On Sun, 28 Jan 2024 21:16:25 -0800 (PST), Rich <rander3128@gmail.com>
wrote:

Any life that might have existed would have been basic and billions of years ago when water existed. Which means, any trace of it has been pummeled by Martian winds and sand storms for billions of years. What could be left?
Meanwhile, potential existing life may be in the moons of the gas giants which is where they should spend most of the money

We find plenty of fossil evidence on Earth for 3+ billion year old
life. Why not on Mars?

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On 2024-01-29 13:07:05 +0000, Chris L Peterson said:

On Sun, 28 Jan 2024 21:16:25 -0800 (PST), Rich <rander3128@gmail.com>
wrote:

Any life that might have existed would have been basic and billions of
years ago when water existed. Which means, any trace of it has been
pummeled by Martian winds and sand storms for billions of years. What
could be left?
Meanwhile, potential existing life may be in the moons of the gas
giants which is where they should spend most of the money

We find plenty of fossil evidence on Earth for 3+ billion year old
life. Why not on Mars?

We don't find fossils where we don't search and it is much harder
to search on Mars.

So far the best evidence is from the meteorite Allan Hills 84001,
which was found on Earth.

--
Mikko

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On Mon, 29 Jan 2024 15:26:22 +0200, Mikko <mikko.levanto@iki.fi>
wrote:

On 2024-01-29 13:07:05 +0000, Chris L Peterson said:

On Sun, 28 Jan 2024 21:16:25 -0800 (PST), Rich <rander3128@gmail.com>
wrote:

Any life that might have existed would have been basic and billions of
years ago when water existed. Which means, any trace of it has been
pummeled by Martian winds and sand storms for billions of years. What
could be left?
Meanwhile, potential existing life may be in the moons of the gas
giants which is where they should spend most of the money

We find plenty of fossil evidence on Earth for 3+ billion year old
life. Why not on Mars?

We don't find fossils where we don't search and it is much harder
to search on Mars.

So far the best evidence is from the meteorite Allan Hills 84001,
which was found on Earth.

We find such evidence on Earth around ancient lakebeds... which is
where we are focusing the search on Mars.

The scientific consensus is largely against AH 84001 presenting any
fossil life.

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On Mon, 29 Jan 2024 16:20:29 -0800 (PST), Rich <rander3128@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Monday 29 January 2024 at 08:07:12 UTC-5, Chris L Peterson wrote:

On Sun, 28 Jan 2024 21:16:25 -0800 (PST), Rich <rande...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Any life that might have existed would have been basic and billions of years ago when water existed. Which means, any trace of it has been pummeled by Martian winds and sand storms for billions of years. What could be left?
Meanwhile, potential existing life may be in the moons of the gas giants which is where they should spend most of the money

We find plenty of fossil evidence on Earth for 3+ billion year old
life. Why not on Mars?

And yet there are researchers today who believe Earth had a major civilization going a billion years ago and that geological upheavals and subduction have buried all evidence of it. I don't buy that, but Mars was probably worse, having geological

changes, meteorite bombardments like our moon (no atmosphere) and Mars's current, ceaseless eroding dust storms. Maybe they'll find the Martian equivalent of stromatolites?

That would be the sort of thing I'd expect, if there's anything.
Simple life. Something that I think is probably very common around the Universe.

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On 29/01/2024 05:16, Rich wrote:

Any life that might have existed would have been basic and billions
of years ago when water existed. Which means, any trace of it has
been pummeled by Martian winds and sand storms for billions of years.

Earth's environment is much more corrosive to sedimentary rocks and yet
many ancient fossils *do* survive. Mars might actually be benign enough
that in the permafrost some life does survive albeit growing very
slowly. That is observed in salt mines and in Antarctica.

They have recently demonstrated that some terrestrial lichens can
survive living outside the ISS for a considerable period of time.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S1473550414000214

What could be left? Meanwhile, potential existing life may be in the
moons of the gas giants which is where they should spend most of the
money

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-ancient-lake-mars-perseverance-rover.html

I hope they do eventually visit the water world moons with suitably
sterile landers to look for life on them. It would be a real shame to contaminate a pristine possibly sterile world with our planet's life.

--

Martin Brown

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On Mon, 29 Jan 2024 22:09:19 -0800 (PST), StarDust <csoka01@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Monday, January 29, 2024 at 5:07:30?PM UTC-8, Chris L Peterson wrote:

On Mon, 29 Jan 2024 16:20:29 -0800 (PST), Rich <rande...@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Monday 29 January 2024 at 08:07:12 UTC-5, Chris L Peterson wrote:

On Sun, 28 Jan 2024 21:16:25 -0800 (PST), Rich <rande...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Any life that might have existed would have been basic and billions of years ago when water existed. Which means, any trace of it has been pummeled by Martian winds and sand storms for billions of years. What could be left?
Meanwhile, potential existing life may be in the moons of the gas giants which is where they should spend most of the money

We find plenty of fossil evidence on Earth for 3+ billion year old
life. Why not on Mars?

And yet there are researchers today who believe Earth had a major civilization going a billion years ago and that geological upheavals and subduction have buried all evidence of it. I don't buy that, but Mars was probably worse, having geological

changes, meteorite bombardments like our moon (no atmosphere) and Mars's current, ceaseless eroding dust storms. Maybe they'll find the Martian equivalent of stromatolites?

That would be the sort of thing I'd expect, if there's anything.
Simple life. Something that I think is probably very common around the
Universe.

Mars is a dead planet, like the Moon, I think?
Mars has some atmosphere from past volcanic activity, that's all?
NASA just looking for basic elements, like water, fuel etc... to support a permanent human space station there!
By the time humans able to live there, robots will outshine humans and those don't need food, climate control and life support!
They just need an RTG to plug in to recharge and back to work, 24/7!

Almost certainly dead now. But if Earth is any indication, it had
plenty of time for life to form.

Robots already can do much, much better than humans in space (and
increasingly on Earth).

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On 30/01/2024 00:20, Rich wrote:

On Monday 29 January 2024 at 08:07:12 UTC-5, Chris L Peterson wrote:

On Sun, 28 Jan 2024 21:16:25 -0800 (PST), Rich
<rande...@gmail.com> wrote:

Any life that might have existed would have been basic and
billions of years ago when water existed. Which means, any trace
of it has been pummeled by Martian winds and sand storms for
billions of years. What could be left? Meanwhile, potential
existing life may be in the moons of the gas giants which is
where they should spend most of the money

We find plenty of fossil evidence on Earth for 3+ billion year old
life. Why not on Mars?

And yet there are researchers today who believe Earth had a major civilization going a billion years ago and that geological upheavals
and subduction have buried all evidence of it. I don't buy that, but

Can you actually name one credible researcher that believes that tosh?
Science fiction writers might "believe" what you claim.

One of the more interesting searches for life that may yet bear fruit is
based on looking at exoplanet atmospheres for chemical compounds that
reach into the stratosphere and must have been made by a technological
society that has harnessed synthetic chemistry (and followed roughly our
path of industrialisation). Notably once they have mastered
organofluorine chemistry then for a hundred years or so there will be
CFCs and HCFCs in the upper atmosphere for out telescopes to detect.

In the natural world calcium scavenges fluoride ions so efficiently that
even in the vicinity of volcanoes it doesn't stay reactive for long. You
need sophisticated electrochemistry and a eutectic melt to make fluorine
and a bit more chemical plant to make CFCs. They are so useful that it
is likely any civilisation will go through a period of using them.

Mars was probably worse, having geological changes, meteorite
bombardments like our moon (no atmosphere) and Mars's current,
ceaseless eroding dust storms. Maybe they'll find the Martian
equivalent of stromatolites?

Mars dust storms are not all that destructive compared to the very
powerful ice, water and dust storm erosion that occurs on Earth. Mars atmosphere is too thin to do much damage to surface rocks.

--
Martin Brown

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On Tue, 30 Jan 2024 07:12:40 -0800 (PST), StarDust <csoka01@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Tuesday, January 30, 2024 at 6:46:39?AM UTC-8, Chris L Peterson wrote:

On Mon, 29 Jan 2024 22:09:19 -0800 (PST), StarDust
wrote:

On Monday, January 29, 2024 at 5:07:30?PM UTC-8, Chris L Peterson wrote:

On Mon, 29 Jan 2024 16:20:29 -0800 (PST), Rich <rande...@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Monday 29 January 2024 at 08:07:12 UTC-5, Chris L Peterson wrote:

On Sun, 28 Jan 2024 21:16:25 -0800 (PST), Rich <rande...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Any life that might have existed would have been basic and billions of years ago when water existed. Which means, any trace of it has been pummeled by Martian winds and sand storms for billions of years. What could be left?
Meanwhile, potential existing life may be in the moons of the gas giants which is where they should spend most of the money

We find plenty of fossil evidence on Earth for 3+ billion year old
life. Why not on Mars?

And yet there are researchers today who believe Earth had a major civilization going a billion years ago and that geological upheavals and subduction have buried all evidence of it. I don't buy that, but Mars was probably worse, having geological

changes, meteorite bombardments like our moon (no atmosphere) and Mars's current, ceaseless eroding dust storms. Maybe they'll find the Martian equivalent of stromatolites?

That would be the sort of thing I'd expect, if there's anything.
Simple life. Something that I think is probably very common around the
Universe.

Mars is a dead planet, like the Moon, I think?
Mars has some atmosphere from past volcanic activity, that's all?
NASA just looking for basic elements, like water, fuel etc... to support a permanent human space station there!
By the time humans able to live there, robots will outshine humans and those don't need food, climate control and life support!
They just need an RTG to plug in to recharge and back to work, 24/7!

Almost certainly dead now. But if Earth is any indication, it had
plenty of time for life to form.

Robots already can do much, much better than humans in space (and
increasingly on Earth).

We need better AI for robots to work in space, to make more of their own decisions with limited human input.
Rather than telling robots go here or do this or that, give them objectives to do, like find rocks within a certain criteria etc...
Few robots are already crawling on Mars so far, but instructions still has to be uploaded from Earth, no direct control is possible because of the lag in transmission.

Existing robots, which are semi-autonomous, outperform anything people
can do on other planets. They will only get better as AI advances.

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