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Seti@home pointless?

The ones that sent probes to Mars, and investigated it for life, and are still doing so through soil extracts.
 
Bill Thompson said:
I don't know what you are getting at.

Most star systems have planets that were born from the star they orbit. Ours isn't like that and so ETI would not focus on us. Typically, a star like ours would not have planets that harbor life.
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Of course you don't know what I am getting at, when it seems your starting point is wholly and fully wrong.... Our sun is a 3rd generation (or late 2nd) Population I star. And the planets coalece separately from the sun. Both your statements are wildly innacuare to say the least.

Looks like you need to learn at least a few basics on planetary formation theories... Not to mention stellar formation...
 
Bill Thompson said:
http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l266/Soylachula/Yoda.jpg
Radiation scrambles the delicate interplay necessary to get life started. Mars has no magnetic shield to prevent the suns radiation from destroying the microbial life. Thinking that life could have existed at some point in time is thinking that there could have been water there and then ignoring the fact that there still could not have been any shield from the radiation.
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Read I did, Mr Thompson. I am a member of the Viking flight team, a team that is admittedly becoming rather sparse. While I was not a scientist on the biology experiment, I was intimately involved in testing it and the rest of the instruments on Viking, and I've followed the life on Mars debate quite closely.

Current theory is that Mars may have had everything that Earth had by way of a suitable climate for developing life. Unfortunately, the magnetic field was eventually lost, leading to loss of atmosphere, and subsequent essential death of the planet. That is not to say, however, that microbes could not still be living there now. After all, Earth lived through from one to three sessions of "snowball Earth" after life initially developed to unicellular stage, and it still managed to pull through.

Radiation is a force to be respected on Mars, there is no doubt. The solar wind was chiefly responsible for stripping away the atmosphere after the magnetic field failed. UV has nothing to stop it from raining onto the surface, and there is little doubt that it has pretty much sterilized the top few millimeters of the surface where it falls, particularly in the equatorial regions. Yet, UV is just UV, and it cannot penetrate through a millimeter of dust particles. Moreover, UV rained down upon the Earth's surface for millions of years before the atmosphere could muster its ozone shield; life developed in the oceans and could not conquer the land until it was so, but having sone so, stripping away the ozone shield would hardly eradicate it completely now. In the polar regions it does not penetrate into the depths of craters. Likewise, the solar wind doesn't penetrate; it is mainly atomic nuclei, and even the most energetic alpha particles are stopped by a sheet of paper. Cosmic rays are harder to work with, but they are rarer by far, and Earth has just as much to fear from them as Mars does; more, in fact, as they tend to create showers of energetic particles in our atmosphere.

Edit: Forgot about solar storms and CMEs, which are threats because of high energy protons and xrays. While these do penetrate further than normal wind particles and UV, they still don't penetrate effectively beyond a 10 cm through typical Mars dust. Depth is still a sovereign remedy. Also, Mars atmosphere, while thin, is still there and is somewhat effective in shielding from both of these radiation sources.

It is a fact that the proposed Mars Science Lab will go there to determine whether microbial life has existed on Mars:

Mars Science Laboratory is a rover that will assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life. In other words, its mission is to determine the planet's "habitability."
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http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/
 
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Bill Thompson said:
Most star systems have planets that were born from the star they orbit. Ours isn't like that and so ETI would not focus on us. Typically, a star like ours would not have planets that harbor life.
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Please cite me a cite on that. I'd like to know what exactly you mean by "our's isn't like that" and "Typically would not have planets that harbor life". That seems pretty speculative for the state of the art to me.
 
erlando said:
Didn't Phoenix confirm the presence of water on Mars?
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Yes indeedy it did. http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter detected huge areas of hydrogen rich deposits in the polar areas, that were believed to be water. Phoenix verified the existence of ice at its landing site, and by implication indicated that the deposits seen from the MRO were indeed water ice, at least to a very large fraction. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14143-phoenix-lander-uncovers-ice-on-mars.html

http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/

One report summarizing the suspected history of Mars:
http://helio.estec.esa.nl/intermarsnet/redreport/m3redascii.html
 
Didn't I see images of changes in geological features that were strong evidence of liquid water as well?

I'm thinking of these sort of mudslide looking things on the side of a canyon wall. They weren't there at one point in recent time, and then they were there later (by comparing photos), and something about them made it unlikely that they happened with dry soil/regolith. Someone with more knowledge know what I'm talking about?

And of course, some of the methane plumes are accompanied by water vapor.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Didn't I see images of changes in geological features that were strong evidence of liquid water as well?

I'm thinking of these sort of mudslide looking things on the side of a canyon wall. They weren't there at one point in recent time, and then they were there later (by comparing photos), and something about them made it unlikely that they happened with dry soil/regolith. Someone with more knowledge know what I'm talking about?

And of course, some of the methane plumes are accompanied by water vapor.
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Yes, they have, of course, the ancient canon system that, in all its detail, is very hard to explain without invoking water. Then there is recent (between photos) pictures of slumping within crater walls, apparently caused by water sublimating away the underlaying support, perhaps even turning liquid briefly.
 
shadron said:
Yes, they have, of course, the ancient canon system that, in all its detail, is very hard to explain without invoking water. Then there is recent (between photos) pictures of slumping within crater walls, apparently caused by water sublimating away the underlaying support, perhaps even turning liquid briefly.
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I thought I'd read something about stronger evidence of contemporary liquid water, but the "slumping" must've been what I was thinking of. Maybe I just read one of those over-stated popular press versions of this story.

Yes, I knew the evidence of liquid water on the surface in the past was already pretty conclusive.
 
Two excellent presentations about the search for life on Mars: NOVA: Is There Life on Mars? is an overview from Viking through Phoenix:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mars/program.html

and the second is specifically focused on the Phoenix project: Mars - The Quest for Life:



The final segment shows the two photos of the "ice cubes" sublimating in the trench at 7:53:



For the latter, and a great many more science programs on the BBC, History channel, Discovery channel and other places (including Sagan's Cosmos) the hat's off to Zuke696. His playlist section (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Zuke696&view=playlists ) is nothing short of a video library of science. Subscribe to his channel, and you'll get all these on the fly.
 
Lonewulf said:
So you know better than NASA scientists.
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I can only assume from your very brief post that you figure that since we are exploring Mars, NASA scientists think there is or was life there.

It is not like that at all. In fact almost the opposite is true. NASA scientist, being scientists, are obligated to think critically and scientifically. They are explorers. They are exploring. They are trying to learn. And as history has shown, we often do not know what we do not know. We have no idea what we will find or learn.

And being scientists, they are sceptical and they do not subject themselves to believing something on hopes and dreams like undergrad sci-fi fans who tout "I am sure there is life on Mars"

I have spoken face to face with NASA scientsts. I was lucky when the AAAS had a meeting down the street from where I worked once and I had lengthy discussions with several NASA scientists. They expressed excitement about exporing Mars because we will have no idea what we might find. None expressed excitement about finding possible life there. And they all doubted it. I know this is unlike what we would like to believe. But it is the truth.

Lonewulf said:
The ones that sent probes to Mars, and investigated it for life, and are still doing so through soil extracts.
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Nope.
 
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erlando said:
You're not making any sense...
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Am so.

I have to suppose and guess what you mean and what part you are not clear of.

So I am guessing that it does not make sense to you because it is not what you would like to hear or believe. But NOONE at NASA whose job it is to plan, work on and work with these missions to Mars thinks there is or was life there. It is the common joe who assumes that is what they are looking for. It isn't. It is just science and discovery. That does not mean that if they do not find life, then it is a waste of time.

We look at the physics at play on another world to better understand our own. It is as simple as that.
 
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Bill Thompson said:
I can only assume from your very brief post that you figure that since we are exploring Mars, NASA scientists think there is or was life there.

It is not like that at all. In fact almost the opposite is true. NASA scientist, being scientists, are obligated to think critically and scientifically. They are explorers. They are exploring. They are trying to learn. And as history has shown, we often do not know what we do not know. We have no idea what we will find or learn.
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I'm so happy to learn that we have such a noble and honest knight to come to the defense of our and their scientific purity. So, I guess, they are guilty of lying then, if they're advocating something they don't really think there is a possibility of seeing any signs of. I've pointed out to you the locations on their website where they mention a quest for life. I would think that might just be political BS put on by their PR department (on your word) if it were not the real names of NASA scientists at the bottom of the pages labeled as content managers.

As much as you may desire that they don't go looking for something that has a fairly good possibility of being true, in the name of some sort of queen-sized idea of scientific purity, then you need to take off the blinders. There is nothing wrong with, no skeptical attitude that demands, that a scientist might think that life may be present on Mars; life is one of those physical facts, the determination of which will enlighten the study of biology whether they find it or not. They will, of course, draw conclusions as the evidence warrants. How in the world do you think they can plan missions and create experiments if they believe that they must inevitably be failures?

And being scientists, they are sceptical and they do not subject themselves to believing something on hopes and dreams like undergrad sci-fi fans who tout "I am sure there is life on Mars"
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And you are equivalently sure there isn't, and NASA had better agree with you, eh? Otherwise they're not being skeptical? They're being undergrad sci-fi fans? You sir, need to deflate the ego just a mite. Ye gods, you make it sound like some sort of viral infection.

I have spoken face to face with NASA scientsts. I was lucky when the AAAS had a meeting down the street from where I worked once and I had lengthy discussions with several NASA scientists. They expressed excitement about exporing Mars because we will have no idea what we might find. None expressed excitement about finding possible life there. And they all doubted it.
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There was a time, after the negative results from Viking in 1976 seemed to kill the idea that there was life on Mars, that there was a lot of gloom (no other word for it) on the subject. I wouldn't be surprised to find that your experience came from that time. At that time we had no data on Mars' natural history. Today, thanks to the plethora of explorative robots on and around Mars, that negative outlook has been miigated by the fair chance that life at one time did exist on Mars, and that remnants of it may still exist. No certainties, for sure, but scienists don't have to proceed from an assumption of total lifelessness as you imagine.

Get a grip. No one expects to find Barsoom in a cavern under the North Martian Pole, sucking on that ice cube buried there. But they may find some microbes, and if they do, than that will extend biology's whole realm by a factor of two overnight. That thought does excite scientists, biologists and cosmologists in particular; even Spock (http://www.griffithobs.org/pnimoy.html) is looking forward to the discovery.

I know this is unlike what we would like to believe. But it is the truth.
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Some skeptical attitude, fella. :rolleyes:
 
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There are a couple movies that come to mind. One, I think, was called Mission To Mars with Val Kilmer and there was another one with Tim Robbins.

Both of these are the view that the main stream public would enjoy and possibly expect and hope for. And they are both flying bovine feces.

Finding some sort of chemical reaction that is pre-pre-pre life is more likely and more helpful than finding any sort of life or clue of previous life.

Looking at the goings on on another planet could lead to real earthly benefits like curing cancer or something like that. Unlocking the many mysteries of what makes us who we are would happen on the atomic and subatomic level rather than the hog wash of popular science fiction.
 
I think the problem is that when Bill's talking about "mainstream" point of view or what "we would like to believe" he is apparently not talking about anything like scientific consensus. Instead, he's talking about popular opinion (you know, as in that majority of people who believe some version of creationism explains biology better than evolution?).

I say, let's just forget that position since no one here seems to be advocating it.

I think most of us hold the position expressed by the Carl Sagan quote I offered above (see post number 49 of this thread).

There's no reason to suppose that anything magical or exceptional happened on Earth. The laws of physics and chemistry operate the same everywhere. So it would be surprising if in the vastness of the universe complex life and intelligence only happened here. At the same time, we've explored very very very little of even our own galaxy, and we have no evidence at all of life elsewhere.

By the way, I recommend reading the chapter in Darling's Life Everywhere that refutes the arguments made in the Rare Earth Theory (and points out the connection to creationism and a religious agenda).

He also makes some good arguments that complex life might be very common, and it might be relatively similar to life here. However, again, we simply don't know.
 
Bill Thompson said:
Both of these are the view that the main stream public would enjoy and possibly expect and hope for. And they are both flying bovine feces.
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And the majority of the "main stream public" also believe in creationism. This is the same "main stream public" that is unlikely to be able to identify neighboring countries on a map or do very basic math or give the name of the current U.S. Attorney General. So what? That is not the position of mainstream science, and not the position of anyone here.

You're arguing against a straw man.
 
All this talk about Mars really does not have anything directly to do with SETI and/or SETI @ Home.

And if you want to get specific it really has to do with how you define "life". I mean, I can remember when the Viking lander touched down and Carl Sagan was being interviewed along with Ray Bradbury (by the way, I met Ray Bradbury at a book signing in Santa Barbara once) and the reporter asked him how he felt about the event. He asked Ray Bradbury how he felt about having written so many books about life on Mars and how now all those stories would soon be outdated and if Bradbury was sad that we did not find life there.

Here is the cool part. He said that, on the contrary, now there really IS life there and that the Viking probe is an extension of humanity. It is like our eyes and arm and feet are now extended to another world. I thought that is pretty cool.

So it is how you view "life". It also depends on who you listen too. To get the real answer, you should go to the most educated person you can find and not just the science fiction fans.

I mean, if you really want to get down to specifics, there was once life on mars, but that is not the same as live evolving on mars.

And we know from the greatest and most educated and most intelligently gifted man who ever lived that there was life on Mars -- I mean biological life -- back in the 1840's. All you have to do is ask The Church for some of his recordings on the matter. But L. Ron Hubbard said that the outpost of the Golorkians was abandoned and since then, there has been little interest in Mars and Earth, for that matter.

So it is basically how you define life. I mean, we are basically apes if it weren't for our thetans placed there by Lord Xenu.

Ok, let's see if anyone has anything to say before they read this disclaimer. I am joking in the last 4 paragraphs here.
 
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