peroxide the same way humans use water. Chemical analysis was done by mixing samples with water. This would have lead to a chemical reaction in a microbe with hydrogen peroxide, killing it and releasing the peroxide.

Because of the cold conditions, Martian microbes might be expected to contain hydrogen peroxide because of its lower freezing point, he said.

Earlier probe may have killed Martian life

[Al-khiyal]

Two NASA space probes that visited Mars 30 years ago may have stumbled upon alien microbes on the Red Planet and inadvertently killed them, a scientist theorizes.

The problem was the Viking space probes of 1976-77 were looking for the wrong kind of life and did not recognize it, the researcher said in a paper presented Sunday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle.

This new report, based on a more expansive view of where life can take root, may have NASA looking for a different type of Martian life form when its next Mars spacecraft is launched later this year, one of the space agency's top scientists told The Associated Press.

Last month, scientists excitedly reported that new photographs of Mars showed geologic changes that suggest water occasionally flows there - the most tantalizing sign that Mars is hospitable to life.

In the '70s, the Viking mission found no signs of life. But it was looking for Earth-like life, in which salt water is the internal liquid of living cells. Given the cold dry conditions of Mars, that life could have evolved on Mars with the key internal fluid consisting of a mix of water and hydrogen peroxide, said Dirk Schulze-Makuch, author of the new research.

That's because a water-hydrogen peroxide mix stays liquid at very low temperatures (-68 degrees Fahrenheit/-55.56 degrees Celsius), does not destroy cells when it freezes, and can suck scarce water vapor out of the air.

The Viking experiments of the '70s would not have noticed alien hydrogen peroxide-based life and, in fact, would have killed it by drowning and overheating the microbes, said Schulze-Makuch, a geology professor at Washington State University.

One Viking experiment seeking life on Mars poured water on soil. That would have essentially drowned hydrogen peroxide-based life, Schulze-Makuch said. A different experiment heated the soil to see if something would happen, but that would have baked Martian microbes, he said.

"The problem was that they didn't have any clue about the environment on Mars at that time," Schulze-Makuch said. "This kind of adaptation makes sense from a biochemical viewpoint."

Even Earth has something somewhat related. He points to an Earth bug called the bombardier beetle that produces a boiling-hot spray that is 25 percent hydrogen peroxide as a defense weapon.

Schulze-Makuch acknowledges he cannot prove that Martian microbes exist, but given the Martian environment and how evolution works, "it makes sense."

In recent years, scientists have found life on Earth in conditions that were once thought too harsh, such as an ultra-acidic river in Spain and ice-covered lakes in Antarctica.

Schulze-Makuch's research coincides with work being completed by a National Research Council panel nicknamed the "weird life" committee. The group worries that scientists may be too Earth-centric when looking for extraterrestrial life. The problem for scientists is that "you only find what you're looking for," said Penn State University geosciences professor Katherine Freeman, a reviewer of the NRC work.

A new NASA Mars mission called Phoenix is set for launch this summer, and one of the scientists involved said he is eager to test the new theory about life on Mars. However, scientists must come up with a way to do that using the mission's existing scientific instruments, said NASA astrobiologist and Phoenix co-investigator Chris McKay. He said the Washington State scientist's paper piqued his interest.

"Logical consistency is nice, but it's not enough anymore," McKay said.

Other experts said the new concept has a certain logic to it, but more work is needed before they are convinced.

"I'm open to the possibility that it could be the case," said astrobiologist Mitch Sogin of the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and a member of the National Research Council committee. But he cautioned against "just-so stories about what is possible."

Report: Probes might have overlooked Mars life

[Al-khiyal]

A high resolution camera mounted on a spaceship orbiting Mars has found evidence that water once ran under the planet's surface. The geological features could be probed for fossil evidence for past life or used to point to other regions of the planet where running water - and maybe life - can be found today.

The pictures were taken by Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which was launched in August 2005 and began sending data back from the planet in November last year. They show discoloured rocky ridges in the Candor Chasma, part of a massive canyoned region at the equator called the Valles Marineris, the largest geological rift in the solar system. The ridges are evidence of chemical changes caused by a fluid (almost certainly water) as it flowed down a fissure in the rock.

The changes cemented the rock together making it stronger, so erosion left strengthened ridges. Chris Okubo, a geologist at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, studies similar geological evidence for ancient flowing water on Earth. "When I started to look at some of the HiRISE images of Mars we started to see the exact same features along the fractures. HiRISE [the High Resolution Science Experiment] is a camera on the orbiter with a resolution of about 30cm (12in).

"It is hard to say how long ago the fluids were there - hundreds of millions or perhaps a billion years ago," said Dr Okubo. "But the fact that we see evidence for chemical reactions between the fluids and the rock means that the fluids were sitting there for quite a long time ... that's perhaps good if you want to look for any habitable areas that might support any biological activity." He presented his data, which also appears in the journal Science, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting in San Francisco yesterday.

He suggested that the regions of altered rock would be a good place to look for fossilised simple organisms and that landers might find water flowing underground. In December Nasa scientists, using images from another orbiter, Mars Global Surveyor, found evidence for water flowing fleetingly on the surface in the last five years. They compared images of the side of a crater taken in 2001 and 2005. The second showed gullies apparently caused by water bursting out of the crater wall.

"The Nasa campaign since 1997 has been 'follow the water'," said Colin Pillinger at the Open University, who led the ill-fated Beagle II mission to land on Mars in 2003. Experiments to look for life should be performed where water is thought to be or to have been. "That's what Beagle II attempted to do and that would be my strategy if I was doing it again." Examining water-changed rocks would be an obvious place to look for evidence of past life on Mars, he added.

"On Earth sedimentary rocks are where you look for the relict of organic matter ... this is the logical progression of the search for life on Mars."

The location of the ridges could be difficult for a spacecraft to land in. The canyoned Valles Marineris is 4,500km long, 200km wide and up to 8km deep.

Spaceship finds hard evidence of water on Mars

[sania]

The cartoon in the first post is fu(a)ntastic..!

[Al-khiyal]

Mars: A patch of bright-toned soil is so rich in silica
that scientists propose water must have been involved in concentrating it

PASADENA, California: The Mars rover Spirit has uncovered the strongest evidence yet that ancient Mars was wetter than previously thought, scientists reported Monday.

The robot analyzed a patch of soil in Gusev Crater and found it was unusually rich in silica. Scientists said the presence of water was necessary to produce such a large silica deposit.

"This is a remarkable discovery," principal investigator Steve Squyres of Cornell University said in a statement. "It makes you wonder what else is still out there."

Spirit previously found clues of ancient water in the crater through the presence of sulfur-rich soil, water-altered minerals and explosive volcanism. But the latest find is compelling because of the high silica content, researchers said, raising the possibility that conditions may have been favorable for the emergence of primitive life.

It is unclear how the silica deposit formed. One possibility is that the soil mixed with acid vapors in the presence of water. Others believe the deposit was created from water in a hot spring surrounding.

The durable Spirit and its twin, Opportunity, have been working on overtime since completing their primary, three-month mission in 2004.

For the past eight months, Opportunity has explored the rim of Victoria Crater on the opposite side of the planet. Scientists are looking for a safe opening to send the rover in.

The mission is managed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

NASA rover finds new evidence of wet history on Mars

[Al-khiyal]

Bigfoot on Mars? NASA captures alien figure

January 23, 2008 -- Is this the picture that proves that there is life on Mars? And the existence of Bigfoot?

It certainly is - if you believe the current crop of rumours whizzing around cyberspace after the image was captured on the surface of the Red Planet.

The photograph, taken in 2004 by the Mars explorer Spirit, appears to show a human shaped object that looks startingly like previous photographs purporting to have captured Bigfoot.

Unsurprisingly, conspiracy theorists have had a field day. One blogger wrote: “My first thought: It’s Bigfoot! If you show me another rock in another photo of Mars that naturally looks like that, I will reconsider. “Doesn’t look very much alive though.”

Another added: “These pictures are amazing. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw what appears to be a naked alien running around on Mars.”

And one more said: “It’s definitely Bigfoot. That’s why we’ve not been able to find him on Earth, he’s gone to Mars.”

However not everyone is convinced - one blogger despaired: “Ah, the human eye can be tricked so easily.”

Spirit, sent to Mars to capture images from the surface of the planet, is one half of a $820m (£410m) mission, along with its twin explorer, Opportunity.

It landed on Mars in January 2004 for a three month mission to search Gusev Crater, a rock strewn stretch of soil that scientists believe could be the bed of an ancient lake. If Mars once had surface water, it had the potential to support life.

Find the alien

[Al-khiyal]

Video: The NASA images