{"id":3008,"date":"2018-07-29T20:48:10","date_gmt":"2018-07-29T16:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/?p=3008"},"modified":"2018-07-29T20:48:10","modified_gmt":"2018-07-29T16:48:10","slug":"the-truth-about-life-on-mars-according-to-nasas-chief-scientist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/2018\/07\/29\/the-truth-about-life-on-mars-according-to-nasas-chief-scientist\/","title":{"rendered":"The truth about life on Mars according to Nasa’s chief scientist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nasa’s chief scientist tells\u00a0Laurence Bergreen<\/em>\u00a0what a newly-found Martian ‘lake’ really means for the Red Planet<\/p>\n

There is nothing new under the sun \u2013 or on Mars. Even with the announcement last week of the\u00a0discovery of underground water on the Red Planet, one way or another, we have been here before.<\/p>\n

\u201cWater on Mars is not a novel idea,\u201d says Dr James B Garvin, chief scientist of Nasa\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington, DC. A fervent \u201cMarsist\u201d for his entire career, he reminds me that our planetary neighbour was long thought to be a parched wasteland where aeons ago oceans perhaps lapped against ancient shores\u2026 until 2008, that is, when\u00a0Nasa\u2019s Phoenix lander\u00a0detected a layer of water.<\/p>\n

And then, just a few years later, another Nasa spacecraft \u2013 this one an orbiter circling Mars overhead \u2013 discovered thawing ice deposits on mountain slopes.<\/p>\n

Where there\u2019s ground ice, there\u2019s the possibility of liquid water, and where there\u2019s the possibility of liquid water, the conditions exist for life, however primitive. The past decade, then, has been something of a race to find signs of that life on Mars.<\/p>\n

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S<\/span>o last week, when an Italian team of researchers published their article \u201cRadar Evidence of Subglacial Liquid Water on Mars\u201d in the journal Science, Dr Garvin was anything but surprised about evidence suggesting a large underground lake \u2013 a mile across or more \u2013 trapped below the ice of the Martian South Pole. Not only that, but the team behind the article opined that \u201cthere is no reason to conclude that the presence of subsurface water is limited to a single location\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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C<\/span>ould it be true? At first blush, this news sounds like a confirmed finding, the unassailable result of three-and-half years of soundings performed by a European spacecraft, Mars Express, between 2012 and 2015.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A<\/span>t Nasa, however, Dr Garvin and others are not wholly convinced.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Italians are all smart dudes,\u201d he concedes, but their results are far from definitive. They\u2019ve detected something \u201cstretching maybe a mile or more\u201d, and it may be liquid water. \u201cIf you shine radar at water, it would be 40 times brighter than its surroundings. But this is only three times.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In numbers<\/span>\u00a0| Mars<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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  • 53%: The diameter of Mars is about 53% of Earth’s, making it the second smallest planet in the solar system<\/li>\n
  • 38%: The surface gravity of Mars is 38% that of Earth, so if you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh only 38 pounds on Mars<\/li>\n
  • 687: A year on Mars is 687 days but a day on the Red Planet only lasts 40 minutes more than one on Earth<\/li>\n
  • 1,058: Number of people selected from 202,000 applicants for the Mars One project, which hopes to create a human colony on Mars in about 10 years<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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    S<\/span>cientists are agreed that this is an \u201cexciting anomaly\u201d, which might point to a buried Dead Sea on Mars \u2013 but it also could be sand or silt with some liquid between the grains, or even perchlorate, a \u201csuper salt\u201d capable or melting stubborn Martian ice. In that case, the subterranean \u201clake\u201d might not be water at all, just a salty deposit.<\/p>\n

    Dr Garvin\u2019s caution stems in part from Nasa\u2019s hesitancy to oversell discoveries. In 1984, the agency revealed with great fanfare the discovery of possible microfossils in a Martian meteorite collected here on Earth. The announcement seemed for a time to herald a new Age of Aquarius. This bit of\u00a0ancient rock, called ALH8001, seemed to be a time capsule hurled in our directed from Mars containing an amazing secret, that Mars once \u2013 and might still \u2013 harbored forms of microbial life, and perhaps even more complex life forms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    O<\/span>n further examination, doubts were raised. The meteorite had been lying on earth on the slopes of the Alan Hills in Antarctica for quite some time, and had perhaps had become contaminated with life on\u2026 Earth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    I<\/span>t became difficult to prove that it contained a pristine sample of extraterrestrial life. Maybe we were just looking at ourselves. Thirty-five years later, ALH8001 still has its proponents, but scientific consensus about what, exactly, it contains, or means, no longer exists.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    \"The<\/figure>\n

    The red planet: Mars<\/span>\u00a0CREDIT:<\/span>\u00a0HO\/REUTERS<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    T<\/span>oday, the most Dr Garvin will say is that the subterranean Martian \u201clake\u201d \u2013 if that\u2019s what it is \u2013 \u201ccould\u00a0<\/em>be a source of microbial life\u201d. Although he doesn\u2019t say so, the thought hangs in the air that it might be up to Nasa to devise a more convincing explanation of the lake, or the illuminated region, or whatever it is.<\/p>\n

    The ability to study other planets has set in motion an evolution in thinking about planetary geology, a revolution not unlike the one set in motion by Galileo, or other scientists studying natural phenomena. These observers see the same things as their scientific forbears, Aristotle, for instance, but they interpret it differently. It can lead scientists down unusual speculative pathways.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    D<\/span>r Garvin, a planetary geologist, wonders aloud if Mars \u2013 whose geology, though strikingly similar to that of Earth, also has significant differences \u2013 somehow \u201cfollows playbooks different from ours\u201d. And, he asks, \u201chow do you use terra-centric standards to look for signs of life, as agnostics tend to do? It raises the bar on \u2018weird\u2019 life on Mars being able to find a way to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

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    E<\/span>ven the definition of \u201clife\u201d is up for grabs. And perhaps life on Mars, or elsewhere, differs in some important respects life on earth. If we don\u2019t recognise it as such, is it still life?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    E<\/span>lon Musk, the inventor, engineer and self-promoter who seems to have stepped out, fully formed, from the pages of latter-day Jules Verne novel, is keen to find out. Musk has already announced that Space X, the aerospace company he founded just 16 years ago, plans to send a test vehicle to Mars as early as the first half of 2019.<\/p>\n

    But to Musk, the hazards function mainly as incentive, if only to prove that he can overcome them. In addition to the requirements of rocketry, and training a crew, just getting to Mars is a formidable undertaking. At its closest approach (which, by coincidence, happens to be today), Mars is 34 million miles away. By comparison, the Moon is about 239,000 miles.<\/p>\n

    \"Matt<\/p>\n

    Matt Damon starring in\u00a0The Martian<\/span>\u00a0CREDIT:<\/span>\u00a0AIDAN MONAGHAN\/HANDOUT<\/span><\/p>\n

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    W<\/span>ith the average distance between Earth and Mars coming in around 140 million miles,\u00a0getting to the Red Planet\u00a0would mean a journey of at least six months through space, contending with the depredations of zero gravity and cell-destroying radiation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    A<\/span>s Dr\u00a0Garvin puts it: \u201cMusk wants to pioneer the Martian frontier. The problem is, physics isn\u2019t free.\u201d By which he means, as well as the distance and danger involved, there\u2019s no getting around the immense expense either.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    D<\/span>r Garvin compares exploring that underground \u201clake\u201d on Mars to the difficulties of exploring on Earth: \u201cLet\u2019s say this lake is a mile below the surface\u2026 well, drilling that distance below the surface of the Earth costs a great deal, and demands a huge commitment of time and material. But drilling down a mile on Mars would tax the entire world economy, for an uncertain benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n

    –<\/p>\n

    Telegraph<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Nasa’s chief scientist tells\u00a0Laurence Bergreen\u00a0what a newly-found Martian ‘lake’ really means for the Red Planet There is nothing new under the sun \u2013 or on Mars. Even with the announcement last week of the\u00a0discovery of underground water on the Red Planet, one way or another, we have been here before. \u201cWater on Mars is not …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3008"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3010,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3008\/revisions\/3010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}