Mars: A Water World? Evidence Mounts, But Scientists Remain Tight-Lipped
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 01:00 pm ET
29 February 2004




PASADENA, California -- Evidence that suggests Mars was once a water-rich world is mounting as scientists scrutinize data from the Mars Exploration rover, Opportunity, busily at work in a small crater at Meridiani Planum. That information may well be leading to a biological bombshell of a finding that the red planet has been, and could well be now, an extraterrestrial home for life.

There is a palpable buzz here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California that something wonderful is about to happen in the exploration of Mars.


LINK

now this is interesting reading. something big is about to come out of these rovers.

NASA is going to get one hell of a shock if they find huminoid life sitting around playing in a pool

*shows how one can turn any thread into a religious or political debate*

Perhaps when the Bible says that God gathered all the water into one place....it
means exactly that...ALL of the water....perhaps he scooped up all the water from
Mars (and maybe Venus as well) to supply Earth with the water it needed.

If the more civilized countries take a trip to Mars together...will the less
civilized third world countries be jealous and demand some attention through
perilous means?

wow!

Bizarro! Nice Post!

So do you think if they do find life it
will be only microbial or something
more advanced?

These are amazing times we live in
aren't they?

Gazz

That's so damn cool!

The problem with finding life, is that we can only see life as we know it. We could be squishing some intelligent martian being, that is too small for us to see.

The only way we'll find something is if it's really obvious to us. Some giant lizard being, with a phazer gun or something.

I agree with Gazz. There's a VERY huge chance of other possible humanoid life out there.

Update here

Doesn't add all that much, really.

The possibility of finding humanoid life which evolved similarly to human life (paired organs, 5 fingers, etc...) is so remote that I would consider such evidence to be indicative of a supernatural power. Since the Christian Bible stated that God created all men in his image, I would have to consider whether this validates a claim for the Christian God.

But I'm still thinking that we'll only find bacterial fossils, if that.

How could the word "Christian God" get into this thread???

If they find humanoids on Mars, will the Vatican send representatives to Mars to try and convert them to Christianity/Catholicism? Not trying to be sarcastic but think about it. Really.

Just a silly thought. It would be interesting if NASA finds the primary building blocks for life on Mars. It would really be interesting to find that we shared those building blocks. That would open the door to us earthlings being from mars and had to migrate to another suitable planet for our survival. That could explain a lot of prehistoric and ancient ruins.

I don't think humanoid life have such a remote chance of evolving elsewhere. In the end, form is slave to function and function is dictated by the environment. Take a look at fish, ichythosaurs and dolphins. All three are different types of animals and yet all three shared the similar forms because they share similar environments. So I wouldn't be surprised to see similar shaped creatures evolving in some ocean elsewhere.

Thus it is quite possible that alien land animals could be tetrapods as well.

Just think though that if mars had water, and may still have in some parts, what about martian microbes? If they still exist, who knows what they could do to the human body, yet alone what would happen if people did land their and get sick from them?

I saw this thing on tv a little while ago. They said that in many of the rocks that where around where the water was has some kind of special chemical in it ( cant remember wich one though). This chemical can only be formed in water, but water with this chemical in it is very uninhabitable. On Earth only a very select fiew specias of micro organisims can survive in this chemical. So this brings down the possibility of mars having life on it. Also they dont know exactly how much water there was, could be a huge body of water or could have been just a pond.

And for anyone who dosent know, mars does have water on it currently, it has polar ice caps on the north and south poles.

it wouldent matter still we cant settel on and planet or moon in the solar system cause of the way those planets ahve dangerous gas in the air same with mars