Hmm.

I'm excited about reading the paper, and seeing their evidence.

Personally, I don't see any reason for there not to be life.

I'm very curious about what they "found" and have to say.

What do you think?

Wow... Looks interesting.

Makes you wonder what kind of life they'll find.

Life persists just for the sake of it. I would actually be surprised if microbial life isn't still tucked away in a corner of mars.

And a few other places too for that matter.

Shame mars is spherical then

Approximately spherical: it bloats slightly around the equator just like earth does

Spherist. Get with the picture. The planets are flat and orbit the Earth.

/me turns on Nerf Herder - Life on Mars

any life they find would probably just be those damn imps and pinky demons.

I dunno Page, do demons count as being alive?

I thought they were cubes. Inverted, of course.

Anyways, who cares if there is some kind of microbial life? Is that really shocking? Not trying to be a pesimist but I want full fledged evil aliens or nothing. Preferrably with giant-mechanical-walking-machines! Mechanical machines? What am I thinking? bah

Yah... to just find microbial life would be pretty disappointing. I want something multicellular! Or at least something like the Marsmat in Gregory Benford's The Martian Race.

But to be perfectly honest, the life I would most like to find on Mars is my own.

Maybe if they finally find evidence humanity will finally open their eyes and stop being so naieve in their belief that we are alone and that life only evolved on earth by pure extreme chance, we are not alone.

Get a billions of bucks and what do they spend it on? Algae! But oooohh, look! It's space algae!

People starving in Africa, and they go and spend billions on space algae. Yay. I suppose they have a right to spend money on what they want.

Do you honestly think our government would send the money to Africa if they didn't give it to NASA?

Anyway, I'd say finding conclusive evidence of even microbial life on Mars is well worth the price. It would completely shatter the tradional idea that we are the only life in the universe.

SAILORS FIGHTING IN THE DANCE HALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bah. You have no idea what you are talking about. You must remember all life on Earth has a common origin, and structures like DNA, RNA, and the amino acids are shared by all orgamisms, with minimal alterations and quite indentical coding from bacteria to humans.

However, life on Mars would have had no contact (quite probably) with life on Earth, and the biochemistry could be totally different, from the beginning to the end. We barely know how orgisms on Earth work on cellular level. To study alien organisms with a totally different background and solutions to the basically similar tasks would be enlightening beyond belief.

And since we aren't likely to ever find humanoid life forms out there, ST or SW style, it might give us some much needed perspective.

I think it's highly likely we'll find sentient life, perhaps not humanoid. We evolved from tree climbing apes and monkeys. If a planet doesn't have trees, I doubt it would result in humanoids.

To be fair we are barely aware of 2% of microbial life on earth: we could discover something 'unique' on mars, but then it could turn up in literally thousands of places on earth nobody has bothered to look. There are about 5000 - 9000 species in a typical gram of soil And about 5000 - 9000 different species on a typical gram of soil a few yards away.

We really are in the dark about most life on earth. Even plants and animals, in the normal sense of the word!

And that's not even thinking about ocean life (which conversely makes up about 95% of our fossil records)!

Eh, it hasn't passed peer review yet, so it could just be complete nonsense. It's a shame that the media are leaping all over it before it's gone through peer review, it's quite likely to be turned down and dismissed but that won't make headline-grabbing news. There is plenty of fascinating science that is approved by peer review and is far more worthy of discussion. This is little more than speculation.

There has been found ammonia and methane in the Martian atmosphere, which certainly suggests that life did at one time exist on Mars.

There have also been found various amino acids on asteroids, which too suggest that life could exist somewhere else. I think it is grossly unlikely for life to be exclusive to Earth.

Lassev brings up an interesting line of discussion; what form would extra-terrestrial life take?

We will assume that life will only occur in conditions similar to primordial Earth, and that life cannot exist in conditions extremely different to this. If it can, it would be vastly different from anything we have ever seen before. So, let's assume this planet has plenty of water and is of a similar temperature. The one thing we can probably be quite certain of is that the extra-terrestrial life will undergo evolution; if it didn't, it would exist for long. In fact, if it didn't undergo evolution, it probably wouldn't be 'life' at all.

So, the best way of making predictions about extra-terrestrial life is to look at life on Earth. On Earth, there are only about five or six different types of eye. The 'pinhole camera' type eye that humans have is shared by many other animals like octopi, and has evolved independently several times. This suggests that this type of eye is a generically useful evolutionary feature (rather than something that is extremely specialised, like displaying a particular colour to blend in with surroundings). So extra-terrestrial life will probably have an eye similar to ours.

Jumping a few steps forwards, for extra-terrestrial life to become any sort of advanced civilisation, it must exist on land. Civilisation cannot exist underwater, simply because civilisation requires fire. Civilisation will probably require to use tools, so some limbs able to pick up objects will be necessary; something like fingers. In order to make any use of these objects, some or all of these fingers must be opposable; something like thumbs. Similarly, walking upright will probably be useful.

So, you can continue this sort of discussion for some time, evaluating various different evolutionary features, and you will probably come to the conclusion that advanced extra-terrestrial lifeforms will probably be eerily similar to human beings.

Look at those cave-men go!

It's a good thing not everyone thinks like you do...

"Ferdinand, you're going to give three expensive ships to this idiot Columbus when there are people starving over in Africa?!"

yeah well, they better not bring back diseases.

Well, at least that's something you don't need to worry about. If there is life on Mars, it would be micro organisms evolved to live in anaerobic, cold conditions quite unlike anything your body could offer. They would most probably die the moment you opened the bottle in our high oxygen atmospere. If not, your immune system would anyway make short work of them.

I reckon you were right the first time: the high 02 content in our atmosphere would poison them instantly.

It's the freakiest show!

Trade routes to the east could have benefited people. Algae or microbes are pretty useless. We have plenty of 'em here on earth. Who the heck cares if there are microbes or algae on mars anyway, what good could they possibly be?

Well, lots of people do care, and that's enough. It's science. You don't buy science in your local super market, but you surely do buy, every time, products made possible by science. You gotta broaden your views a little. It's a complicated society we have.

Off with his head!!

s

...

"If you can't wow them with facts, baffle them with bull****"

...Said the expert.

I think he's paraphrashing, Flex.

...what exactly was your problem with it, Raol?

No, none of that was 'fact', there's very little real 'science' to go on with extra-terrestrial life, but it's interesting nonetheless, and I was continuing the postulating over what extra-terrestrial life would be like. The only way we can do that is by looking at life on Earth and seeing what evolutionary features have cropped up.

OMGSTFU there is SO humanoids out there! there must! no no no bla bla bla I cant hear you keep your scientific correctness to yourself you're raping our beliefs!!...

RAPING I SAY!!!

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

There is a difference between useful science and useless science. Tell me how gathering evidence that microbes exist or existed at one time on mars helps us at all.

Except that there are conditions on Earth that would make life on Earth unique. Differences in lighting levels all across the spectrum would effect how ocular tissue would form. A different gravity field would cause the shape, density, and support techniques for life to evolve quite differently than here on Earth. Not only that, just by looking at life on Earth, you can assume that most likely we would not encounter vertebrates. I think there'd be a better chance of advanced alien life forms being similar to cuddle fish and squids than a primate.

It's basic research. You can always argue basic research is useless because it rarely produces any concrete applications straight away. However, applied research that usually comes after that (with few exceptions), is based on basic research.

If we want to study how life can begin and evolution work in the universe in general, not just here on Earth, and how living organisms function in different environments, our own solar system is still the only place we can study with reasonable investments.

I guess looking beyond our own planet is still as much dreaming as hard science. But I see nothing wrong in that

The information will be useful for future colonies.

Exactly. You (Mort-Hog) were thinking far too linearly with that logic. You just made a series of wild assumptions and tried to act like some kind of expert in the field.

oh, so when can we live there?

That's a little harsh. As he said he was only speculating. I was going to post something similar to what you're thinking, but since he was just ranting and speculating I saw no need.