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51 Comments
- lesleye, on 08/26/2008, -0/+22"Stone soup" and "Upper Cupboard" - couldn't they have come up with a better name for a trench?!
- welshboy82, on 08/26/2008, -1/+22It has its own Twitter account?! Awesome. What mobile network has reception on Mars? :)
- Cancerkitty, on 08/26/2008, -0/+18Man, it doesn't seem like they've get much from a seven-inch deep trench, but I guess I'd be wrong.
- OpenIntro, on 08/26/2008, -0/+11Obviously not AT&T
- Laminarcissus, on 08/26/2008, -0/+7Okay, how about these:
The Furrowed Brow of Hercules and Bellona's Hoo-Ha. - protodon, on 08/26/2008, -0/+5At&t, they have more bars everywhere but it's $150/minute for roaming, $250 for texting and don't even get me started on Data Usage. Sheesh!
- inactive, on 08/26/2008, -0/+4solar panels
- orlyfactor, on 08/26/2008, -0/+4Forced labor is a bitch!
- JasonCox, on 08/26/2008, -1/+5They're right, they do have more bars in more places:
-Sitting on my desk at home: 5 bars
-Picked up from desk: 3 bars
-Moving 5ft across the room: 1 bar
-Kitchen: 0 bars
They're not lying, they do have more bars in more places. Unlike, I don't know, Sprint, where I just had 5 bars everywhere in my apartment. - AmyVernon, on 08/26/2008, -2/+5Well, they're scientists, not writers. They should have hired Arthur C. Clarke to come up with some names (wait, is he dead?).
- S1L3NTC, on 08/26/2008, -0/+3Now we have tinyurl'ed, totally unrelated flickr spam...
- raptor000000, on 08/26/2008, -0/+3facepalm yourself, please
- Culyt, on 08/26/2008, -1/+4Personally I wish they would stop looking for life and instead focus on teraforming/sending people.
I think if life existed it would have been detected already, it would be very hard to land on earth, take a soil sample and not find some evidence of life even in the middle of a desert. Granted Mars is much less hospitable to life as we know and there are things like the possibility of it living underground, but life tends to be very adaptable with things like extremophiles surviving in places we wouldn't think possible so if there was life underground some of it would likely have adapted to the surface. Humans would also be much better at being able to look for life, they can dig holes larger than 7 inches for example.
The poles where also a fairly bad choice to look for life, but that wasn't really the landers primary missions which was water.
Even if life is found, it doesn't really prove life is common, not enough to make radical changes in thoughts, as panspermia/exogenesis could mean that life spread to Mars to Earth or visa versa. This is kind cool scifi wise but does mean we can't make any major assumptions about life out of the solar system. Unless they happen to find something radically different like silicon life (unlikely due to Mars being similar to Earth climate wise), or something radically different to DNA/Genome etc... But they haven't found anything yet so they are unlikely too. Die hard religious people will just claim it migrated from Earth, or possible that Mars is the remains of the garden of Eden of some such crap.
I think we should look at sending some bacteria genetically modified or bred that live on Mars and can produce CO2 to help start the cycle of life and teraforming there.
☢ - grapeguy, on 08/26/2008, -0/+2http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/08082 ...
- orangefly, on 08/26/2008, -2/+4i wish they would find proof of life already....it would make (some)people think a little differently....
- diceau, on 08/26/2008, -0/+2Some, yes, but not the people you appear to be referring to.
- WELLDOITLIVE, on 08/26/2008, -0/+2That's what he said
- MWeather, on 08/26/2008, -0/+2You think that's amazing? Voyager 1 & 2 have been going for 31 years.
- JasonCox, on 08/26/2008, -0/+2They must not have contacted Colbert, I'm sure he would have gladly let them use the 'Stephen Colbert Nacho Cheese Doritos Trench' :-)
- inactive, on 08/26/2008, -1/+3Overlooked (perhaps deliberately ignored) in all the reporting about the possibility of finding microbial life on Mars is the Earth transpermia origin. The most likely way microbial life could be present on Mars is it traveled there on ejecta from meteoritic impacts on Earth. Think about it, we find meteorites scientists say are from Mars on Earth so the opposite is also true - some meteorites on Mars are from Earth. Microbial life can withstand very extreme conditions so the most likely origin of any life (big IF) found on Mars is it was carried there by ejeca from the Earth.
Dr. Carl Sagan was at least honest enough to admit given the physics of the universe there is no possible mechanism for life to arise by blind chance spontaneously. Even the most simple form of life is far too complex to self assemble by blind chance natural processes.
From "The Creator and the Cosmos" by Dr. Hugh Ross, Chapter 14: 'To put this situation in perspective, imagine the possibility of a Boeing 747 aircraft being completely assembled as a result of a tornado striking a junkyard. Now imagine how much more unlikely that possibility would be if bauxite (aluminum ore) is substituted for the junk parts. Finally, imagine the possibility if instead of bauxite, river silt is substituted. So, too, as one examines the building blocks necessary for life to come into existence, the possibility of that happening without someone or something designing them stretches the imagination beyond the breaking point."
That the presence of water or even liquid water means life can by blind chance spontaneously assemble itself is ludicrous. The whole "liquid water means life" assumption is faulty. - MarsPhoenix, on 08/26/2008, -0/+2There was no Earth (or Mars) shattering announcement. There were a few wild media reports claiming the mission had found something so fantastic that the White House has been informed (wrong!), so a briefing was held to respond to those reports. One instrument has detected perchlorate which is interesting, but it's still a preliminary result.
- thedogfatherx, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1I believe it was when they detected perchlorate. I'm not positive on that though.
- BenKenobi88, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1And what if they don't? Also, 7 inches is a named trench? Couldn't they find something a little deeper?
- BoneheadFarker, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1Unfortunately yes, in March of this year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke - JasonCox, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1I wish they'd find oil; then maybe NASA could get the funding they deserve.
- richlw, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1mirror?
- RockBandit, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1Yikes! I didn't realize bringing up the official Phoenix Twitter account was such a touchy subject for most diggers...
- zaffir, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1Correct. That news being "earth-shattering" and the talk about them meeting with the White House about it was all rumor.
- inactive, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1Crash a spike into the soil really at an angle. Move machine into hole.
Why are we only working in centimeters? I am sure there are interesting things to be discovered, but they could find an effective way to create a deep hole and use math and logic to tell were perhaps more interesting stuff came from. - johnomaz, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1Can it really be called a trench.
- mrzeero, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1Hey. What was the earth shattering announcement they were going to make a few weeks ago? Did they ever announce anything?
- j0se, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1Show us some results.
- emjaymj, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1You clearly have very little understanding of what is going on here, SamMcPhy. There is not a single scientist who says that "liquid water means life." The presence of liquid water simply means that conditions are much more favorable for life as we know it.
Finding a body with liquid water in no way means that the scientists think life will be/has been present. This is extremely unlikely. But it greatly improves the odds that there are MANY more planets in our universe with liquid water, which in turn greatly increases the chances that life might exist on even just ONE other planet out there.
Within our solar system, Earth is remarkably special in having a very protective atmosphere as well as magnetosphere, and being just the right distance from the sun to keep water in its liquid phase. If we can prove that Earth is really not that special at all, life on another planet just becomes so much more likely. - inactive, on 08/27/2008, -0/+1Lets get man on mars with a shovel, it would be alot easier
- CadMasterAdam, on 08/27/2008, -0/+1^ is igniant
- Someguy101, on 02/19/2009, -0/+1Hmmm... what if there was microbial life on the mars lander and we just placed life on Mars. Then in billions of years it evolves into a species capable of dominating whatever life exists on earth and they come back to claim our planet?
...hang on I need to call Hollywood real quick. - form3hide, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1Ever the most simple form of life had to start from somewhere, no? So how else do you explain how the first form of life came to be?
- MarsPhoenix, on 08/26/2008, -1/+2You can read my posts on Plurk (someone has posted them there, thank you), but I answer questions sent to me via Twitter.
- MWeather, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1"The most likely way microbial life could be present on Mars is it traveled there on ejecta from meteoritic impacts on Earth."
Swap Earth and Mars, and it's just as likely. - MWeather, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1Phoenix can't move.
- inactive, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1I was commenting on the idea that we would spend so much money on a trip and not send equipment that has the potential to discover a little more than what this one is capable of. Scientific gains are still scientific gains, so I am happy that they are doing this. I was just curious why they don't do something more innovative. I would have started off with as much discovery as possible, instead of just scratching the surface. They can do that later, but I am sure that is not NASA's style.
I bet it would help their funding if there was something a couple meters deep worth discovering. - inactive, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1Teraforming Mars is good science fiction but from a real science standpoint impossible.
Mars has less mass than the Earth (much less, 0.107 Earth Masses (Wikipedia)). Therefore Mars could never hold an advanced-life sustaining atmosphere (Nitrogen, Oxygen, water vapor, and trace amounts of other gasses) for very long. All these gasses would dissipate into space. (That is what happened to or would have happened to any Earth like atmosphere on Mars.)
The Earth system is so exquisitely designed and fine tuned that Methane (CH4) and ammonia (NH3) are able to attain escape velocity and dissipate into space (if these gasses built up to high concentration levels the Earths atmosphere would become toxic to humans). Yet, water (H2O), the fabulous life sustaining compound, is too heavy to attain escape velocity so it remains abundant on Earth.
[ Methane, average mass: 16.0428 - Ammonia, average mass: 17.0306 - Water, average mass: 18.0153]
Additionally, Mars has such a weak magnetic field that it is essentially zero. Therefore, all of Mars is continuously bombarded by high energy, advanced-life destroying radiation from the sun (microbes might, repeat might be able to survive). The Earth in contrast has a very strong magnetic field protecting us from this high energy radiation from the sun. - Emmo213, on 08/26/2008, -1/+1Except they're not looking for life during this mission.
- extirpater, on 08/26/2008, -1/+1i'm still expecting an elephant there
- inactive, on 08/26/2008, -1/+1 Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created...
- cerberes, on 08/27/2008, -0/+0FLASH----- Nasa has just renamed Phoenix lander to :::::
Dirt Diggler...
bada ding. - ChristBehemoth, on 08/26/2008, -2/+1MarsPhoenix on Twitter : http://www.twitter.com/MarsPhoenix
MarsPhoenix on Plurk: http://www.plurk.com/user/MarsPhoenix - phr0s7b1tt3n, on 08/26/2008, -1/+0how have they been able to run that thing for 90 consecutive days with no fuel reserve or anything?
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