The Great Beyond

could other thing live ont the planey mars?

Hold on . Scientists are forgetting that Earth also had a salty-acidic oceans 4 billion years ago . Earth's oceans were green, so let's not judge the evidence that Mars is lifeless .

Mars is really a crappy planet for finding life. No atmosphere, no tectonics, no liquid water on the surface.
As shown also by the recent discoveries of new forms of life under the antarctica, it is much easier to find life forms in cold seas, so for example on planets as Europa... Although it is true that it will hard to make a hole in the ice and have look there inside, we should better reorient our research in that direction...

I think what we should be asking is not whether there IS life on Mars, but whether there ever WAS at any point it time. That's a much more interesting question, considering that finding and possibly culturing some extra-terrestrial organism could be super-dangerous in the first place.

It eliminates possibilities of many microorganisms to survive on Mars. But still chances of robust dormant forms of ancient bacteria capable of active DNA repair cannot be overlooked!!

"Is there life on Mars? No" Thats a pretty definitive statement. It ignores the fact that life on Earth is pretty tenacious and exists in all sorts of extreme environments.

There have been some indications of the possible presence of life, on Mars, such as the presence of methane in the Martian atmosphere.

We will have to wait for the Phoenix lander later this year to hopefully give us a definitive answer.

If life were found on Mars, the big question it would answer is - Is life a rare occurrence or is it common, almost inevitable, in the universe?

NASA is trying to replenish its inflated budget with expansive, untenable, even nonsensical propaganda about "life on Mars," adding where there is or was water there was probably life," etc.

Such nonsense is laced with inaccuracies, hyperbole, and sheer fantasy--in fact, anything to bamboozle the public, Congress, even the White House about the "inevitability" or "likelihood" of extraterrestrial life.

Meanwhile, no one cares to ponder this hypothesis with any reflection or depth--say, by reading, e.g., Ward and Brownlee's excellent, sobering study, RARE EARTH. The two authors are not emloyees of NASA and in their book make a specialist's estimate that Earth might be unique in possessing a biosphere.

This idea, by the way, although unopular, is not new. The late, famous Russian astrophysicist Dr. Iosif Shklovsky wrote about this just before he died in the early 1980s.

Shklovsky argued the thesis of a "unique Earth" in possessing life. Sir James Jeans, Einstein, and other eminent scientists have also suspected Earth might be unique in this way.

As to frozen liquid--if it is that--on Mar: It is called by NASA PR "water ice." Haven't we all heard, though, that there are OTHER TYPES OF ICE of a kind that is poisonous and more likely is what lies beneath the surface of that airless, lifeless, clinker of a so-called "world" called Mars? (Water, as Ward and Brownlee point out, is evidently very rare outside of Earth.) There are many types of frozen, formerly liquid acids, for example, or a liquid compound resembling noxious "dry ice"?

Shklovsky, world renown as an astrophysicist, ventured to proipose that we adopt a new "neo-geocentric" point of view about our fragile, very special Planet Earth--meaning, he argued, cultivating an appreciation of the likelihood of Earth's uniqueness.

It's certainly time to critique the lame notion that if there are "billions of Sun-like stars" out there "must be" Earth-like planets orbiting them (Asimov's, Sagan's, Morison's, Shapiro's, SETI's, et al., argument).

This is like saying that if you had billions of chimpanzees pounding on computer keyboards for billions of years, sooner or later there would "inevitably" be some who would write a Shakespearean play or sonnet!

Obviously, this doesn't follow. There is such a thing in philosophy, science, and real life called UNIQUENESS. And that may well be what Earth is.

We hear sometimes that it is "arrogant" to posit Earth's uniqueness. On the contrary. It is the height of metaphysical arrogance to suppose humanoids grow like "cosmic weeds" Universewide. Projecting Earth;s experience throughout the whole Universe is hardly modest!

Anyway, there is no proof of this and much doubt that Earth's likely unique experience could be replicated. Even a World Series game or world soccer match cannot be replicated and theyt are uncomplex affairs compared to Earth's evolution! Each type of evolution, or series of events, is unique, just as each human personality is unique. (The game anaology is admittedly a simplistic example since Earth;s evolution over its 4.5 billion years is vastyly difference, more complex, and has seen far more contingencies, chance and fortuitous events that contribute to its overall likely uniqueness.

By the way, the argument for a unique Earth contains no religious connotations. On the contrary. It has been the religious argument going back to the Middle Ages--namely, that God "in all His plentitude" created many "worlds" populated with humans.

Albert L. Weeks

i would argue that Mars itself is alive and therefore there is life there. It would seem to me that the planets themselves possess their own energy/life but if you are looking for "traditional" life I am not so sure.

Seldom have I read such hogwash as that in the above two posts.

Dr Albert L Weeks - water is not rare outside the Earth. It is found abundantly even in our own solar system. The Sun contains it, Comets are mostly composed of it and Europa, Jupiter's moon, is covered with water several kilometres thick.

Also as there are billions of Sun-like planets then to say that will be plenty of Earth-like planets orbiting them is something that can be worked out by simple mathematics. I suspect that billions of chimpanzees pounding on billions of computer keyboards for billions of years producing Shakespeare's Sonnets would have lesser odds.

But the fact is that there are NOT billions of chimpanzees pounding on billions of keyboards for billions of years, but there ARE billions of stars and billions of planets as evidence now suggests, so there must be millions of Earth-like planets even in our Milky Way.

Also the stars can be smaller or larger than our sun. For each star there will be a "Goldilocks" size and distance for the planet to be "just right" for conditions of life.

Intelligent life would be rarer as it takes longer to develop and it has many possibilities other than "humanoids" "sprouting like weeds".

there could very well be life on mars, if you leave water on a book for instance, it turns into mold after about one year if it is untouched. water on other planets PLUS different conditions on other planets means that water could evolve to something more then just simple mold. and with billions of other planets, who knows what else there may be. there could possibly be life on mars millions of years ago that was unseen to mankind. fossils for example, have to be dug up to be seen. miles and miles down from the top of the earth. the same might go for mars.

Life at the martian surface may be unlikely but whatabout deep down. Subterranean ecosystems have been found on Earth maybe they could exist on Mars in undergound caves or blocked off lava tubes. The absence of plate tectonics means that you could have extensive systems persisting for billions of years with their own macroflora and macrofauna evolving. If they were large enough the radar probing would be able to spot them.

this is all billshi#

im on this page because im learning about is there life on mars i think there isnt because there isnt any gravity and you will be floating on the air.It also has not got notectonics.

i think there isnt any gravity becuase you will be floating in the air.

nnnnnnnnnnoooooooo way there might be life on mars

ok look the way i see this is...we live on Earth...which has its own elements...we have our own technologies...our own bacteria...our own organisms...whos to say there isnt a different class of organisms, or a different set of elements we have not encountered yet...we have not set foot on another planet which would suggest we know almost nothing about the planet...we test for things we know about..not things we have no clue about..dont count on there being no life on mars or any other planet...just life we dont know is there...we adapt to the elements of Earth...im pretty sure they would have adapted to the salty, uninhabitable...or should i say possibly uninhabitable planet they reside upon...

huh no one is sure if there is life on mars there isnt enough water and there is 95.3% carbon dixiode so lol no one is sure but mostly there isnt

As a scientist,i believe there is possibility of life in mars because of some earth-like characteristics found there,but on the other hand,if we look at our holy books,we read that God created earth & also created plants and animals. installed life into them,He never talked of life outside earth except in heaven

iight so their is no life on mars but how about inside if mars lol? !

I belive that there is live on Mars.

The world is only 7,000 years old.

If I remember right there was a time on earth that we could have been considered a "dead planet" by others? We don't know exactly know what happened with the surface or atmosphere of our own planet to knock out the life form we know as dinosaurs,so I don't rule out life on other planets!

God only told us that He put life on earth (Book of Genesis), not on the other planets, too. If we had neighbors, I'm sure he would tell us in His Word. The other planets surely were never placed there by God to support life. They were put there for other reasons. Such as Jupiter's huge body and magnetic pull attracting massive asteroids, thereby shielding Earth from destruction.

There may be a lot of salt on the planet but what says that the Martians can't evolve to live there?

Do you all actually believe that they didn't find no life on mars? Think about it. Why would NASA or the government tell us in the first place. They hide enough from us as it is. So why wouldn't they hide this. The only time we are gonna "ever" find out that there is life on another planet is when an if this other life attacks Earth or just simply wants to be known. Cause the government sure as hell wouldn't tell us. An when I say we, I mean regular everyday people. So don't belive everything that your told.

many of the previous bloggers need to actually take a highschool level astronomy class before you form your opinions. look up the 14 things a planet needs to sustain life. then make your assumption. there isnt life on mars. but we dont know for sure if there ever was in the past, there are theories that suggest the planet lost its magnetic field which would essentially wipe out all life on mars. i strongly encourage bloggers to stop posting their thoughts when they have no idea of the facts.