John Grotzinger, Curiosity’s chief scientist, recently revealed to NPR that the Mars rover has made a discovery “for the history books.” Is it life? There are several lines of evidence indicating that it is. This would be the biggest scientific discovery of our generation. If Curiosity did discover life, what type of life could it be? What is it based on? And how would it change the way we view life in the universe?
I am going with DNA-based microbial life, originated on Mars. Why not? If it's life, I don't mind be wrong about the rest. :) If this is indeed signs of life, then I can only hope that it will give a serious shot in the arm to further exploration of our solar system. Also, it could give the human race a healthy fresh perspective.
I'm excited to learn more.Also, it could give the human race a healthy fresh perspective.
I hope you are right about this. I think the majority of humans won't believe life exists outside of earth unless it looks like something from Star Trek. The best marketers on earth (Christian churches) will have their way with it.
I think the discovery of life would definitely be a major incentive to further explore Jupiter's and Saturn's moon systems. I would be incredibly shocked if Europa didn't have microbial life.
My guess is amino acids. Either way I think it's a ringing endorsement for Stuart Kauffman. Life is a rule not an exception. But if its life then we didn't need curiosity. NASA already discovered life on Mars in the 70s.
Amino acids is a great guess. At the very least I'm expecting some form of organic compound.
You watching this announcement? I'm just tuning in but it looks like they found organic compounds but haven't determined if they're indigenous to Mars?
Appears as though if Mars does have life - it is most likely underneath the surface of Mars. My guess would be extremophiles that adapted to life beneath the surface after Mars lost its atmosphere. It will be interesting to find out when exactly Mars lots its atmosphere. And it will be even more interesting to see if they can determine where the organic compounds came from...
"most important aspect of this is that we landed on an ancient riverbed" It is fantastic that we now have direct evidence of that... even know indirectly everyone suspected that Mars 3.5 billion years ago quite like Earth is today.
Tuning in. Yes... appears to be able to tell us a lot about the past environment on Mars as well. This is really exciting.
Of course, I agree that is a possibility. For all we know all life develops on asteroids and is seeded to planets from outer space. Good point.
Was it not on this site that someone had a profound discussion about hoping that Life will NOT be discovered on Mars. The thinking was a bit like that:
-There should be aliens every where. But we still didnt find any.
-The reason is either: life is ultra super rare, or life is doomed to disappear (for various reason: super volcano, gamma ray, self destruction, etc..)
- If we find trace of life on other planet that mean life isnt rare. So the second explanation is the correct one: we're doomed to disappear. It was a nice read, but cant find it anymore. As I didnt post it here, I should have read it from here.
I tried to find the discussion you are referring to, but couldn't. I don't remember it in particular. That is a depressing take. However, my personal belief is that if life isn't extremely rare, then we are likely missing the presense of more advanced life because we are observing in the wrong spectrum. As much as our technology has advanced in the last 100 years, I predict that our lives will be utterly incomprehensible to us in 500 years. In fact, I would bet that we will have separated consciouness from living matter by that point. It's my guess that life that is even just a bit more advanced than ours in terms of cosmic timescales is something of an entirely different nature. It might be only loosely tied to time and space as we know it.If we find trace of life on other planet that mean life isnt rare. So the second explanation is the correct one: we're doomed to disappear.
I think it is also important to consider the possibility that microbial life is very common, but complex organisms are very, very rare. For 1.5 billion years life on Earth was nothing but unicellular organisms. It was a gigantic evolutionary leap to go from unicellular to multicellular organisms. The conditions need to be just right for billions of years. On top of that, there have been literally trillions of multicellular organisms and only one of them has the capacity to understand the universe in the way we do.
http://hubski.com/pub?id=46716 Your summary is basically correct. Nice read, but ignores the fact that we're dealing with a relatively small sample size. And I think I'd rather find more life but be doomed to disappear than be extremely rare, personally.