Posted on 10/13/2022 1:41:48 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Ancient microbial life on Mars could have destroyed the planet’s atmosphere through climate change, which ultimately led to its extinction, new research has suggested.
The new theory comes from a climate modeling study that simulated hydrogen-consuming, methane-producing microbes living on Mars roughly 3.7 billion years ago. At the time, atmospheric conditions were similar to those that existed on ancient Earth during the same period. But instead of creating an environment that would help them thrive and evolve, as happened on Earth, Martian microbes may have doomed themselves just as they were getting started, according to the study published Oct. 10 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The model suggests that the reason life thrived on Earth and was doomed on Mars is because of the gas compositions of the two planets, and their relative distances from the sun. Being farther away from our star than Earth, Mars was more reliant on a potent fog of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen, to maintain hospitable temperatures for life. So as ancient Martian microbes ate hydrogen (a potent greenhouse gas) and produced methane (a significant greenhouse gas on Earth but less potent than hydrogen) they slowly ate into their planet’s heat-trapping blanket, eventually making Mars so cold that it could no longer evolve complex life.
The scientists believe their findings suggest that life may not be innately self-sustaining in every conducive environment it pops up in, and that it can easily wipe itself out by accidentally destroying the foundations for its own existence.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Thought this was The Bee at first.
This has to be one of the dumbest premises I’ve ever encountered.
A blatant falsehood crafted to appear to support the never ending crusade of the left to enslave us under the color of “climate change”.
This is absolutely absurd. There is no evidence whatsoever to support any of this yet they are are playing on stupid people to believe this.
Pure fantasy.
OMG what have we become.
The idiot who wrote this didn’t get a grant if it didn’t push the OMG! CLIMATE CHANGE! agenda.
This is the state of modern so-called “Science”.
Eisenhower warned us of this.
Ditto.
Mars has no magnetosphere, so even if somehow a microbe spontaneously assembled itself, it would probably have been pretty quickly obliterated by cosmic radiation.
I thought this was the Bee.
I guess speculation is now settled science.
Interesting how “suggest” and “could” in the article became “likely” in the headline.
Did I miss the mention of water vapor and the weak gravity on Mars? This smells like some student’s thesis and is about as useful as the study that estimated the weight of all the ants in the world that was published a while ago.
WOW!! I thought LSD went away with the end of the Grateful Dead
I just heard breaking news that a Chinese Mars rover uncovered a Martian Time Capsule containing a dire warning for future civilizations. Translators have been busy the last few hours trying to decode the message and so far they have the following: “Don’t make the same mistakes we made, never vote for a democrat and for heavens sake never convert to electric cars. Our ancestors uncovered this same warning from the remains of the ninth planet but we ignored it and it is now too late to reverse our course. We are doomed. Best of luck and don’t say we didn’t warn you!”
It ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids.
Martian farts...because 95% carbon dioxide...is a gas, man.
I stopped reading at “new theory”.
I will now read the FR comments to learn why I stopped.
No worries. 2 weeks from now, they’ll say Pluto went extinct due to the previous Pluto inhabitants driving V 8’S.
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