A step closer to life on Mars

[CaptainCrunch]

As the martians invade earth, they land their UFO on the front lawn of the whitehouse and the first alien steps onto earth and sends that fatefull historic radio message back to his gelatonous overseer on mars

"This is one small leap for martiankind, and one giant step on mankind"

Then they exterminate us with methane clouds

[Bagor]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Look we need to get to mars right away, and exploit it.

We could solve our garbage issues by building landfills, our heating issues by drilling for methane, and our money issues by building amusement parks.

Its all there waiting for us people, lets go get rich.

and sending all the Asian ganstas there.

[Daradon]

Originally Posted by atb

There is a side which suggests finding life on Mars could be bad news for us because of the "Great Filter". It's an interesting read:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/id..._dread_planet/

http://hanson.gmu.edu/greatfilter.html

That's a little depressing.

[Thor]

Originally Posted by Five-hole

You might have been thinking of Saturn's moon Titan, which has a relatively thick atmosphere with a similar pressure to that of Earth's made up of mostly methane gas. Next to Europa it has probably the highest probability of any other body in our solar system of sustaining life. Neptune's moon Triton might be next.

Caveat: it's been a while since I've corroborated my so-called facts.

I think your facts are slightly old, but you might be right about hope for Titan. I'm pretty sure the one with the most hope now is Europa, I saw a discovery doc on the topic and it seemed to fit a number of key ingredients for some basic life, the most important it the ocean under the thick ice which would be a reasonable temperature and the friction from its orbit causing a warming in its core.

[GreenTeaFrapp]

I was kind of hoping this thread would be about the ABC show, Life on Mars, which I hope is returning to their schedule. It seemed like kind of a lame concept but for some reason I really enjoyed it.

[onetwo_threefour]

Originally Posted by Thor

I think your facts are slightly old, but you might be right about hope for Titan. I'm pretty sure the one with the most hope now is Europa, I saw a discovery doc on the topic and it seemed to fit a number of key ingredients for some basic life, the most important it the ocean under the thick ice which would be a reasonable temperature and the friction from its orbit causing a warming in its core.

Not to nitpick, (especially since I might be wrong) but aren't tidal forces from Saturn considered to be a more likely source of heating than friction from it's orbit? I'm not sure how closely Europa orbits Saturn or whether it 's orbit passes through the rings, but one would think you'd have to have a pretty serious density of material to create non-trivial heating of Europa's atmosphere via friction, let alone the sub-ice oceans.

[Thor]

Originally Posted by onetwo_threefour

Not to nitpick, (especially since I might be wrong) but aren't tidal forces from Saturn considered to be a more likely source of heating than friction from it's orbit? I'm not sure how closely Europa orbits Saturn or whether it 's orbit passes through the rings, but one would think you'd have to have a pretty serious density of material to create non-trivial heating of Europa's atmosphere via friction, let alone the sub-ice oceans.

Yeah, its badly worded by me as I meant the gravity from Saturn cause the friction for the warming, as its really all about allowing for a liquid ocean with reasonable temps for life.

As per wiki "The apparent youth and smoothness of the surface have led to the hypothesis that a water ocean exists beneath it, which could conceivably serve as an abode for extraterrestrial life.[11] Heat energy from tidal flexing ensures that the ocean remains liquid and drives geological activity."

Love this image, gives people an idea of why this is such a promising place to search for life:

[onetwo_threefour]

S'alright, I was just checking to see if maybe there was something out there I wasn't aware of.

Thanks for not making fun of my apostrophe catastrophe...

I know it's not 'it's' when it's possessive, and yet my hands are completely unwilling to type 'its' and my internal editing only ever catches it when I go back and read much later. It's quite strange.

[troutman]

"All These Worlds Are Yours Except Europa. Attempt No Landings There."

- HAL