Comments on: Have We Already Discovered Alien Life—on Mars?

By: game

game — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 11:26:56 +0000

Hi, I can’t help it but those 2 photos supposedly on mars are photoshopped. The second one with many rocks. If you can notice it the rocks are very congested plus they have same size and shape. (they only differ in some rocks that are reversed horizontally or vertically. but they have the same size and shape. Picture number 2 is more worse. The light on the machines are behind them, so how come their rears are shining? moreover their color don’t blend in with the background itself.

By: Brian Schmidt

Brian Schmidt — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 22:27:16 +0000

I suppose it’s also possible that methanogens evolved in an earlier climate, but on Earth they were then were replaced by modern versions that evolved a second time and replaced the older form.

By: James

James — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 22:58:58 +0000

This link shows NASA images that indicate there is life on Mars. It shows what can be speculated as being herd life forms:

https://sites.google.com/site/tycho511/

By: Sion

Sion — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 12:57:29 +0000

Mini Cooper, not Cooper Mini.

By: Magoo

Magoo — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:56:48 +0000

they detected farts on Mars.. what more do you want?

By: Brian Schmidt

Brian Schmidt — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 04:34:55 +0000

Torbjörn – that’s a depressing point I’d never heard before. It doesn’t rule out microbial transfer from Earth, though.

By: Terry Martin

Terry Martin — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 04:16:17 +0000

Para 4: I guess you were not aware of the Titan descent probe on Cassini?

By: zebo

zebo — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 00:56:21 +0000

In 1976 I waited 30 days; down to the final 30 seconds for Viking to land. Then another 30 days for results; which turned into 30 months; which eventually became a wait of over 30 years. Thats a long time to get a definitive answer of whether life is a common phenomenon in the Cosmos.

By: Torbjörn Larsson, OM

Torbjörn Larsson, OM — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 21:54:56 +0000

Another plus for life on Titan is AFAIU that carbon isotope ratios differ from the solar average.

A minus for life on Mars is that Earth methanogene metabolism phylogenetically only evolved once, in modern and specialized archaebacteria in the neomura lineage that is found time and time again in broadly samplings of genomes, based on bacterial methanophiles that evolved from an oxygenated metabolism.

A priori that isn’t an easy metabolism to achieve anywhere and especially on Mars. You can argue contingency on phylogenetic analyses, but nevertheless that is the data we have.

By: Rhacodactylus

Rhacodactylus — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 20:18:30 +0000

Life is one of those things that will sort of require a smoking gun to verify. Unless we come across something like tiny =)