This fact often catches people by surprise when I tell them also. The more conspiratorial theory is that JPL prefers not to include life detection equipment because it would mean the end of robotic missions and more of an emphasis to get humans there to do real biology, which is more the domain of Houston Mission Control. Follow the money...
Cmon folks, let’s be realistic. If someone at NASA had indeed reason to believe life exist(s/ed) on Mars it would 200% have leaked by now. No funding discussion would inhibit someone from leaking this information. It’s the biggest discovery in human history and you think someone’s sitting on it for funding reasons?! Especially since the immediate reaction would be to pour billions into them following up?
A big discovery has a high burden of proof and that’s basically where we’re at. There’s definitely reason not to rule it out but I can’t believe conclusive evidence is being sat on by all of NASA for funding reasons.
Let’s speculate for a sec. Tardigrades can survive space. Things have been hitting us knocking earth stuff into space for billions of years. Some of that stuff probably made it to Mars and back in the day it was pretty liveable. It’s not far fetched. None of that negates the above.
TFA was written by a NASA team member, and is literally saying "we did discover life on Mars". If that's not "leaking" then I don't know what is.
Yet here we are, discussing it as if this is fake news. I don't think we need to call this a "conspiracy", just the lack of official confirmation makes anyone saying that there's life on Mars sound like a crackpot.
I don't think that microscopical life in Mars is the biggest discovery in human history. It's more like an interesting trivia. But it doesn't change people's lives any more than the discovery of water on Mars.
It may not change people's lives directly (unless you're an astrobiologist), but it would absolutely change our lives indirectly-- the effects on the future of space exploration and the ongoing human conversation would be dramatic. Ultimately no one's mind is likely to be changed about much of import - such as religious beliefs - but at the very least it will mean we approach Mars missions differently.
It'd surely have impact in the related fields. However, I'd save the "biggest discovery" title to findings that debunk and completely change our assumptions, rather than more evidence for assumptions we already hold. Perhaps, having another life origin to study will lead us to new understandings. But the mere discovery of alien life is not that disruptive.
Given all theories and evidences we've observed thus far it's expected that we are not the only living things in the universe. Except for some fringe theorists, everyone expects life to exist in other places besides Earth. Finding out that life exists elsewhere in the solar system would just be more evidence for what we already belive to be true. So, not really huge news in itself.
Solid point, if you're academically inclined. For the majority of the world's population, though, it's hard not to think "ALIEN LIFE CONFIRMED" headlines in every major news outlet might lead to some other shifts in public opinion.
I think one of the biggest questions about our universe is whether life is unique to Earth. It's pretty silly and self centered to assume that we're unique, but we don't really have any real way to confirm or deny the question outside of the ability to find signs of life within our solar system. So yes, finding signs of life on Mars is basically answering one of the most fundamental questions about our existence.
But only sort of a biggest question. Once we know there’s life out there beyond us other questions arise. Perhaps the next big question would be is any of it intelligent and/or industrial like us?
nobody knowing there's actually aliens out there would ever leak anything if they're sure there's certain danger in doing it so. If they found something and nobody is saying anything, not leaking a word, there should be a really important reason for that.
This argument can be flipped, though. If life were found on Mars, that might lead to a ban on manned Mars missions, because there's absolutely no chance that a manned mission will not contaminate Mars with microbes from Earth. So to protect a Martian ecosystem, we might have to use only robots to explore Mars.
On a civilizational time scale, I just don't see the whole human race deciding that "ohh nooooo, the pwecious pwecious native microbes might be disturbed if we go there" holding up for very long. This is far, far from the opinion of the entire human race right now, despite how common it may seem on HN. At most it'll be a funny footnote that the school kids learn about in their orbiting space station schools where they'll laugh at what the funny old groundpounders thought, before the Earth became uninhabitable after the asteroid pounding given to it in the Great Space Indepedence War of 2343.
In evolutionary terms, it does not seem to be pro-survival attitude.
or rather to protect us from what is coming back; I remember that the Apollo astronauts were kept in quarantine due to that fear. I think it's sort of funny that the effort to make us a multi planetary species might as well doom us if we catch something unusual while on Mars.
Would extra terrestrial bacteria have any chance versus generation after generation of earth specific bacteria in life forms on earth? I mean, wouldn't it be like a baseball team showing up for cricket or maybe slalom?
Whatever bacteria might live on Mars had millennia of evolutionary pressure to adapt to an environment with no lifeforms larger than an inch. It seems very unlikely that they will interact with human physiology in a meaningful way.
That doesn't mean they can't be harmful though. Bacteria that quickly eats through concrete for example would be just as bad to bring back.
> It seems very unlikely that they will interact with human physiology in a meaningful way.
Human physiology depends very much on various bacteria. Supposedly, there are 10 times as many bacterial cells than human cells in our bodies. Perhaps you should reconsider your attitude if you take into account that bacteria from Mars might wreak havoc on these bacteria?
I don't know that much about biology, but my understanding is that if the bacteria does not target our bodies, then it will be just some inert material that will eventually be eliminated by one mechanism or another.
the bacteria will be looking for food. either it finds it or it doesn't. if it finds it it will grow and reproduce. that in itself is not the end yet, as there are already many bacteria in our body that live in a symbiotic relationship. only if it reproduces to much and overwhelms our body somehow it becomes a problem.
but also, if it doesn't find food we are not safe yet. the bacteria itself could be toxic in some way and it could reproduce elsewhere and enter our body through food or other ways.
it doesn't need to target our bodies. it just needs to cause an averse reaction of some form.
compare to chemicals for example. they don't target anything. they are inert. yet some chemicals are poisonous.
Uh, no, this is nuts. I work there and personally know the PI of the below-linked instrument which is designed to “search for organics and minerals that have been altered by watery environments and may be signs of past microbial life.” Some of the best engineers at JPL have worked to get this ready for Mars2020.
There is a standard and open pipeline to getting an instrument on these missions. Scientific American is not part of it. It’s more like AGU, LPSC, Icarus, and the National Academies decadal survey — writing actual instrument proposals with hypotheses and trace back to hardware that can make the measurements needed to test the hypothesis.
This assumes the amount of funding would remain the same. Would it? Hell, if they found life on Mars I'd consider switching jobs to work on that. I'd be surprised if tax-paying people wouldn't be open to funneling more tax-money towards space travel. Human- or robot missions, regardless.
