Tiny Tunnels in Mars Rock Hint at Possibility of Life

SPACE.com ^ | March 23, 2006 | Leonard David

[AntiGuv]

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[keithtoo]

I know what's in those tunnels.

[Recovering Ex-hippie]

Is it just possible that perhaps, just perhaps....
IF there is life on Mars...that the creatures on Mars could provide the Democrates a strategy for the '08 elections?!!!!!!!

this could be trouble.

[The Old Hoosier]

I knew it! A tunnel for illegal Martians to enter the U.S.!

[Right Wing Professor]

However, no DNA could be extracted from the meteorite, so it's not known if the tunnels are of biological origin.

Not sure why they think Martian life would be DNA based.

[diverteach]

So that's where Bin Laden been hiding so we couldn't find him.

[dinok]

Some day we will turn over a rock on Mars and find a democrat.

[djf]

It's time for us to bite the bullet, send a scooper to Mars with an Estes rocket attached, and get a sample.

One kilogram of stuff from the surface would probably end the debate for all time.

I'm pretty darn certain they'd find something. The chances that Mars has never been polluted by Earth organisms is almost vanishingly small.

[keithtoo]

Yup. He's the tall one on the right.

[RightWhale]

conditions are such on Mars that the DNA was not preserved.

It's alien life. DNA seems like a massive presumption.

[diverteach]

and he's with Elvis. LOL

[RightWhale]

They have tunnel vision.

[cripplecreek]

Horta

[King Prout]

ping

[King Prout]

peptides are common in stellar dust.
polypeptides are formed from simpler peptides in hight speed impacts.
why would other life in this system NOT be DNA based?

[NicknamedBob]

The good news is that Mars may have been colonized by bacterial, microbial life.

That's also the bad news, because it possibly means that life may already exist all over the Galaxy wherever it can find a purchase.

Which alleviates the need for special creation of life on Earth, (or elsewhere).

Which puts another arrow into creationistic quivers.

Which still doesn't answer the question of Who started what when.


Of course, my own take on it, is that if you add ten billion years to the beginning of life, and ten times that many worlds on which it could begin, then it becomes inevitable, whether created or not.

[boomop1]

Sand worms, don't yah hate when that happens.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Sheila Jackson Lee thinks the tunnels are from the flag the Astronauts left!

[NicknamedBob]

"... bacteria was expelled from the earth and into space and landing on mars and other planets ..."

Actually, it works the other way. Chances are bacteria were landing on Earth. We may never know from where.

As I implied, this backs up the beginning of Life to almost the beginning of time, (or at least to near the Big Bang).

We are all made of second-hand materials which were formed in the primordial stars. It may be that life arose at that time, and has been spreading ever since.

Wrenching as the concept may be, it strikes me as proof that we cannot be alone.