You know guys we are on the verge of something could have huge importance to mankind it seems we are now being primed for an anouncement about water on Mars with Phoenix about to begin analysing the samples from Mars stories all over the internet that Mars had vast amounts of water at one time and maybe some of it is still frozen just under the surface if all of these claims come true what do you expect next ? could there be a new space race to land a man on Mars to search for evidence of life ? you know we are always told ''were there's water there's the potential for life'' could this be the key to us not being alone ? your thoughts please guys

My feeling is that there is life there, complex life. We just haven't found it yet...officially anyway.
The discovery of water sure helps fuel the hopes.

mars is an older planet then earth, remember that...

My thoughts on the matter is that Mars will be an enigma. A dead world that is devoid of life. Yes it does have water, it has large amounts of water in some places.

The soil is rich in minerals for the growing of plants. Phoenix just determined that.

The air is thin and weak but possesses all that it needs to support an Earth like world. If it was only thinker... The was determined by some of the first probes to the planet.

The Sun is weak but enough for plants to grow... As NASA has stated this in some of their research.

The gravity is adequate for Earth life to live on and to hold a thinker atmosphere. Even if not as dense as Earth it is only 1/5th less then Earth.

All this and our older stories talk of life on Mars as if it was a fact that someone once fad access to...

But where is the life?

It should have life, it does have minor traces of life. But it is a dead world.

to us it may seem dead, but to them it may seem perfect.

perhaps they are a subterranean species or have just adopted underground living, perhaps they dont need the sun as an energy source as we humans need it for nourishment, perhaps they delve on another cosmic force for sustanence? i would speculate that it is probably closer to magnetism, considering the amount of iron oxide that is on mars, perhaps martians are magnetic in some sort?

perhaps they have developed a means of space travel, if they are different life forms, with a different makeup, i assume that they would have a different understanding and viewpoint on life, as well as their planets physical science, perhaps instead of creating fire as a evolutionary breakthrough, perhaps their people harnessed a different form of energy like magnetism, it would make sense on mars... it would also make sense that we see some of these ufo's act like magnets, perhaps they are martians? not saying that they are all martians....

maybe they said see ya to their old planet since they have interplanetary capabilities...

there have been giant caves and giant holes leading beneath the surface of mars...

i wouldnt rule any of these possibilities out unless i had a credible reason to do so, and if you are going to call the current space programs as credible, then you should go punch a mirror,lol, ithink the most credible are people like you and me, and internet forums like this, where we can share thoughts and stuff, like a giant primal campfire, its evolution, trail and error, life at its finest!

This post has been edited by vyrtigo: Jul 18 2008, 04:14 PM

That is a very good point indeed. Forms of life might be very different from planets to planets. Some might need a source of energy to live of off as for example the sun, and some may produce it themselves. Some may not even need it. So where does this bring us all? Could only the planet Mars have life on it? Of course not. The most Earthly life on it probably. But any other planet could have just as well as a chance. My guess wouldn't be that UFOs are coming from Mars, I admit.

Who told you that?

Nevertheless, I believe that we'll find evidence of simple life on Mars very shortly. While Mars and Earth are the same age, Mars is much smaller and therefore cooled quickly. It's becoming standard thought anymore that Mars had lots of water and a thick atmosphere when Earth was way too hot and had a poison atmosphere. Perhaps in a couple of billion years, aliens will land probes on a cold, dead Earth, long after tectonic activity had recycled any remnants of humans back into the mantle, and the magnetic field had disappeared, and will look for traces of ice and past life here.

This post has been edited by maullin: Jul 18 2008, 10:30 PM

I think that more and more scientists are coming around to the less arrogant opinion that alien life does not have to be carbon based and water dependent. I read an article a few months back written by a team speculating about life on Titan. Their contention was that, while the atmospheric gases are different, and the lakes and seas are made of methane rather than water, gas is gas, and liquid is liquid, and all of it is capable of being converted to energy. Titan is cold, but that's irrelevant in the case of a life form dependent on liquid methane. Who knows? Little Johnny might have a fever at 200 below zero!

Haha.

awesome.

my mistake, thank you for bringing that to my attention.

you are right, according to our current understanding on the development of our solar system, the popular theory is that they are the same 4.5 billion yrs old.

i must have misinterpreted the facts.

BUT, can you say for sure that mars and earth are the same age? only according to the current space programs etc... which i think are rather questionable at the moment.


also, what do you think of the ancient sumerian texts, the earth formerly being a larger planet callet tiamat, and the nibiru theory?

There's water on a couple of planets and a few moons in our solar system, Europa for example is nothing but a planet of water frozen. So I don't see the significance in wondering about water on Mars, I still don't think there is life there. Maybe traces of bacteria but they'd be fossilised by now. Now don't get me wrong I know the theory...where there is water there is life and I DO take that seriously. But I don't see why Mars gets so much credit for supposidly having water on it's surface when we have a whole freakin moon like Europa getting no attention. I'd be following Europa for life, not Mars, Mars is too damn baron. Granted I think we should still be looking on Mars, but at the same time can't some of that attention be given elsewhere? They say one day they will send probes to Europa, well...they've had a loooooooooong time to do this and never have. Oh well, it's everyone's loss I guess.