"...groundwater-fed lacustrine setting”
I initially read that as 'langoustine' and was quite excited for about a second. Then I used a dictionary.
While the Curiosity rover faffs about sending its earthbound doppelganger to help President Obama be inaugurated afresh, NASA's harder-working Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has spotted something interesting at the bottom of a crater, namely clays and other rocks associated with terrestrial lakes and perhaps, just perhaps, …
*meh*
Best we'll get is some hydro-carbon sludge at the bottom.
Mars is either a billion years too early or too late for life I recon, and that's even before we take into consideration the non-ideal climate and atmospheric issues.
Now if we're looking for ideal conditions where we can grow our own when we get there, that's different. This could be a promising development.
Hardly "Meh"... This kind of stuff, while not as Spectacular as some people would like to see, gives us a great amount of data about the planet's geology and history.
Even if Mars proves to have entirely been devoid of life in all its' history, the geological data would be priceless. People forget that finding evidence of (previous) life on Mars is a bonus, not a requirement.
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Mars dried out a billions of years ago. Even assuming life even got started its unlikely its survived the harsh conditions there now. The water is frozen solid through the entire crust except for a few exceptional events, there is little or no warmth from the rocks to provide an energy gradiant to microbes hiding from the solar UV and there is little atmosphere to provide any CO2 or O2 for them to use.
Aside from that the NASA scientists might like to remember that even on cosy earth there are some places that are too sterile for life such as certain parts of the atacama desert where not even microbes are found. What an earth makes these scientists think that life will have survived in an even more inhospitable enviroment for 2 billion years?
Its bollocks. Mars is dead. If it wasn't once it certainly is now.
I'm never quite sure whether the scientists are deluding themselves or just the funders. I personally believe that most of the shit they point at and scream 'evidence of water' is no such thing.
I do however value the data that Curiosity is picking up as being extremely valuable and if they have to con a few dumb politicians and newspapers to get up there and have a good look around by telling them they're looking for life (and they don’t get distracted by spending too much time looking for press releases) then so be it.
1. You're making an assumption and on the basis of that assumption 'let's not bother!'
2. Life is extremely resilient, just because you couldn't be arsed and would give up and die! Doesn't mean the extremophiles wouldn't.
3. There are bacteria living in the ice in Antarctica, these are just one form of many extremophiles.
4. If life got started on Mars and the conditions at some of the time allow that life continue to exist, then there may be life there, unless we go a look we will never find out.
This is critical to understanding one of the fundamental questions, are we alone?
Life (in some form) on Mars indicates a wider spread of life throughout the Universe as it's not unique to the chemistry and conditions here on Earth.