I read this less as "this makes it more likely that there was life" and more as "if there was life, this makes it more likely that we'll have found it".
> Perseverance's soil and rock samples will be brought back to Earth by a future expedition and studied for evidence of past life.
Can someone explain to me why we need to bring the samples back to Earth to analyze them? What "signs of life" are we looking for that the rover itself couldn't report?
Without being an expert, I would say that samples on Earth would let us (or at least those who look at the samples) look in ways the rover was not designed to look. There is a lot of analytic equipment that is here on Earth but not on Mars.
Also, there are things to study besides past life. Geology, material science, horticultural implications, and other things are all worth study
The "past life on Mars" maybe interesting but it is also an easy selling point.
As little as 20 years ago, the idea that Mars had a lake, like honest to God lake, or that we'd gather 1000s of exoplanet signatures, or that we'd find solid evidence of a liquid ocean on Europa. All of this would be bananas.
It may not feel fast on the scale of a decade, but on the scale of my lifetime this is breakneck pace. Not fast enough now that I'm middle aged, but so fast.
Everything is amazing, even if you already knew it was amazing, just let it be amazing.
It should gives impetus to further (and more targeted) effort - e.g., the killer evidence would be some kinda fossil, but what mechanisms of fossilisation would we expect to have existed on Mars? Perhaps stromatolites? We're still working out how to identify abiogenic stromatolites from biogenic ones.
And where should we look? It's kinda hard to build a robot that can replicate a sunburned human wandering around hitting rocks with a pickaxe and looking thoughtful, and likewise, a probe that can take a core sample of a former lakebed is a very specialised probe, if it's even possible to build one that could drill deep enough to where any postulated evidence of life might be found.
Only a sentence or two of the article talks about life. The article is actually about the ancient lake bed and how they confirmed it and the technology used to find it.
I think the Viking approach from 50 years ago was the right one: Send miniature labs to Mars and look for signatures. The Rovers are funky as all hell and the Skycrane is a masterpiece of engineering. Once down, they don't go very far or very fast and they look for biology-adjacent stuff instead of biology itself.
If martians had built anything cool there we would have known by now. It's just not very likely there's much interesting up there unless you're interested in the little things.
I agree with the part of being sick of it, but I also wonder why it even matters.
So what if there are microbes in the maritian soil? What difference does it make to us? Except possibly the worst invasive species incident in human history.
At least this isn't into the total wing-nut fanatasyland of living on mars, which is one of the stupedest ideas proposed in modern time.
Just bury a trucking container in Nevada and live in it, That's exactly what living on mars will be like, except the line of logistics will be much more practical.
[+] [-] unwise-exe|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Reubend|2 years ago|reply
Can someone explain to me why we need to bring the samples back to Earth to analyze them? What "signs of life" are we looking for that the rover itself couldn't report?
[+] [-] tocs3|2 years ago|reply
Also, there are things to study besides past life. Geology, material science, horticultural implications, and other things are all worth study The "past life on Mars" maybe interesting but it is also an easy selling point.
[+] [-] every|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amiga1200|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bedobi|2 years ago|reply
don't mean to be uncharitable, i'm as excited as anyone at the prospect, but the whole thing is getting old
either come up with something or keep quiet lol
[+] [-] jvanderbot|2 years ago|reply
It may not feel fast on the scale of a decade, but on the scale of my lifetime this is breakneck pace. Not fast enough now that I'm middle aged, but so fast.
Everything is amazing, even if you already knew it was amazing, just let it be amazing.
[+] [-] idiotsecant|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brcmthrowaway|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EdwardDiego|2 years ago|reply
And where should we look? It's kinda hard to build a robot that can replicate a sunburned human wandering around hitting rocks with a pickaxe and looking thoughtful, and likewise, a probe that can take a core sample of a former lakebed is a very specialised probe, if it's even possible to build one that could drill deep enough to where any postulated evidence of life might be found.
[+] [-] ChrisClark|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OldGuyInTheClub|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tocs3|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smoldesu|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnea|2 years ago|reply
So what if there are microbes in the maritian soil? What difference does it make to us? Except possibly the worst invasive species incident in human history.
At least this isn't into the total wing-nut fanatasyland of living on mars, which is one of the stupedest ideas proposed in modern time.
Just bury a trucking container in Nevada and live in it, That's exactly what living on mars will be like, except the line of logistics will be much more practical.