The red planet : A New Search for Life on Mars
space·@biomanu·
0.000 HBDThe red planet : A New Search for Life on Mars
 A group of American researchers urges the US not to send people to Mars. They will be the bearer of terrestrial microbes capable of displacing the hypothetical Martian life, having got into places of its dwelling. Recent discoveries do point to the possibility that life on Mars is there, and that "earthlings" will also successfully survive there. Should humanity refrain from sending people to the Red Planet? ## Why did scientists begin to oppose the study of Mars? US vice president recently delivered a program article on the US space strategy. In it, he notes that the United States in the near future intend to return to the moon and, relying on the lunar base, to fly to Mars. Pence considers the task real - of course, if you rely not on NASA, which spends too much money for nothing, but on private space exploration. She really demonstrated impressive success: SpaceX Ilona Mask kicked Russia out of the first place in the number of commercial launches. At the end of 2017, the company is preparing to launch a heavy rocket Falcon Heavy, as well as creating a new, already very heavy BFR rocket. Its second stage will be integrated with a ship capable of landing people on the Red Planet. Such a close prospect "to touch Mars with human hands" and to understand whether there is life on Mars, caused serious unrest in the scientific community. Immediately there were two opposing positions, whose supporters spoke about each other in very harsh terms. The first offer to forbid people to fly to the fourth planet. They state the fact: "The main reason why space agencies around the world spend billions of dollars to study Mars is its potential fitness for life." Researchers ask a logical question: what will be the meaning of such an investigation if the life we find there turns out to be terrestrial? To "open" our microbes, you do not need to fly 50,000,000 kilometers. From earthly experience it is known that, getting into an isolated ecosystem, alien organisms can quickly displace Aboriginal people. What if the terrestrial microbes simply destroy the Martian? https://youtu.be/gwinFP8_qIM *Delivery to Mars robot Curiosity - 3D animation*..[source](https://youtu.be/gwinFP8_qIM) To avoid such an outcome, according to scientists, we must completely refrain from disembarking people in regions where there may be liquid water on the surface. Large ships, similar to those that bring BFR SpaceX to Mars, are very difficult to disinfect. Nuclear-free microorganisms are archean (prokaryotes that differ from bacteria biochemically and lack of spores) and bacteria live in a mass of household appliances - for example, conventional water heaters. Inside each person there is more than a kilogram of bacteria and fungi. They make up the normal microflora of his intestines and without them normal health is impossible. That is, American astronauts, whom Mask and Pence want to bring to another planet, will become walking peddlers of terrestrial microbes of all kinds. Another feature of "human development" is that people, unlike automata, are much more mobile, faster and have much more power reserve. All rovers during their many years of history drove on Mars less than a hundred kilometers, no more than a dozen or so kilometers a year. Experience in the operation of spacesuits shows that a person can walk in them at speeds of up to 7 kilometers per hour. Mars rover "Kyuriosity" usually moves a few meters a day: the machine itself can not make a decision, and every movement is controlled from the Earth, which slows down the process. As a result, a man - even in a spacesuit - is thousands of times more mobile. Researchers note: if the submachine guns brought pollution to Mars, they could not spread them widely. Man, by virtue of his much higher mobility, is much more dangerous for the Martian life.  Astrobiologists agree that a person, in search of an answer to the question of whether there is life on Mars, will be able to search for life much better than any automata. One astronaut with a trench tool can dig a hole much deeper in a day than all the borers of all rovers could in recent decades (just a few centimeters in depth). However, they believe, this does not pay off the risks - a person should appear there only after the Martian life is found by automatic machines. An article that represents the position of the first group of scientists is called: "Explore Mars before it's too late."  *The first use of a drill for collecting rock samples* With a sharp rebuke to its authors, another group of scientists appeared. They believe that the original article exaggerates the danger of the spread of terrestrial microbes by astronauts and understates the danger from automatic weapons. As they note, "Earthly life is already on Mars, because our [that is, the American ones - approx. Ed.] robots carry viable terrestrial organisms. " Because of this, they believe, more attention should be given to the sterilization of machines that the US and Europe send to Mars, rather than the threat of human development. ## Life can hide in a "warm zone" Not so long ago it was very difficult to discuss life on Mars on a scientific basis. This was mainly done by science fiction writers. The average temperature is below minus 55 degrees Celsius, the absence of precipitation and liquid water, and even atmospheric pressure is 160 times lower than our ... Research devices found in local soil perchlorates are dangerous poisons, deadly for all living things. Even Central Antarctica against this background is a resort. However, in recent years, everything has changed noticeably. Began to find out completely unexpected things. Firstly, in the Atacama Desert (Chile) at depths of one to two meters, prosperous underground ecosystems have been found - which can not be detected from the surface. Given that the maximum depth to which rovers were drilled is less than 10 centimeters, the question arose - if we could not find life on Earth, maybe we overlooked it on Mars? Secondly, in the Antarctic, huge subglacial lakes were discovered at a depth of kilometers - and there is life in them. Lake Vostok is isolated tens of millions of years and is still inhabited by living organisms. On Mars, according to calculations, from 600 meters and deeper - positive temperatures. This means that the "warm zone" is much closer there than under Antarctica. That is, the conditions for preserving life in subsurface oases are much more favorable. ## Mars was much more suitable for life than we thought Discoveries in recent years have shown that the "anhydrous" and cold world of the Red Planet is actually relatively rich in water. Only in polar caps and glaciers of temperate latitudes, covered only with ground meters, contains more than five million cubic kilometers of water ice - that is, quadrillion tons. And NASA is constantly finding huge new "priporoshennye" glaciers. How much ice is lower - difficult to estimate, but it is clear that a lot. If you melt only the visible ice, it is enough to cover the entire planet with the ocean, a thickness of 35 meters of water.  *Mars, a group of canyons called the Labyrinths of the Night. Fog is clearly visible* Eka's importance is ice, the reader will say. Life requires precipitation and liquid water. It turned out that there are also on the Red Planet. A picture of the Viking in 1976 showed that over the labyrinths of the deep canyons of Mars there is a usual morning fog - from ice, evaporated under the sun's rays. A few years ago, a Nepali schoolboy saw the traces of modern water currents photographed by NASA Martian wastelands.  How on a planet with such a cold climate can there be flows of liquid water? October 13, 2017 in Nature Communications came out an article that answers this question. It turned out that the water in contact with magnesium perchlorate (it is abundant in the ground) sharply changes its structure and behaves as if it is under a pressure of 20,000 atmospheres. The higher the pressure, the more difficult the water to freeze. In experiments in the terrestrial laboratory, perchlorates allow water to remain liquid even at temperatures well below -40 Celsius. ## Perhaps life is already there In the 21st century, with the help of new highly sensitive instruments, methane was found in the atmosphere of Mars. It appears there in very small quantities and only in the local summer - in winter it is almost nonexistent. A number of mechanisms for its formation were proposed, but all the abiotic scenarios (without the participation of living beings) still have serious shortcomings. With their help, it is difficult to explain why methane is produced only in summer, but not in winter. Finally, there is practically no methane in the Earth's atmosphere that is not produced by living things - isotopic analysis shows that it is all organic (similar methane has another fraction of carbon-13 in its molecules). From inorganic methane in significant quantities to take on Mars - a terrestrial planet? All this taken together has already led a number of scientists to assume that life on Mars is. Most likely, they believe, it is located relatively deep beneath the surface and lives like terrestrial methanogens - due to the "eating" of hydrogen, obtained by the interaction of rocks with water. As a waste of life, methanols excrete methane - and just could find earth devices. ## We did not know the conditions suitable for earthly life The most common terrestrial bacteria actively eat extremely poisonous Martian perchlorates in terrestrial laboratories. And not only there - under the surface of Atacama, there is also a perchlorate medium, and bacteria and archaea also live there. Even ultraviolet (there is no ozone layer on Mars) is not scary to them. In a number of experiments, the ordinary terrestrial lichens Xanthoria elegans, completely photosynthesized at the Martian level of ultraviolet and similar Martian atmosphere. From the ultraviolet, they were saved by fairly simple pigments that absorbed harmful radiation. Similarly, (black pigment appearing in tanning), although less effective, people are protected from ultraviolet radiation. All this raised the question among scientists: what will happen if we take a simple and widespread terrestrial microorganism and place it in Martian conditions? Experiments have shown that in many cases such living beings not only live, but also reproduce themselves. Methanothermobacter wolfeii, Methanosarcina barkeri, Methanobacterium formicicum and Methanococcus maripaludis underwent a pressure of 1/160 terrestrial - both on the surface of Mars or high in the terrestrial stratosphere. They continued as if nothing had happened to eat, as was evident from the allocation of methane. https://youtu.be/yAG-YO6eqGI *Fragment from the movie "The Martian"* They were placed under pressure up to 1 200 atmospheres - more than at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The same number can be at the bottom of the deepest subsurface lakes of Mars. As the reader has already guessed, they survived and continued to divide even there. Moreover, with such an abnormal pressure, they did it even faster than with the usual, earthly! They did not confuse these archaeas (unicellular microorganisms that do not belong to bacteria and do not have a cell nucleus) and very high alkalinity or acidity. Five years after the Soviet microbes (or their disputes) got to Mars, the American ones, probably on the Viking-1, also landed there. According to the same NASA, efforts to sterilize these spacecraft were lower than any criticism. A significant part of microorganisms present on the surface of the device collected on the Earth, from such "sterilization" did not die at all. And it's not just that then no one knew about the tremendous vitality of terrestrial organisms. Sterilization of complex spacecraft is generally a difficult task. Electronics is sensitive both to the effects of chemical reagents and to radiation, and these are the most reliable means.  *An image transmitted from the surface of Mars by an automatic Martian station in 14.5 seconds* ## To fly or not to fly? Let's sum up: the fears of Western scientists are justified. Indeed, terrestrial organisms can contaminate Mars. And it is not a fact that it will be easy for us then to understand who we discovered there - the simplest earthlings or the same simple Martians. However, it's either too early or too late to worry. Yes, Mask, Trump and Pence really want to send Americans to Mars in the foreseeable future. But even if they succeed, it will not happen before the second half of the 2020s. It is more realistic to expect this in the 2030s. No less obvious is the fact that no one can send to the United States to Mars. The budget of Roskosmos is seven times less than that of NASA, and China still lacks the technologies of the required level. For the remaining 15-20 years, automata will have a time reserve to find something on the surface of the planet. In this regard, it is too early to worry. ***If, on the surface of Mars, Martian microbes can live, then the Soviet from Mars-3, or the American ones from the Vikings, will also cope with a high probability. In this case, to care for the purity of the shoes of future astronauts does not make sense. Since 1971, almost half a century has passed, and "aliens from the Earth" have long been accustomed and have become "indigenous Martians".*** *** *** *References:* [1](https://www.businessinsider.in/These-vein-like-features-stretched-across-the-surface-of-Mars-can-tell-us-a-lot-about-the-planet/articleshow/53526812.cms), [2](https://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/december/nasa-rover-finds-active-ancient-organic-chemistry-on-mars),and [3](https://medium.com/@jnnielsen/what-will-it-be-like-to-be-a-martian-49805f2bbaa6) *** *Image sources :* [1](https://www.businessinsider.in/These-vein-like-features-stretched-across-the-surface-of-Mars-can-tell-us-a-lot-about-the-planet/articleshow/53526812.cms), [2](https://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/december/nasa-rover-finds-active-ancient-organic-chemistry-on-mars), [3](https://marsmobile.jpl.nasa.gov/news/?NewsID=1419), [4](https://mrwallpaper.com/mars-planet-noctis-labyrinthus/), [5](https://noticias.eltiempo.es/la-nasa-confirma-agua-liquida-marte/),and [6](https://www.pinterest.com/nstarb/earth-moon-mars/) https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://res.cloudinary.com/hpiynhbhq/image/upload/v1515691653/vcmxroqvhkhy8tkubnvk.png ***steemSTEM*** *Want to discover more science and technology related content on Steemit? 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