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Can bacteria survive on Mars ?


Saru

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Scientists have run an experiment to grow bacteria in conditions designed to simulate those on Mars.

Scientists have grown bacteria in a very low-atmospheric-pressure environment, similar to the surface of Mars.

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Just because the planets conditions aren't just like ours doesn't mean there isn't life on it. Conditions that may be suitable to us may not be suitable for other forms of life. Even here on Earth there is life in places most things couldn't survive but it evolved there so it can.

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Of couse it can. Different Planet diffrent Bacteria. Why is everything based on this planet?

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They base everything off Earth cause its the only example of life we have. Once they discover life on other planetary bodies, then they will include those places in the scope of "what places are habitable?"

I hope they start looking closer at some of Saturn and Jupiter's moons too. Everyone knows about Europa's possible liquid ocean beneath its icy surface. I'm sure there's other places we'd least expect to find life too.

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Of couse it can.

And you know this how exactly?

Science isn't about blind guessing and wishful thinking, it is about deducing the truth from observation and experimentation. Since no bacteria had ever been observed to survive in the remarkably low atmospheric conditions found on the surface of Mars it was impossible to know for sure if they could survive without doing the experiments, without this research your statement would be totally meaningless.

Different Planet diffrent Bacteria. Why is everything based on this planet?

Since we currently know of no bacteria on any planet other than Earth this statement remains meaningless for the time being.

Why is everything based on this planet?

As TheMolePatrol correctly said, because Earth is the only example we have. To base assumptions on any other planet would just be guess work.

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Very cool experiments. Should logically have been done decades ago.

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Bacteria from earth might survive in a dormant state, but without water would they be able to grow and reproduce? Also without a magnetic field like the Earth's, Mars is subject to solar radiation that might even kill dormant bacteria.

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Without a magnetic field all the bacteria would need is about 3 inches of dirt to protect them. And ice could provide the water, and they have shown the Mars and even Mercury have ice scattered around.

Not to mention there are bacteria that live in nuclear reactor level radiation areas and are just fine. There are actually Deep Earth bacteria that live exclusively on radioactivity. They use a photosenthisis like process that uses radioactivity instead of light photons as energy to create sugars.

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/microbes/textonly/eaters.jsp

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I recall reading recently that, according to the Curiosity radiation instrument, the radiation on the surface of Mars is no worse than astronauts receive in Earth orbit, well inside earth's magnetic field. A rather surprising result, given the weak and fragmentary magnetic field on the Red Planet.

Life appears to be almost incredibly adaptable. It's tempting to suspect that it will be found in a very wide range of planetary environments.

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More than bacteria can survive on Mars, apparently. Interested folks could view this video clip confirming the sky on Mars is blue, there are traces everywhere of former civilization and we've had a physical presence up there since the late 60's. Mars is pretty much comparable to an Arizona desert.

Check it out:

Name of clip: The Project Camelot TruTv pilot episode "Shadow Operations: The Mars Project"..

Now, I'll sit back and wait for the thrashing I expect is coming.

For some of you though....enjoy! Leftcoastgal

Edited by Leftcoastgal
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Personnally I think the sky of Mars in not blue. Since the pics showing blue sky have the rocks being an almost grey color, I think the color has been tampered with. The pics with the bright red surface show a reddish sky. And direct observation of Mars by anyone with a telescope shows that the surface is the same color of red. Thus, I think the red sky is the true sky.

Plus, anything that bases a lot of its story on Richard Hoagland's expertise and opinion is just asking to be torn down.

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Can we keep the conspiracy theories to the conspiracy section please?

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Apologies to those offended on the basis of conspiracy or my lack of citing chapter & verse spec that offers hard scientific 'proof', Anything else I can say would still fall into the area of my opinion so I won't proceed beyond this post. The clip was interesting to me as it resonated in several aspects with my current thinking about focus on Mars, not just U.S. attention. Believe it or not I'd never heard of Hoagland and his sidekick before I saw that clip. Project Camelot, yes, and MUFON, I enjoy and learn from some of their meetings, but .. that said, I'll close. Time will tell us all eventually, that's good news, IMO.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Firstly, of course we must simply consider earth-like environments for the possibility of assessing the possibility of alien life. This arisies from the simple fact that we have detectable and measurable life environments on earth which simply provides us with a starting platform. If we stretch out to envisage other forms of life then we simply enter the unscientific realms of science fiction and fantasy.

There are 'extremophiles' on earth (only bacteria) which could perhaps easily survive on Mars, or the possible oceans of Europa (perhaps larger forms of life may exist here too). We have even had viruses accidentally deposited on the moon that have survived the harsh temperatures, radiation and vacuum of space there. Indeed, many basic building blocks of life are probably created in the interstellar medium and deposited throughout the galaxy by comets; like sowing of seeds perhaps.

All this suggests life may be very common, but first we must try and locate environments with which we are familiar; otherwise no government is going to invest in expensive exploration!

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Regarding the colour of the Marsian sky: I believe it will generally appear redish given the dust that is often blown into the atmosphere. Dust will scatter the red end of the spectrum more than the blue end; hence the sky appearing reddish. However, on other occasions I would expect it to appear dark blue - same as Earth. This is due to the scattering of the blue end of the spectrum by the atmosphere; and dark as the atmosphere is so thin. In essence, the same atmospheric gas and dust behiour in scattering of light will equally apply to Mars as it does the Earth.

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All this suggests life may be very common, but first we must try and locate environments with which we are familiar; otherwise no government is going to invest in expensive exploration!

I think that is probably wrong, because the only way that funding would be collected is if a exploration mission was relatively near by... inside our solar system. So, I think even if the 3 other closest stars were shown to have Earth exact like planets, we'd not send probes there till we got our feet dirty looking in our own yard first. We have to do with what we have, and Mars and Europa are what we have.

Thus, I think the red sky is the true sky.
Regarding the colour of the Marsian sky: I believe it will generally appear redish given the dust that is often blown into the atmosphere. Dust will scatter the red end of the spectrum more than the blue end; hence the sky appearing reddish. However, on other occasions I would expect it to appear dark blue - same as Earth. This is due to the scattering of the blue end of the spectrum by the atmosphere; and dark as the atmosphere is so thin. In essence, the same atmospheric gas and dust behiour in scattering of light will equally apply to Mars as it does the Earth.

On second thought, you are right, since the contents of Mar's atmosphere would create a dark blue color, it probably is just that it is not too common for there to be no dust in the air.

But, my observation that the one pic was tampered with is still probably true, since the ground would still be a bright red, not a dull greyish color.

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But, my observation that the one pic was tampered with is still probably true, since the ground would still be a bright red, not a dull greyish color.

This really is not the place for conspiracy theories and I have already asked that conspiracy theories be discussed in the correct place, but as you seem to wish to be made silly who am i to deny you your wish.

You seem to be totally unaware of how these colour images are made, that they are not always true colour and what constitutes "true colour" colour is very subjective anyway.

Colour images from Mars exploration rovers and landers are taken using black and white CCD systems. Colour images are made by taking multiple images through different colour filters and then combining them. Red, blue and green filters are used to form images similar to how the human eye would view Mars. However other filters (infra-red for example) are often used. When other filters used the images producedwill not be "natural" coloured.

NASA also often exaggerates colours to make details more apparent, or to help determine which minerals are present. These images will also not be "natural" coloured.

Then there is the issue of Mars lighting conditions which make things look slightly different to how they would appear on Earth. NASA sometimes corrects for this, making the images look more natural (this image processing is no different to the "white correction" on a digital camera, which corrects for artificial lighting. Switch that off and everything looks far too yellow).

Without giving specifics of which image, what filters were used and what processing was implemented I'm afraid DieChecker that your claim of tampering, which boils down to a rather pathetic case of, "it doesn't look how I think it should," is not so ridiculous that it should be dismissed out of hand, it is so ridiculous that it should be laughed out loudly before being dismissed out of hand.

Now if you wish to continue making silly accusations please do so in the conspiracies forum.

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Now if you wish to continue making silly accusations please do so in the conspiracies forum.

OK. Thanks for the schooling... I'm big enough to admit when I am wrong. And you convincingly showed that any discussions of color here are probably wrong.

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