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Posted by David Williams on October 27, 2006, 11:04 am
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-> Well there is certainly evidence for life on mars now. There are little
-> tracks left by RoverBots. There are dents on the surface left by bouncing
-> balloons. And I am sure there are at least a few earth type microbes found
-> on finger prints on a washer in the debris left by earthlings. Microbes that
-> might thrive in the Martian environment. Our probes may in fact be creating
-> Schrödinger's Cat in the Box. Yes the probes might detect life,but is it
-> life that we brought there? Don't think about the vessel's external skin
-> traveling through a hostile space, but instead think about the protected
-> environment inside the craft. It will be interesting to observe evolution at
-> work on the changing surface of Mars. Will E.
This is a good point. If and when life is discovered on Mars, one of
the first things that will have to be done will be to determine whether
it could have got there by riding on one of our spacecraft. If it is
utterly different from earthly life, in a fundamental biochemical
sense, then this will be strong evidence that it is native Martian
life. But if it is similar to earthly life, then two hypotheses could
explain it. Either it got there by recent contamination from
spacecraft, or it shares a common origin with earthly life, having
reached both planets from somewhere else long ago. Differentiating
between these will amount to determining how long ago Martian and
earthly organisms had a common ancestor, which is the kind of thing
that geneticists nowadays frequently have to do.
I guess we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it...
dow
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