Fossil Hunting on Mars

Here is an interesting article posted at the CNN Science and Space website:

[link]

people appear to be hedging their bets.

Mars,

It would seem, once again, that we are not the only ones thinking outside of the proverbial box here.

Good find man! I wonder how many more curious articles we may of missed.

A.

Amalgamale and Mann,

Probably quite a few. I am going to keep looking and bookmarking more stuff. Stay tuned!

V/R

marsman

I just know that I plan on keeping up the hunt for fossils. Nothing the evil twins on here could do, would ever slow me down. AKA, Greg and TR.

Being called an "evil twin" by Amalg is surely not an insult to me. What about you TR?

I read that article and it expresses my and TR's thinking completely.

"Life on Mars IS possible"

"Life on Mars has not been discovered"

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof"

Among other things, the article states..."There is a lot of interest in trying to see fossils in the Mars rover images, Greeley said. "The team is looking at the data fairly rigorously, but nothing has emerged along these lines."

We're all looking. and hoping to see something that would be the biggest discovery of the century. (IMHO) It'll be cool if we find it. For now, nothing has emerged along these lines.

I, for one will keep looking. I'm hoping that future missions will concentrate on lower elevations. IF life ever existed on Mars, that's where it is/was.

What Greg said.

Amalgamale, I wouldn't dream of discouraging you in your fossil hunting. Everyone needs a hobby. Yours is like dowsing, or studying bumps on people's heads for signs of intelligence, or reading people's fortunes in tea leaves.

You're not only wrong, you're uneducated:

"In 1998, NASA's Associate Administrator Wesley Huntress, Jr., stated, "Wherever liquid water and chemical energy are found, there is life. There is no exception."" Taken from [Link]

Considering that it took the bastardz twenty years to release these Viking "frost" photos, I wonder, is it real, or is it lies? I see chemical energy, and I see water, case closed.

Except that NASA would appear to be contradicting itself administratively, which would suggest a political agenda, rather than hard science influencing their press releases. Gee, go figure that one.

What I want to know, is how much are they paying(1) you guy(s) to say you only see rocks and spit this out like a broken record? No other motivation makes any sense, outside of religion(2), or just perhaps, this is how a "bog" is maintained, to keep it lively and interesting(3).

I just know that your agenda here clearly makes no rational sense, and if #3 is the case, then I guess we're all being dupped.

I agree with the other contributors, an "ignore" feature may be essential to saving this forum from collapse.

Hi, Amalgamale, as I pointed out in a different thread, the quote by Huntress was referring no exceptions ON EARTH.

ON EARTH. Got that now? ON EARTH.

Enjoy your tea leaves.

To the person that just responded without leaving a name...

You claimed we were wrong. Yet, didn't say why. Have YOU seen any fossils yet?

I haven't read up enough to respond to to the accusasions that NASA is contradicting itself.

I can tell you my motivation for saying that we only see rocks. Drum roll........ They've only shown us pictures of rocks.

Show me a picture of a fossil. Or a picture or something that looks like a fossil, and I'll be the first to jump in and say so. (I have done it already. It apprears that I was wrong though)

Has anyone else noticed that NASA has taken all raw pictures off their official site; or did they move them somewhere else?

What, these raw images?

Several interesting points in this article, but none that are new to anyone who is familar with geology, paleontology, biology and the search for life off of earth. Here's a couple more that are relevant:

1) Every place that we've been able to get to on earth that has water, also has life. Since we've only been able to sample the upper few miles of the earth's crust, and that in only a very few places, our sample is still too limited for any kind of final conclusion.

2) All multicellular organisms known- plants, animals, fungi- carry out some version of oxygen-carbon dioxide metabolism. All the other types of metabolism that have been discovered in the last couple of decades are carried out only by unicellular organisms of a type called archaea.

3) For life on Earth to evolve past single celled organisms took at least a couple of billion years; to evolve hard body parts (shells, bones, exoskeletons) took another couple of billion years. Hard bodied organisms required nearly four billion of Earth's 4.6 billion years- 88% of its history.

4) The rich fossil record of earth represents a tiny slice of slightly more than the final 10% of this planet's history.

5) Mars certainly had water in the past, but certainly did not have it for anywhere approaching 90% of its history. For most of its history Mars may have had ephemeral, highly saline surface water on rare occasions. Most of the time, though, water on Mars has either been deep underground or locked up in ice.

6) Water underground might support single celled equivalents of archaea- since sunshine wouldn't be available there. Occasional surface water might allow a few organisms to carry out metabolic processes sporadically on the surface of the planet, but the lack of a thick atmosphere and magnetic field mean that complex life on Mars would almost certainly be fried beyond functionality by solar radiation.

There is, in my opinion, a very good chance that life exists on Mars today. It is almost certainly single-celled, and most likely 100's to 1000's of meters under the surface. Likewise, I think there's an even better chance that life existed there in the past. I'll even grant that it might have left some trace- i.e. fossils. I sure hope so. However, all of my comments and the CNN article are pretty standard stuff, widely accepted and disseminated. Amalgamale & Company's claims to have found bird skulls, wolf crustaceans, dinosaur bones, et cetera ad nauseum are highly entertaining, but, as certain people have tried to point out, have more to do with consensual illusion than science. Science is not about, "this looks like a bird, therefore it IS a bird." Read a little about biological nomenclature to get a sense of how careful *scientists* are when saying "This is a dinosaur, not a reptile," or "a whale is a mammal, not a fish"

Until a couple of years ago, there was a massive stone face on a mountainside in New Hampshire. It collapsed into rubble, but it is commemorated on the New Hampshire Quarter. No one that I ever heard of was claiming a cover-up of a fossilized race of hundred meter (or taller) human beings on the basis of this huge, unmistakeable face on the side of a mountain. Amalgamale, go back and read the part of the article where it says there are many natural processes that can create features that look like life to us.

I'm not planning to play this game with Greg, TR, Amalgamale and so on, anymore. I get a great deal of fun from reading it, and have no desire to make anyone feel that I'm uninterested in their positions. But keep in mind there's a great deal of difference between interest and respect.

Lockwood, Observation is all we have, so thats what we use. Respect, i get in my day job.

Life on mars may developed sooner, and advanced quicker than life on earth.

Currently mars life could protect themselves by shells, living below the surface, and pigmentation.

It gets very warm on the equator, miday in the martian summer. One of the rovers had to shut down, for fear of frying circuits. Frozen subsuface water would melt, then vaporize. But the air is already saturated, so the ground becomes moist, in spots. Simple things grow, lichen, fungas, Small creatures crawl from holes and tubes, from below ground, consume the growths, and store what they can. They become dormant, and wait for the next cycle.

One face on the side of the mountain. I see more than one growth, i see many. Many of each type.

I see many different life forms, not just one of any.

From your education you tell us what can and cannot be. I tell you, by observation, you are wrong. Observation is how i have gained respect in My day job.

Scientists like yourself, once said the earth is flat. But common stupid men, sailed away to fall of anyway. The scientists pitied them.

A very short time ago, Scientists said that mars was a dry dustball, and only the quacks talked about canals or plains that looked like River beds or empty oceans.

Now you're telling us that The only life possible Is miles below the surface, and that it could not possibly have time to develop.

We'll see, someday, maybe 20 years,with nasa,s Elitest write your paper polices. Or missplaced images. With other organizations and countries heading to mars, i hope one of them opens the door to let us realy see, the beautifull colored planet Mars is. Nasa must change.

Mann, What you said isn't even a big disagreement from what Lockweed said. Fundamentally, everything that Lockwood said made sense. And, we need thoughtful, sane minds here like Lockwood.

The only thing I would disagree with Lockwood on, is the assumption that the requirements for life to flourish on Earth are also applicable to any possible life on Mars.

1) I would not assume that because it took X amount of time for life to appear on Earth, means that it would take the same amount of time on Mars.

2) We don't really know how long water (Or a more hospitable atmosphere) was abundant on Mars.

To me it appears that the most overlooked issue is one that Moxy brought up in this forum. That is the issue of denser atmosphere at lower elevations. However thin the air is at the elevation we are at now, we know it is considerably more dense lower down in the valleys. Mars' valleys are considerably lower than those on Earth. That means the air has always been thicker there. That could be a huge issue, especially in the distant past when there was more atmosphere. What's more, we can't assume that Mars life would need exactly the same atmospheric density Earth life does.

To make a long story short, (I know, it's too late) I don't think we should apply all of the Earth based assumptions of life to possible life on Mars. I also don't think we really know how inhospitable Mars is or has been for the growth of life.

Having said all of that, it appears likely that Lockwood's assumptions are the most likely scenario. There's a good chance that any past or present life on mars is likely single celled. If there is any multi celled organisms, it was likely in the distant past.

Those assumptions are, of course, based on current observations. There's always the exciting possibility that new observations could come up turning those assumptions upside down. For now, the rovers have not provided new observations revolutionary enough to change the current assumptions.

I. for one, am staying tuned though.

Mann, What you said isn't even a big disagreement from what Lockweed said. Fundamentally, everything that Lockwood said made sense. And, we need thoughtful, sane minds here like Lockwood.

The only thing I would disagree with Lockwood on, is the assumption that the requirements for life to flourish on Earth are also applicable to any possible life on Mars.

1) I would not assume that because it took X amount of time for life to appear on Earth, means that it would take the same amount of time on Mars.

2) We don't really know how long water (Or a more hospitable atmosphere) was abundant on Mars.

To me it appears that the most overlooked issue is one that Moxy brought up in this forum. That is the issue of denser atmosphere at lower elevations. However thin the air is at the elevation we are at now, we know it is considerably more dense lower down in the valleys. Mars' valleys are considerably lower than those on Earth. That means the air has always been thicker there. That could be a huge issue, especially in the distant past when there was more atmosphere. What's more, we can't assume that Mars life would need exactly the same atmospheric density Earth life does.

To make a long story short, (I know, it's too late) I don't think we should apply all of the Earth based assumptions of life to possible life on Mars. I also don't think we really know how inhospitable Mars is or has been for the growth of life.

Having said all of that, it appears likely that Lockwood's assumptions are the most likely scenario. There's a good chance that any past or present life on mars is likely single celled. If there is any multi celled organisms, it was likely in the distant past.

Those assumptions are, of course, based on current observations. There's always the exciting possibility that new observations could come up turning those assumptions upside down. For now, the rovers have not provided new observations revolutionary enough to change the current assumptions.

I. for one, am staying tuned though.

I apologize for the mispelling of your name Lockwood. It was NOT intentional. (The spell checker did it even worse)

Bet hedging:

"I flat out see no evidence for any fossils in our data," said Jim Rice, a Mars Exploration Rover team scientist and a planetary geologist from Arizona State University in Tempe. "If a trilobite, for example, evolved on Mars and we came across a rock with it, we could resolve it."

QUOTE: Scientists like yourself, once said the earth is flat. But common stupid men, sailed away to fall of anyway. The scientists pitied them.UNQUOTE

Not true. Scientists always said the world was ROUND. Ancient Greeks knew the world was round -- they even knew its diamater!

Blue,

I'm not seeing how that can be called "bet hedging." We just haven't seen very much curious objects.

This composite provided by UPS has some curious things. But, there really isn't much more than this. In fact, it's likely that the things in this photo aren't more than odd shaped rocks. (I'd sure like to see the bunny removed from that composite.)

When the bunny emerged, I wasn't part of this forum. But, I didn't think for a second that it was anything other than part of the rover. The link provided by Lockwood gives proof.

[link]

I must say, however, that kind of investigation wasn't necessary for this item. Another thing we can say about the bunny. "It's NOT a rock"

Good point TR.

It is commonly believed now, that scientist or "learned men" in Columbus' time thought the earth was flat.

The fact is that educated people knew the world was round. It was the uneducated peasant that thought it was flat. Less educated people in those times also believed in leprechauns. (Worm teeth and crustacean hair)

I'm sure those peasants dismissed the factual arguments of those that didn't believe in the leprechauns.

Hmmm, I see an analogy here.