Richard, The two rovers were not sterilized prior to being sent to Mars. When Apollo 12 astronauts recovered pieces of the Surveyor craft and returned them to Earth scientists found that microbes that got onto the Surveyor before being launched to the Moon a couple of years earlier were still viable. That's after two years on the surface of the Moon. Seth -----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-bounces+sjarvis=slco.org@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces+sjarvis=slco.org@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Richard Tenney Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2006 11:12 AM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: RE: [Utah-astronomy] (From NASA) Mars - Recent Gushing Water andNewCraters A couple of questions for the smarties on the list: Have the two rovers already spread microbial "infection" across the surface areas they have explored? Or does spending 9 months in the vaccuum of space getting there effectively kill any chance of that possibility? How doable is it to send up a robotic vehicle capable of drilling deep enough to tap into underground water sources? Seems like a pretty difficult task to me... I was pretty blown away by this news. Liquid water! I don't know about the press, but it got me pretty pumped (pun intended)! --- Michael Carnes <michaelcarnes@earthlink.net> wrote:
This is HUGE news. I'm amazed that the press is being so nonchalant about it. Well, the NASA press release had a few multisyllable words. That's too hard to read for most members of the press (Joe B excepted).
This does raise all the questions you mentioned Seth. But there's one interesting question that I don't believe I've heard the exobiologists bring up. I'll express it in a roundabout way. It's clear that the more we learn about Earth, the more places we find life. Extremophiles live in hot, acidic water. They live in cracks deep in the mantle of the earth. They live frozen in ice and high in the atmosphere. This knowledge has certainly caused us to broaden our sense of possibility about the origin of life. There may be conditions on Mars now that are close to conditions where things are alive here.
But what we don't really know yet is whether life on Earth originated under all these conditions. It may have. Or it may have originated in more traditionally "favorable" conditions and then radiated outward into these extreme niches. One might certainly imagine that, once life had a foothold, evolution could eventually find forms that could survive in extreme conditions--conditions where the chemistry might not have kicked off life ex nihilo.
I guess we won't know till we know.
MC
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