OT: The US mars lander

Jan Panteltje wrote: _____________________

That would be news................

..... Phil

They'll just find more 'evidence' of a wet past. Lots of sand and rocks, too.

Jeroen Belleman

There is every chance that it will find something that oxidises whatever food they have used this time just like with Viking. But hopefully with pyro GC mass spectrometry they might be able to tell if it is life.

It is a pretty amazing stunt to have fitted it into the lander! They have also done loads of terrestrial experiments with a mock up to figure out what the inorganic perchlorates known to be present will do.

It would be truly amazing if they did find any kind of life in the Martian soil.

Mars probes do have a bad habit of crashing. The Martian atmpsphere is very unkind. Just enough to burn you up on re-entry without being thick enough for parachutes to do much good slowing down. So many things all have to work exactly as intended before you get a soft Mars landing.

Credit to Jodie Foster in the movie "Contact".

..... Phil

On a sunny day (Thu, 18 Feb 2021 01:45:16 -0800 (PST)) it happened Phil Allison wrote in :

Personally I think even if all its life detecting experiments were positive it would be denied as 'instrument error' or some for some other reason.

The religious [name_your_fruit_of_choice]cakes did the same number when the Viking experiment was positive, it was announced that signs of life had been found on Mars, then hours later it was pushed onto the press it was an error. In spite of the fact that NASA tested that experiment for month before launch. That Viking experiment designed by Dr. Levin was positive:

Also the fact that they now land in a crater is pure sabotage, it is the LAST place I would look for signs of life, much better to land at Reull Vallis:

So the religious powers that finance NASA made very sure no life would be found.

Also I am not so impressed by the landing system, maybe it will work, airbags did work...

If against all odds the test for life is positive and it is allowed to be announced by the media, that would be nice. Else we will have to wait for for example a Chinese lander...

The idea that life would be unique to earth is similar to the earth at the center of the universe, it serves many religious leaders well (to exploit and control the people).

It could easily be instrument artefacts though. The Martian surface is full of perchlorates and they can do quite convincing job of reacting with organic molecules in the presence of iron and making CO2.

It isn't quite as bad as you seem to think. There appear to be sediments in it so there was still liquid water about after it formed. You are much more likely to find fossils and samples from upstream in river beds and in sedimentary rocks.

Earth life seems to manage to exist everywhere not matter where we look.

The failed mud core samples in Antarctica revealed complex life somehow clinging on to existence and growing incredibly slowly in a cold dark oceanic desert deep under the ice cap. Life finds a way.

Airbags don't give you a lot of control where you land. The sky crane is neat for choosing your landing site - provided that everything works.

I am inclined to think that life as in unicellular coloured photosynthetic or redox powered slimes are relatively common given how quickly it got started on the Earth. However, more complex life could well be much rarer. Life on Earth went though some very tight gaps to become sufficiently complex to be intelligent and self aware.

It always seems to me that the intensity of interest that life exists anywhere else is inversely proportional to the amount of scientific thinking put into it. Even the Drake equation has so many unknowns and variables that it barely scratches the surface of the problem.

What do you mean by "life as in unicellular coloured photosynthetic or redox powered slimes are relatively common given how quickly it got started on the Earth"? Nobody knows how life got started on Earth, whether in "black smokers" or anywhere else. There are many theories, but where are the facts and proofs (see introductory paragraph at )? For all we know it took ten different molecules to be in the right place at the right time under the right conditions to react, the result of that reaction to be sustained without decomposing again to perhaps its constituent parts, and its stability assured because for an equally rare reason that molecule was not destroyed within seconds by being formed in a highly reactive environment. It doesn't matter if there are a googol of planets on which life might start if the chance of life starting and being sustained is one in a googolplex of possibility. It might happen once, but what is the chance of it happening again?

And if what you say is true, why does it matter if life is found on Mars, an extrasolar planet in our galaxy, or one in Andromeda or even further away? It might prove to be quite common. In that case, why the interest in it?

That's pretty funny actually. "It might happen once" as if that somehow pr events it from happening again.

Life mostly happens because there are forces pushing it to happen. Just as mountains are pretty inevitable given the movement of plates floating on t he Earth's crust or that the aurora borealis happen from the solar wind in the magnetic field and many other events that are a natural outcome, there is no reason to think life is not an eventual outcome from the processes of the universe.

It doesn't matter that we don't sufficiently understand. It happened here and it is implausible to think it isn't happening elsewhere.

Lol! Why is anyone interested in the Kardashians? The Cardassians I can u nderstand.

Jeff Layman wrote: ================

Cos right now, we must assume the human race is the only intelligent, technology creating form of life in the universe.

FFS try to think about the significance of that.

...... Phil

What is the significance? We'll never visit them.

It's interesting but not important.

-1

More so than war? Calculate how much it costs you personally for this space mission. Then calculate how much war costs you personally. Then calculate how much this covid thin costs you personally. I want to see your numbers. Show your work.

I'm sure folks though nothing was smaller than the atom at one time...

We don't know what we don't know, so while it is easy to say we'll never visit them, the fact is we don't know of any way to visit them. That may well change.

It will have a major effect on a number of religions that postulate that we are made in some god's image for example.

John :-#)#

So says a rabid autistic bully with pea size imagination.

The same soulless asshole is also unmoved by film or music.

Wot a pig.

..... Phil

How do Mars rovers prevent war?

Poor countries like China and the Saudis are launching satellites and moon and Mars missions. This isn't science, it's international chest-thumping. As is ISS and putting more bootprints in the moon dust.

Think how much real science and medicine could be done with that money and those people. How many children could be saved.

More money spent on Mars rovers means less spent on weapons.

If any politician thought that they could get extra votes that way.

The US is at number 47 on that list with 6.5 deaths per 1000 live births. Australia is a 23 with 3.6. Iceland is second with 2.0.

Donald Trump didn't see any advantage in spending money on making the US slightly less third world on this measure.

ces that we are not alone.

echnology creating form of life in the universe.

Funny that anyone would one plus such an obvious mistake. Finding life on Mars is about like finding trash in the suburbs indicating there must be o ther cities in the country. It has been theorized that life might have sta rted on Mars and spread here from there. The likelihood of that happening is much, much higher than life spontaneously evolving from a primordial sou p on both planets.