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steveclv · 08-09-2013, 08:29 AM

I have been reading some interesting articles that have looked at, and reconstructed some of the earliest proteins that were the pre-cursor to life.

When the scientists combined their data with what is known about the Earth and what they are now discovering about Mars and what it would have been like at about the same time period (the Hadean period about 4 billion years ago), it is being suggested that a large meteor could have impacted Mars causing pieces to break away and those meteors would eventually have impacted a very early Earth.

As the Sun was a lot younger and hotter at that time, Mars would have been at a distance that was more likely to sustain life whereas the Earth was too hot. Components of life would have been transferred in those meteors to land on Earth and form the basis from which life first started in Earth.

To me, it's interesting to think that if life had existed on Mars 4 billion years ago, at what stage did it develop to?

After such a long period of time, anything that it built or created would have been long gone so it could have been microbial or it could have been very 'Earth' like.

Maybe there were 'Martians' a long, long time ago.

RedWing Nut · 08-09-2013, 09:24 AM

You should watch the 2000 movie, Mission to Mars It theorizes that Earth was "seeded" by aliens on Mars millions of years ago. Good special effects.

offshore · 08-09-2013, 10:49 AM

I don't know much about Mars, but this morning I learned that Venus in the only planet which spins clockwise. I think my wife is from Venus, at least that's what the book said.

JohnBoyToo · 08-09-2013, 11:33 AM

all of them can spin clockwise or counter clockwise...
just depends are the below you or above you ????

Lindsay Richards · 08-09-2013, 11:57 AM

Actually, the clocks on Venus are all digital.

Ed-Sommers · 08-10-2013, 09:44 AM

The word "could" greatly expands Theorists thought pattern.

Ed

flaggship1 · 08-10-2013, 10:17 AM

It seems to me that much believed to be improbable or impossible could well be neither. If you take a strict creationists point of view, who's to say that the exact scenario ascribed to didn't play out many times elsewhere in the universe. There would have been no reason to refer to previous creations in subsequent accounts.

If you take a non-creationist view, the sky's the limit so to speak. Many scientists are able to take both positions. One of the great things about the human mind is the ability to hold multiple and competing ideas simultaneously.

Billions and billions of light years.... Do do do do. Do do do do.
To infinity and beyond - oh yeah - and may you all live long and prosper, in your dream RV of course.
Steve

biosensai · 08-10-2013, 04:11 PM

The scientific issue of the origin of life on earth is perplexing. When a guy of the stature of the late Francis Crick states (paraphrased) that science cannot explain the origin of life on earth, and offered support for the idea that life originated elsewhere and then got here, the scientific race was on for an explanation. Science has looked for a long time for a place like earth to look for life as we know it. Speculation about Mars has abounded over the years. Heck, even the author of Tarzan was in on it! Water, ice, rivers and oceans containing life deep in its subterranean depths necessitate a scientific imagination as creative as Edgar Rice's! And a good scientist must have that I'd suggest.

Ultimately we are still left with the same question. If the conditions here couldn't spark life from non-living materials (abiogenesis, which science disproved many years ago) how did it happen somewhere else? Especially given that life as we know it requires an environment like earth has. Bare bones evolution has that very concept at its core. The environment designs which organisms exist through their surviving and the passing on of their favorable traits. As for the idea of proteins hitching a ride on something through the earth's atmosphere, that's tricky. Very fanciful explanations do exist, but they all agree - most proteins are very susceptible to heat and are irreparably damaged by it. Think cooking an egg.

As a retired molecular bio type, I appreciate the explanation I've heard being voiced by some physicists. We just aren't smart enough to understand the universe in which we live.

If one keeps in mind that science is a method of answering questions based on observably replicated experimentation, than one has to acknowledge that it has it's limitations. But it can be absolutely fascinating to look at the stars at night and wonder . . .

vsheetz · 08-10-2013, 06:15 PM

Next time I am abducted by aliens I will ask about this Mars thing. That is if I can get them to stop playing checkers long enough... They sure are crazy over checkers. Go figure...

Nick-B · 08-10-2013, 07:49 PM

It is absolutely true you Neanderthalic Earthlings!

Kuzzy · 08-10-2013, 10:40 PM

Ack ack

stink · 08-10-2013, 10:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nick-B

It is absolutely true you Neanderthalic Earthlings!

Umm you stole my neutronium space modulator, that makes me very angry, angry indeed!

steveclv · 08-12-2013, 10:30 AM

biosensai

Nice thought process however I for one believe that you have to create a hypothesis first that makes logical sense and then work through the science to prove or disprove.

Yes, proteins would be unlikely to make the journey on the surface of a meteor, but an ice laden block of the size that caused some of the major craters here on Earth could have retained sufficient internal environments to make it possible. Assuming that the time was right in terms of the Earths environment (and remember that life still exists in most horrendous habitats today) it seems plausible that early life could have originated in the way described - I mean we can see how rapidly a bioorganism placed in an appropriate environment can multiply and evolve.

So to me at least, the sequence of events seems 'possible' and 'plausible' - now it's up to science to prove

Muddypaws · 08-12-2013, 11:08 AM

Is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we could ever imagine.

Given the size of the universe, and the number of galaxies, and the number of stars within those galaxies, and the number of planets in the Goldilocks zone (hundreds of which have been recently discovered) and the weird types of life we've discovered on our own planet (like in sulfur vents on the sea floor) it is almost impossible to conceive that we are the only living sentience in 'our' universe.

I read too much.