Life on Mars after all?

[Graham Kennedy]

Source

New analysis of 36-year-old data, resuscitated from printouts, shows NASA found life on Mars, an international team of mathematicians and scientists conclude in a paper published this week.

Further, NASA doesn't need a human expedition to Mars to nail down the claim, neuropharmacologist and biologist Joseph Miller, with the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, told Discovery News.

"The ultimate proof is to take a video of a Martian bacteria. They should send a microscope -- watch the bacteria move," Miller said.

Wouldn't it be just amazing to find that we've had this evidence all along, and just didn't realise it?

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

One hell of a whiplash for the scientific community, methinks.

[McAvoy]

That is a hell of a way to give victory while looking stupid.

[Mikey]

IDK, the history of science is full of "we knew that all alongs." If it were obvious evidence, I'd say it could make NASA look stupid. If, however, it requires a dedicated team of neuropharmacologists to find that evidence, I'll give NASA a pass.

[Captain Seafort]

IDK, the history of science is full of "we knew that all alongs."

It's also full of "everything we knew for a fact is wrong...oops, no it isn't." The recent miscalculation over the speed of neutrinos for example.

[Teaos]

They have 'discovered' life on mars half a dozen times. But none have been 100% conclusive just like I doubt this will be.

[Atekimogus]

Now I have no clue whatsoever, but if they send a microscope to the mars for "filming" bacteria.......can they ever be 100% sure when they find something, that it originated on mars and isn't some bacteria they brought along on the microscope itself?

Some of those microorganism are supposed to be pretty resilient afaik.

[Mikey]

No scientific observation can ever be 100% sure of anything. There seems to be rather sophisticated and effective ways of trying to ensure that such a microscope wouldn't be observing a sample contaminant, though.

[Graham Kennedy]

Space probes are generally built in high level clean room conditions and very thoroughly sterilised for that exact reason.

But if they do find bacteria with a pretty cheap and simple test like that, it would surely lead to follow ups that could either do DNA analysis on the spot or return a sample. Earthly DNA would stand out a mile, I'd imagine.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

They have 'discovered' life on mars half a dozen times. But none have been 100% conclusive just like I doubt this will be.

Says Marvin the Martian. Your thinly veiled attempt at subterfuge won't work here!

Here, the usual peculiarities of scientific progress are magnified by virtue of the fact we've been limited to gathering clues from simple probes; we can hardly grab Mars and put it on a lab bench. It's not quite like drawing a picture from the shadow of a thing you can't directly see.

[Atekimogus]

But if they do find bacteria with a pretty cheap and simple test like that, it would surely lead to follow ups that could either do DNA analysis on the spot or return a sample. Earthly DNA would stand out a mile, I'd imagine.

Are you sure about that? Again, I have no real clue of biology and DNA but if we assume that life only develops under certain circumstances, wouldn't the DNA of very simply organism....well, be relativly similar, no matter where they originated?

Given how often bacteria and viruses are mutating etc. how can you be really certain, that it's "mars" dna, and not just another mutated earth micro-organism?


I would imagine short of really going up there, turning over a rock and finding something.....you can't be really sure.

[Graham Kennedy]

Even assuming alien life used DNA at all, it would probably be very different to ours. You can track changes and relationships between Earthly life through how much DNA it has in common - it's one of the great proofs of common ancestry and evolution. Alien life wouldn't show any of those sorts of commonalities, it would stick out like a sore thumb.

[Teaos]

Unless when life forms, DNA is a standard model. There have been papers suggesting that DNA or RNA would likely to be seen in even alien life. Much like if you leave hydrogen on oxygen together you get water, not just on earth but everywhere.

[Graham Kennedy]

I'm not doubting that DNA would be used by alien life. But it would still be very different from Earthly DNA, having come from a completely separate evolutionary line.

[Mikey]

Even if it were shown that DNA universally prefers a typical structure, like our terrestrial double helix, different compounds are available in different quantities on other planets. Unless a planet has EXTREMELY similar occurrences of chemical compounds to Earth, it's highly unlikely that organisms would develop using the same 2-deoxyribose - or any other pentose sugar - as is done on Earth; and further it's even more unlikely that extraterrestrial DNA would also use only the same adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine as we use for nucleotide base.

Of course, different nucleotides would mean a different shape of connections, which would alter the shape of a chromosome from the 3'/5' we all know and love... and a non-pentose peptide would likely mean an overall structure far removed from any sort of double helix, asymmetrical or not.