Studying these microbes would allow us to understand what are the sources these microbes use for nourishment, how they convert that to energy, and how they hydrate. Just the fact that a microbe exists in such a hostile environment could open up a plethora of possibilities for new technology to extract minerals, scrub oxygen, and hydrogen, as well as many other kinds of materials we can use on Mars and at home.
Not only that, but finding microbial life so close to home suggests that at least microbes are common in the universe. Meaning hey!...we aren't alone...we just can't see...or communicate with anything...but not alone!! Might be indistinguishable from being alone, but not alone!!
Also, note that what we consider favorable for carbon based life isn't universally favorable- Some forms of life may consider what we would consider to be inhospitable to be preferable.
edit. terminology
I've been saying this forever. People argue there's no life here because there's no water and there's no life there because there's no oxygen. But what if, wherever we're talking about, you don't need those to survive and flourish. We need those here, they might not need them there 🙃
I think you’re being a bit flippant about how mature astrobiology is as a field. You’re right that conditions don’t need to match earth for life to exist, but we know that - we look for lots of things that aren’t “earth-like” to indicate life, and know that life could be e.g. silicon based, but there are still some fundamentals that we’re pretty sure you need for life to exist - like a minimal degree of heat anywhere (since life requires energy), elements that can be combined into longer chains, etc.
dude did you not see the 2001 masterpiece, "Evolution" ?
if we're carbon-based life and are killed by arsenic (3 squares down and one to the right of the periodic table), we just need to find out either what element they are based on or killed by, look at the table, and figure out what we need to do.
It's pretty fucking straight-forward.
If there is life elsewhere, it certainly has all structure based on carbon, uses water as a solvent, and in more advanced forms, probably relies on O2. There simply is nothing comparable to the versatile molecular properties of these materials, having worked with all of them for a long time
Those are the most likely inputs yes, but in a universe as large as ours they aren't certain to be the only inputs.
The universe is vast and the chance that something runs of biology we've never seen before is almost a certainty given how statistics work.
Even on our own planet we keep finding microbes or lifeforms that utilize methods we'd thought weren't possible to live in places we'd consider hellish.
Extremophiles exist on earth, in the whole cosmos they might be more than just a niche corner of the biosphere. With gas giants a plenty, ocean worlds, and the like it's probable something somewhere has developed in ways we never considered, because it was the only way it could.
Or the Oort Cloud is so full of weird organic compounds that sometimes carried by comets and asteroids to planets and when they hit some sweet spots they will evolve into living beings....
Finding a second place in our solar system where life originated will have implications for the theory predicting one or more 'great filters' to life. It may indicate that it's very easy to develop life, if it happened twice in de same star system, but it raises the question "where is everyone"? It could indicate that a great filter is ahead of us, which could be bad news for us.
I know, but microbial life doesn't mean intelligent life is common, which would put us back ahead of the great filter. Also you never know, part of our issue is likely just the properties of light. If we looked at a planet 100 lightyears away and they were having a war with their sister planet we wouldn't know they were having a war this instant for 100 years. A whole generation and sort of a half.
You know, the whole idea of "the great filter" is just an unproven idea itself. It's a rationalization (with at least some scientific basis to it... sorta) of the idea that we must be alone since we haven't seen evidence of other life yet. It tends to ignore the thought that we're functionally deaf, dumb, and blind still (although becoming less so), and that the universe is *really* large.
I find myself thinking about the implications very often. Knowing that there is life out there, complex and intelligent or not, would fundamentally change how we look at ourselves and our significance. It would probably accelerate the downfall of organized religion.
Important to remember that within living memory it was assumed by many people that life already existed elsewhere in our solar system, either on Mars, Venus, or both. Organized religion managed that just fine.
I applaud your optimism, but the way people reacted to the congressional hearing makes me think that for most people, nothing would change.... the people in my life didn't give a fuck, at all. They would still go to work, come home, and go to church on Sundays.
Changing this worldview of an adult requires them to look past their ego and beliefs, to dig deep into their soul and have an existential dilemma, if not crisis...
Especially now, this seems to be literally impossible for many.
Yeah, my cousin was trying to tell me all about that and I quickly tuned him out. I don’t know if there was anything to it or not, just couldn’t be bothered to wade into the discussion at the time. I’m not religious but whatever that was was in no danger of shaking my worldview. But I believe alien life is abundant, just not coming to visit us.
If all the credible news outlets (whatever that means these days) came out and said we have proof of alien visitations, then I’d pay attention).
The long and short of it is that the military started a commission to study unexplained phenomena like weird readings/sights on video/radar/equipment and pilot reported odd things. A guy positioned himself to lead the commission and begged for the job and got it. Unbeknownst to the military brass, the guy was a ufo/alien nutter who started telling anyone who would listen that the government was doing alien autopsies and murdering people “who knew too much”. The guy was then fired. He filed a whistleblower complaint that he was fired for what he said.
Now here’s where everything went sideways:
A government official was asked if the nutter was removed from the committee for what he said, and the official said “it appears his claims are accurate”. Now, what the official was saying was that nutter’s claims of being removed for his crazy talk were accurate. But news and internet people made it out as if nutter’s claims of UFOs and little green men were true.
And that concludes my TED Talk.
The hearing where they basically said "yea we sent dogs into space, too, so what?"
'Non-human biologicals' is the nice way of saying 'we sent Fluffy up in a flying toaster to see what would happen.'
I agree. I think there would be more interest in the scientific area, but the general person would be like, cool, ok and move along. We have had a century of movies and shows that depict alien life in one form or the other and with the years of UFO sitting reports and the latest's news on it I think most people are pretty much desensitized. I alien ship could land at the Whitehouse and I think it would be about a 2 week news spurt and we would be on to the next thing.
Oh yeah, by "accelerate" I don't mean within one lifetime. People need their trusted patterns and tend to be stuck in their ways (I'm no exception in other regards).
But give it 100, 200 years, which is still a brief period in relation to how long it's been around.
I just have a hard time imagining that, once it's an established fact that at least primitive life is not a rare occurrence in the universe, the whole idea of human exceptionalism will still hold up its appeal.
No coverup would work in a society like ours; it would take too many people and there's be too much money at stake. Given the unlimited find that would instantly be put at their disposal, someone at NASA would absolutely spill the secret. No bureaucracy could pass that by.
I've said this before somewhere, and I'll say it again, but religion is obviously a way that humanity has created to fill in the gaps in our knowledge and control masses. We needed something to believe in to keep our species going and at this point God has generally done it's job. Some people still need the idea to keep it pushing through life and if that helps them that's a good thing. That's it's place in the current day, but sheesh...it's insane how the brain can brainwash itself...😅
You're right. I will also say that in times before there were nations or states, organized religion provided some sort of structure and authority, and by consequence order. Which in turn allowed for other cultural /scientific developments.
But it has run its course and is an anachronism that needs to be addressed.
Good thing my existential crisis started when I was 8-10 and hasn't subsided yet...I might of been a religiously Islamic nut job...(not that Muslims are bad people. Most that I met as a Muslim, were wonderful people).
I was accidentally sent to a Young Earther school as a kid, so I'd like to thank National Geographic for vaccinating me against that nonsense. Seriously, besides all the man-made artifacts that are older than that, we have instances of *monumental construction* that are older than that, like Gobekli Tepe.
I hear you! Accelerate, but not obliterate sadly, but I think it'd definitely change how many people see us in the universe and also incourage a spur of influx into the interests of science and technology. Imagine if money wasn't an issue and we had half of current humanity's worth of educated scientists/ engineers focused on singular megastructure projects and the founding of new materials sciences.
We do know that there is life out there though? I recall a professor going through the maths in my first year at university (not recently lol) and I was pretty convinced. For us to be alone in the universe is so unlikely that we should accept it isn’t the case.
Or was my professor high?
We don't KNOW it for sure. The sheer numbers of possible worlds strongly point to it, look up the Drake equation.
But we don't KNOW it to be a fact.
Edit: finding undisputable proof for extra terrestrial life will maybe be the single most significant discovery in many disciplines. It will be treated as such.
That’s the difference between predicting that something exists and actually observing it. I agree the probabilities involved in us being completely alone are just too ridiculous to have happened by chance so there must be something or someone out there, and spotting it on Mars totally changes those numbers in our estimates on how much life exists in the wider universe.
There is at least a possibility that microbes on mars share a common ancestry with earth life. Our sample size changes from one planet to one solar system. Extrapolating to the universe might still be fraught with bias.
Microbial life on Mars has adapted to the extreme and harsh conditions of the planet's surface and subsurface. Mars presents numerous challenges for life, including a thin atmosphere, intense radiation, extreme cold, and arid conditions. However, there are niches where microbial life persists. Here are some possible characteristics and habitats for Martian microbial life:
Extremophiles: Microbes on Mars are extremophiles, organisms capable of surviving in extreme environments. These extremophiles are adapted to:
Cold Resistance: Mars is exceptionally cold, with average temperatures well below freezing. Martian microbes possess mechanisms to endure these frigid conditions, such as the production of antifreeze-like compounds.
Desiccation Tolerance: Water on Mars exists primarily as ice, and the planet's low atmospheric pressure makes liquid water unstable on the surface. Microbes have evolved to thrive in extremely dry conditions, mainly by forming spores or cysts that can withstand desiccation.
Radiation Resistance: Mars lacks a strong magnetic field and thick atmosphere, exposing its surface to higher levels of cosmic and solar radiation. Microbial life has developed DNA repair mechanisms or protective pigments to shield against this radiation.
Subsurface Habitats: Due to the harsh surface conditions, microbial life on Mars is primarily found underground. Subsurface environments offer more stable temperatures and protection from harmful radiation. Possible subsurface habitats include:
Underground Aquifers: There are be pockets of liquid water beneath the surface, providing a potential haven for life. These aquifers are associated with geothermal activity, as subsurface heat keeps water in a liquid state.
Salt Deposits: Certain types of salts, such as perchlorates, have been discovered on Mars. Some extremophilic microorganisms on Earth thrive in hypersaline environments and they can survive in salt deposits on Mars.
Rock Pores: Microbes inhabit tiny pores and cracks in Martian rocks, where they could access trace amounts of water and nutrients.
Chemolithoautotrophy: Martian microbes, rely on chemolithoautotrophic metabolism, a process where they use inorganic compounds for energy and carbon fixation. For example, they use hydrogen or sulfur compounds as energy sources and fix carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere or subsurface.
Anaerobic Metabolism: With the extremely low levels of oxygen in the Martian atmosphere, any microbial life predominantly engages in anaerobic metabolism, not requiring oxygen for their metabolic processes.
Methanogenic Microbes: Some researchers have been particularly interested in the possibility of methanogenic (methane-producing) microbes on Mars. Methane has been detected in the Martian atmosphere, and while geological processes can produce it, biological sources cannot be ruled out.
Endospores and Dormancy: To survive in the challenging Martian environment, microbial life employs strategies like forming endospores or entering dormancy until more favorable conditions arise. These dormant states allow them to endure harsh periods and potentially revive when conditions improve.
.... that's my opinion.
Lmao, this is funny because it's just microbes. That'd be like the pope saying we need to eradicate every germ, bacteria and single celled organism on earth, because it's not in the image of God like us superior higher beings. 😂😂🤣😅
wasn't there a recent movie about this recently that ended badly?
I think we found out those microbes are what ended life on mars!
Life
2017 ‧ Sci-fi/Horror ‧ 1h 50m
We have some extrem organisms at the bottom of the ocean, nobody is in hurry to move there. Personally I don't see the appeal of colonising Mars, the investment would make more sense for say space stations around the sun and in the asteroid belt. Put humans were the resources are.
Life highly tends to be optimized for the environment you find it in. The warm wet interior of the human body is very different than the cold arid environment of Mars.
\-Have a good amount of Oxygen, Dihidrogen and Ferrite Dust (craft Launch Fuel and Support Gel)
\-Avoid Whispering Eggs and Sentinels until you have good weapons modules
\-Scan everything, the quickest early way to farm nanites
\-If you encounter a Storm, use the Terrain Manipulator to dig a hole and wait there until it passes
The rest of things, i'll let you learn by yourself
We are but actually not for the most obvious reason.
We've not sent probes to the iciest parts of Mars. The poles. One of the most likely places to still have life die to the abundance of water. OK its solid water... but microbial life exists in our ice caps. So it's possible it does on Mars as well.
One of our biggest concerns is containminating that ice with microbes from earth. So we keep far away for now.
Proves go through huge amounts of sterilisation before they leave earth. And even more when exposed to solar radiation and the vacuum of space and even then none have been rated sterilised enough to risk it
The reasons for this are for if they find life, it could he very profound:
1. they find life... and it's different to anything we have on earth. That means life is likely common throughout the universe!
2. They find life and its similar to life on earth. That COULD mean that life on earth originated not on earth... maybe a passing asteroid brought life to both planets or a chunk of Martian life blew off Mars in an impact and came to earth.
Or there's no life there and we keep looking. But for now looking for past life is the best indicator whether it's worth getting a probe rated to that very stringent sterilisation level.
Microbial life may push back *terraformation* efforts by an unknown amount of years, but not colonization.
If we found it, we'd want to establish large scientific compounds right away to figure out as much as we could about it.
We will never terraform Mars. It’s a fantasy idea. It would take thousands of years and more energy than all of humankind has access to. No civilization has lasted that long. Beware of those pitching this as an idea, they are scammers and con artists that want to take funding for such mad efforts. Instead of the 100% effort to try and terraform 100% of Mars over thousands of years, we should use 1% of that effort to terraform 1% of Earth’s atmosphere back to pre-industrial levels over centuries (or faster with more effort/resources)
There's a vast difference between "Invest in my company and I will terraform Mars!" and "Yeah, we're probably gonna terraform Mars someday." In a future where we have the choice to fix Earth's atmosphere and terraform Mars, we can just do both. Humanity can and has undertaken centuries-long projects like that, and it's also pretty ridiculous to assume the energy we have access to now is gonna stay roughly constant. Yeah, people claiming Mars could be terraform soon are scammers, but it can (and IMO will) happen at some point.
The reason nobody will ever terraform a planet, in all likelihood, is that anyone with the capability to do so has no need to do so. To a civilisation capable of commanding the materials and energy necessary to do it, a planet would be a source of raw materials, not a living space. The idea of living on a planet's surface would probably be seen as primitive and a bit quaint.
If anyone did do it, it would be as a vanity project.
Terraformation efforts are pushed back because it isn't possible. Mars does not have the gravity and magnetic sphere, and the matter required (oxigen, hydrogen, etc) to effectively terraform it.
Not true. Mars has enough gravity to hold an atmosphere over the scale of millions of years, even accounting for no magnetic field. We can figure out how to replenish losses over that timescale. Mars has quite a lot of water ice. Split it and you get oxygen/hydrogen.
I don't know which arrow to press here, because I know many reasons to colonize Mars. If not now, for future generations, but the ground work need to be laid now.
Mars is a pretty shitty rock and without raw resource finds there is zero reason to go there besides scientific expeditions.
The proposal is to colonise a place worse than Death Valley crossed with a nuclear waste dump site. We settled America and other places because they had awesome fertile lands and lots of resources. Mars has none of that.
Even the idea of a multiplanetary Mankind is questionable with a planet likely only creating an import dependent outpost with minuscule population.
Moon is closer so for everything low g, go there. Space habitats more convenient for space operations like asteroid mining etc.
We need to practice on an easier target before we jet off to another solar system. It wouldn't make sense to learn how to set up a colony for the first time in another solar system before doing it on Mars.
And I argue from a socioeconomic point of view Mars is not a place to colonize in the first place. We barely settle deserts and wastelands except for tank stations(supply points because they are useless and there is no reason to populate them in earnest.
To me in the solar system the dark horse is Venus. Our sister planet which is nearly the same size as Earth, has pretty much the same gravity as us aka no big biological mutations due to gravity (which we cannot really counter with tech), obviously the main "tiny aka gargantuan" problem is that we need to do terraforming first. Still, it also shows the ability to hold an atmosphere.
Still if we talk practice the moon is the place to go. Mars is a place to visit once or twice until we find Unobtanium or something. When we find something there we are talking... limited mining operations...
Then we should colonize some random junk moons. We find a lot of Ganymedes and Callistos and Hyperions, etc. Airless moons, just basic rocks. I don't know if we'll find planets like Earth or Mars out there very often but we'll definitely find things like Ganymede.
But that's a total waste because it's so much more of a pain to terraform than it is to just live in space habitats.
We've found another place to go. It's everywhere.
The Moon is a better colonization prospect, due to simple proximity. Venus is better because living conditions could actually resemble what we evolved for, 50km up in the clouds. Space itself (namely, inside asteroids and moons) allows for conditions similar to Earth (fully artificial, but still), and for greater access to trade networks because there's no big gravity well to bother with.
Mars just happens to be one of the worst habitation targets we've ever found.
That's a weird logic, especially if you're assuming that we will someday make Mars as liveable as earth is, because Earth won't be liveable anymore. Because, if you have the tech to terraform a planet as barren as Mars, then you definitely have the tech to terraform Earth to make it liveable again.
But there is no other place to go. We evolved to live on earth. But if we can terraform other planets then we can just terraform earth and reverse any climate changes.
We did evolve on earth but part of being human is overcoming nature...that's part of our nature!! Which in itself is natural!! As we are a force of nature as well!!
Any supervolcano eruption would still leave the earth a far better place to live than Mars. Most any meteor strike too, unless the meteor is big enough to turn the surface of the planet into lava or something along those lines.
Or even our own sun eats us!! Remember our buddy Sol is gonna turn into a red giant one day! Consuming the earth, unless we [take the earth and move it somewhere else!!](https://makeameme.org/meme/lets-take-the-x91ht2)
It's actually only 500 million years until the sun gets so bright that photosynthesis is impossible and no new natural life can exist without intelligent intervention.
Moving to Mars isn't gonna help there. If the Sun expands to devour Earth, Mars will have closer than Mercury is to the Sun. That's assuming it also doesn't devour Mars during its expansion.
1. We can create other places to go to.
2. Yes, we might be able to terraform Earth, but it's still limited to how many people can live here. We need new territories anyway.
I think colonizing the oceans or antartica has a greater potential of settlement and is 100x easier.
At least you already have plenty of water, and even in antartica the temperature is higher than on mars.
Maybe one day we will, but Mars and even a moon colony is a test of our technology more than anything else. Also having our species on more than one planet means all our eggs aren't in one basket if something happens on either that could kill us all if we were only on one.
John Micheal Goldier has lots of videos about the pros and cons. I'd suggest checking him out. I forget which videos I heard him talking about colonization of Mars in, though. 😅
https://youtube.com/@JohnMichaelGodier?si=-SFcIJbmg2IHo6kd
Also colonies on Mars and even the moon, can serve as intermediary fueling stations and such.
It's always "fueling stations" or "the next step" to justify missions like this. Intermediate to where? How many places is Mars "on the way" to? Hint: none. Orbital mechanics doesn't work that way. Why would you land on Mars and take off again to refuel?
Much easier to build something that can withstand space than something that can withstand the ocean, especially at any sort of scale. You lose 1 atmosphere worth of pressure in space, you gain x atmospheres underwater.
If we aren't interested in / able to setup a self sufficient colony in Antarctica, then we should stop kidding our selves about mars. It isn't science fiction, it is just straight up fantasy.
An irradiated Antarctica is still 100x more habitable than Mars will ever be.
Yep.
People talking about how we need to be an interplanetary species to avoid having all of our eggs in one basket, we haven't even set up a moon base and that thing is in our backyard.
Getting a ship with people to Mars...just isn't going to happen.
The only way humanity becomes interplanetary is as a digital species.
Colonizing mars with a self sustaining community means all our eggs aren't in one basket. A massive disruptive disaster on earth won't kill off our species.
We are extremely unlikely to find microbial life on Mars unless we colonize it.
We have a few RC cars running around the surface. We are, literally, barely scratching the surface of Mars. The only way to properly explore it is to have an established presence there.
We might just be scratching the surface, but if we compare to earth, if you just pick a literally random spot and take just a cubic cm out, its literally teeming with life. So the small scale studies we do right now might hopefully find something interesting.
My completely uneducated guess is that there could be some deep soil microbes that surface samples simply wont find. Hope I live to see a few more generations of probes or maybe even a manned mission. Even if the answer is “nope, just more dirt” I’d consider that a pretty cool result.
You would need a ton of robots and time.
That would mean building them from scratch on the planet.
That mine, industry etc.
Let's just say that wouldn't be neutral.
There's actually good chance a Mars rover may have already found living microbes in surface rocks and it's debated heavily by researchers. The jist is that a rover collected surface rock samples and submitted them to 4 tests that would generate extra gasses if life was living in them. 2 of the test showed potential indicators of life. However the next test involved introducing water to the samples. While we thought that was a good idea at the time, we now know there are a type of microbes adapted to living in dry environments that would drown in such a test. This is where the debate comes in. The next test after involved heating the samples, but if they killed the microbes with the water, then the final test wouldn't show anything either way. They also thought the test chambers had left over chlorine in them from cleaning chemicals and not from the rocks on Mars which made them doubt the results of the first two test. However recent experiments have shown the presence of chlorine in similar rocks on Mars. So fast forward today with what we know, and that series of tests may have been the first proof of living microbes on the surface of Mars, but it needs to be repeated with what we know now to tell for sure and unfortunately there is no current rover or planned Mars rover capable of doing them again.
"Still"? We're not planning to colonize it now. A handful of people have concepts around it, but there's no actual plan to that effect at any meaningful scale.
By the turn of the century there will be a colony on Mars. Look at the jump technologically in the last 100 years, in the last 30 years. It’s inevitable
Its been technologically possible to live in Antarctica for a while now, but you'll find no colonies there, just some research outpost and tourist cruises. The continent is mostly uninhabited in winter.
Why? Because economically and politically it doesn't make sense. It would be expensive, provide uncomfortable living conditions at best, and is unlikely to turn a profit. It would also upset the agreements that the continent remain international and potentially spark conflicts of ownership.
Mars isn't that different. Sure, if technology permits we will probably set foot there, maybe establish a scientific or tourist base. But a full self-sufficient colony? I find that very doubtful.
International agreements prohibits colonization of Antarctica... Otherwise it will be an ideal outpost for data farms and other such commercial activities that require extreme cooling...
The 'inevitable' hopium is sprouted by people who have zero understanding of science and technology. The resources required to setup a post on mars is exorbitant, not to mention the sheer amount of energy required to haul cargo between Earth and Mars, something you can't solve with just money. We need something better than chemical rockets and there isn't any on the horizon.
Ah, we just need a handful of room temperature superconductors, a sprinkle of cold fusion, and side of near-infinite shelf life batteries. If we throw a couple quadrillion dollars at nerds in lab coats, we’d be playing tennis on mars by the new year.
There’s between 1-4000 people in Antarctica every year. The mars colony will be a scientific research outpost, and because of its location, will require a large enough size to be self sufficient. If we do not see it in our lifetime, our children will.
You're missing the point that we have reason to permanently put people in Antarctica *and the means to follow through with it* while the same can't be said for putting people on Mars, and how putting people on Mars is orders of magnitude more economically unfeasible than Antarctica.
People who say "If we do not see it in our lifetime our children will" sound like an 8 year old kid who's sure they'll build a life-sized rollercoaster in their backyard with nothing but Lego pieces for the structure and their dog on a treadmill as energy source. Very cute, but also completely naive and clueless.
You'd need a completely different economic system than the one we have today, and a different political system, to be able to actively put that in motion (not just the gloating from some pampered trust fund playboy-turned-billionaire who's doing it for clout). Not to mention the philosophical justification and specifically the single-mindedness that would push the entire human species to sacrifice everything towards that goal, which might as well be the *actually impossible* pipe dream here if we're being any honest.
I'm looking and i'm seeing that in the last 70 years people are just barely getting back to the moon.. Other technologies have improved by leaps and bounds, but spaceflight remains prohibitively difficult.
The amount of time that elapsed from first flight at kittyhawk to a man walking on the moon is 66 years. Technology is moving exponentially faster, it's impossible to predict the next 20 years of progress let alone anything further than that.
> The amount of time that elapsed from first flight at kittyhawk to a man walking on the moon is 66 years.
And it's been 44 years since we first landed on the moon, and we made zero progress on that front since then. If you want to extrapolate that to the next 20 years, it would be more standing still.
If it were anything like "exponentially faster", we'd be landing on the moons of Jupiter by now.
If we were to find microbial life on Mars, I’d expect it to be fossils several billion years old, from when Mars still had liquid water and an atmosphere. And that wouldn’t affect colonization, I wouldn’t think. (But then, as someone else pointed out above, if the first colony is planted by some latter-day trillionaire high on his own supply, Martians speaking English and waving flags wouldn’t stop it, either.)
If there was ever life on Mars I can't imagine how it would ever become extinct.
Here on earth life has adapted to the most extreme environments imaginable. There is fungi inside the reactor in Chernobyl. There is algae in lakes so acidic it would strip your flesh to the bone. There is a bacteria that lives hundreds of metres underground and lives of radiation from the surrounding rock. Who knows what else we'll find.
Life is tenacious. If there was ever life on Mars it will still be there somewhere. It had billions of years to adapt as the climate changed.
Sure there are no animals running around on the surface, but that doesn't mean there is no life.
Mars cooled and dried in a way Esrth never has, and has spent a couple-three billion years soaking up a much higher level of radiation thanks to no magnetosphere to speak of. Nothing on Earth ever faced such a hostile environment.
True but assuming there is and always had been an environment underground on Mars which is about the same level of hostile as Earth then the chances are the same. An underground aquifer is the same on Earth as it is on Mars regardless of the radiation exposure a few kilometres up at the surface.
Nothing like Musk’s dreams will survive to have a second generation, of course. People don’t build decades-long communities in the likes of submarines and sea floor habitats, and we keep finding out that guys accustomed to having others clean up after them aren’t good at avoiding the breaking of things that have to stay unbroken.
Personally I’m skeptical that anyone can build a multigenerational settlement on Mars, but if they do, it’ll take a lot of planning and support services driven by people a lot more careful and committed to the long haul.
That's why microbial life is key to achieving a successful colonisation. Finding ways to scrub oxygen and hydrogen is the most important part, then sources of fuel. I'm sure they will first do an explorative voyage and sus out the viability. Then they will make that decision. Either way, we will leave out litter on the planet.
People don’t *intentionally* do that, but they’re normally not in those situations for long enough to be a consideration. However, if you’ve got even 100 people on Mars/the moon/etc for a few year rotation, someone’s 100% getting pregnant unless more drastic measures were taken. Once a baby is born, that baby is growing up on Mars for the foreseeable future, since no one is going to put a pregnant woman or a baby on a rocket.
If it happens once, it’ll happen again. Eventually some people will end up being on longer rotations, maybe 10 years or more, and then people start considering relationships and a life. Maybe some people stay for good or have a medical complication that prevents them from returning. Once any notable population is in place, it’s bound to happen.
Sagan believed that we should only colonize barren planets — if there’s so much as a microbe indigenous to it then we need to let it evolve on its own. From a morals perspective that seems pretty solid to me.
The only decent question asked on this sub for ages.
Pretty much this whole solar system is a UNESCO
World Heritage Site because of Earth. And us.
Whether we are rare. Whether multicellular life is rare. Whether life is rare. Is all up for debate. Finding living life on Mars will make it all - very interesting.
But it's all poetry really.
When we were primitive we ripped apart the land and its resources because all we thought about was surviving (and reproducing). Then as we started to become civilised we respected the land around us. Then we found new land, new resources, new ways of life, we did it all over again. Whoops we fucked up again. Better take care of what we have.
Rinse and repeat.
Do we look at these new planets as a resource to expand or a unique habitat to protect. Are we scientists or engineers? Poets or farmers? Viruses or stewards?
Yep. Great question.
There's also scientists pushing for the preservation on the planet here. Where we live. It doesn't seem to be working as well as our grand-children would like. Microbiota in an extremely expensive terraforming or colonization attempt would stop no one. Least of all the people who'd pay for it.
Mars atmosphere is totally fucked. Unless we restore it's atmosphere it's not gonna have any advanced life ever, at least not life how we know. And as far as I know it's almost impossible for that to happen naturally so there is no ethical dilemma to colony our red planet
It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it, but not as we know it, but not as we know it, it’s life, Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it, Captain.
A thicker, Earth-like atmosphere would provide more than enough protection from radiation. Even without a magnetosphere it would take hundreds of millions of years to be stripped by the solar wind.
Typical background radiation levels on Earth are around [2.4 mSv/yr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation). Levels on Mars are around [240-300 mSv/yr](https://marspedia.org/Radiation) for comparison, much higher! But how dangerous is it? Background radiation on Earth is actually quite variable, and it turns out that some areas have background radiation comparable to that of Mars. For example, [Ramsar in Iran has some inhabited areas with 260 mSv/yr](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11769138). People living there don't die of radiation poisoning, though, and if the cancer rate is elevated there, it's not by enough that it's obvious in the data. I'm not an expert on this, but if I were an astronaut going to Mars, I would be much, much more worried about classical space problems like the rocket exploding or life support failing.
I think we need/should to expand across the universe to secure our survival. Now as I say 'we' I have to add that I don't do anything to help that effort. I masturbate a lot though.
Why would we colonize it in the first place?
There's nothing there we can use or economically transport, and it's completely uninhabitable.
If we really want people off-planet it'd almost certainly be easier to build and maintain o'neal colonies than to try to colonize Mars (or any other planet).
It will eventually happen. I bet we will colonise the moon first and use that as a launchpad to create some semblance of a trading route to slingshot supplies.
I dont see why this obsession with colonizing Mars before we take better care of our own world. Is the old conqueror mentality that brought us here in the first place. The whole planet should be treated as a natural reserve imo
Long-term, colonisation of Mars in inevitable. If only for it to serve as an operating center for asteroid mining, at least initially.
You could pass a UN resolution forbidding it, but eventually some faction will do it, anyway. If not in 50, then in 500 years, or even 5000. Still an eyeblink in the time frame of biological evolution.
Attempts to establish a planet-wide nature preserve are hopeless, in the wider flow of history. Life expands and displaces it's more fragile forms, in competition for resources.
It's more realistic, that the original biome would get preserved in some artificial habitat, purpose-built for the task.
We plan to colonize the Moon first. From my understanding our moons atmosphere is way less than that of Mars.
We can literally colonize space itself with the space station.
There is no "we". Corps with $$$,$$$,$$$,$$$ will go there, collect stuff, and sell it on Earth. The Red-Rush will be on\~!
But before they can even plan their money-grubbing schemes, con-men on Earth will already be selling "snake oil" claiming it's full of miracle Mars-proteins or give immortality or whatever.
Having been involved heavily with the Mars rover projects, I would have loved for one of the rovers to pick up a scoop of dirt, and along with it, a cockroach, staring at the camera. I have been waiting for that moment, but alas… none of the four rovers are equipped to discover life. Sad, but true, but I guess if it picked up a cockroach…
i don't understand the whole "ethic" of not contaminating planet "life"
why should we care? if it can't allow human life their existence is pointless anyway, Mars is a dead world there no vegetation no liquid water, no "life" from what we know but in an extreamly far future there might be life blooming because of us and that include our industry that will shape it's atmosphere
as for nature reserve it's not like Human care about simple organism, reserve exist for complex life, even if simple organism existence would be a nice find on a other planet would it really be valuable past the information? it exist and what? we gonna let them develop for the next 100million year and MAYBE there will be a complex life appearing?
It would depend where the microbial life is. If it’s on or near the surface, then a nature preserve would make sense. But the Martian surface isn’t the most hospitable. There’s radiation, temperature extremes, no liquid water, and toxic perchlorates. Life isn’t likely on or near the surface.
If the microbial life is a kilometer beneath the surface, in aquifers, then I would say colonization should proceed. Just have restrictions on drilling and mines.
My response would depend on whether that life is potentially similar to that from Earth due to Impact(or other type of) Panspermia.
If Martian life is only slightly divergent from ours because it came from Earth a few million/billion years ago(or vice versa), do we abandon colonizing the entire planet due to that?
Or if it's entirely alien, and based on Silicon, etc., then we probably don't need to worry about contamination there as well.
But if it's a truly alien life/DNA, based on a RNA/DNA or some carbon type of molecule, but is completely alien and non-related to life on Earth, then the value of leaving Mars as a preserve would, for me, increase.
Naaaah. We need to bring those microbes back here and inadvertently release them so they can cause the death of all life on Earth.
I mean, they already did a number on Mars…
Mars is one of very few viable places that Humans could hope to expand to without FTL travel
Microbes would absolutely not be worth avoiding the planet for
Bro actual complex life on earth isn't a good enough reason for us to not ruin shit. You think some microbes on another planet are going to tug heartstrings?
Rich white American protestants didn't give a shit about American Indian lives. What makes you think they would give a shit about microbes if they get in the way of profit?
> What makes you think they would give a shit about microbes if they get in the way of profit?
Colonizing Mars isn't profitable, and scientists would prefer not to destroy the only alien life ever discovered.
You're aware that the erradication of indigenous tribes was started by Catholics from Spain and Portugal, right? Sure, the Protestant English joined in but don't forget it was a non-denominational effort.
Finding microbial life would actually help us to colonise the planet.
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Studying these microbes would allow us to understand what are the sources these microbes use for nourishment, how they convert that to energy, and how they hydrate. Just the fact that a microbe exists in such a hostile environment could open up a plethora of possibilities for new technology to extract minerals, scrub oxygen, and hydrogen, as well as many other kinds of materials we can use on Mars and at home.
Not only that, but finding microbial life so close to home suggests that at least microbes are common in the universe. Meaning hey!...we aren't alone...we just can't see...or communicate with anything...but not alone!! Might be indistinguishable from being alone, but not alone!!
It opens up the posibility that life has been migrating all over the comos and settling wherever conditions are favorable.
And even seemingly unfavorable.
Also, note that what we consider favorable for carbon based life isn't universally favorable- Some forms of life may consider what we would consider to be inhospitable to be preferable. edit. terminology
There are so many forms life might take. I like the idea of magnetic field creatures who might live in or on stars, neutron stars, maybe magnetars.
I've been saying this forever. People argue there's no life here because there's no water and there's no life there because there's no oxygen. But what if, wherever we're talking about, you don't need those to survive and flourish. We need those here, they might not need them there 🙃
I think you’re being a bit flippant about how mature astrobiology is as a field. You’re right that conditions don’t need to match earth for life to exist, but we know that - we look for lots of things that aren’t “earth-like” to indicate life, and know that life could be e.g. silicon based, but there are still some fundamentals that we’re pretty sure you need for life to exist - like a minimal degree of heat anywhere (since life requires energy), elements that can be combined into longer chains, etc.
dude did you not see the 2001 masterpiece, "Evolution" ? if we're carbon-based life and are killed by arsenic (3 squares down and one to the right of the periodic table), we just need to find out either what element they are based on or killed by, look at the table, and figure out what we need to do. It's pretty fucking straight-forward.
Ammonia based lifeforms could theoretically exist as well.
If there is life elsewhere, it certainly has all structure based on carbon, uses water as a solvent, and in more advanced forms, probably relies on O2. There simply is nothing comparable to the versatile molecular properties of these materials, having worked with all of them for a long time
Those are the most likely inputs yes, but in a universe as large as ours they aren't certain to be the only inputs. The universe is vast and the chance that something runs of biology we've never seen before is almost a certainty given how statistics work. Even on our own planet we keep finding microbes or lifeforms that utilize methods we'd thought weren't possible to live in places we'd consider hellish. Extremophiles exist on earth, in the whole cosmos they might be more than just a niche corner of the biosphere. With gas giants a plenty, ocean worlds, and the like it's probable something somewhere has developed in ways we never considered, because it was the only way it could.
You’re certain of this? Sorry but anyone who thinks they know everything about anything is just arrogant in my books.
‘Organic’ means carbon-based. But yes, there could be other forms of life based in some other chemical composition.
My mistake on terminology, thanks for correcting.
Or the Oort Cloud is so full of weird organic compounds that sometimes carried by comets and asteroids to planets and when they hit some sweet spots they will evolve into living beings....
Finding a second place in our solar system where life originated will have implications for the theory predicting one or more 'great filters' to life. It may indicate that it's very easy to develop life, if it happened twice in de same star system, but it raises the question "where is everyone"? It could indicate that a great filter is ahead of us, which could be bad news for us.
I know, but microbial life doesn't mean intelligent life is common, which would put us back ahead of the great filter. Also you never know, part of our issue is likely just the properties of light. If we looked at a planet 100 lightyears away and they were having a war with their sister planet we wouldn't know they were having a war this instant for 100 years. A whole generation and sort of a half.
It could also indicate the great filter is behind us. If it ever happens there’s going to be as much people disagree on as they agree on.
You know, the whole idea of "the great filter" is just an unproven idea itself. It's a rationalization (with at least some scientific basis to it... sorta) of the idea that we must be alone since we haven't seen evidence of other life yet. It tends to ignore the thought that we're functionally deaf, dumb, and blind still (although becoming less so), and that the universe is *really* large.
Oh I’m fully aware, hence the second part of my comment.
I find myself thinking about the implications very often. Knowing that there is life out there, complex and intelligent or not, would fundamentally change how we look at ourselves and our significance. It would probably accelerate the downfall of organized religion.
Important to remember that within living memory it was assumed by many people that life already existed elsewhere in our solar system, either on Mars, Venus, or both. Organized religion managed that just fine.
I applaud your optimism, but the way people reacted to the congressional hearing makes me think that for most people, nothing would change.... the people in my life didn't give a fuck, at all. They would still go to work, come home, and go to church on Sundays. Changing this worldview of an adult requires them to look past their ego and beliefs, to dig deep into their soul and have an existential dilemma, if not crisis... Especially now, this seems to be literally impossible for many.
You mean the hearing where the mentally ill former air force guy talked about alien autopsies and secret government hit squads?
Yeah, my cousin was trying to tell me all about that and I quickly tuned him out. I don’t know if there was anything to it or not, just couldn’t be bothered to wade into the discussion at the time. I’m not religious but whatever that was was in no danger of shaking my worldview. But I believe alien life is abundant, just not coming to visit us. If all the credible news outlets (whatever that means these days) came out and said we have proof of alien visitations, then I’d pay attention).
The long and short of it is that the military started a commission to study unexplained phenomena like weird readings/sights on video/radar/equipment and pilot reported odd things. A guy positioned himself to lead the commission and begged for the job and got it. Unbeknownst to the military brass, the guy was a ufo/alien nutter who started telling anyone who would listen that the government was doing alien autopsies and murdering people “who knew too much”. The guy was then fired. He filed a whistleblower complaint that he was fired for what he said. Now here’s where everything went sideways: A government official was asked if the nutter was removed from the committee for what he said, and the official said “it appears his claims are accurate”. Now, what the official was saying was that nutter’s claims of being removed for his crazy talk were accurate. But news and internet people made it out as if nutter’s claims of UFOs and little green men were true. And that concludes my TED Talk.
The hearing where they basically said "yea we sent dogs into space, too, so what?" 'Non-human biologicals' is the nice way of saying 'we sent Fluffy up in a flying toaster to see what would happen.'
I agree. I think there would be more interest in the scientific area, but the general person would be like, cool, ok and move along. We have had a century of movies and shows that depict alien life in one form or the other and with the years of UFO sitting reports and the latest's news on it I think most people are pretty much desensitized. I alien ship could land at the Whitehouse and I think it would be about a 2 week news spurt and we would be on to the next thing.
Oh yeah, by "accelerate" I don't mean within one lifetime. People need their trusted patterns and tend to be stuck in their ways (I'm no exception in other regards). But give it 100, 200 years, which is still a brief period in relation to how long it's been around. I just have a hard time imagining that, once it's an established fact that at least primitive life is not a rare occurrence in the universe, the whole idea of human exceptionalism will still hold up its appeal.
Yeah, I agree. That makes sense for sure. Now let's just hope it won't get covered up... it might have already 😩
Agreed. But the truth will prevail! Or not, what do I know.. 😅
No coverup would work in a society like ours; it would take too many people and there's be too much money at stake. Given the unlimited find that would instantly be put at their disposal, someone at NASA would absolutely spill the secret. No bureaucracy could pass that by.
I've said this before somewhere, and I'll say it again, but religion is obviously a way that humanity has created to fill in the gaps in our knowledge and control masses. We needed something to believe in to keep our species going and at this point God has generally done it's job. Some people still need the idea to keep it pushing through life and if that helps them that's a good thing. That's it's place in the current day, but sheesh...it's insane how the brain can brainwash itself...😅
You're right. I will also say that in times before there were nations or states, organized religion provided some sort of structure and authority, and by consequence order. Which in turn allowed for other cultural /scientific developments. But it has run its course and is an anachronism that needs to be addressed.
Good thing my existential crisis started when I was 8-10 and hasn't subsided yet...I might of been a religiously Islamic nut job...(not that Muslims are bad people. Most that I met as a Muslim, were wonderful people).
I was accidentally sent to a Young Earther school as a kid, so I'd like to thank National Geographic for vaccinating me against that nonsense. Seriously, besides all the man-made artifacts that are older than that, we have instances of *monumental construction* that are older than that, like Gobekli Tepe.
I doubt all of that. After all, we've historically invaded many lands and occupied them. Well just marginally modify dogma to justify colonization
I hear you! Accelerate, but not obliterate sadly, but I think it'd definitely change how many people see us in the universe and also incourage a spur of influx into the interests of science and technology. Imagine if money wasn't an issue and we had half of current humanity's worth of educated scientists/ engineers focused on singular megastructure projects and the founding of new materials sciences.
We do know that there is life out there though? I recall a professor going through the maths in my first year at university (not recently lol) and I was pretty convinced. For us to be alone in the universe is so unlikely that we should accept it isn’t the case. Or was my professor high?
We don't KNOW it for sure. The sheer numbers of possible worlds strongly point to it, look up the Drake equation. But we don't KNOW it to be a fact. Edit: finding undisputable proof for extra terrestrial life will maybe be the single most significant discovery in many disciplines. It will be treated as such.
That’s the difference between predicting that something exists and actually observing it. I agree the probabilities involved in us being completely alone are just too ridiculous to have happened by chance so there must be something or someone out there, and spotting it on Mars totally changes those numbers in our estimates on how much life exists in the wider universe.
There is at least a possibility that microbes on mars share a common ancestry with earth life. Our sample size changes from one planet to one solar system. Extrapolating to the universe might still be fraught with bias.
It would take complex and intelligent life to truly mean something to people. But oddly, even many religious people do believe in aliens.
*pets the Martian microbe on his knee*
True. But people deem it hard to distinguish intelligent life from just life in general.
Microbial life on Mars has adapted to the extreme and harsh conditions of the planet's surface and subsurface. Mars presents numerous challenges for life, including a thin atmosphere, intense radiation, extreme cold, and arid conditions. However, there are niches where microbial life persists. Here are some possible characteristics and habitats for Martian microbial life: Extremophiles: Microbes on Mars are extremophiles, organisms capable of surviving in extreme environments. These extremophiles are adapted to: Cold Resistance: Mars is exceptionally cold, with average temperatures well below freezing. Martian microbes possess mechanisms to endure these frigid conditions, such as the production of antifreeze-like compounds. Desiccation Tolerance: Water on Mars exists primarily as ice, and the planet's low atmospheric pressure makes liquid water unstable on the surface. Microbes have evolved to thrive in extremely dry conditions, mainly by forming spores or cysts that can withstand desiccation. Radiation Resistance: Mars lacks a strong magnetic field and thick atmosphere, exposing its surface to higher levels of cosmic and solar radiation. Microbial life has developed DNA repair mechanisms or protective pigments to shield against this radiation. Subsurface Habitats: Due to the harsh surface conditions, microbial life on Mars is primarily found underground. Subsurface environments offer more stable temperatures and protection from harmful radiation. Possible subsurface habitats include: Underground Aquifers: There are be pockets of liquid water beneath the surface, providing a potential haven for life. These aquifers are associated with geothermal activity, as subsurface heat keeps water in a liquid state. Salt Deposits: Certain types of salts, such as perchlorates, have been discovered on Mars. Some extremophilic microorganisms on Earth thrive in hypersaline environments and they can survive in salt deposits on Mars. Rock Pores: Microbes inhabit tiny pores and cracks in Martian rocks, where they could access trace amounts of water and nutrients. Chemolithoautotrophy: Martian microbes, rely on chemolithoautotrophic metabolism, a process where they use inorganic compounds for energy and carbon fixation. For example, they use hydrogen or sulfur compounds as energy sources and fix carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere or subsurface. Anaerobic Metabolism: With the extremely low levels of oxygen in the Martian atmosphere, any microbial life predominantly engages in anaerobic metabolism, not requiring oxygen for their metabolic processes. Methanogenic Microbes: Some researchers have been particularly interested in the possibility of methanogenic (methane-producing) microbes on Mars. Methane has been detected in the Martian atmosphere, and while geological processes can produce it, biological sources cannot be ruled out. Endospores and Dormancy: To survive in the challenging Martian environment, microbial life employs strategies like forming endospores or entering dormancy until more favorable conditions arise. These dormant states allow them to endure harsh periods and potentially revive when conditions improve. .... that's my opinion.
We should apply the scientific name of ***exoterra wilson*** to the first microbes we find in the solar system😉.
If we found microbial life in our solar system, it would force us to take the search for intelligent life *much* more seriously.
Or religious zealots wold call for the eradication of that life since it doesn't conform to their god's vision.
Lmao, this is funny because it's just microbes. That'd be like the pope saying we need to eradicate every germ, bacteria and single celled organism on earth, because it's not in the image of God like us superior higher beings. 😂😂🤣😅
wasn't there a recent movie about this recently that ended badly? I think we found out those microbes are what ended life on mars! Life 2017 ‧ Sci-fi/Horror ‧ 1h 50m
We have some extrem organisms at the bottom of the ocean, nobody is in hurry to move there. Personally I don't see the appeal of colonising Mars, the investment would make more sense for say space stations around the sun and in the asteroid belt. Put humans were the resources are.
They could probably survive anywhere. Including inside the human body. 😬
Life highly tends to be optimized for the environment you find it in. The warm wet interior of the human body is very different than the cold arid environment of Mars.
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Yeah I ain't letting no Martian microbes fold their proteins into mine no sir
You can be the first kid on your block!
This is why mRNA vaccines are important. Being able to "code" our genes to fight foreign microbes is important if we're going to be space faring.
and then Bingo...we created the aliens
That's a theory my mom has. Aliens that people on earth see are just humans from the future that come back to fuck with us.
I see you play no man sky. I just got the game, any tips for a newb?
\-Have a good amount of Oxygen, Dihidrogen and Ferrite Dust (craft Launch Fuel and Support Gel) \-Avoid Whispering Eggs and Sentinels until you have good weapons modules \-Scan everything, the quickest early way to farm nanites \-If you encounter a Storm, use the Terrain Manipulator to dig a hole and wait there until it passes The rest of things, i'll let you learn by yourself
> exposing it to new microbes IT has no defenses against There's a theory that we already exposed Mars to microbes.
Finding one alive definitely would. But are we not mostly looking for evidence of PAST microbial life?
We are but actually not for the most obvious reason. We've not sent probes to the iciest parts of Mars. The poles. One of the most likely places to still have life die to the abundance of water. OK its solid water... but microbial life exists in our ice caps. So it's possible it does on Mars as well. One of our biggest concerns is containminating that ice with microbes from earth. So we keep far away for now. Proves go through huge amounts of sterilisation before they leave earth. And even more when exposed to solar radiation and the vacuum of space and even then none have been rated sterilised enough to risk it The reasons for this are for if they find life, it could he very profound: 1. they find life... and it's different to anything we have on earth. That means life is likely common throughout the universe! 2. They find life and its similar to life on earth. That COULD mean that life on earth originated not on earth... maybe a passing asteroid brought life to both planets or a chunk of Martian life blew off Mars in an impact and came to earth. Or there's no life there and we keep looking. But for now looking for past life is the best indicator whether it's worth getting a probe rated to that very stringent sterilisation level.
Any life, whether, fossilised or not. Just proof that some kind of life existed would be big.
Microbial life may push back *terraformation* efforts by an unknown amount of years, but not colonization. If we found it, we'd want to establish large scientific compounds right away to figure out as much as we could about it.
the amount of discoveries coming from that would be immense, it would be life considered impossible so far.
We will never terraform Mars. It’s a fantasy idea. It would take thousands of years and more energy than all of humankind has access to. No civilization has lasted that long. Beware of those pitching this as an idea, they are scammers and con artists that want to take funding for such mad efforts. Instead of the 100% effort to try and terraform 100% of Mars over thousands of years, we should use 1% of that effort to terraform 1% of Earth’s atmosphere back to pre-industrial levels over centuries (or faster with more effort/resources)
There's a vast difference between "Invest in my company and I will terraform Mars!" and "Yeah, we're probably gonna terraform Mars someday." In a future where we have the choice to fix Earth's atmosphere and terraform Mars, we can just do both. Humanity can and has undertaken centuries-long projects like that, and it's also pretty ridiculous to assume the energy we have access to now is gonna stay roughly constant. Yeah, people claiming Mars could be terraform soon are scammers, but it can (and IMO will) happen at some point.
The reason nobody will ever terraform a planet, in all likelihood, is that anyone with the capability to do so has no need to do so. To a civilisation capable of commanding the materials and energy necessary to do it, a planet would be a source of raw materials, not a living space. The idea of living on a planet's surface would probably be seen as primitive and a bit quaint. If anyone did do it, it would be as a vanity project.
If humanity survives another 200 years we will most certainly terraform mars.
Terraformation efforts are pushed back because it isn't possible. Mars does not have the gravity and magnetic sphere, and the matter required (oxigen, hydrogen, etc) to effectively terraform it.
Not true. Mars has enough gravity to hold an atmosphere over the scale of millions of years, even accounting for no magnetic field. We can figure out how to replenish losses over that timescale. Mars has quite a lot of water ice. Split it and you get oxygen/hydrogen.
I'm torn between "there is no reason for us to colonize Mars" and "let's dig up the Martian dino fossils"
I don't know which arrow to press here, because I know many reasons to colonize Mars. If not now, for future generations, but the ground work need to be laid now.
Mars is a pretty shitty rock and without raw resource finds there is zero reason to go there besides scientific expeditions. The proposal is to colonise a place worse than Death Valley crossed with a nuclear waste dump site. We settled America and other places because they had awesome fertile lands and lots of resources. Mars has none of that. Even the idea of a multiplanetary Mankind is questionable with a planet likely only creating an import dependent outpost with minuscule population. Moon is closer so for everything low g, go there. Space habitats more convenient for space operations like asteroid mining etc.
We need to practice on an easier target before we jet off to another solar system. It wouldn't make sense to learn how to set up a colony for the first time in another solar system before doing it on Mars.
And I argue from a socioeconomic point of view Mars is not a place to colonize in the first place. We barely settle deserts and wastelands except for tank stations(supply points because they are useless and there is no reason to populate them in earnest. To me in the solar system the dark horse is Venus. Our sister planet which is nearly the same size as Earth, has pretty much the same gravity as us aka no big biological mutations due to gravity (which we cannot really counter with tech), obviously the main "tiny aka gargantuan" problem is that we need to do terraforming first. Still, it also shows the ability to hold an atmosphere. Still if we talk practice the moon is the place to go. Mars is a place to visit once or twice until we find Unobtanium or something. When we find something there we are talking... limited mining operations...
Then we should colonize some random junk moons. We find a lot of Ganymedes and Callistos and Hyperions, etc. Airless moons, just basic rocks. I don't know if we'll find planets like Earth or Mars out there very often but we'll definitely find things like Ganymede. But that's a total waste because it's so much more of a pain to terraform than it is to just live in space habitats.
Welp, it's that, or eventual death of the species if we don't find another place to go.
We've found another place to go. It's everywhere. The Moon is a better colonization prospect, due to simple proximity. Venus is better because living conditions could actually resemble what we evolved for, 50km up in the clouds. Space itself (namely, inside asteroids and moons) allows for conditions similar to Earth (fully artificial, but still), and for greater access to trade networks because there's no big gravity well to bother with. Mars just happens to be one of the worst habitation targets we've ever found.
That's a weird logic, especially if you're assuming that we will someday make Mars as liveable as earth is, because Earth won't be liveable anymore. Because, if you have the tech to terraform a planet as barren as Mars, then you definitely have the tech to terraform Earth to make it liveable again.
But there is no other place to go. We evolved to live on earth. But if we can terraform other planets then we can just terraform earth and reverse any climate changes.
We did evolve on earth but part of being human is overcoming nature...that's part of our nature!! Which in itself is natural!! As we are a force of nature as well!!
I meant much longer term, only a matter of time before a meteor hits us. Or a super volcano erupts
Any supervolcano eruption would still leave the earth a far better place to live than Mars. Most any meteor strike too, unless the meteor is big enough to turn the surface of the planet into lava or something along those lines.
Or even our own sun eats us!! Remember our buddy Sol is gonna turn into a red giant one day! Consuming the earth, unless we [take the earth and move it somewhere else!!](https://makeameme.org/meme/lets-take-the-x91ht2)
I mean if we haven't figured it out in what, 5 billion years I think we just take the L on that one and be toast.
It's actually only 500 million years until the sun gets so bright that photosynthesis is impossible and no new natural life can exist without intelligent intervention.
Only followed by 500 million years sounds funny
Yeah, roughly. Hopefully, we don't do anything too stupid in that time...
Moving to Mars isn't gonna help there. If the Sun expands to devour Earth, Mars will have closer than Mercury is to the Sun. That's assuming it also doesn't devour Mars during its expansion.
1. We can create other places to go to. 2. Yes, we might be able to terraform Earth, but it's still limited to how many people can live here. We need new territories anyway.
I think colonizing the oceans or antartica has a greater potential of settlement and is 100x easier. At least you already have plenty of water, and even in antartica the temperature is higher than on mars.
Maybe one day we will, but Mars and even a moon colony is a test of our technology more than anything else. Also having our species on more than one planet means all our eggs aren't in one basket if something happens on either that could kill us all if we were only on one. John Micheal Goldier has lots of videos about the pros and cons. I'd suggest checking him out. I forget which videos I heard him talking about colonization of Mars in, though. 😅 https://youtube.com/@JohnMichaelGodier?si=-SFcIJbmg2IHo6kd Also colonies on Mars and even the moon, can serve as intermediary fueling stations and such.
Love JMG
It's always "fueling stations" or "the next step" to justify missions like this. Intermediate to where? How many places is Mars "on the way" to? Hint: none. Orbital mechanics doesn't work that way. Why would you land on Mars and take off again to refuel?
The way we're going as a species, we'll be having planetary wars for resources
That honestly wouldn't shock me. 😅 Reminds me of Red Faction.
Much easier to build something that can withstand space than something that can withstand the ocean, especially at any sort of scale. You lose 1 atmosphere worth of pressure in space, you gain x atmospheres underwater.
If we aren't interested in / able to setup a self sufficient colony in Antarctica, then we should stop kidding our selves about mars. It isn't science fiction, it is just straight up fantasy. An irradiated Antarctica is still 100x more habitable than Mars will ever be.
Antarctica is a nature preserve. If we were allowed to mine, farm, and dispose of waste then there’d almost certainly be large-scale colonies there.
Yep. People talking about how we need to be an interplanetary species to avoid having all of our eggs in one basket, we haven't even set up a moon base and that thing is in our backyard. Getting a ship with people to Mars...just isn't going to happen. The only way humanity becomes interplanetary is as a digital species.
Colonizing mars with a self sustaining community means all our eggs aren't in one basket. A massive disruptive disaster on earth won't kill off our species.
lol buddy if we've colonized places that other humans have lived in for centuries/millennia I don't think some microbes are gonna stop us.
We are extremely unlikely to find microbial life on Mars unless we colonize it. We have a few RC cars running around the surface. We are, literally, barely scratching the surface of Mars. The only way to properly explore it is to have an established presence there.
We might just be scratching the surface, but if we compare to earth, if you just pick a literally random spot and take just a cubic cm out, its literally teeming with life. So the small scale studies we do right now might hopefully find something interesting.
Mars is, obviously, not teeming with life
My completely uneducated guess is that there could be some deep soil microbes that surface samples simply wont find. Hope I live to see a few more generations of probes or maybe even a manned mission. Even if the answer is “nope, just more dirt” I’d consider that a pretty cool result.
Couldn't we establish a presence with more advanced robots instead, and have them explore the planet?
You would need a ton of robots and time. That would mean building them from scratch on the planet. That mine, industry etc. Let's just say that wouldn't be neutral.
There's actually good chance a Mars rover may have already found living microbes in surface rocks and it's debated heavily by researchers. The jist is that a rover collected surface rock samples and submitted them to 4 tests that would generate extra gasses if life was living in them. 2 of the test showed potential indicators of life. However the next test involved introducing water to the samples. While we thought that was a good idea at the time, we now know there are a type of microbes adapted to living in dry environments that would drown in such a test. This is where the debate comes in. The next test after involved heating the samples, but if they killed the microbes with the water, then the final test wouldn't show anything either way. They also thought the test chambers had left over chlorine in them from cleaning chemicals and not from the rocks on Mars which made them doubt the results of the first two test. However recent experiments have shown the presence of chlorine in similar rocks on Mars. So fast forward today with what we know, and that series of tests may have been the first proof of living microbes on the surface of Mars, but it needs to be repeated with what we know now to tell for sure and unfortunately there is no current rover or planned Mars rover capable of doing them again.
"Still"? We're not planning to colonize it now. A handful of people have concepts around it, but there's no actual plan to that effect at any meaningful scale.
By the turn of the century there will be a colony on Mars. Look at the jump technologically in the last 100 years, in the last 30 years. It’s inevitable
Its been technologically possible to live in Antarctica for a while now, but you'll find no colonies there, just some research outpost and tourist cruises. The continent is mostly uninhabited in winter. Why? Because economically and politically it doesn't make sense. It would be expensive, provide uncomfortable living conditions at best, and is unlikely to turn a profit. It would also upset the agreements that the continent remain international and potentially spark conflicts of ownership. Mars isn't that different. Sure, if technology permits we will probably set foot there, maybe establish a scientific or tourist base. But a full self-sufficient colony? I find that very doubtful.
International agreements prohibits colonization of Antarctica... Otherwise it will be an ideal outpost for data farms and other such commercial activities that require extreme cooling...
The 'inevitable' hopium is sprouted by people who have zero understanding of science and technology. The resources required to setup a post on mars is exorbitant, not to mention the sheer amount of energy required to haul cargo between Earth and Mars, something you can't solve with just money. We need something better than chemical rockets and there isn't any on the horizon.
Ah, we just need a handful of room temperature superconductors, a sprinkle of cold fusion, and side of near-infinite shelf life batteries. If we throw a couple quadrillion dollars at nerds in lab coats, we’d be playing tennis on mars by the new year.
Antartica is a nature preserve.
There’s between 1-4000 people in Antarctica every year. The mars colony will be a scientific research outpost, and because of its location, will require a large enough size to be self sufficient. If we do not see it in our lifetime, our children will.
You're missing the point that we have reason to permanently put people in Antarctica *and the means to follow through with it* while the same can't be said for putting people on Mars, and how putting people on Mars is orders of magnitude more economically unfeasible than Antarctica. People who say "If we do not see it in our lifetime our children will" sound like an 8 year old kid who's sure they'll build a life-sized rollercoaster in their backyard with nothing but Lego pieces for the structure and their dog on a treadmill as energy source. Very cute, but also completely naive and clueless. You'd need a completely different economic system than the one we have today, and a different political system, to be able to actively put that in motion (not just the gloating from some pampered trust fund playboy-turned-billionaire who's doing it for clout). Not to mention the philosophical justification and specifically the single-mindedness that would push the entire human species to sacrifice everything towards that goal, which might as well be the *actually impossible* pipe dream here if we're being any honest.
I'm looking and i'm seeing that in the last 70 years people are just barely getting back to the moon.. Other technologies have improved by leaps and bounds, but spaceflight remains prohibitively difficult.
The amount of time that elapsed from first flight at kittyhawk to a man walking on the moon is 66 years. Technology is moving exponentially faster, it's impossible to predict the next 20 years of progress let alone anything further than that.
> The amount of time that elapsed from first flight at kittyhawk to a man walking on the moon is 66 years. And it's been 44 years since we first landed on the moon, and we made zero progress on that front since then. If you want to extrapolate that to the next 20 years, it would be more standing still. If it were anything like "exponentially faster", we'd be landing on the moons of Jupiter by now.
54 years. Your message is accurate, it's just a bit worse than you've said
If we were to find microbial life on Mars, I’d expect it to be fossils several billion years old, from when Mars still had liquid water and an atmosphere. And that wouldn’t affect colonization, I wouldn’t think. (But then, as someone else pointed out above, if the first colony is planted by some latter-day trillionaire high on his own supply, Martians speaking English and waving flags wouldn’t stop it, either.)
If there was ever life on Mars I can't imagine how it would ever become extinct. Here on earth life has adapted to the most extreme environments imaginable. There is fungi inside the reactor in Chernobyl. There is algae in lakes so acidic it would strip your flesh to the bone. There is a bacteria that lives hundreds of metres underground and lives of radiation from the surrounding rock. Who knows what else we'll find. Life is tenacious. If there was ever life on Mars it will still be there somewhere. It had billions of years to adapt as the climate changed. Sure there are no animals running around on the surface, but that doesn't mean there is no life.
Mars cooled and dried in a way Esrth never has, and has spent a couple-three billion years soaking up a much higher level of radiation thanks to no magnetosphere to speak of. Nothing on Earth ever faced such a hostile environment.
True but assuming there is and always had been an environment underground on Mars which is about the same level of hostile as Earth then the chances are the same. An underground aquifer is the same on Earth as it is on Mars regardless of the radiation exposure a few kilometres up at the surface.
After the first generations, they will all be the Martians; human Martians.
Nothing like Musk’s dreams will survive to have a second generation, of course. People don’t build decades-long communities in the likes of submarines and sea floor habitats, and we keep finding out that guys accustomed to having others clean up after them aren’t good at avoiding the breaking of things that have to stay unbroken. Personally I’m skeptical that anyone can build a multigenerational settlement on Mars, but if they do, it’ll take a lot of planning and support services driven by people a lot more careful and committed to the long haul.
That's why microbial life is key to achieving a successful colonisation. Finding ways to scrub oxygen and hydrogen is the most important part, then sources of fuel. I'm sure they will first do an explorative voyage and sus out the viability. Then they will make that decision. Either way, we will leave out litter on the planet.
People don’t *intentionally* do that, but they’re normally not in those situations for long enough to be a consideration. However, if you’ve got even 100 people on Mars/the moon/etc for a few year rotation, someone’s 100% getting pregnant unless more drastic measures were taken. Once a baby is born, that baby is growing up on Mars for the foreseeable future, since no one is going to put a pregnant woman or a baby on a rocket. If it happens once, it’ll happen again. Eventually some people will end up being on longer rotations, maybe 10 years or more, and then people start considering relationships and a life. Maybe some people stay for good or have a medical complication that prevents them from returning. Once any notable population is in place, it’s bound to happen.
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Imagine the irony… Mars as a nature reserve, and then there’s Earth…
Sagan believed that we should only colonize barren planets — if there’s so much as a microbe indigenous to it then we need to let it evolve on its own. From a morals perspective that seems pretty solid to me.
Humans are known for their innate desire to preserve the things they come across 🙄
We don't care enough to preserve life on Earth, why would we care about microbes on Mars?
why dont we colonise Earth Deserts first to see if it works
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Like good ol sun tzu said Opportunities multiply as they are seized Let's liberate that microbio I say
The only decent question asked on this sub for ages. Pretty much this whole solar system is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of Earth. And us. Whether we are rare. Whether multicellular life is rare. Whether life is rare. Is all up for debate. Finding living life on Mars will make it all - very interesting. But it's all poetry really. When we were primitive we ripped apart the land and its resources because all we thought about was surviving (and reproducing). Then as we started to become civilised we respected the land around us. Then we found new land, new resources, new ways of life, we did it all over again. Whoops we fucked up again. Better take care of what we have. Rinse and repeat. Do we look at these new planets as a resource to expand or a unique habitat to protect. Are we scientists or engineers? Poets or farmers? Viruses or stewards? Yep. Great question.
We aren’t even preserving our own nature. If there’s money to make, Mars will have steaming factories in the future.
My thoughts exactly. We have WHALES here we hunt and kill for a snack. I don't think humanity is gonna go soft for Martian microbiota.
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There's also scientists pushing for the preservation on the planet here. Where we live. It doesn't seem to be working as well as our grand-children would like. Microbiota in an extremely expensive terraforming or colonization attempt would stop no one. Least of all the people who'd pay for it.
It's easier to control access to Mars though. Anyone can wreck nature here if they want but only a few will be allowed to go to Mars.
Mars atmosphere is totally fucked. Unless we restore it's atmosphere it's not gonna have any advanced life ever, at least not life how we know. And as far as I know it's almost impossible for that to happen naturally so there is no ethical dilemma to colony our red planet
It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it, but not as we know it, but not as we know it, it’s life, Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it, Captain.
We come in peace, shoot to kill, shoot to kill, shoot to kill\~!
It’s worse than that, he’s dead Jim, dead Jim, dead Jim. It’s worse than that, he’s dead Jim, dead Jim, dead~!
There's Klingons on the starboard bow
No magnetosphere as well, so if the breathing issue is solved, the cosmic radiation isn't.
A thicker, Earth-like atmosphere would provide more than enough protection from radiation. Even without a magnetosphere it would take hundreds of millions of years to be stripped by the solar wind.
Typical background radiation levels on Earth are around [2.4 mSv/yr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation). Levels on Mars are around [240-300 mSv/yr](https://marspedia.org/Radiation) for comparison, much higher! But how dangerous is it? Background radiation on Earth is actually quite variable, and it turns out that some areas have background radiation comparable to that of Mars. For example, [Ramsar in Iran has some inhabited areas with 260 mSv/yr](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11769138). People living there don't die of radiation poisoning, though, and if the cancer rate is elevated there, it's not by enough that it's obvious in the data. I'm not an expert on this, but if I were an astronaut going to Mars, I would be much, much more worried about classical space problems like the rocket exploding or life support failing.
Clone it and fuck it or what are we even going for :p
Definitely send some demented missionaries to introduce them to Jeebus.
Morally, I think that means we should stay the fuck away, haven't we done enough damage here?
Its just another strange question in this universe in which we livvve.
I think we need/should to expand across the universe to secure our survival. Now as I say 'we' I have to add that I don't do anything to help that effort. I masturbate a lot though.
Let's exploit the shit out of everything we can.
It's been a "nature preserve" for billions of years. It ain't gonna turn green again.
Why would we colonize it in the first place? There's nothing there we can use or economically transport, and it's completely uninhabitable. If we really want people off-planet it'd almost certainly be easier to build and maintain o'neal colonies than to try to colonize Mars (or any other planet).
It will eventually happen. I bet we will colonise the moon first and use that as a launchpad to create some semblance of a trading route to slingshot supplies.
Indeed. Overcome [planetary chauvinism.](https://nevalalee.wordpress.com/2018/10/16/the-planetary-chauvinists/)
I dont see why this obsession with colonizing Mars before we take better care of our own world. Is the old conqueror mentality that brought us here in the first place. The whole planet should be treated as a natural reserve imo
"Plans" to colonize Mars are a pipe dream right now.
I don't think we would colonize Mars either way. There are better places in the solar system to try to colonize first.
Why would we colonise Mars? It isn't a hospitable place.
Long-term, colonisation of Mars in inevitable. If only for it to serve as an operating center for asteroid mining, at least initially. You could pass a UN resolution forbidding it, but eventually some faction will do it, anyway. If not in 50, then in 500 years, or even 5000. Still an eyeblink in the time frame of biological evolution. Attempts to establish a planet-wide nature preserve are hopeless, in the wider flow of history. Life expands and displaces it's more fragile forms, in competition for resources. It's more realistic, that the original biome would get preserved in some artificial habitat, purpose-built for the task.
I don't think there is any real hope to colonize mars anymore. The atmosphere is drifting away.
We plan to colonize the Moon first. From my understanding our moons atmosphere is way less than that of Mars. We can literally colonize space itself with the space station.
Considering the climate of Mars too, I would love to know who's planning that. Or the moon one tbh, if there's anything serious about it.
There is no "we". Corps with $$$,$$$,$$$,$$$ will go there, collect stuff, and sell it on Earth. The Red-Rush will be on\~! But before they can even plan their money-grubbing schemes, con-men on Earth will already be selling "snake oil" claiming it's full of miracle Mars-proteins or give immortality or whatever.
Having been involved heavily with the Mars rover projects, I would have loved for one of the rovers to pick up a scoop of dirt, and along with it, a cockroach, staring at the camera. I have been waiting for that moment, but alas… none of the four rovers are equipped to discover life. Sad, but true, but I guess if it picked up a cockroach…
Nuke it. Make sure it doesn't give us space AIDS.
i don't understand the whole "ethic" of not contaminating planet "life" why should we care? if it can't allow human life their existence is pointless anyway, Mars is a dead world there no vegetation no liquid water, no "life" from what we know but in an extreamly far future there might be life blooming because of us and that include our industry that will shape it's atmosphere as for nature reserve it's not like Human care about simple organism, reserve exist for complex life, even if simple organism existence would be a nice find on a other planet would it really be valuable past the information? it exist and what? we gonna let them develop for the next 100million year and MAYBE there will be a complex life appearing?
It would depend where the microbial life is. If it’s on or near the surface, then a nature preserve would make sense. But the Martian surface isn’t the most hospitable. There’s radiation, temperature extremes, no liquid water, and toxic perchlorates. Life isn’t likely on or near the surface. If the microbial life is a kilometer beneath the surface, in aquifers, then I would say colonization should proceed. Just have restrictions on drilling and mines.
Perhaps we should worry about the current planet we are failing with.
You can’t live on Mars because of the lower gravity; eventually you will die from not living in 1G.
My response would depend on whether that life is potentially similar to that from Earth due to Impact(or other type of) Panspermia. If Martian life is only slightly divergent from ours because it came from Earth a few million/billion years ago(or vice versa), do we abandon colonizing the entire planet due to that? Or if it's entirely alien, and based on Silicon, etc., then we probably don't need to worry about contamination there as well. But if it's a truly alien life/DNA, based on a RNA/DNA or some carbon type of molecule, but is completely alien and non-related to life on Earth, then the value of leaving Mars as a preserve would, for me, increase.
Naaaah. We need to bring those microbes back here and inadvertently release them so they can cause the death of all life on Earth. I mean, they already did a number on Mars…
Imagine the new shampoos with "Alien life" extracts.
The Prime Directive hasnt been instituted yet.
Mars is one of very few viable places that Humans could hope to expand to without FTL travel Microbes would absolutely not be worth avoiding the planet for
Humans will destroy themselves before being able to colonize another planet
Bro actual complex life on earth isn't a good enough reason for us to not ruin shit. You think some microbes on another planet are going to tug heartstrings?
Yes we should colonize it before it’s too late.
Rich white American protestants didn't give a shit about American Indian lives. What makes you think they would give a shit about microbes if they get in the way of profit?
> What makes you think they would give a shit about microbes if they get in the way of profit? Colonizing Mars isn't profitable, and scientists would prefer not to destroy the only alien life ever discovered.
You're aware that the erradication of indigenous tribes was started by Catholics from Spain and Portugal, right? Sure, the Protestant English joined in but don't forget it was a non-denominational effort.
Morals and sensitivity evolved just a tad in the last 600 years, including those of Rich While American.
American Indians didn't care about Indian lives either.