Crosswords1 min ago
Life On Mars?
A group of academics say they have identified fossilised sponges, corals, worm eggs, algae and more on the surface of Mars, and say life there may even be thriving today.
“We have photos of fungi growing out of the ground, increasing in size, increasing in number, as based on sequential images,” said Dr Rudolph Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, speaking on behalf of the researchers.
Finding life somewhere other than Earth would have major implications for humanity, proving for the first time that we are not alone in the universe. And if life is present so close to home, it opens fascinating questions as to what life might be like further afield.
“Definitive proof would tell us we are not alone,” added Dr Schild. “We could assume that life has evolved on innumerable Earth-like planets.
“This then raises questions about the antiquity of life. There are planets and Solar Systems that are billions of years older than our own. What if human-like life evolved on those planets billions of years ago? The implications are staggering and humbling.”
https:/
Exciting stuff? I think so. What say you?
“We have photos of fungi growing out of the ground, increasing in size, increasing in number, as based on sequential images,” said Dr Rudolph Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, speaking on behalf of the researchers.
Finding life somewhere other than Earth would have major implications for humanity, proving for the first time that we are not alone in the universe. And if life is present so close to home, it opens fascinating questions as to what life might be like further afield.
“Definitive proof would tell us we are not alone,” added Dr Schild. “We could assume that life has evolved on innumerable Earth-like planets.
“This then raises questions about the antiquity of life. There are planets and Solar Systems that are billions of years older than our own. What if human-like life evolved on those planets billions of years ago? The implications are staggering and humbling.”
https:/
Exciting stuff? I think so. What say you?
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I'm sceptical about this for so many reasons it's difficult to know where to begin. Firstly, though, the attention this has gained is apparently limited to non-specialist media, rather than in more established scientific circles. For example, there's this Daily Star article from a couple of weeks ago: https:/
Secondly, and more damningly, there is this, from two years ago, and the same group: https:/
“No, NASA photos are not evidence of fungus growing on Mars, sorry
Despite what you might have read, the claims about life on Mars are shoddy and unscientific.”
If the same group is making even more outlandish claims today, they shouldn't suddenly be seen as more plausible by virtue of appearing in the Telegraph (and the quote referenced above seems to link directly to this debunked idea of fungi on Mars).
Thirdly, Rudolph Schild may have a long career, but it is a mixed one in some significant ways. For example, he is (or was) the editor of "Journal of Cosmology", a journal which coincidentally published a lot of his own papers, and those of friends, on various fringe theories such as panspermia, and which is one of a number of journals suspected to be "predatory" -- ie, of soliciting papers for publication and clout with little care as to their quality and content.
Fourthly, that suspicion of being predatory is hardly confined to a journal not used in this particular research. One of them, the "Journal of Chemical, Biological and Physical Sciences" ( https:/
Conclusion: you've been had, sorry.
Apparent scope of JCBPS: "... all the branches of Chemistry including Pharmaceutical, Industrial, Environmental, Medicinal, Agriculture, Pesticides and Soil... Microbiology, Biotechnology, Parasitology, Biotechnology, Bioinformatics, Toxicology, Phytochemistry, Chemical Physics, Biostatistics... Physics, Mathematics, Statistics and Engineering as well.")
Secondly, and more damningly, there is this, from two years ago, and the same group: https:/
“No, NASA photos are not evidence of fungus growing on Mars, sorry
Despite what you might have read, the claims about life on Mars are shoddy and unscientific.”
If the same group is making even more outlandish claims today, they shouldn't suddenly be seen as more plausible by virtue of appearing in the Telegraph (and the quote referenced above seems to link directly to this debunked idea of fungi on Mars).
Thirdly, Rudolph Schild may have a long career, but it is a mixed one in some significant ways. For example, he is (or was) the editor of "Journal of Cosmology", a journal which coincidentally published a lot of his own papers, and those of friends, on various fringe theories such as panspermia, and which is one of a number of journals suspected to be "predatory" -- ie, of soliciting papers for publication and clout with little care as to their quality and content.
Fourthly, that suspicion of being predatory is hardly confined to a journal not used in this particular research. One of them, the "Journal of Chemical, Biological and Physical Sciences" ( https:/
Conclusion: you've been had, sorry.
Apparent scope of JCBPS: "... all the branches of Chemistry including Pharmaceutical, Industrial, Environmental, Medicinal, Agriculture, Pesticides and Soil... Microbiology, Biotechnology, Parasitology, Biotechnology, Bioinformatics, Toxicology, Phytochemistry, Chemical Physics, Biostatistics... Physics, Mathematics, Statistics and Engineering as well.")
Clare, I guess, as always, you're not keen on this sort of thing - and forget the Telegraph. How handy finding something in the Daily Star. That'll trash it straight off. Dr Schild is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and having researched this, unlike you, he at least speaks with some degree of authority. Additionally his work is published in mainstream astronomy journals such as MNRAS and the Astronomical Journal but you declined to tell us that. Since he seems a pretty intelligent chap, rather than dismiss it out of hand, I'll await further news. Without curiosity science wouldn't have got far so at the very least it's an interesting topic of conversation for any ABers who might be interested - and who might even want to speculate.
The problem is that Schild has, or seems to have, a clear agenda in terms of promoting ideas like panspermia. I don't know if this is deliberate, or if he's lying to himself more than others, but it still is noteworthy. Is it not, for example, rather suspicious that the life he claims to have found on Mars so closely resembles ours, despite the radically different conditions? But such a claim would presumably lend credence to panspermia, a pet idea of his.
This smacks of somebody finding what they wanted to look for. Nothing more.
This smacks of somebody finding what they wanted to look for. Nothing more.
Also, I haven't dismissed this out of hand, I literally went digging to see what history I could find. The facts are:
1. that this has received no attention in established scientific circles;
2. that related work by the same group has already been dubunked (multiple times, as you can also go back to find a similar wrong claim in 2011);
3. and that one of the authors has a clear agenda, and perhaps the protection of an established position to allow him to get away with exploring it without much scrutiny (including by publishing a lot of his work in garbage journals).
1. that this has received no attention in established scientific circles;
2. that related work by the same group has already been dubunked (multiple times, as you can also go back to find a similar wrong claim in 2011);
3. and that one of the authors has a clear agenda, and perhaps the protection of an established position to allow him to get away with exploring it without much scrutiny (including by publishing a lot of his work in garbage journals).
// Additionally his work is published in mainstream astronomy journals such as MNRAS and the Astronomical Journal but you declined to tell us that. //
Part of the reason I "declined to tell [you] that" is that it isn't strictly relevant. I'd have thought it was implied by "mixed career" that I wasn't dismissing everything he did out of hand, but there we are, I don't have time to trawl through all 250-odd of his works to tell you which are worth reading and which aren't.
But, as I say, it's not strictly relevant. A person can publish great work one day, and junk the next -- that isn't made any less junk by virtue of their having done something right. There are a lot of famous examples of this: Francis Crick, for example, had a huge hand in discovering the structure of DNA, but then went off on one (by promoting directed panspermia, oddly enough, an idea that evidently attracts a lot of people with too much time on their hands). Sometimes it's age, sometimes it's complacency, sometimes both, but in any case Perhaps a less famous recent example would be Michael Atiyah, a brilliant mathematician and physicist whose contributions are acknowledged as significant and ground-breaking, but who ended his life apparently convinced he'd proved the Riemann Hypothesis (despite having not done so). Presumably out of politeness, nobody told him he clearly hadn't, and his work probably only got attention at all because it was him who wrote it.
But, yes, this weird obsession with "so-and-so is an established scientist so for that reason alone I'll listen to them more than you" is just the Appeal to Authority fallacy. I don't care what successes Schild has had. It doesn't make this any less of a failure. Whether that's because he is lying to himself, or only to others, I wouldn't care to say. But, in either case, this particular claim that life exists on Mars isn't worth taking seriously.
Part of the reason I "declined to tell [you] that" is that it isn't strictly relevant. I'd have thought it was implied by "mixed career" that I wasn't dismissing everything he did out of hand, but there we are, I don't have time to trawl through all 250-odd of his works to tell you which are worth reading and which aren't.
But, as I say, it's not strictly relevant. A person can publish great work one day, and junk the next -- that isn't made any less junk by virtue of their having done something right. There are a lot of famous examples of this: Francis Crick, for example, had a huge hand in discovering the structure of DNA, but then went off on one (by promoting directed panspermia, oddly enough, an idea that evidently attracts a lot of people with too much time on their hands). Sometimes it's age, sometimes it's complacency, sometimes both, but in any case Perhaps a less famous recent example would be Michael Atiyah, a brilliant mathematician and physicist whose contributions are acknowledged as significant and ground-breaking, but who ended his life apparently convinced he'd proved the Riemann Hypothesis (despite having not done so). Presumably out of politeness, nobody told him he clearly hadn't, and his work probably only got attention at all because it was him who wrote it.
But, yes, this weird obsession with "so-and-so is an established scientist so for that reason alone I'll listen to them more than you" is just the Appeal to Authority fallacy. I don't care what successes Schild has had. It doesn't make this any less of a failure. Whether that's because he is lying to himself, or only to others, I wouldn't care to say. But, in either case, this particular claim that life exists on Mars isn't worth taking seriously.
I didn't say "only", I said "a lot". I also said that *this* work seemed to be.
// Just say you don't know... because you don't. //
If related work has been so thoroughly debunked already, and if the author doesn't recognise this, then this work isn't worth taking seriously. It's obviously problematic on every level. It's not about "knowing" or not. I shouldn't have to waste any more time going through it to more thoroughly debunk what is, essentially, red circles drawn on pictures coupled with wishful thinking.
* * * * *
As to the broad general question of life existing on Mars, I would guess that most scientists probably do believe that it did, at one point. Also, the sheer size of the planet, and the relatively small amount we've studied of it so far, mean that we can hardly definitively rule out that some form of life still exists today. So there's plenty of room for discussion. The problem is that this sort of sensationalism tends to detract from it.
// Just say you don't know... because you don't. //
If related work has been so thoroughly debunked already, and if the author doesn't recognise this, then this work isn't worth taking seriously. It's obviously problematic on every level. It's not about "knowing" or not. I shouldn't have to waste any more time going through it to more thoroughly debunk what is, essentially, red circles drawn on pictures coupled with wishful thinking.
* * * * *
As to the broad general question of life existing on Mars, I would guess that most scientists probably do believe that it did, at one point. Also, the sheer size of the planet, and the relatively small amount we've studied of it so far, mean that we can hardly definitively rule out that some form of life still exists today. So there's plenty of room for discussion. The problem is that this sort of sensationalism tends to detract from it.
//I would guess that most scientists probably do believe that it did, at one point. Also, the sheer size of the planet, and the relatively small amount we've studied of it so far, mean that we can hardly definitively rule out that some form of life still exists today. //
Now you're meeting yourself coming back ... again.
Now you're meeting yourself coming back ... again.
I've looked at the paper on "Mars: Cocoons, Fungi, Nematodes, Rhizoids, Annelids, Eggs, Arthropoda in Gale Crater?"
I didn't see an indication of when the photos were taken, although it is said that they were taken on mars itself and not from a meteorite.
The photos are intriguing, but in my view far from providing any reliable evidence of past or present life. It must be possible for better photos to be taken, and for actual samples to be collected for study on Earth (although they wouldn't be available until a few years have passed). I remember analysis of moon photos being carried out some time ago which purported to show proof of various things like buried alien bases and an alien sculpted face; the Mars stuff might also turn out to be over-optimistic interpretation of non-living structures.
Or it might turn out to be a hugely important discovery.
However, Mars could have been contaminated by Earthly life carried there on debris following the asteroid collision which probably killed off most dinosaurs, so finding genuine traces on Mars might still not indicate that the universe is teeming with life.
I hope it is.
I didn't see an indication of when the photos were taken, although it is said that they were taken on mars itself and not from a meteorite.
The photos are intriguing, but in my view far from providing any reliable evidence of past or present life. It must be possible for better photos to be taken, and for actual samples to be collected for study on Earth (although they wouldn't be available until a few years have passed). I remember analysis of moon photos being carried out some time ago which purported to show proof of various things like buried alien bases and an alien sculpted face; the Mars stuff might also turn out to be over-optimistic interpretation of non-living structures.
Or it might turn out to be a hugely important discovery.
However, Mars could have been contaminated by Earthly life carried there on debris following the asteroid collision which probably killed off most dinosaurs, so finding genuine traces on Mars might still not indicate that the universe is teeming with life.
I hope it is.
BTW; I don't find the idea of panspermia particularly outrageous, it's simply not been demonstrated. If there are intelligent beings out there, then sending 'seeds of life' out into the universe would be a good way of spreading life without the need for those beings to make huge journeys of colonisation themselves.
Once 100% certain proof is found of life, in whatever form, on another planet, it will be the biggest news story in history - for a while.
But, apart from a handful of astrobiologists, most people will get used to the concept pretty quickly, unless of course, the discovery relates to an invasion force...
But, apart from a handful of astrobiologists, most people will get used to the concept pretty quickly, unless of course, the discovery relates to an invasion force...
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