NASA Expected to Announce Signs of Life on Mars
 

http://www.dailytech.com/NASA+Expect...ticle13948.htm

This should be interesting.

-S

I'm still waiting for them to discover signs of intelligent life on Earth.

aye, me too

I hope they find something that differs from the life we see on Earth, something that takes everything we know about how living stuff works and turns it upside-down. :yep:

Well, NASA has to do something, no matter how speculative it is. With the incoming administration threatening to cut/reduce funding, NASA better get the general public hooked on a new dream...

The Hubble, one of the most significant and successful NASA projects of all time, is old news and coming to the end of it's usable life. Can't pump anymore $$$ into it...

So why not Mars? The two rovers who's "warranties" expired over what, 4 years ago, are still running strong and have been a credit to Nasa. But the pictures of Martian rocks are getting boring and the rovers are "old news"...

I think that is called toe jam. :88)

The building block of civilizations....:D

Naval Jelly holds it all together.

Sure, as long as they keep it isolated from our environment. I doubt there'd be much natural immunity in man, beast or plant against space bugs so if they get loose on Earth it could be catastrophic.

AFAIK, that's the plan with anything they find. :up:

Or, they might die immediately upon exposure to Earth's brutal gravity and toxic, crushing, nitrogen atmosphere:hmm:

I kid, but what really worries me is the possibility of an extraterrestrial virus. I don't know if a virus would qualify as "life", since last time I checked we don't have a proper classification for them yet, but it could be the deadliest bug ever to hit the planet. I suppose a microbe could survive in our environment, we have plenty of anaerobic bacteria that live in all kinds of hostile extremes, after all. But, the odds of such a microbe finding living animals on earth as suitable hosts seem slim to me.
A virus, however, is a lot simpler than a bacterium, and generally, a lot hardier. And all viruses attack cells. An alien virus set loose in a world with no built-in immunity from millions of years of natural selection could easily wipe out the majority of suitable hosts on the planet in very little time. :o

Actually, that is an possibility. :yep:

Especially given rapid transportation and large populations. Heck we're pretty vulnerable to "home grown" virus's.

Oh, not as much as you might think. Granted, individuals are very susceptible, but as a species, we're pretty resistant. Any guess what our most effective defense is?

hint- it's something people think about all the time and yet never realize why we have it

Well Racial variation would be my guess but that is not a foolproof defense against every virus. Think Ebola with a longer incubation period between infection and noticeable symptoms. It's quite possible that a virus will come along that overcomes our resistances and outpaces our containment efforts.