Big news imminent re: Mars ??

[Damocles]

Wow, that's a lot of assumptions. The biggest seems to be that each planet revolving around one of 500 billion stars in 500 billion universes has a broadly equal chance of sustaining life.

Do you have evidence to suggest that this is not the case? Considering that the Universe contains broadly the same elements, the same laws and has been shown to produce millions of species on one world, I don't see how you could reasonably take this stance.

I think we're up to 118 separate elements in the periodic table. The assumption that at the big bang there were no more than 118 elements and we got at least a small share of all of them is quite a big one. But there's no way of knowing whether our share of all the elements in the universe is compeltely atypical, slightly imbalanced or average in ever conceivable way, so let's park that one.

The Universe is the same in all directions. There were two elements at the earliest part of the Big Bang, Hydrogen and then Helium. The rest formed due to stellar nucleosynthesis, and taking the even distribution of Hydrogen and therefore a pretty even distribution of Helium (as the Universe had the same conditions all over), it is more than logical to assume that there is a pretty even distribution of elements.

Then there is the issue of the conditions necessary to support the formation or sustenance of life. Does this require an atmosphere? Well, if it does, that rules out any lumps of rock in space which do not have an atmosphere of their own. (The number of planets of which we have any actual evidence of there being an atmosphere is quite small, as I understand it.)

There is an atmosphere on every planet in the Solar System. Mercury has a thin atmosphere of hydrogen, oxygen, water vapour and potassium. There is evidence to suggest that it had a thicker atmosphere in the past that was blown away by solar winds due to the low gravity of Mercury. Venus has a very thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide and is a world of constant storms. It is actually the sister planet of Earth, and a study of what happens when you put a shedload of carbon dioxide into an atmosphere. Mars also has an atmosphere mainly of carbon dioxide but there's some nitrogen, argon and methane in there too. Jupiter and Saturn have "atmospheres" of Hydrogen and Helium. I use inverted commas there as they have no real land so the point at which the planet begins and the atmosphere ends is an exercise in futility. Both Neptune and Uranus are methane based atmospheres with ammonia, methane and water vapour.

Some of the Moon's of Jupiter and Saturn also contain an atmosphere.

Our atmosphere's composition is well know, but this is actually our third atmosphere, believed to be changed by bacterial life that fed off of methane and excreted oxygen.

Atmospheres are very common to planets because of the way that planets form. The colour that we see the outer planets are actually due to their atmospheres, as they absorb light of the spectrum on the red side. However, nobody is exactly sure how the ice giants formed but both successful models create an atmosphere and as it has one, it seems close enough.

What about temperature? Well, the temperature on any given planet will depend on a number of variables, the size of the sun and its distance from the planet in question being obvious ones, as well as the planet's own internal dynamics (eg geo-thermal issues) but of course it's the temperature of the atmosphere rather than the planet itself (a fine distinction perhaps but an important one) which is important. But being too hot or too cold will rule out a number of other possible candidates.

I disagree. Life has formed on Earth in conditions ranging from an entire planet of Lava, a "snowball Earth", an entirely methane based atmosphere and what we have today. We have found bacterial life in the harshest conditions on the Earth and have successfully shown that some bacterial strains can survive even in the harshness of space for periods of time.

Each step along the way, you rule out a large number of planets. In our own solar system realistically it is unlikely that any organic life either is or has ever been present elsewhere than Earth and Mars. So if 7/9s of our own solar system (and let's not get into semantics about Pluto and everything beyond) is incapable of sustaining life or its creation, it isn't unreasonable to suspect that the same broad proportion applies to the other 5 planets (average) revolving around 500 billion stars in 500 billion other galaxies.

In our Solar System, I wouldn't even rate Mars that highly. I think Venus has an excellent chance of life due to the amount of heat, energy and hydrides but we cannot get to it properly to test. Europa may be our best shot and is a Moon of Jupiter. It looks to have liquid water underneath the surface and crucially gets irradiated by Jupiter and has carbon dioxide in its atmosphere. When you irridiate carbon dioxide, you get formaldehyde, an essential building block for life. It also has Jupiter's magnetic field breaking down the ice into hydrogen and some compounds to produce energy and a feeding source.
Enceladus and Titan are also excellent candidates. Enceladus might even have an ocean upon it.

Even so, the chances that life occurred uniquely here still apprear pretty small - if you accept as gospel truth the various extrapolations which astronomers adopt to fill in some of the gaps in the current state of their knowledge.

You mistake gaps in their knowledge for gaps in your knowledge.

However - and this was really the point of my last post (however stupid you might have considered its premise to be) IF the reality is that of all the places in the universe this is the only one where the right combination of things happened in the right way to create life, that would (IMO) be a rather awe inspiring fact.

It would be an almost unbelievably impossible thing so rare that nobody should be suggesting such a thing.

 

[Chris in London]

Wow, that's a lot of assumptions. The biggest seems to be that each planet revolving around one of 500 billion stars in 500 billion universes has a broadly equal chance of sustaining life.

Do you have evidence to suggest that this is not the case? Considering that the Universe contains broadly the same elements, the same laws and has been shown to produce millions of species on one world, I don't see how you could reasonably take this stance.

I think we're up to 118 separate elements in the periodic table. The assumption that at the big bang there were no more than 118 elements and we got at least a small share of all of them is quite a big one. But there's no way of knowing whether our share of all the elements in the universe is compeltely atypical, slightly imbalanced or average in ever conceivable way, so let's park that one.

The Universe is the same in all directions. There were two elements at the earliest part of the Big Bang, Hydrogen and then Helium. The rest formed due to stellar nucleosynthesis, and taking the even distribution of Hydrogen and therefore a pretty even distribution of Helium (as the Universe had the same conditions all over), it is more than logical to assume that there is a pretty even distribution of elements.

Then there is the issue of the conditions necessary to support the formation or sustenance of life. Does this require an atmosphere? Well, if it does, that rules out any lumps of rock in space which do not have an atmosphere of their own. (The number of planets of which we have any actual evidence of there being an atmosphere is quite small, as I understand it.)

There is an atmosphere on every planet in the Solar System. Mercury has a thin atmosphere of hydrogen, oxygen, water vapour and potassium. There is evidence to suggest that it had a thicker atmosphere in the past that was blown away by solar winds due to the low gravity of Mercury. Venus has a very thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide and is a world of constant storms. It is actually the sister planet of Earth, and a study of what happens when you put a shedload of carbon dioxide into an atmosphere. Mars also has an atmosphere mainly of carbon dioxide but there's some nitrogen, argon and methane in there too. Jupiter and Saturn have "atmospheres" of Hydrogen and Helium. I use inverted commas there as they have no real land so the point at which the planet begins and the atmosphere ends is an exercise in futility. Both Neptune and Uranus are methane based atmospheres with ammonia, methane and water vapour.

Some of the Moon's of Jupiter and Saturn also contain an atmosphere.

Our atmosphere's composition is well know, but this is actually our third atmosphere, believed to be changed by bacterial life that fed off of methane and excreted oxygen.

Atmospheres are very common to planets because of the way that planets form. The colour that we see the outer planets are actually due to their atmospheres, as they absorb light of the spectrum on the red side. However, nobody is exactly sure how the ice giants formed but both successful models create an atmosphere and as it has one, it seems close enough.

What about temperature? Well, the temperature on any given planet will depend on a number of variables, the size of the sun and its distance from the planet in question being obvious ones, as well as the planet's own internal dynamics (eg geo-thermal issues) but of course it's the temperature of the atmosphere rather than the planet itself (a fine distinction perhaps but an important one) which is important. But being too hot or too cold will rule out a number of other possible candidates.

I disagree. Life has formed on Earth in conditions ranging from an entire planet of Lava, a "snowball Earth", an entirely methane based atmosphere and what we have today. We have found bacterial life in the harshest conditions on the Earth and have successfully shown that some bacterial strains can survive even in the harshness of space for periods of time.

Each step along the way, you rule out a large number of planets. In our own solar system realistically it is unlikely that any organic life either is or has ever been present elsewhere than Earth and Mars. So if 7/9s of our own solar system (and let's not get into semantics about Pluto and everything beyond) is incapable of sustaining life or its creation, it isn't unreasonable to suspect that the same broad proportion applies to the other 5 planets (average) revolving around 500 billion stars in 500 billion other galaxies.

In our Solar System, I wouldn't even rate Mars that highly. I think Venus has an excellent chance of life due to the amount of heat, energy and hydrides but we cannot get to it properly to test. Europa may be our best shot and is a Moon of Jupiter. It looks to have liquid water underneath the surface and crucially gets irradiated by Jupiter and has carbon dioxide in its atmosphere. When you irridiate carbon dioxide, you get formaldehyde, an essential building block for life. It also has Jupiter's magnetic field breaking down the ice into hydrogen and some compounds to produce energy and a feeding source.
Enceladus and Titan are also excellent candidates. Enceladus might even have an ocean upon it.

Even so, the chances that life occurred uniquely here still apprear pretty small - if you accept as gospel truth the various extrapolations which astronomers adopt to fill in some of the gaps in the current state of their knowledge.

You mistake gaps in their knowledge for gaps in your knowledge.

However - and this was really the point of my last post (however stupid you might have considered its premise to be) IF the reality is that of all the places in the universe this is the only one where the right combination of things happened in the right way to create life, that would (IMO) be a rather awe inspiring fact.

It would be an almost unbelievably impossible thing so rare that nobody should be suggesting such a thing.

Are you actually able to engage in discussion with anybody about anything without being insulting?

Don't answer, just fuck off to wherever it is you're fucking off to.

Dickhead.

 

[Damocles]

Diddums. Hurt your feelings did I?

Maybe you should try not talking shit about stuff that you obviously don't understand?

EDIT: Also, if you're insulted by science I suggest coming into a thread about a scientific discovery wasn't the strongest move you've ever made.

 

[ali benarbia's studs]

We know that you can hear us, Eaaaarrrrthhhhmeeeennnn

O O

a post for the over 50`s!!! great work carver!

 

[The Pink Panther]

Life as we know it, must have water to survive. It is agreed that at some point Mars held water, but couldn't keep hold of it(something to do with how far it is from the sun and gravity) where as the Earth is the perfect size and distance from the Sun
With all those trillions of planets, the odds are that there are others that are that perfect distance from their sun, so I'm firmly in the "there is definitely life out there" camp
The more mind boggling discussion is, are these other life forms evolutionary ahead of us or behind us?
The Earth has been around for billions of years, where as we, the human race, have only been here for a couple of hundred thousand, so in the grand scale of things no time at all, and when you look at how far we've advanced in the last 200 years it is astonishing.
So if there is a species similar to humans that is 500 years in advance of ourselves, what powers and knowledge must it possess?

 

[Damocles]

The water thing is a bit of Earth bias coming in. For life to form, it needs something for metabolic functions, a solvent which dissolves things and a form for it to carry information.

We tend to base the search for life around carbon, water and DNA, and this is entirely a decent position. It's the only possible form of life we have observed so it is easier to presume that this is the only combination. I certainly have problem imagining life forming without carbon, though I've read some stuff in the past that hypothesises about Silicon as an alternative biochemistry system.

It has been considered that other solvents could be used except water, with ammonia and methane being prime candidates. Sagan himself said in Cosmos that hydrogen fluoride maybe be a decent solvent for life.

My point is, we have a bias towards "water as a solvent" due to where we are from and this is a very good idea as a starting place but I wouldn't rule out non-water solvents just yet.

 

[Seosa]

Would it plausible to consider the idea that foreign life may not require such elements as water to survive?

 

[Damocles]

Would it plausible to consider the idea that foreign life may not require such elements as water to survive?

You have to be careful whilst assigning terms here but this is probably the best way to put it:

Is water the only known solvent for life? Yes.

Is water the only known possible solvent for life? Theoretically no. Other solvents have shown to have the same properties that water does that makes it such a great solvent. All of these solvents have various drawbacks or disadvantages from water

 

[BlueHammer85]

Wow, that's a lot of assumptions. The biggest seems to be that each planet revolving around one of 500 billion stars in 500 billion universes has a broadly equal chance of sustaining life.

Do you have evidence to suggest that this is not the case? Considering that the Universe contains broadly the same elements, the same laws and has been shown to produce millions of species on one world, I don't see how you could reasonably take this stance.

I think we're up to 118 separate elements in the periodic table. The assumption that at the big bang there were no more than 118 elements and we got at least a small share of all of them is quite a big one. But there's no way of knowing whether our share of all the elements in the universe is compeltely atypical, slightly imbalanced or average in ever conceivable way, so let's park that one.

The Universe is the same in all directions. There were two elements at the earliest part of the Big Bang, Hydrogen and then Helium. The rest formed due to stellar nucleosynthesis, and taking the even distribution of Hydrogen and therefore a pretty even distribution of Helium (as the Universe had the same conditions all over), it is more than logical to assume that there is a pretty even distribution of elements.

Then there is the issue of the conditions necessary to support the formation or sustenance of life. Does this require an atmosphere? Well, if it does, that rules out any lumps of rock in space which do not have an atmosphere of their own. (The number of planets of which we have any actual evidence of there being an atmosphere is quite small, as I understand it.)

There is an atmosphere on every planet in the Solar System. Mercury has a thin atmosphere of hydrogen, oxygen, water vapour and potassium. There is evidence to suggest that it had a thicker atmosphere in the past that was blown away by solar winds due to the low gravity of Mercury. Venus has a very thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide and is a world of constant storms. It is actually the sister planet of Earth, and a study of what happens when you put a shedload of carbon dioxide into an atmosphere. Mars also has an atmosphere mainly of carbon dioxide but there's some nitrogen, argon and methane in there too. Jupiter and Saturn have "atmospheres" of Hydrogen and Helium. I use inverted commas there as they have no real land so the point at which the planet begins and the atmosphere ends is an exercise in futility. Both Neptune and Uranus are methane based atmospheres with ammonia, methane and water vapour.

Some of the Moon's of Jupiter and Saturn also contain an atmosphere.

Our atmosphere's composition is well know, but this is actually our third atmosphere, believed to be changed by bacterial life that fed off of methane and excreted oxygen.

Atmospheres are very common to planets because of the way that planets form. The colour that we see the outer planets are actually due to their atmospheres, as they absorb light of the spectrum on the red side. However, nobody is exactly sure how the ice giants formed but both successful models create an atmosphere and as it has one, it seems close enough.

What about temperature? Well, the temperature on any given planet will depend on a number of variables, the size of the sun and its distance from the planet in question being obvious ones, as well as the planet's own internal dynamics (eg geo-thermal issues) but of course it's the temperature of the atmosphere rather than the planet itself (a fine distinction perhaps but an important one) which is important. But being too hot or too cold will rule out a number of other possible candidates.

I disagree. Life has formed on Earth in conditions ranging from an entire planet of Lava, a "snowball Earth", an entirely methane based atmosphere and what we have today. We have found bacterial life in the harshest conditions on the Earth and have successfully shown that some bacterial strains can survive even in the harshness of space for periods of time.

Each step along the way, you rule out a large number of planets. In our own solar system realistically it is unlikely that any organic life either is or has ever been present elsewhere than Earth and Mars. So if 7/9s of our own solar system (and let's not get into semantics about Pluto and everything beyond) is incapable of sustaining life or its creation, it isn't unreasonable to suspect that the same broad proportion applies to the other 5 planets (average) revolving around 500 billion stars in 500 billion other galaxies.

In our Solar System, I wouldn't even rate Mars that highly. I think Venus has an excellent chance of life due to the amount of heat, energy and hydrides but we cannot get to it properly to test. Europa may be our best shot and is a Moon of Jupiter. It looks to have liquid water underneath the surface and crucially gets irradiated by Jupiter and has carbon dioxide in its atmosphere. When you irridiate carbon dioxide, you get formaldehyde, an essential building block for life. It also has Jupiter's magnetic field breaking down the ice into hydrogen and some compounds to produce energy and a feeding source.
Enceladus and Titan are also excellent candidates. Enceladus might even have an ocean upon it.

Even so, the chances that life occurred uniquely here still apprear pretty small - if you accept as gospel truth the various extrapolations which astronomers adopt to fill in some of the gaps in the current state of their knowledge.

You mistake gaps in their knowledge for gaps in your knowledge.

However - and this was really the point of my last post (however stupid you might have considered its premise to be) IF the reality is that of all the places in the universe this is the only one where the right combination of things happened in the right way to create life, that would (IMO) be a rather awe inspiring fact.

It would be an almost unbelievably impossible thing so rare that nobody should be suggesting such a thing.

Are you actually able to engage in discussion with anybody about anything without being insulting?

Don't answer, just fuck off to wherever it is you're fucking off to.

Dickhead.

Its well worth the abuse to read Damo's posts.

 

[Seosa]

Would it plausible to consider the idea that foreign life may not require such elements as water to survive?

You have to be careful whilst assigning terms here but this is probably the best way to put it:

Is water the only known solvent for life? Yes.

Is water the only known possible solvent for life? Theoretically no. Other solvents have shown to have the same properties that water does that makes it such a great solvent. All of these solvents have various drawbacks or disadvantages from water

That's pretty much the answer I was looking for. Personally I'm buzzing over the potential of this unveiling but as it's been said I'll reserve any excitement in the meantime.