Sound of Trumpet wrote:

http://helives.blogspot.com/2006/07/martian-life.html


Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Martian Life



Life on Mars would have no impact on the strength of the cosmological
ID argument. However, the absence of such life would land in the win
column for privileged-planet type arguments. At the same time a lack of
Martian life would be an easier pill for evolutionary biology to
swallow.

If primitive life is discovered on Mars, some will say "see, not only
is earth not privileged, not only is life not rare, but in fact it is
so common that we find it on our next-door neighbor. Any discussion of
one in a gazillion chance is clearly nonsense."

Bzzt. Sorry, the more sensible response is: the conditions for complex
are exceedingly rare in the universe.

Bzzt, sorry, you are a dumbfuck.

And given that earth had to be in
the right part of the right kind of solar system, with the right kind
of satellite, and the right kind of star, and the right planetary
companions, in the right part of the right type of galaxy, in the right
cluster of galaxies, of the right age, in a universe with the correct
laws and constants-well if I were taking bets on the next most likely
place to find life, I'd look first at earth's nearest neighbors,
reckoning that they are closest to being in the habitable zone. If I
can't live at the oasis, I'll settle for being within walking distance.

Welcome to planet Earth.

If any place other than earth should have life, it should be Mars.

The universe is awful big. Just Mars? You're sure about that?

If Mars has primitive life (that didn't originate on earth-that would
have to be ruled out) then it is because of its proximity to a favored
location in the universe-not a sign that life is cheap and easy.

Mars almost certainly was alive in its early history.

Personally, I don't think we will find evidence of non-terrestrial
primitive life on Mars. New data from the European OMEGA satellite
confirms Mar's lack of substantial water, or of any significant
hydro-activity on Mars for the last 3.5 billion years.1 So when there
was water on Mars, the solar system was at its most inhospitable-with
the inner planets subjected to frequent life-quenching impacts from
comets and asteroids.

First of all, Mars is loaded with water. You'd have to be an idiot to miss
that. Sure, the top few centimeters of the surface are now very dry, but
the atmosphere is saturated, the poles are covered with vast ice sheets,
and the high latitudes are saturated with ice in at least the top meter or
so. All the evidence points to a water saturated Mars.

Earth was also bombarded mercilessly in its youth, and life did just fine.
Those same impacts certainly seeded a wet and warm early Mars.

It's fun to test the predictability of evolutionary biology by asking
those practiced in that science to predict what life on Mars will be
like, should we discover it. If you get an answer (not likely) and
distill it to its essence, it will be along the lines of "Oh, I don't
know, but whatever it is will be consistent with evolution." Can you
imagine a physicist stating "Oh, I don't know even the gross details of
the orbit of Mars, but whatever it is it will be consistent with
gravitation."

Then again, if I were an evolutionary biologist I would be hoping that
no life was found on Mars.

That would make you a geologist, certainly no astrobiologist thinks that.
Now that we have clearly established that early Mars was alive, the
question is rather, how far did it get, and what happened to it.

I would not want to explain how earth
(without being privileged) supports complex life while microbes on Mars
remained microbes. I'd much rather Mars be sterile, so that I could
blame the great evolutionary scapegoat, abiogenesis. A lifeless Mars
permits the argument that "yes the origin of life is (possibly) rare,
but if life were to have started on Mars, it would have evolved (as all
life should, evolutionarily speaking) into more and more complex
forms."

My god, you are dumber than *****. Where do these people come from?

http://cosmic.lifeform.org