NASA discovers Mars once had more water than the Earth’s Arctic Ocean

[Legend]

There is life on Mars called anaerobic bacteria

There could be, but no one's sure yet.

[Raven]

What does it take to artificially create water? Because I know it's not just about sticking two hydrogen atoms to an oxygen atom. Just asking in case we decide to terraform someday.

[Legend]

What does it take to artificially create water? Because I know it's not just about sticking two hydrogen atoms to an oxygen atom. Just asking in case we decide to terraform someday.

You can burn hydrogen gas.

However Mars has enough water there. Creating a thick atmosphere would be what's needed.

[Raven]

You can burn hydrogen gas.

However Mars has enough water there. Creating a thick atmosphere would be what's needed.

Yeah. Now how do we go about that?

[DD_Bwest]

You can burn hydrogen gas.

However Mars has enough water there. Creating a thick atmosphere would be what's needed.

any idea what would happen if we tried to burn the methane?

would it even be possible since its in a cardon dioxide atmosphere?

[BasilZero]

Red Faction Guerrilla here we come.

[Legend]

Yeah. Now how do we go about that?

I'd say with genetic engineered microbes. We make a breed that can thrive on Mars while outputting various gases we want.

Then using rockets we put a whole freakton of them around the planet. They'll rapidly expand and do the work for us. After a few decades once the atmosphere gets nice, the microbes can be set to die off naturally from poor living conditions.

Engineering the microbes would by far be the hardest aspect of this approach. However I find engineering something like that on Earth to be much more realistic than building huge machines and shipping everything to Mars.

[Legend]

any idea what would happen if we tried to burn the methane?

would it even be possible since its in a cardon dioxide atmosphere?

Without oxygen, you can't burn things.

However burning it with oxygen would give us water and co2

[DD_Bwest]

I'd say with genetic engineered microbes. We make a breed that can thrive on Mars while outputting various gases we want.

Then using rockets we put a whole freakton of them around the planet. They'll rapidly expand and do the work for us. After a few decades once the atmosphere gets nice, the microbes can be set to die off naturally from poor living conditions.

Engineering the microbes would by far be the hardest aspect of this approach. However I find engineering something like that on Earth to be much more realistic than building huge machines and shipping everything to Mars.

but we would have to find life there first, other wise we will get people saying we cant contaminate it

[the-pi-guy]

Terraforming Venus and Mars would be cool.   Mars would need the insulation and water. 
Venus would need to change the CO2 to O2 and get water and stuff. 

If all the CO2 on Venus was turned into Oxygen, then we'd get some very interesting species. 

[the-pi-guy]

Each type of maas has a chance of spontaneous generation out of its environment. As is we can trace all life back to essentially a single colony of prokaryotic cells. If life had high chances of spontaneous generation and would just happen to form on other planets with similar environments, then why wouldn't it have spontaneously formed multiple times on Earth? Earth is billions of years old with tons of water and good materials, and yet there's zero evidence of primitive life just generating itself. I think it's a good sign that the chance of life spontaneously generating are very very very low.

It would be interesting to find out if it was actually more common than we suspect, and maybe bacteria kills almost all of them.  I don't know.  But the idea of discovering life that's unrelated to our own would be incredibly exciting, and would perhaps give us more knowledge about how life started. 

[Legend]

but we would have to find life there first, other wise we will get people saying we cant contaminate it

Yeah teraforming Mars will not happen. Building regular stations on it would be much cheaper and faster.

The life issue is important because Mars either has life or had life. Destroying that would be idiotic. The information is priceless.

On that note kinda, I think within 5 years we'll find life on Mars. Just this past Dec Curiousity found strong evidence of life right beneath it.

[Legend]

It would be interesting to find out if it was actually more common than we suspect, and maybe bacteria kills almost all of them.  I don't know.  But the idea of discovering life that's unrelated to our own would be incredibly exciting, and would perhaps give us more knowledge about how life started. 

Well if we consider RNA to not be life, then we actually have three/four forms of maas still active today. Cellular life, viruses, viroids, and prions. Studies from Nasa show that amino acids and the like are produced in young solar systems and then launched to the planets. These building blocks could make RNA worlds like early earth very common. It'd then be up to luck for more advanced organisms to form. Almost all maas would be rna/dna based, but it'd be so unique.

Or the early rna theory is wrong, in which case "who knows?" I'd love to build a form of maas one day. Using my much looser definition of "life," I think I could do it. Then in a billion years it might become slightly more advanced!

Time chambers that speed up time will be amazing for evolution experiments. Just put it in for 30 seconds and poof, 10 billion years just passed.

[the-pi-guy]

Well if we consider RNA to not be life, then we actually have three/four forms of maas still active today. Cellular life, viruses, viroids, and prions. Studies from Nasa show that amino acids and the like are produced in young solar systems and then launched to the planets. These building blocks could make RNA worlds like early earth very common. It'd then be up to luck for more advanced organisms to form. Almost all maas would be rna/dna based, but it'd be so unique.

Or the early rna theory is wrong, in which case "who knows?" I'd love to build a form of maas one day. Using my much looser definition of "life," I think I could do it. Then in a billion years it might become slightly more advanced!

Time chambers that speed up time will be amazing for evolution experiments. Just put it in for 30 seconds and poof, 10 billion years just passed.

That'd be insanely awesome. 
*1 billion years later*
Sweet this life form grew a new eye ball! 

[darkknightkryta]

They have a thin covering of co2. South pole co2 freezes during the winter night and sublimates during summer. North pole always has co2, about 8 meters thick.

I created my own word that helps in these questions. Maas=distinct objects that actively work towards producing more copies of themselves, with the ability of mutation/evolution between generation. Life is just a specific type of maas, one with carbon based cells and all that.

Each type of maas has a chance of spontaneous generation out of its environment. As is we can trace all life back to essentially a single colony of prokaryotic cells. If life had high chances of spontaneous generation and would just happen to form on other planets with similar environments, then why wouldn't it have spontaneously formed multiple times on Earth? Earth is billions of years old with tons of water and good materials, and yet there's zero evidence of primitive life just generating itself. I think it's a good sign that the chance of life spontaneously generating are very very very low.

For us to find life on other planets, we'd have to have some connection to each other ala seeding. Either life traveled from us to them, from them to us, or from a 3rd party to both them and us.


For us to find maas on other planets, we'd just have to get lucky.
We've had many mass extinctions, but when did life ever die?

Mass extinctions is what I was referring to.