Author Topic: Life on mars? now and in the past.  (Read 1993 times)

pudding

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Life on mars? now and in the past.
« on: November 30, 2016, 01:07:27 AM »
Just curious if anybody has any thoughts on this?

I've been following the curiosity rover since it landed on mars and some of the pictures that have come back have me thinking that there almost definitely was intelligent life on mars, and maybe there still is microbial life there.

If I go looking online for conversation on this it seems to be 2 thought camps.  One is nasa and their kind of reasoning that everything is wind erosion or just a strange camera angle.    And the other camp sees stupid stuff in everything.

I think these are some pictures that just can't be put down to wind erosion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDQ0HCmMVb8


https://s.yimg.com/dh/ap/default/150808/090815_Life_on_mars2_art.jpg
« Last Edit: November 30, 2016, 01:10:15 AM by pudding »

StetsTerhune

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Re: Life on mars? now and in the past.
« Reply #1 on: November 30, 2016, 01:27:33 AM »
I tend to think that the human mind is too biased towards recognizing patterns to really have any value analyzing this stuff. Stare at anything long enough you start to think there must be a design behind it. That's how our mind works, it's what allows us to make sense of the world we live in.

That doesn't prove a negative, but it seems likely to me that any kind of life that would leave real "artifacts" like the ones people think they see, would have left something far, far more definitive to find as well.

Anatidae V

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Re: Life on mars? now and in the past.
« Reply #2 on: November 30, 2016, 01:34:21 AM »
I'm with StetsTerhune on this in terms of recognising patterns. There's plenty of perfect geometry caused by natural geology, and the wind and rocks on Mars are made up of slightly different concentrations of elements than on earth, so erosion will cause some interesting and different patterns.

Sibley

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Re: Life on mars? now and in the past.
« Reply #3 on: November 30, 2016, 07:55:53 AM »
Mars definitely had the potential for life in the distant past, but due to the loss of their magnetic field, it lost its atmosphere and then the water.

If there is any microbial life there now, it'll be buried somewhere, protected from the surface temperature extremes and radiation. We may never find it.

I don't know if Mars was stable long enough while it had liquid water and atmosphere to develop complex life, much less intelligent life. It would be cool if it was though.