A report from the BBC about possible locations for Life on Mars:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7966437.stm

I hope you find it interesting . . .

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Really interesting article.
But what I don't quit understand is, that as far as I know Mars has a "cold" core not liquid like earth, so how can there be active (mud)vulcanos even in the last 10 million years.
Could someone please explain this to me?

Its assumed the mud volcanoes are ancient

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

That I understood but if they are many million (billion?) years old and mars has a cold core how can there be life TODAY? Leftovers of life - ok that seems possible/logical but without a source of heat/energy I can't imagine "active" life only some kind of microbes in hibernation.

An interesting article about the so called "Bärtierchen" (sorry don't now the english name - latin: Tardigrada) travelling to ISS, "surviving space without a suit" and having fun when back on earth ...:

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/weltall/0,1518,577056,00.html

Perhaps someone can translate it or find an english version.



Greetings from germany where the temperatures are rising and the skirts are getting shorter ... ;-)

JRK Beyer

all you have to do is look at all the extremophiles on earth and you'd get a sense that at least a few types of bacteria might easily live on mars

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/web/14725_web.jpg
Caption: This is reconstructed landscape showing the Shalbatana lake on Mars as it may have looked roughly 3.4 billion years ago. Data used in reconstruction are from NASA and the European Space Agency.


University of Colorado team finds definitive evidence for ancient lake on Mars

First unambiguous evidence for shorelines on the surface of Mars, say researchers


A University of Colorado at Boulder research team has discovered the first definitive evidence of shorelines on Mars, an indication of a deep, ancient lake there and a finding with implications for the discovery of past life on the Red Planet.

Estimated to be more than 3 billion years old, the lake appears to have covered as much as 80 square miles and was up to 1,500 feet deep -- roughly the equivalent of Lake Champlain bordering the United States and Canada, said CU-Boulder Research Associate Gaetano Di Achille, who led the study. The shoreline evidence, found along a broad delta, included a series of alternating ridges and troughs thought to be surviving remnants of beach deposits.

"This is the first unambiguous evidence of shorelines on the surface of Mars," said Di Achille. "The identification of the shorelines and accompanying geological evidence allows us to calculate the size and volume of the lake, which appears to have formed about 3.4 billion years ago."

A paper on the subject by Di Achille, CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Brian Hynek and CU-Boulder Research Associate Mindi Searls, all of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, has been published online in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

Images used for the study were taken by a high-powered camera known as the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE. Riding on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, HiRISE can resolve features on the surface down to one meter in size from its orbit 200 miles above Mars.

An analysis of the HiRISE images indicate that water carved a 30-mile-long canyon that opened up into a valley, depositing sediment that formed a large delta. This delta and others surrounding the basin imply the existence of a large, long-lived lake, said Hynek, also an assistant professor in CU-Boulder's geological sciences department. The lake bed is located within a much larger valley known as the Shalbatana Vallis.

"Finding shorelines is a Holy Grail of sorts to us," said Hynek.

In addition, the evidence shows the lake existed during a time when Mars is generally believed to have been cold and dry, which is at odds with current theories proposed by many planetary scientists, he said. "Not only does this research prove there was a long-lived lake system on Mars, but we can see that the lake formed after the warm, wet period is thought to have dissipated."

Planetary scientists think the oldest surfaces on Mars formed during the wet and warm Noachan epoch from about 4.1 billion to 3.7 billion years ago that featured a bombardment of large meteors and extensive flooding. The newly discovered lake is believed to have formed during the Hesperian epoch and postdates the end of the warm and wet period on Mars by 300 million years, according to the study.

The deltas adjacent to the lake are of high interest to planetary scientists because deltas on Earth rapidly bury organic carbon and other biomarkers of life, according to Hynek. Most astrobiologists believe any present indications of life on Mars will be discovered in the form of subterranean microorganisms.

But in the past, lakes on Mars would have provided cozy surface habitats rich in nutrients for such microbes, Hynek said.

The retreat of the lake apparently was rapid enough to prevent the formation of additional, lower shorelines, said Di Achille. The lake probably either evaporated or froze over with the ice slowly turning to water vapor and disappearing during a period of abrupt climate change, according to the study.

Di Achille said the newly discovered pristine lake bed and delta deposits would be would be a prime target for a future landing mission to Mars in search of evidence of past life.

"On Earth, deltas and lakes are excellent collectors and preservers of signs of past life," said Di Achille. "If life ever arose on Mars, deltas may be the key to unlocking Mars' biological past."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-06/uoca-uoc061709.php

Ohh la la!

Really interesting article.
But what I don't quit understand is, that as far as I know Mars has a "cold" core not liquid like earth, so how can there be active (mud)vulcanos even in the last 10 million years.
Could someone please explain this to me?

Here is what NASA says about mars warmth...
http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/mars_worldbook.html
"Mantle

The mantle of Mars is probably similar in composition to Earth's mantle. Most of Earth's mantle rock is peridotite (PEHR uh DOH tyt), which is made up chiefly of silicon, oxygen, iron, and magnesium. The most abundant mineral in peridotite is olivine (OL uh veen).

The main source of heat inside Mars must be the same as that inside Earth: radioactive decay, the breakup of the nuclei of atoms of elements such as uranium, potassium, and thorium. Due to radioactive heating, the average temperature of the Martian mantle may be roughly 2700 degrees F (1500 degrees C)."

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Official Abuser of Boinc Buttons...
And no good credit hound!

... The main source of heat inside Mars must be the same as that inside Earth: radioactive decay, the breakup of the nuclei of atoms of elements such as uranium, potassium, and thorium. Due to radioactive heating, the average temperature of the Martian mantle may be roughly 2700 degrees F (1500 degrees C)."

Go deep enough from the -50 deg C surface and you'll find a temperate habitable zone.

We've seen many effects of (past) water there and very good hints of recent or even present liquid water...

And we have various 'bugs' that live very deep underground and even in some rocks here on (in the) Earth.


The big question then is whether life ever got started on Mars, and if so, what form it takes now...

Bacteria-esq bugs anyone?

Or highly evolved viral DNA archive spores waiting to metamorphose the first adventurers into ancient Martians?

Keep searchin',
Martin

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To add to the confusion on if mars has a cold core, i would like to ask is the planet mars so light that the pressure at the centre is not enough to keep it molten, or scientists just think so due to the absence of active volcanos on the surface and absence of magnetic field .The two observations above alone cant be conclusive that the core is solid but that the core may have a slightly different composition from that of earth and may be there is more to the earths magnetic field than just circulating molten iron core .

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We choose to go to the moon and to do other things, we choose to go to the moon not because its easy but because its hard. kennedy

I think we also need to keep in mind that the core of our planet is actively giving off H3.. so it signifies that it is a slow burning nuclear reaction happening down there, as well as the pressurised molten Iron etc. It makes sense when you think that the truly "heavy" atoms will eventually sink over long periods of time. Some are belched back out of volcanoes etc but the bulk are down there for good. We live on a very thin "balloon skin" of this planet. The hot core keeps the Iron molten and supports the electric field of the reaction which gives rise to the active magnetic field.

Mars may be a potentially habitable planet but with no mag-field to protect the inhabitants from solar radiation and summer temperatures of -12 you have to be desperate to live there... after 4 billion years its not going to change a lot in the next century or two, even with terraforming it will be a tough place to be.

However given more time, climate change, continuing population explosion Im sure some folk will end up there... it will either be an underground luxury resort (luxury buried underground??) ...or a giant prison colony..

or perhaps a potential food basket.. covered in agricultural developments... ?

all you have to do is look at all the extremophiles on earth and you'd get a sense that at least a few types of bacteria might easily live on mars

Scientists have found stones on Mars that might contain fossilized bacteria.

So then, if there's fossilized bacteria, that might mean there's contemporary bacteria -- the extremophiles are well, extremely possible in that scenario!

Jess

all you have to do is look at all the extremophiles on earth and you'd get a sense that at least a few types of bacteria might easily live on mars

Scientists have found stones on Mars that might contain fossilized bacteria.

umm they've found stones(meteors) that they assume are from Mars. We've yet to bring anything back from mars yet

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Hopes Dim for Mars Life

Hopes Dim for Mars Life
By SPACE.com Staff

posted: 06 August 2009
09:40 am ET

A study earlier this year confirmed there's methane in the air of Mars. Methane is typically produced by living things, so the finding prompted hope there could be organisms on Mars.

The tantalizing evidence for Martian methane goes back several years, in a seesaw scenario of optimism and skepticism. Plumes of methane in the martian air have been confirmed, but its origin has remained highly debated.

But a new study, detailed in the journal Nature today, finds the methane is concentrated in one spot. If it were generated by life at or under the surface, the methane should be spread throughout the atmosphere, the researchers argue. Its concentration suggests it is generated by some sort of chemical reaction in the atmosphere.

"Destruction of methane on the surface of Mars would have to occur within about one hour to explain the recent observations," according to a summary by the journal Nature.

"If observations of spatial and temporal variations of methane are confirmed, this would suggest an extraordinarily harsh environment for the survival of organics on the planet," write the researchers, Franck Lefevre and Francois Forget of the Universitaire Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.

"Something is rapidly destroying the methane in the Martian atmosphere," planetary scientist Michael Mischna of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says in ScienceNow. Whatever that might be, Mischna said, "there's no way life could survive at or near the surface if [methane] destruction occurred so quickly."

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We choose to go to the moon and to do other things, we choose to go to the moon not because its easy but because its hard. kennedy

Greetings from germany where the temperatures are rising and the skirts are getting shorter ... ;-)

JRK Beyer

Hi JRK,

Shouldn't that be the other way around?? :)

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@Ray:

high temperature = short skirts (wide belts)

What 's wrong about that? I like it ... .


Greetings