Comments on: What would prevent life from existing on Mars or even our Moon?

By: ER

ER — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 22:27:59 +0000

Force is what happens when a mass changes velocity or direction. That’s another way of saying “Force is mass times acceleration”.

Energy is what you get when an mass experiences a force over a distance. Energy is force times distance.

“The Force” with a capital F is a made-up religion in the Star Wars movies. There is no such thing. I didn’t mention energy at all in my original post.

By: johannes

johannes — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 22:09:30 +0000

By: Jody

Jody — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 02:47:52 +0000

Force: When your parents made you take out the trash.

Energy: What the dog has at eleven at night and wants to go for a walk…and you don’t.

By: Jody

Jody — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 02:44:23 +0000

All in good time m’dear…all in good time.

By: johannes

johannes — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 19:58:40 +0000

How do you interpret “force” and “energy”?

By: johannes

johannes — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 19:56:14 +0000

Earth has (so called;-) intelligent life on it, I wonder why Mars would not.

By: johannes

johannes — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 19:54:38 +0000

The universe seems to be about ten billion years older than Earth, if it only takes 3.5 billon years to develop intelligence on a planet and if there are countless planets out there, then it is quite reasonable to suspect that there may be beings out there that are far more intelligent that what we are. Could even speculate that some have visited this planet.

By: bowser

bowser — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 17:23:55 +0000

It takes much, much more to sustain life as we know it than just liquid water. Water seems to be necessary, a good indicator, but is basically a catalyst for many, many other processes. Many other elements are needed, a relatively moderate temperature range, and resources which can be manipulated to provide energy. Radiation must be moderated somehow.

That’s for life as we know it. The Moon doesn’t seem to have liquid water and the radiation isn’t moderated on the surface. Would be tough to find life there which isn’t an artifact of Earthly activities.

Mars is different. Entirely possible to meet all the needs for life.

By: ER

ER — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 17:11:18 +0000

We already know microbes can go into a dormant or “spore” state and exist almost indefinitely in conditions like those found in deep space. And we already know life has the ability to evolve into and thrive in extremely hostile environments. In fact, life may very well have arisen in places like boiling anaerobic acidic brines, which today are only populated by a few hardy species of highly specialized microbes.

But it is highly unlikely life could arise spontaneously in all those hostile environments. If there is life on the moon, Mars, or other dangerous deep space habitats, it either arose there when conditions were more moderate and gradually evolved to survive there as they subsequently deteriorated, or it came from somewhere else and went into a dormant state in the hope conditions would ultimately improve.

All the circumstantial evidence we have so far suggests life is tenacious and hardy, can arise almost anywhere and given time, can adapt to almost anything. But it does have its limitations, and it is not a magic, vitalistic Force, imbued with some spooky imperative to spread throughout the cosmos. Its just complex chemistry, capable of modification and adaptation. Nothimg more.

I’m convinced there is a lot of life in the universe, it is extrememly common, but any life we are likely to find in space may only be of great interest to a biochemist, and would probably quickly bore anyone who wasn’t one. Advanced life, multicellular organisms, complex ecosysterms, sentient beings, may be extremely rare in the cosmos. People anything like us are probably extremely rare. We may even be the only ones.

Life arose on earth almost as soon as it cooled off, about 3.5 to 4 billion years ago. But the first (multicellular) macro-organisms didn’t arise until about .5 billion years ago. Astronomically, it is extremely unlikely for a planetary surface to remain stable and life-friendly for the several billion years it seems to require to evolve life forms complex enough to develop intelligence.

Of course, we don’t really know. We may never know. But that’s the best guess we can make now consistent with what we do know.