Like this??

Not a bad point.

I sincerely doubt that virus would even be compatibile with earth life, different aminoacids an all(if it even have those). It would most likely not even notice we're there, like windows based viruses in a unix based system. Thanks for the pics Darkflame, I couldn't sit yesterday after the landing to wait for the first photos to come in :( Shame :(.

Well, to start with it isnt bringing anything back....thats a later probe.

Secondly, plenty of material from mars has hit the earth already from a historical viewpoint (ie, millions and millions of years).
So anything would have had to be a recent evolution, or very old. So nothing could possible have evolved to be suitable against our planets lifeforms.

Thirdly, any samples brought back would be incredibly well contained to stop us containminating it.
Theres already concerns that anything we find on mars might have been brought there by the same probe that detected it :p

Or perhaps we're the Martians...


Someone might ask how would life survive a joy ride on apiece of steaming rock, imagine they found bacteria on the moon, brought there by the apollo misions, after the bacteria found themselves in an earthly environment they started reproducing like mad again.

There are bacteria that feed on radioactivity, to that point that they can bloom in a jar, wich has gotten brown from the radiation.

If Mars exchanged materials with Earth in the past, it might be very likely that there's biological lifeforms on mars.

If mars and earth exchanged life more often, they might even have their periods at the same time. If mars however is a man, then maybe the moon....

:eek:
* Jasiek just uncovered a weird truth about the solar system

Well, the moon did come from the earth :p
--
The life-seeding idea is rational and well support, if still not likely in an absolute sense.
(after all, whatever the chance of life starting on earth, its going to be more then the chance of life appearing elsewhere AND hitchhiking too us)

That said, theres plenty of bacteria that are durable enough to stand the extreme conditions required.
Luckly for us durable dosnt nesscerly mean aggressive :p

Why?

By the way, talking about stellar love...
http://pbfcomics.com/archive_b/PBF041-Sun_Love.gif

Reminds me of the Only Fools And Horse's eppisode with the mobile phone. :D
Because probabilitys multiply.

So, lets say the chance of something developing on a planet is 1/100.
Then the chance of something jorneying and surving that jorney is, say, 1/10
then the end result would be (1/100) x (1/10) = 1/1000.
So that would be 1/1000 rather then 1/100.

The only time it would be more likely for mars to seed the earth would be if coniditions on mars to develop life were much better then earths in the past.
Certainly not impossible, but we dont have any evidence for that as yet.

We don't actually *know* how the procedure that generated the first bio form happened, correct me if I'm wrong. And we sure don't know the chances. So it could be that the chances of life developing on a planet are so low, that it would be more likely to have happened elsewhere.

We dont know for sure, allthough theres a few good theorys.
Hydrothermal vents still seem a good bet to me.


And we certainly dont know the odds. We have a sample range of just 1.
Its like rolling a 6, when you dont know how many sides the die has :p

But still, regardless of odds, all things being equal, it would be the same odds on mars as earth.
Replace the 1/100 with 1/10000000000000 and it would still be less chance to have formed on a world then it would be to have formed on a world and traveled.

So while the chances of live swapping between worlds might be quite high, its equaly and more likely to have started to earth and then spread out then visa-versa.

That is, unless conditions elsewhere were better then early earth. Which is something we dont know.

Of course, it could be argued it is more likely to have formed elsewhere purely because "everywhere else" has, in total, been around longer then the earth.
But that logic probably wouldnt apply to mars, but more on a gallactic scale....and with those mind-blowing distances life seeding between planets is a heck of a lot less likely.
(sure, lifeforms might survive a hundred years in space...but hundreds of thousands? and then actualy hit another planet?)

I see life-swapping within a solar system, but not between them basicaly.

(of course, a third possiblity is life evolving in space itself. Maybe some gas clouds having some sort of basic life evolving. That would increase the chance of spreading)

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2...st-image-ever/

http://www.badastronomy.com/pix/babl...enix_chute.jpg

O_O

That was taken as it was landing

I'm not sure I understand why that picture is so incredible. :? We already know it landed, and we already know we have satellites at Mars. So... what?

I believe it's got something to do with not being able to fathom or grasp what this all means until one is presented with evidence. Evidence enough to prove that something like this has really happened. Evidence that clearly shows the process undergoing a state of happening - at the very moment the photograph was taken.

Personally.. I, as ChaosFish, don't find that particular picture very fascinating.

wow

Its a picture taken by one spacecraft that has been orbiting another planet for a few years. This craft is orbiting at a incredibly fast speed, and they managed to get it in the correct position to take a split-second snapshot of precisely the correct region while another spacecraft is just landing also perfectly on target.
In this case, they had a margin of error of just a few seconds.

Its hard to imagine from just the picture, but its kinda like playing golf and hitting a hole in one, while another golf ball flys directly over the first golf ball and takes a photo just as the first one is going into the hole.
That is, if golf balls could take photos.
I suck at analogys :p
But trust me,getting this picture is pretty amazing.

The photo itself tells us nothing new, thats true, its just cool that they could do it.
I'm guess it would have been a more important photo if Pheonix didnt land as planned, as it would have helped to tell them why.

This is good, for starters.

Darkflame's explanation is better :p

New image;
http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/phoen...hwestcolor.jpg

They are very slowly going to start moving the arm today/tommorow, and apperently hope to start digging during next week.

So cool! This reminds me of a scene from Photopia.

Exoskeletons:

http://www.raytheon.com/newsroom/tec...8_exoskeleton/

http://www.cyberdyne.jp/English/robotsuithal/index.html

I want an exoskeleton! Where can I buy one? And is there a color choice?