Seeding life?Follow

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Genius Logic, right there.

Yeah I saw that as well. Rather idiotic conclusion that.

It's an idiotic statement because life evolved for earth shouldn't survive on Mars. There is no expectation that it would. Life evolved to live in that climate wouldn't be expected to survive here. It's like saying fish don't survive in the desert so there must be no life in the desert.

Not really. The statement is "If we can never find..." not "let's just throw a couple random things and say that's a day". Presumably you start by looking at the conditions you'd be introducing things to and trying to find microbes that would best survive that environment. Trips to Mars are rare enough that you're not going to send a giraffe for ***** and giggles.

That's not to say we shouldn't.

Not all life, but some? Absolutely. Why would you think differently?



It would be expected to survive in a similar climate. What planet that climate happens to exist on isn't that relevant. I suspect you're thinking of higher order animals, but we're talking about very simple organisms here.



No. It's like saying that if no single form of life we know of can survive in that desert, then the odds of naturally occurring life in that desert are low. Because something should be able to survive there. Life on earth is incredibly varied. Environments on earth are as well. Some of them much much more harsh than that on mars. If we can't find anything that survives on mars, then it doesn't preclude some completely different form of life evolving there, but it makes the odds much lower than if we can find things from earth that survive on mars. It's a probability statement, not an absolute one. I suspect you're just looking at it backwards. If we can find life from earth that survives on mars, then that indicates good odds that life did (or at least could have) evolved/existed on mars (at some point at least). If we can't, then the odds become lower.


It's like if you want to determine if someone could have climbed a cliff without a rope. You might find the best cliff climbers in the world and see if they can climb the cliff without a rope. If they can, then it means that someone else could have. If none of them can, then it means the odds that someone else did is low. It's not bad logic. It's quite good logic.

Edited, Jan 11th 2013 2:02pm by gbaji

Volcanic vents spewing boiling sulfuric acid can objectively be considered a more harsh environment than some environments on mars.

Except in some cases we're talking about microbes which feed off sulfides directly. Has nothing to do with other things living in the water in other conditions. These creatures could not survive except in the vents they're feeding off of. Certainly, the presence of liquid water in the area around the vents likely was involved in these forms of life evolving in the first place, but the fact that they could evolve and adapt to such an incredibly harsh (yes, I'm using that term again) environment is pretty darn amazing.



Consistently cool and dry is kinda on the mild end of "harsh" IMO. Lack of liquid water (at least on the surface) is a problem, but there are lots of organisms which live without liquid water here on earth (more correctly, they don't require water around them to be liquid to live). It seems quite reasonable that if such things exist here, they could (or did, or even do) exist on mars. Which was somewhat of the point in the first place.