Mars

[Armat]

Very exciting! and how striking the resemblance to earth the mars is. I was listening to radio where few scientists were discussing the definition of life. Pretty interesting. As you know common view that life needs oxygen to survive is not true. They are large living forms under deep oceans and small bacteria living deep in the crust of earth which receives neither water or oxygen and deep see creatures living next to sulfuric acid vents and thrive on it. Anyway here is the link for pictures from mars.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

[Stormig]

large living forms under deep oceans

Hmmmmmmmm, I'm not sure they don't get oxygen. In fact, the coldness of the water and in fact the high pressure... I don't know.

Anyway let me have a look at your link. Anyone know what HAS happened to the Beagle, by any chance?

[THOTH]

No actually Armat is entirely correct. These are primordial bacterial beings that by all rights (considering what we normally accept as acceptable parameters of life) shouldn't be able to exsit at all.

[Stormig]

But I'm not talking about bacteria. I think the spiel with large living forms under the ocean really is that they are able to survive under such pressure and more often that not give out when brought to the surface.

[DominO123]

No actually Armat is entirely correct. These are primordial bacterial beings that by all rights (considering what we normally accept as acceptable parameters of life) shouldn't be able to exsit at all.

This is not true, the acceptable parameters of life are not the presence of oxygen but rather a source of energy, atp production etc...

 

Theoritically Cl can burn and be the comburant, the oxydizer, not as good as Oxygen but still on paper it is possible, the key is on the transfer of electrons.

Edited January 5, 2004 by Fadix

[THOTH]

OK Domino - I stand corrected. Thank you. All hail the matrrix! lol

[Armat]

But I'm not talking about bacteria. I think the spiel with large living forms under the ocean really is that they are able to survive under such pressure and more often that not give out when brought to the surface.

Actually I did not make this up.These are very large worms which thrive on sulfaric acid vents.

 

Research on Earth now shows that where life can exist, it does. About 20 years ago explorers discovered hydrothermal vents in the Earth's ocean floor surrounded by communities of giant clams and tubeworms. These animals survive by eating bacteria that utilize heat and nutrients (chemical energy) from the springs. Recent genetic research has shown that the last common ancestor to all life on Earth may have been a heat-loving, sulfur-eating organism (called archaea) that thrived in these dark depths.

 

These bacteria could have migrated to the ocean's surface when the Earth's atmosphere became more hospitable, and planet-scale cosmic impacts ceased. These so-called extremophiles could have survived the boiling oceans caused by asteroids or comets smashing into the early Earth.

 

Hearty bacteria have also been found surviving entombed in 10 million- year-old sediments beneath the ocean floor, in algae mats in perennially ice-covered lakes in Antarctica, deep in Earth's crust, in caves without light, in scalding hot water, in freezing subsurface water, in acid and inside rock. These ancient primitive life forms, surviving in hot and cold environments for billions of years, go back to the root of the tree of life on Earth.

 

Just last year, a new species of worm was found living on mounds of frozen natural gas (mostly methane) 1,800 feet below the Gulf of Mexico. Although it hasn't been confirmed, it is suspected bacteria are involved in converting the methane to usable food for the worms.

 

Jupiter is the king of all planets, containing two thirds the planetary mass of the solar system and host to 16 moons. Composed of hydrogen and helium, it is more like a star than a planet, but with only one eighth the mass needed to ignite a fusion reaction. With its massive magnetic field and electrical storms, Jupiter greatly influences its planetary neighbors. Huge Jovian gravity tides cause Io's (Jupiter's innermost large moon) volcanic eruptions of sulfur dioxide, and are thought to "warm" Europa's suspected planet-wrapping ocean. Should we go ice fishing on Europa? Scientists think it's worth a try.

[Armat]

It is probable and may prove true that life started on earth by comets crushing on the Earth and bringing the first living bacteria to earth.

The common or archaic theories that life needs oxygen and water to exist are no longer true. It can exist without both present. What is more important is carbon 14, which is the building block of all living things.

[DominO123]

It is probable and may prove true that life started on earth by comets crushing on the Earth and bringing the first living bacteria to earth.

The common or archaic theories that life needs oxygen and water to exist are no longer true. It can exist without both present. What is more important is carbon 14, which is the building block of all living things.

I think you meant C(Carbon), Carbon 14 is just an isotope of C, the most common is C12.

 

Ah as for Jupiter moons, I havnt seen the last countdown, but if I were you I would check it, those last years they have found many others.

 

BTW Armat, good posts, you are not an ordinary artist.

[Sasun]

Yeah Armat, nice job, I am surprised How come you didn't post in science section before? Well science could be dull compared to arts I guess

[Armat]

Thanks guys, actually I find both Arts and Science facinating.I read lot of "nerd" magazines.

This article is pretty intersting.Sasun, Domino, Thoth and others will enjoy it (I hope)Sorry it is a bit long but worth the read since it relates to Mars.

 

BACTERIA: SURVIVAL IN SIBERIA

 

 

By Stephen Hart

>From Astrobiology Magazine

 

 

14 August 2002

 

 

The concept of suspended animation supports the plots of dozens of

science fiction books and movies. If such a procedure could ever

work with humans, it's surely many decades away. But exobiologists

count on suspended animation as one of the best chances of finding

life on other planets, Mars specifically. This spring, Gene D.

McDonald and colleagues gave them some solid reasons for hope:

evidence that single-celled organisms such as bacteria, archaeans and

fungi repair cellular damage for tens of thousands of years--and

perhaps many times longer--after being frozen solid.

 

 

Scientists have known for nearly a century that microorganisms can

survive in the Siberian permafrost. How they do this, however, is

not fully understood. McDonald's discovery hinges on the fact that,

even in permafrost, animation turns out to be not quite completely

suspended.

 

 

Even when all life processes appear to have stopped, processes that

affect life do not. Organisms frozen in soil continue to be

bombarded by radiation from elements within the soil itself. And at

any temperature above absolute zero, all molecules vibrate a little.

Thus, cells' DNA and other important molecules continue to sustain

life-threatening damage. For organisms to remain viable for long

periods of time, they must somehow maintain a minimal level of

molecular repair.

 

 

"One of the reasons we did this work is because it had been believed

that the organisms that had been buried in permafrost for tens of

thousands or hundreds of thousands of years were basically inactive

metabolically," McDonald says. But, he wondered, if they remained

completely inactive, how much radiation damage could the cells

sustain?

 

 

To answer that question, McDonald and his colleagues, Karen Brinton

and Alexandre Tsapin, both working with him at Jet Propulsion

Laboratory in Pasadena, and David Gilichinsky, of the Russian Academy

of Sciences in Pushchino, needed a convenient indicator of the

molecular-repair activity of cells embedded in Siberian permafrost,

where they obtained their samples.

 

 

One such indicator is the rate at which certain building blocks of

proteins undergo a normal molecular change. Because they're

asymmetrical molecules, amino acids come in both right-handed and

left-handed forms, labeled D and L respectively. Left alone at any

temperature above absolute zero, any individual amino acid molecule

occasionally will switch from the right-handed configuration to the

left-handed one and vice versa in a process called racemization. A

bowl of any given amino acid, regardless of its initial balance of

left- and right-handed molecules, eventually will reach an

equilibrium state, with roughly equal numbers molecules of each

configuration at any moment.

 

 

The speed of this process differs among the amino acids and depends

on temperature and other parameters of the environment, McDonald

says. "It could literally range from hours in boiling acidic water

to billions of years in a cold dry sediment."

 

 

This process, while normal to chemistry, is inimical to biology.

Proteins in living organisms don't work if they contain right-handed

amino acids. But the right-to-left and left-to-right reactions go on

continuously even in living cells. As a result, McDonald explains,

organisms have evolved "enzymes that basically go around and scavenge

the D amino acids, the right-handed ones, and get rid of them.

Because if the D amino acids build up to too high a level, they can

poison protein synthesis and essentially kill the cell."

 

 

These enzymes prove so efficient that a living cell maintains a near-

zero ratio of right-handed to left-handed amino acids, or D/L ratio.

This process provides a sort of clock to determine the age of dead

cells or cells with suspended molecular activity. Once the repair

process stops, the clock starts ticking, and the level of right-

handed amino acids slowly rises.

 

 

"If you know what the temperature of the environment is, and if

you've measured the rate of racemization [molecular switching] at

that temperature, you can then predict what the amount of

racemization would be for a given age," McDonald says.

 

 

Amino acids undergo this right-to-left-to-right switch at different

rates, so McDonald chose to study the fastest amino acid, one called

aspartic acid. To calibrate the clock, the team studied the rate at

which aspartic acid switched from left to right at different

temperatures and ran a carbon-14 dating technique on the samples.

Organisms build all their carbon-containing molecules using carbon

from the environment. That carbon is a mixture of stable and

radioactive forms of carbon. The amount of carbon-14, a radioactive

form, continuously decreases after a cell stops building new

molecules with atmospheric carbon-when it's frozen or dies, for

example. By measuring the total amount of carbon-14 in a sample,

researchers have an independent way to determine the sample's age.

 

 

The researchers can express the amino acid clock's results in a

variety of ways. Because the process depends on temperature,

McDonald compared the temperature predicted by the measured amount of

right-handed amino acid in a sample with the actual average

temperature of the permafrost at the depth of the sample.

 

 

The amino acid clock suggested that the samples had been continuously

cooled to a temperature of minus 19 degrees Celsius (minus 2 degrees

Fahrenheit). But the measured temperature of the permafrost is 6 to

8 C (11 to 14 F) warmer. When the clock's results are expressed as a

temperature, colder means less measured right-handed aspartic acid.

 

 

What could account for the discrepancy?

 

 

"If there's less of the right-handed form" than would be expected if

no biological activity had been taking place, McDonald says, "then

the only real explanation for that is that the organisms are

scavenging these D amino acids and getting rid of them." Enzymes

convert D amino acids to the L form or break down the D amino acids,

recycling the parts of the molecule.

 

 

McDonald and colleagues suggest two possible ways the soil organisms

could have continued this molecular maintenance. First, the

permafrost may have warmed periodically, thawing the frozen

organisms. But independent research shows only very low levels of

molecular activity in permafrost samples.

 

 

The second possibility is that the organisms continue to scavenge

right-handed aspartic acid even at permafrost temperatures. This

process would be slow but steady. And if the organisms are

performing maintenance on aspartic acid, McDonald argues, they may

also be maintaining DNA and other essential biomolecules (although

there is, as yet, no direct evidence of this). McDonald's results

suggest that permafrost organisms can continue this molecular

maintenance for at least 30,000 years.

 

 

"We can't absolutely prove it, but the assumption is that there's

essentially no cell division. So we're talking about a cell

population that's basically been there since soon after permafrost

was deposited," McDonald says.

 

 

On to Mars

 

 

"A lot of papers are being published in exobiology but very few have

really direct relevance to the goals of exobiology," says E. Imre

Friedmann, a microbial ecologist and astrobiologist at NASA Ames

Research Center. "This is one of those which does have a direct

relevance to the goals of exobiology. This is a possible method to

document microbial activity in martian permafrost."

 

 

While Mars experts have gathered evidence of ice on Mars for some

time, results in May from the Odyssey spacecraft showed large amounts

of subsurface ice. Friedmann says the amino acid clock could help

determine if life once existed on Mars-or even if living organism

still reside in the martian permafrost.

 

 

"Now having said that, this is not something that we will do

tomorrow. Because in order to use this method, we will have to go to

Mars, drill into Mars to reach the permafrost and bring permafrost

back. It is not something which will be done next year. But [the

technique] is a very important preparation for a more advanced stage

of exploration of Mars."

 

 

Drilling would be an essential first step because the surface of Mars

cannot sustain liquid water. "Conditions in considerable depth below

the surface may be more suitable for life," Friedmann says, "but of

course this is also uncertain.

 

 

Friedmann calls martian permafrost the most likely place to find life

on the red planet. But for life to have survived, even in almost

suspended animation, organisms would have to have survived far longer

on Mars than they have so far on Earth.

 

 

"The oldest Siberian permafrost is about three million years old,"

Friedmann says. "On Mars, life, if there was any, probably stopped

over three billion years ago. Billion. So it is an enormous

difference between the Earth conditions and the martian conditions.

Still it is not impossible that we can find living bacteria, not near

the surface, but maybe quite deep."

 

 

What's next?

 

 

McDonald pictures uses for the amino acid clock on Earth and on Mars.

Here at home, he plans to obtain samples from permafrost in Alaska

and deeper in the Siberian subsurface. As for Mars, he says, "There

are several instruments under development that would measure amino

acid D/L ratios on Mars, from a lander or rover." And the Mars lander

scheduled for 2009 may well have a drill capable of obtaining

permafrost samples-if a lander can reach the parts of Mars suspected

of having permafrost, not an easy feat. If such instruments work,

they would save the considerable trouble of transporting samples of

martian permafrost back to Earth.

 

 

In the lab, McDonald hopes to examine the enzymes organisms use to

maintain a viable amino-acid ratio. "I'm interested in how these

organisms go back and forth, for instance, between the enzymes that

require oxygen and other enzymes that don't in order to keep doing

this repair," he says. "We don't really know what the enzymes

involved are. It could be the same enzyme that they would use at the

higher temperatures or they could have evolved a different enzyme or

a different way of dealing with it. We don't really know that.

That's one of the things we'd like to look at."

[MosJan]

We know that USA and UK was upTo No good

so we have send our "agent" OOH to Mars

 

we will get some more info soon

[MosJan]

OOA and OOH was on Mars way before USA and UK

[MosJan]

one more

[MosJan]

ooH and ooA have named some part of Mars

[Stormig]

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UK's Beagle 2 Mars Probe Still Lost in Space

 

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LONDON - Latest efforts to contact a British-led mission to Mars from its orbiting mothership failed on Wednesday, compounding fears the Beagle 2 probe crashed during a Christmas Day touchdown.

Gloom surrounding the first all-European mission to Mars contrasts with the joy at NASA, whose robot explorer Spirit safely landed on the Red Planet at the weekend and has transmitted high-definition pictures in the last few days.

 

"We did not get a signal from the surface of Mars but this is not the end of the story -- we have more shots to play," the European Space Agency's David Southwood said.

 

"It is a setback and it makes me feel very sad," he added.

 

Engineers and scientists at the Beagle HQ in London hung their heads after the announcement.

 

"We hope we'll get the dog to come back to the kennel," said a defeated-looking Colin Pillinger who heads the project.

 

"We must play until the final whistle."

 

Although nothing has been heard from the 34kg (75lb) probe since its attempted landing, scientists say they have not given up and will make further attempts to talk to it.

 

Project scientists have pinned their hopes on contacting the lander, designed to hunt for evidence of life on Mars, on its orbiting mothership, the Mars Express.

 

But the Express's first pass just 350 km above the probe's landing site, near the planet's equator, resulted only in a worrying silence.

 

The Express will pass over the landing site again on January 8, 9 and 10 for about five to eight minutes each time. If those attempts fail it passes again on the 12th and 14th. Pillinger said the absolute last attempt would be made in February.

 

Earlier attempts by radio telescopes and NASA's Mars Odyssey Orbiter to contact Beagle 2, a saucer-shaped probe about the size of an open umbrella, also failed.

 

Beagle 2, launched last June, is packed with sophisticated instruments designed to take samples from the Martian surface.

 

At its heart is a mass spectrometer used to measure the mass and abundance of atoms and molecules on planetary surfaces.

 

It was named after the ship which British naturalist Charles Darwin took to gather the data that led to his groundbreaking 19th century theories of evolution.

 

 

 

Story by Jason Hopps

 

Story Date: 8/1/2004

 

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