[meteorite-list] Astrobiologists Find Stuff

From: Mark Ford <mark.ford_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2013 08:56:12 +0000
Message-ID: <3D7A674A041FFB4DBA68772C82FB4A07A00A189C_at_GAMMA2.ssl.atw>

>>>Look deep underground (tough to do from Earth)> - That's fine if your looking for Earth style microbes, but until we even formally define life (and not just some grey area about self reproducing molecules) would we know 'it' if we saw it?



Seems to me if you chart the historical progress of the hunt for life on Mars it's getting a bit thin and desperate, in 100 years we have gone from theories of there being colonies of Martians with canals or forests to a small chance there may still be a few microbes hanging on deep underground near the equator, Nothing wrong with looking and we should, but at some point in the near future we should probably give up and start face to reality, and think about sending some resources elsewhere - where frankly the chances are a looking little bit higher, e.g Europa.

Mark



-----Original Message-----
From: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com [mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] On Behalf Of Michael Mulgrew
Sent: 14 March 2013 19:04
To: Sterling K. Webb; Meteorite List
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Astrobiologists Find Stuff

Sterling,

Look deep underground (tough to do from Earth), any life remaining on Mars will likely be found there.

Michael in so. Cal.


On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 11:46 AM, Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> Count,
>
> You said:
>>
>> ...Asimov was making a wild ass guess as to the
>> 10,000 to one Oxygen/Chlorine ratio and he never presented one paper
>> to support his hypothesis.
>
>
> Asimov wasn't presenting a scientific paper. He was writing a popular
> article in a popular magazine. There are no referencew in magazine
> pieces. Again, he wasn't making hypotheses; he was presenting the
> well-known science of the time. The cosmic abundances were being
> determined for forty years before this article was writteen.
>
> Here's a current table of the values:
> http://www.kayelaby.npl.co.uk/chemistry/3_1/3_1_3.html
> and a bit clearer example at:
> http://old.orionsarm.com/science/Abundance_of_Elements.html
>
> Counting atoms for cosmic abundances is tricky. People have tried by
> counting atoms in Earth's sea water, in the crustal rocks of the
> Earth, by analyzing meteorite abundances, by spectroscopic analysis of
> the Sun and of other stars.
>
> The table in the first reference gives figures for all of these
> sources; water, rocks, meteorites, Sun, stars... (I don't know which
> one Asimov was using.) It works because our star and rocks (planets)
> are all made out of the same stuff and similar stars are made from
> almost identical stuff.
>
> The ratios may have been refined since 1957, but they haven't changed
> that much. And Isaac only mentions one "noble" gas:
> neon.
>
> As for Mars, I have another argument. Mars had a warm wet past. Any
> simple life there probably started then. So, life has had 3-4 billion
> years to get its act together. IF there is life on Mars, don't you
> think it would evolve a little bit in all that time?
> Do something that would get our attention? Leave visible evidence of
> its presence? Life expands, spreads, complicates.
> If there were life on Mars, wouldn't it have done SOMETHING in three
> billion years?
>
> I don't believe in patient little microbes that do nothing for
> billions of years. It says to me that there's nobody home...
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
______________________________________________

Visit the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com
Meteorite-list mailing list
Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Received on Fri 15 Mar 2013 04:56:12 AM PDT