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Ancient Mars; Mars life before it became barren
Topic Started: Oct 17 2008, 12:26 AM (1,832 Views)
Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

We've all seen or read stories about Martians. They were always depicted as little green men and were said to live at the same time we did.

Now, we have sent a multitude of probes to Mars to look for life, but we have found nothing. However, we have found evidence that Mars had water on its surface billions, possible millions, of years ago.

Mars's core cooled about 3 billion years ago (not sure if that is accurate) making it lose its atmosphere as well as any life that existed.

If Mars started forming at the same time Earth did, what would life look like before it was destroyed? Keep in mind that Mars, being smaller, cooled more rapidly than Earth did.
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lamna
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Very interesting idea. Armored worms seems cool and somewhat plausible.
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

I'm just wondering:

Could a kind of bacteria STILL eke out an existance on Mars?
If so, where would it live? And if it were exposed to humans, could it possibly become virulent?
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lamna
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Probably not. How many extremophiles like to infect people? Plus Martian life could be entirely separate from earths, it might use the opposite amino acids or arsenic rather than phosphorous.

Mind you they might act like earth microbes in War of the Worlds. In the book the Martians don't get sick, they decay as earth bacteria eat them alive.
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Xenophile
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Formerly known as alienboy.
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Marshian microbes could still exist today. The M.R.O. detected some thermal anomalies in Hellas basin. The heat signatures are equally warm night and day and are 10 degrees warmer then the rest of Hellas basin. Maybe the heat is from volcanic vents with Martian extremophiles. It is more likely that Martian life exists underground, though
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Genesis
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There is no reason to believe that producers would be photosynthetic, unless panspermia is involved. Life on other worlds would more than likely be so different that even a xenobiologist might not recognize it as a living thing. That rock with strange microbial structures may have been what was left of a mineral deposits in a life form's body, for all we know.
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colddigger
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the scientifically accepted definition for life might not recognize it as life, and so we pass it as something else.

Also, photosynthesis is likely since light can affect so many kinds of chemical reactions and can be supplied in a fairly steady pace. Chemosynthesis works in/on deep sea vents because the chemical amounts are steady but limited as it has to be produced by chemical reacts underground... small ecosystems and the like... If it was in a pool of chemicals already for the pickings, with no barriers to keep most of the chemicals out of the organisms reach, the population of the chemivore would explode, the chemicals would be consumed to virtual nonexistence, and there would be a massive global alteration.
Then photosynthetic organisms would become dominate producers if light was available... the large amounts of dead chemivores would help too...

What is the standard amount of time to pass before multicellular life can arise on a planet? (from time of first cell to time of first multicellular life) I'm just curious how a person can possibly know, I mean, supposedly our planet was smacked by a meteor during its early time prolonging its period of lifeless existence, idk it just seems kind of baseless...
Edited by colddigger, Mar 14 2009, 08:15 PM.
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

lamna: love that book. Never new the Martians were actually eaten alive.

Would it be possible for the Viking probe to have transported some sort of prion to Mars?





The rest of you:
Maybe Earth life is descended from life from ancient Mars? May be a radical theory, but it gives you something to think about.
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colddigger
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Joke's over! Love, Parasky
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what would a prion even do though? just lay dormant until it ends up on/in some lifeform?
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

Yeah, just lie dormant and maybe mutate.

Once it comes in contact with another life form (most likely a human explorer of Mars), it will do what prions do best: make massive amounts of protein, usually in an organisms brain.

Makes for an interesting idea for a book, doesn't it?
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