Life on Mars? Not Even on Saturday Night!
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| Gale Crater on Mars NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona (slightly modified) |
Actual observations are constantly wrecking their hypotheses and dreams. Water on Mars would be a good chance of finding life on Mars. Bzzzzz! Wrong answer, Hans! What appeared to be signs of water are actually signs of wind. The more we learn about Mars, the more we learn that it is downright toxic, and even colonizing Mars is probably a bad idea.
Evidence disputes Mars water, let alone life. It’s looking like a toxic place. Besides, where would the water come from?
The big mound in Gale Crater, site of the Mars Curiosity Rover, looked like a tantalizing place to look for habitability. Mt. Sharp, as it is called, appeared to be a mountain laid down by water. Now, however, it looks more likely it was built by wind. Astrobiology Magazine shared the bad news from Princeton: “If correct, the research could dilute expectations that the mound holds evidence of a large body of water, which would have important implications for understanding Mars’ past habitability.”
Where would the water have come from, anyway? Live Science proclaimed that Mars and the core of Jupiter formed from “large space crashes.” The energy of impacts would seem to obliterate volatile compounds (including water). That’s why cosmogonists try to find other sources for Earth’s oceans, assuming it crashed into existence similarly. The highly speculative theory proposed by U of Chicago scientists, given credence in the article, relies on numerous improbabilities, among them: (1) dust particles sticking together to make planetestimals, (2) sufficient numbers of planetesimals colliding and accreting together instead of breaking up into fine particles, and (3) sufficient time before all the planet-forming ingredients are expelled from the system.You can read the rest of "Trouble for Mars Lifers", here.