life to mars?

[Tim_Lou]

lets start this:

it is found that a large amount of water-ice is trapped in north and south pole of mars.

do you think it is possible to carry earth-life there? is it good to do so?

or is it a bad idea? will that organisms evolve into super deadly stuffs? or harmful to the may-be-existing mars life?

i saw newspaper that says there are plans to move life to mars....it will probably like billions..

whats your opinions?

[BlameTheEx]

Are you trying to give scientists heart attacks?

All probes to mars have been, with varying degrees of care, sterilised.
Nobody wants to wipe out, or contaminate any possible martian life before it can be studied.

There has been suggestions that mars can be teraformed by genetically engineered life from Earth. Nobody will be in a rush to start the job, which is, as yet, beyond our technology. At best it would be a project measured in centuries.

Frankly, I am at a loss as how to even start. Consider the problems:

1) An Earth style atmosphere is the equivalent of stripping ALL the oxygen and nitrogen from the surface of mars to a depth of 10's of meters. Bacteria won't do. We need plants with extensive roots.

2) Having stripped out the oxygen from so much rock, how do we stop it reabsorbing it again? That is an awful lot of iron that will need rustproofing. It could be buried, but that will not work if mars is heated sufficiently to have a liquid water table. The water will absorb oxygen and transport it down.

3) Once the atmosphere is created how will it be heated? Sufficient greenhouse gasses would make it unbreathable, At present mars reaches the freezing point of water at best. However, this is a daytime temperature with low atmosphere. An earth style atmosphere will have the effect of evening out day and night time temperatures. Our breathable atmosphere would be well below zero, even at the equator.

Failing a breakthrough, mars will continue to be of only scientific interest for generations. As such it must be kept free from contamination.

[Freethinker]

Originally posted by: BlameTheEx
Are you trying to give scientists heart attacks?

All probes to mars have been, with varying degrees of care, sterilised.

Nobody wants to wipe out, or contaminate any possible martian life before it can be studied.

Failing a breakthrough, mars will continue to be of only scientific interest for generations. As such it must be kept free from contamination.

I remember when we found "rocks from mars" on earth some years back. They were thought to have some signs of life in them. One of the possible sources of abiogenesis on earth is extraterrestrial. Is there a big difference between contamination from OTHER sources and that from earth for Mars?

Is this a moral/ ethical issue? If Mars is basically sterile at this point, does it matter if our organics permeate?

[Tim_Lou]

i remembered i saw it in someplace... they said that the process to get mars "alive" is like this:
1: get some mechines and whatever....put tons of CO2 to warm the planets.
2: ice melted so planets can grow....or some photosynthetic organisms.
3: once oxygen is created, things will be easy...

(......not sure if its right...)

(BlameTheEx, get oxygen out of iron oxides??? never heard of it...hmm, maybe they can put tons of CO into there and it might work!....lol)

[Freethinker]

My youngest son, a few years older than you Tim, and I had a short discussion about this. Do we have a "right" to invade another biosphere? Would our existence on Mars contaminate it? Would we ourselves be pollution? Do we have that RIGHT?

Further, do "other factors" moderate that "right"?

As a thought experiment, if the existence of the human race on earth was determined to be seriously attacked, say because of our own pollution or a ELE (“Extinction Level Event”) like a massive meteorite, would that change the "moral" considerations of invading another bioshere? Is the ongoing existence of the human race enough reason to ignore any other moral issues?

[Frogon]

I think we don't have the right. We trash our planet and then we get out of it by going to another?

But, say later we know that mars will be close, and we know earth will be hit by a large meteor (like 5km diameter) that will wipe out almost, if not all, the human race. And, thats only after we know what we are doing, so in like 5 years, it would be almost as deadly (time in space, actually living there) to go to mars as it would be to stay here.

[Tormod]

I have no qualms about visiting other planets, and even "terraforming" them if possible. All organic molecules on earth came from space, the same has happened to every other planet in our solar system. Thus humanity is simply one of possiblt many life forms in the universe - I don't find any reason why we should not expand away from earth.

However, I am *not* saying I think we should "got to Mars and trash it". We need to take better care of our own planet before we start inhabiting others.

Tormod

[Tim_Lou]

hmm... but what do you do if the earth is gonna expldde like a month later? and mars is made available for us....
are you gonna stay in earth and die? or go to mars?

[Frogon]

Well, if we could survive on mars, and the trip to mars, I think we should, but only send the people who know how to learn about mars, so we just don't see it as a desert where some barbairans live.

And, if we are going to make it to mars, we need more creative names than "terra" and "aqua"...you know something's old when they start running out of creative names...

[BlameTheEx]

Freethinker. in reply to:

"I remember when we found "rocks from mars" on earth some years back. They were thought to have some signs of life in them. One of the possible sources of abiogenesis on earth is extraterrestrial. Is there a big difference between contamination from OTHER sources and that from earth for Mars?

Is this a moral/ ethical issue? If Mars is basically sterile at this point, does it matter if our organics permeate?"


Not exactly a moral/ethical issue. I pointed out that mars is of only scientific interest, for the foreseeable future. The issue is a scientific one. We don't know if mars IS sterile. There may well be small amounts of local life in the form of bacteria, or similar lifeforms. If there is life on mars we do indeed care where it came from. If mars life evolved separately then we know that life will evolve just about anywhere it can. The universe must be full of it. If life spread from planet to planet, then we can consider the possibility that life is spread throughout the universe in similar ways. Who cannot be excited by the answer to the question of "are we alone in the universe"?

Nor is that the only reason. We are only beginning to discover the uses we can make of life forms with genetic engineering. Martian bacteria would open up a whole new source of material. Perhaps they will be simple enough for us to understand. They may be the key to learning how to create life to order. The possibilities are endless. New drugs, genes to improve crop plants, biological extraction of rare metals. But all this is lost if martian life is wiped out by competiton/predation from more advanced earth life.