More News From Mars? Afraid Nasa Funding Could Dry Up?

[mistermack]

To mistermack

I would not totally discount the possibility that the bacteria 65 million years ago could not survive and reproduce, and consequently evolve into some better adapted to Mars. All that seems needed for bacterial life is liquid water. While Mars is less than 0 C, we know that water may remain liquid under those conditions in very thin films around dust particles. That is all that many bacteria need.

The truth is that we do not know if any life exists on Mars, and if so, where it might have come from. But the dinosaur killer impact sending Earth bacteria to Mars, and those bacteria surviving, is not impossible in theory, even if it is not probable.

I suppose so, but reproduction at current Martian temperatures would be incredibly slow. So I wouldn't expect much evolution to happen in 65 million years.
But of course, bacteria that live in rocks wouldn't need to evolve much, except to cope with the cold.

There is the problem of radiation hitting the surface, which would restrict the spread of bacteria on fine grains of sand or dust.

If you combine the temperatures and the radiation effects, I think it's highly unlikely that bacteria from the dinosaur impact could colonise the surface of Mars to any great extent. But not impossible.

But I think it's far more likely that life-generated organics would date from the period when Mars had seas and rain and more life-freindly weather. How it got there would be something else.

[Blind groper]

Gawd.

Why not?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Gawd.

Why not?

What window do we have on Mars being capable of sustaining life?

If a rock strike was more than 650 million years ago we'd see signs in the stromatolites, I think.

[Blind groper]

Gawd

I think once Mars had bacterial life successfully reproducing, it would just keep going and evolving. Bacteria are tremendously versatile. On Earth they live in everything from high pressure, 200 C water to Antarctic well below zero conditions, and everything from strong acid to strong caustic. Give them a toe hold and they will be there for the life of the planet. They are even in rocks 10 kms below the surface of the Earth, under high temperatures, high pressure, and an almost zero ration of essential nutrients. Yet still they survive.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Numbers.

[Blind groper]

What do you mean by "numbers"?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I meant whats the window for life on Mars, current best guess. Would like have been possible there 650 million years ago?

[mistermack]

I meant whats the window for life on Mars, current best guess. Would like have been possible there 650 million years ago?

I was sure that Mars has been cold for billions of years. I looked at wiki, and it says that Mars lost it's magnetosphere about four billion years ago, so that's probably when it lost most of it's atmosphere, and it's greenhouse effect.

There were a hell of a lot of impacts happening 4 (not 400) billion years ago, so it's highly likely that lots of chunks of the Earth were floating around in solar orbits. So Mars could have been seeded once, or many times, back then. Or life could have gone the other way, from Mars to Earth. Or even evolved separately on both.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

There were a hell of a lot of impacts happening 400 billion years ago,

I think there are a few orders of magnitude gone astray there.

We've only had a universe for 14 billion years, give or take an epoch...

[mistermack]

There were a hell of a lot of impacts happening 400 billion years ago,

I think there are a few orders of magnitude gone astray there.

We've only had a universe for 14 billion years, give or take an epoch...

I meant four billion. Where the fuck did that come from? I have no idea.

[Jason]

There may have been a hell of a lot of impacts 400bya. If the theory of the universe as a giant arsehole gaping open to crap out matter and then clenching shut again in 30 billion year intervals is correct, it's entirely possible that everything in our universe is the effluence spewing out the rectum of a multidimensional being of incomprehensible complexity. We should pray to it and prepare for the great wiping.

[Jesus_of_Nazareth]

I heard they had found tracks.........

.......tyre tracks.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I meant whats the window for life on Mars, current best guess. Would like have been possible there 650 million years ago?

I was sure that Mars has been cold for billions of years. I looked at wiki, and it says that Mars lost it's magnetosphere about four billion years ago, so that's probably when it lost most of it's atmosphere, and it's greenhouse effect.

There were a hell of a lot of impacts happening 4 (not 400) billion years ago, so it's highly likely that lots of chunks of the Earth were floating around in solar orbits. So Mars could have been seeded once, or many times, back then. Or life could have gone the other way, from Mars to Earth. Or even evolved separately on both.

Like I said, I think the stromatolites would have shown a dino-killer impact during their reign. And life, so far as we know, is only 1.5 billion years or so, thus making a transfer from Earth unlike.

[Blind groper]

Life on Earth is somewhere between 3 and 4 billion years old. The oldest absolutely unambiguous fossil is 2.7 billion years, but there are rock markings in Australia dated to 3.6 billion years which look very like stromatolite sand layering, and there are hydrocarbon traces in Canada dated to 3.8 billion years.
The Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago after the impact that created the moon, and life seems to have arisen reasonably soon after it cooled down enough for liquid water.

There have been a number of massive impacts in that time, meaning many opportunities for Earth life to get to Mars.

[mistermack]

There may have been a hell of a lot of impacts 400bya. If the theory of the universe as a giant arsehole gaping open to crap out matter and then clenching shut again in 30 billion year intervals is correct, it's entirely possible that everything in our universe is the effluence spewing out the rectum of a multidimensional being of incomprehensible complexity. We should pray to it and prepare for the great wiping.

Fuck, I would pray if I was offered another seventy healthy years. But I ain't praying to nothing that's going to kill me off in a few decades of old age. If I'm lucky.

What's the point of a few more billion years, when you're history yourself?