Intelligent life on Mars?

Well also the fact that we land there so much, we could just be "shedding" bacteria and other organisms.

Figures. I do remember hearing about bacteria found on Mars, and I seem to remember something discounting it on the news awhile back...

If it really WERE verified, I think just about everyone on Earth & Mars would know of it by now.

Now, what about other planets... or even moons? I'd say the possiblity for waste to hit the moon is far greater than to Mars. Though, I don't know if scientists have found any bacteria on the moon, if they did I'm sure it'd be hyped up right now.

We have to think about what we are saying here though. Bacteria is VERY small. The idea that we could just happen to find bacteria that we "dropped" somewhere on another planet is almost impossible so I vote for it being from something else. At least from the equipment that picked up the object with bacteria, or the fact that it was probably contaminated before or after it landed.

I'm say why is everyone hyped up about bacteria on Mars? Why not the moon? It could be possible that life may have started on the moon due to its relatively small size and quicker cooling.

You also have to kind of think about the fact that if bacteria did land on Mars or the moon a hundred years ago or even a billion years ago then it is now still Martian or moon life. We could also be from another planet. Who knows, we could have started out as bacteria that crashed here from another planet. Also some sort of bacteria could have landed here which helped create life on Earth, or some other form of life. We ourselves may be alien. All life BUT us live here in harmony. We destory, the rest have a certain natural balance with each other. The Matrix said it will, we are a virus.

Agh... this topic sucks now... we've had too much of it.

Well, theres a million possibilitys, we can think of them all but we could think of a couple hundred ;-).

Well, then sorry for continuing it, but I had to react to some of it...

A very interesting theory/idea Rick, but maybe it'd be better off in a thread of it's own...
So I'll just leave it, though I have to say I do not agree with much of your theory...

This has been more or less answered, but a couple of points...

One theory of the big bang says that in the beginning there was nothing in the universe than a black hole... This reach "critical mass" and exploded into the universe, releasing Hydrogen and Helium a long with a lot of heat..

After a while the hydrogen and helium started forming small "lumps" which grew ever bigger until they reached critical mass and started to react with eachother to create suns...

The suns lived for a while, before going supernova, sending out not only hydrogen and helium, but some of the other atoms we find in the wild today, like iron, (which had been created by the heat and pressure in the core of the sun)...

This happened once again, giving us the different atoms we know of today...

We're currently living in the "third generation" of suns, at least our sun is a third gen sun, and quite young at that...

So it happened a third time, but this time the atoms didn't only turn into suns, but planets too...
The closer to the sun, the more heavy atoms (iron and such) you'll find, and the farther off you go, the more Hydrogen and Helium you'll find... (Note: This does not totally apply to Mars, but I'll come back to that in another answer....)

And it is at this point that life started to "show up" in the universe...

Over the same time, the universe cooled down to the level it is now... But when it was first created, it was hot!

This is a very general description, but if I were to write it any longer, most of you would probably go off in search of some wet paint to look at instead...

That depends on which theory you follow...

The one I described above, says it's part of a circle, where the universe expands and subtracts, continuing endlessly... This accommodates the planets that were discovered some years ago that are older than the rest of the universe....
Think of it like the Ancient Greek way of looking at time and history, as they thought it was circulatory... There was no beginning, and there is no end... Everything is/will be repeating itself... Maybe not you, or your actions, but in general everything will be repeated...
(But that's another discussion again...)

But back to the topic of life...

There's a theory going around that is gaining momentum (at least it did last year when I was learning about this), that life didn't start on Earth, but rather in the/a asteroid belt... There the non-organic materials would be subject to enough shifting radiation, have enough water/other materials needed, and thus suddenly there was life...

Then why do we have life on Earth you ask?*

Because some time in the past, a comet/asteroid/whatever hit the asteroid belt, and sendt a couple of asteroids our way... One of them hit earth in the "correct" manner (didn't bounce of our atmosphere, or burn up in it), and made it's way down to us... The heat produced in the atmosphere reawakened the life, and it was spread out over the sea...

From there on and to today you know as much as me about how life spread...

*Note: This is still a theory....

I think I'll split this up into two posts, as it is getting quite long allready, and I'm about halfway...

Can life exist, even dormantly, without an atomsphere in space? I find it difficult to understand any living organism.. Be it cells or more complex life... survive in absolute zero, directly unshielded from cosmic rays. Is that possible?

This seemed like a good post to continue on...

What you're saying goes quite well with the last theory in my previous post, allthough that says that all life on earth is "alien", and not just us...

But back to life on Mars...

Continuing on the theory from above, that life didn't come to be on any of the planets, but rather in the/a asteroid belt (in our, or another solar system), and crashed on the different planets...

When the asteroid hit Mars (and Earth), it was cooling down, there was oceans and carbon dioxide aplenty...
But there's a very big difference between Earth and Mars... Mars is a much smaller planet, with a smaller gravity... This give it the problem of holding on to the lighter atoms...

As the probes to Mars has proved, there is next to no oxygen or lighter gases there...
This is because Mars doens't have enough density to keep the suns gravity from dragging them away from it's atmosphere.... So after a while there was very little left of Mars' atmosphere, and so the sunlight wasn't blocked, and thus the oceans were turned into gases which in turn floated off into space...
(Space isn't total vacuum as is popularly belived, but rather the space between each atom is so big that it's hard to detect them... This is due to atoms drifting away from all the planets in the solar systems, yes even Earth....)

NOTE: Still a very general description, as I wouldn't want you to stare at wet paint, since some of it gives off dangerous gases...

And when this had gone off long enough, there wasn't any oceans left where the bacteria could live, and life on earth died off...

There are a couple of things that doesn't quite fit with this theory, as there is ice on Mars' poles, though mostly carbondioxid based...

Another problem with this theory is that there are lifeforms which doesn't require oxygen, nor sunlight here on earth (they live in deep sealed off caves), and those could easily have developed on Mars too...

I'll just tackle one more post, and then I'll shut up for a little while...

Because (one of) the (more) popular theory about how the moon was created doesn't allow for this... In very short terms, the theory says that another object crashed with Earth, tearing off what we know as the moon, and putting it in the current orbit...

Why doesn't this theory allow for life to develop on the moon?

Because there isn't an atmosphere on the moon, and all life needs an atmosphere, even if they're not carbon based... And before you say that life could have evolved beneath the surface, it would need heat, and that as you said, it cooled of much faster, so the life would have had much less time to develop into something (that'd be able to travel from one planet to the next)...


I know there are a couple of points that doesn't seem to fit, but that's because I don't want to go into too much detail, there are limits to what I care to write, and that I'm tired and probably has forgotten a point here and there...

Anyways, that's what I know about the subject at hand... Sorry if you find it too boring, or long winded, but I couldn't find any other way to write it...


[EDIT]If you are interested in this kind of things, there was a nice documentary called "Space" a while ago which took up quite a few different theories about the big bang, life and other space related things... I think it was made by BBC, but i'm not certain, I'll try to find out tomorrow.... [/EDIT]

Good point... It was actually what I was thinking off when I was writing the "disclaimer" in the prev. post...

I'll have to come back to you about that tomorrow (when I've had some sleep), but from what I can remember now, it was because of the radiation and the heat from the sun (at that time)... It froze, and since it wasn't absolute zero degrees in space, and was a bit warmer at the time it would have happened, it survived...

It wasn't until it was warmed up in our atmosphere that life reawakened...

Also, from what I can remember, this didn't happen in our solar system, but another system with a diferent class star...

Since I was writing so much, I figured I could allways write another...

You don't have to read more than the first pages in genesis to see there is something strange...

But instead of saying that because not everything in the book is true you shouldn't belive anything of it, why not look upon it as a metaphor?
It does have some resemblance to how the solarsystem was created...

My point is that as soon as you start discussing religion, don't take everything written down as an exact recollection of what happened, but rather an abstraction/metaphor not to be taken at face value, but to be though about...

I'll leave off there, as I don't want to start a religious discussion since my head allready hurts from writing the other posts in this thread....

I personaly don't believe that life came from space and ended up here on Earth. Here are some things to think about:

1. If it all started with a big bang, then its fair to say that just before the explosion, there was no life?

2. If there was no life before, or just after the big bang, then life must have developed afterwards?

3. If life developed afterwards, then why would it develop in an asteroid belt that is bombarded with radiation, and has no atmosphere?

4. If we need the right conditions for life to develop (atmosphere, heat, water, etc.) then isn't Earth the only planet in our solar system that currently has these conditions, and isn't this a good reason for life to develop right here, rather than in some inhospitable asteroid belt? Would any lifeform survive if we sent it into space?

5. Seems to me that life developed here on Earth and has remained here on Earth. We are not aliens that arrived from outer space.

Also, where did all the matter come from that led to the big bang?
If it is a cycle that continues to repeat, then why is our universe supposedly expanding at an ever increasing rate?
If it is not a repeating cycle, then what caused all the matter to come together to produce a big bang?
Where does all the radiated energy (heat, gamma radiation, etc.) that leaves the universe end up?
Is the mass of the universe decreasing?
Is the universe of infinite size?
What happens if it continues to expand?
Where does it all end?
Where did it all come from?
How can a bunch of chemicals develop the ability to reason and understand?

There are a lot of questions, and the big bang theory doesn't answer the more important question of what existed beforehand. The big bang theory does provide a reasonable explanation of why the universe is expanding, and how the stars, planets, etc., were created. It doesn't, however, explain much else.

Hehe SNG... Nice post!

Too bad I didn't think about checking the old forum, since then I wouldn't have had to type all I did...

Anyways, all I wrote in my prev posts (except about religion) was from a course in Astro Physics I took last semester...
Or rather, the "how life began" theory was from that course, "how the universe came to be" was more from the textbook....
This makes it a bit hard to me to recheck the life theory, but I'm searching for my notes right now, and will post what I can find (when/if I find it)...

Very good post SNGX1275. Many things that I wasn't even aware of. I'm looking forward to MrG's life theory. Some good stuff here.

I'm very sorry to say this, but I can't find my notes anywhere... They must have gone into the recycling bin a while ago...

So you'll just have to take my word that there is such a theory, and that I'm not just making it up...

I'd try to search on the web for it, but I don't have the time, and won't have it until the end of September (at which point I'm allmost certain I'll have forgotten all about this thread...) :-/

Once again, I'm sorry!