Life on Mars found in 1976?

I saw a movie with people from Mars flying with a UFO. That is enough proof for me. There is live on mars in Hollywood.
 
On the other hand, saying they might have overlooked evidence of microbial life from 30 years ago seems, er, desperate and smacks of the >c neutrinos fiasco. The far more sophisitcated Spirit and Opportunity rovers didn't turn up even a smidgeon of evidence.

(I have not the slightest problem with ET life, but that's hardly the point in this discussion.)
 
I'm not saying it was aliens in the soil ....

But it was aliens ;)
 
Microbes could never build the structures in the Cydonia area so it must be ......HUMANS!!
 
They're only going to disappoint themselves if they don't find anything and then all the Bible lovers will claim that this is proof that mankind is alone in the universe.

My take on other ET life forms:

Looking back at evolution of life on earth it is found that life started in the oceans and evolved slowly for hundreds of millions of years before plant life took over the land, then animals next. That is why all living creatures on earth are mainly composed of H2O. H2O in liquid form is in abundance on earth. The other main ingredient for life is stable energy from a nearby star. It needs to be stable otherwise if microbial life develops in a certain climate, then it can easily be wiped out by sudden changes in temperature before it has time to evolve into complex life.

There are certainly other earth-like planets out there with similar atmospheric gas compositions and temperatures to ensure liquid water on the planet. If there is water there is potential locked up oxygen. The earth once had hardly any oxygen in the atmosphere. It was only when plant life evolved and broke down CO2 into oxygen that things started evolving faster and in different ways because of increased energy from the new gas in the atmosphere.

Basically, what I am getting at is that there are certainly other planets out there with an abundance of water. Life forms would be similar in composition to that on earth on those planets. They will of course have evolved is different ways depending on climate conditions but they would be water based as the main factor.

There however will also be many other planets that have a more colder/warmer climate with other gases that have liquefied. So whatever gas is in abundance and in liquid form will be the basis of that planets evolution of life. For example, one of Jupiter's moons has an atmosphere made of clouds of methane and liquid methane that rains down on the surface. Oceans and rivers of the stuff for life to develop in strange ways given enough energy from the sun. If anything evolves on planets and moons such as those it will be very different to anything we have ever imagined.

Talking about other advanced civilizations. I'm sure there are plenty. The estimated age of the universe is over 13 billion years. The earth only formed around 4.6 billion years ago when a large star exploded and formed the sun and our planetary system. We would be crazy to assume that we are the only planet that has evolved life. There is surely many more civilizations, possibly thousands or even millions, which have billions of years advancement over us.

Who knows what technologies they possess. Perhaps over billions of years they have found a way to harvest energy from stars as that is the primary source of energy in the universe. What we see as black holes could be devices used by these civilizations to harvest energy ;)
 
SaiyanZ said:
They're only going to disappoint themselves if they don't find anything and then all the Bible lovers will claim that this is proof that mankind is alone in the universe.

My take on other ET life forms:

Looking back at evolution of life on earth it is found that life started in the oceans and evolved slowly for hundreds of millions of years ... are mainly composed of H2O ... is ... is ... if ... then ... are certainly ... is ... is ... there are certainly other planets out there with an abundance of water. ... be water based as the main factor ... I'm sure there are plenty ... There is surely many more civilizations, possibly thousands or even millions, which have billions of years advancement over us ... harvest energy from stars as that is the primary source of energy in the universe...
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And what makes you think early 21st Century cosmology has anything to do with the way things really are? Early 20th Century cosmologists were pretty certain they had at least the main outlines fiugured out, and today we'd regard their notions are cutely quaint and deeply wrong.

Not everyone has noses just because we do. Ditto water- or cabon-based life-forms.

Look, I'm not knocking your nicely-written apologia. But in my view it has far too many assertions and certainties than are warranted by the facts as we know them today. Methinks a more tentative and cautious stance is called for.

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Back to topic: Life on Mars.
Trying to rehash data from very crude 1970s instruments is fraught with problems, so any conclusions could ever only be tentative.
 
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There are billions of galaxies and billions of stars in each of those galaxies. This is a fact since we can see this with our most powerful telescopes. There are only so many elements (just over 100) and possible combinations of them. Unless planets forming around stars are not a commonly occurring phenomenon there will be other planets very similar to earth. The sheer numbers are just too high to deny it. Even if everything else that we know about cosmology, the age of the universe, and the earths history is false, there will still be other earth-like planets out there, with or without life.

Whether life can evolve in forms other than carbon/water based is just my take on the matter.
 
I think what will be most exciting is when we actually set foot on another planet and actually get down to exploring it and living on it like we do with the ISS. To see or hear that we have people terraforming another planet and making it habitable.
 
waynegohl said:
I think what will be most exciting is when we actually set foot on another planet and actually get down to exploring it and living on it like we do with the ISS. To see or hear that we have people terraforming another planet and making it habitable.
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I reckon we'll achieve this within the next decade. What you think?
 
carstensdj said:
I reckon we'll achieve this within the next decade. What you think?
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No will or money. When Apollo 11 returned in '69 the consensus among the cognoscenti was that we'd be on Mars by 1980, maybe 1985 at the latest ... I still have the articles in my Moon Albums compiled in them thar days. The tech's been there for ages, but not the will.
 
Arthur said:
No will or money. When Apollo 11 returned in '69 the consensus among the cognoscenti was that we'd be on Mars by 1980, maybe 1985 at the latest ... I still have the articles in my Moon Albums compiled in them thar days. The tech's been there for ages, but not the will.
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How can there be no will? Not saying you're wrong or anything, but why would there be no will to do so? I would think it would be the opposite... All will, but not enough tech:erm:
 
Desire is one thing. Will quite another.
Realistically there's only one state that can do this - the US of A. Yes, I know ESA, Russia, China and Japan have credible space programs, but none of them have any manned land-and-return experience or tech as per Project Apollo. Nor the money.

Since the 1980s several US presidents have announced Mars programs (here's George W Bush in 2004), but successor POTUSs or Congress canned or scaled them back to some indeterminate date. The most recent call for a serious Mars program was from Newt Gingrich, but mainly for mining.
 
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Arthur said:
Desire is one thing. Will quite another.
Realistically there's only one state that can do this - the US of A. Yes, I know ESA, Russia, China and Japan have credible space programs, but none of them have any manned land-and-return experience or tech as per Project Apollo. Nor the money.

Since the 1980s several US presidents have announced Mars programs (here's George W Bush in 2004), but successor POTUSs or Congress canned or scaled them back to some indeterminate date. The most recent call for a serious Mars program was from Newt Gingrich, but mainly for mining.
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/puts on tinfoil hat

Whether or not America ever actually landed on the moon is still debatable :whistle:

/takes off tinfoil hat

So do you think they will ever send humans somewhere in the next 50years? Or keep sending robots?
 
If you bring abiogenesis into the picture esp the seeding portion, they not aliens but our brothers and sisters so to speak

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#Extraterrestrial_organic_molecules

Extraterrestrial organic molecules

Another idea is that amino acids which were formed extraterrestrially arrived on Earth via comets. In 2009 it was announced by NASA that scientists had identified one of the fundamental chemical building blocks of life in a comet for the first time: glycine, an amino acid, was detected in the material ejected from Comet Wild-2 in 2004 and grabbed by NASA's Stardust probe. Tiny grains, just a few thousandths of a millimetre in size, were collected from the comet and returned to Earth in 2006 in a sealed capsule, and distributed among the world's leading astro-biology labs. NASA said in a statement that it took some time for the investigating team, led by Dr Jamie Elsila, to convince itself that the glycine signature found in Stardust's sample bay was genuine and not just Earthly contamination. Glycine has been detected in meteorites before and there are also observations in interstellar gas clouds claimed for telescopes, but the Stardust find is described as a first in cometary material. Isotope analysis indicates that the Late Heavy Bombardment included cometary impacts after the Earth coalesced but before life evolved. Dr. Carl Pilcher, who leads NASA's Astrobiology Institute commented that "The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the Universe may be common rather than rare."

Based on computer model studies, the complex organic molecules necessary for life may have formed in the protoplanetary disk of dust grains surrounding the Sun before the formation of the Earth. According to the computer studies, this same process may also occur around other stars that acquire planets. (Also see Cosmic dust/Earth.)

Recent observations suggests that the majority of organic compounds introduced on Earth by interstellar dust particles are considered principal agents in the formation of complex molecules, thanks to their peculiar surface-catalytic activities. Studies reported in 2008, based on 12C/13C isotopic ratios of organic compounds found in the Murchison meteorite, suggested that the RNA component uracil and related molecules, including xanthine, were formed extraterrestrially. On August 8, 2011, a report, based on NASA studies with meteorites found on Earth, was published suggesting DNA components (adenine, guanine and related organic molecules) were made in outer space. More recently, scientists found that the cosmic dust permeating the universe contains complex organic matter ("amorphous organic solids with a mixed aromatic-aliphatic structure") that could be created naturally, and rapidly, by stars. As one of the scientists noted, "Coal and kerogen are products of life and it took a long time for them to form ... How do stars make such complicated organics under seemingly unfavorable conditions and [do] it so rapidly?" Further, the scientist suggested that these compounds may have been related to the development of life on earth and said that, "If this is the case, life on Earth may have had an easier time getting started as these organics can serve as basic ingredients for life.
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Let's wait until the Ruskies or even better, the Chinks plan to make Mars or the moon habitable then you will very quickly see the USA making sums to be the first to do it like in 1969. let one of them make a noise about colonizing another planet and America will very quickly find the will and the money to be the first.
 
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