What's the big deal? (Organic molecules found on Mars)

[Rick Law]

Before this last Thursday, NASA made a big deal about an announcement to come on Thursday.  On Thursday, it's announcement was that "Mars Curiosity Rover found ancient organic material..."
_{https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-finds-ancient-organic-material-mysterious-methane-on-mars}

Well, I am not sure why it is a big deal.  Organic molecules have been detected in space years ago.  Methane was found on Mars years ago.  So, finding more organic molecules really is not much of a surprise.  Yup, found in ancient lake-bed that could have supported life, but so?  It is not as if we found evidence of ancient life.

Budget time attention grabber?  or something I missed?

[ataradov]

It is not a huge deal, but still news. NASA just had a press conference, that's what companies that have news do. Media outlets decided to make a big deal out of it, since they could write attention-grabbing headlines.

[metrologist]

Exactly! It has to do with your "believers" culture. Anything to scare the unpopular group is big news!

[Brumby]

Media outlets decided to make a big deal out of it, since they could write attention-grabbing headlines.

Just remember the objective of the Media ... and it's not to inform.  (That's just a by-product - sometimes.)

[TerraHertz]

Anyone else wondering if NASA is working up to a 'find' of some obscure ice-seep-scum microbe or whatever, which is then declared endangered, and so SpaceX gets banned from going to Mars? Because the poor microbes...

[apis]

[Rick Law]

Media outlets decided to make a big deal out of it, since they could write attention-grabbing headlines.

Just remember the objective of the Media ... and it's not to inform.  (That's just a by-product - sometimes.)

Rare that there is an actor/actress worth quoting, but this is one such occasion.  Below are quoted from Denzel Washington on Media December 2016.

"If you don't read the news paper, you are uninformed.  If you do read the news paper, you are misinformed." ... "Anything you practice you'll get good at -- including BS," ...

[Mr. Scram]

Anyone else wondering if NASA is working up to a 'find' of some obscure ice-seep-scum microbe or whatever, which is then declared endangered, and so SpaceX gets banned from going to Mars? Because the poor microbes...

Of course NASA would love to discover extraterrestrial life, but that has nothing to do with SpaceX. It would likely be the biggest scientific discovery in decades, maybe ever. A ban on "frivolous" Mars missions would be a logical next step. It'd be very important to thoroughly understand the nature of this new strain of life before doing anything to endanger it.

[TerraHertz]

Anyone else wondering if NASA is working up to a 'find' of some obscure ice-seep-scum microbe or whatever, which is then declared endangered, and so SpaceX gets banned from going to Mars? Because the poor microbes...

Of course NASA would love to discover extraterrestrial life, but that has nothing to do with SpaceX. It would likely be the biggest scientific discovery in decades, maybe ever. A ban on "frivolous" Mars missions would be a logical next step. It'd be very important to thoroughly understand the nature of this new strain of life before doing anything to endanger it.

Define "frivolous".  Would your definition by any chance be close to  'not controlled by government bureaucracy'?

Also explain how 'understand the nature of such life' could happen without manned Mars missions.  Building a robot to detect presence of some life-indicating molecules - feasible. Building a robot to explore the molecular machinery, metabolism and behavior of any form of life - not feasible, ever. Not without full, strong AI capable of the complete scientific method loop, and running a general manufacturing setup. In which case, we may as well just kill ourselves already.

I knew I could count on someone to fail to get the joke, even if it's not totally a joke.
By the way, in my opinion Mars very likely has a dense atmosphere, plenty of liquid water, and even a complex biome.

Not on the surface, but in vast, deep underground caverns formed by the thermal contraction of the planet's original magma core as it cooled and solidified. When you shrink the entire internal volume of a planet by a few percent (as magma does when cooling), that's a HUGE amount of space. Easily enough to swallow the planet's entire original atmosphere and oceans.  Previous post: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/elon-musk-spaceship-ready-for-mars-in-2019/msg1451015/#msg1451015

Whether there's still enough heat flow to support an ecology via thermal vents in such caverns, remains to be seen.
Good luck designing lander robots to find out, by finding entrances then cave exploring downwards hundreds of kilometers.

Lastly, discovery of life on Mars is only going to be a big thing to those who, for whatever reason find the concept of non-Terrestrial life challenging. Those of us who don't subscribe to the human-centric religions, and expect that organic life is pretty common in the universe, will just be mildly pleased by the definite discovery of life on Mars. Kind of 'told you so' satisfaction. Most of the fun will come from observing the religious institutions have conniptions.

[CatalinaWOW]

The big deal, according to NASA, is that the molecules are still there and that they have found some fairly large molecules including benzene rings and others.  Given the UV and heavy chemistry on the surface it was thought for years that organic molecules would not have survived from the water era, even if they existed in very large quantities then.

Those angling to find life on Mars are extrapolating this with some speculations about special chemistry that allows the molecules to survive, which might have been incorporated in living things allowing them to extend their survival beyond the water era, possibly even to current times.

So there is a bit of new news, and speculation about really exciting possibilities.  Of course lots of really exciting possibilities, like teleportation, free energy and others are unlikely to become true in the foreseeable future.

[Rick Law]

...
Define "frivolous".  Would your definition by any chance be close to  'not controlled by government bureaucracy'?

Also explain how 'understand the nature of such life' could happen without manned Mars missions.  Building a robot to detect presence of some life-indicating molecules - feasible. Building a robot to explore the molecular machinery, metabolism and behavior of any form of life - not feasible, ever. Not without full, strong AI capable of the complete scientific method loop, and running a general manufacturing setup. In which case, we may as well just kill ourselves already.

I knew I could count on someone to fail to get the joke, even if it's not totally a joke.
...

Joke or not, actually, I think we should built up that AI capability.  When we do resolve the question of life on Mars (or not), the next likely target may be Europa.  Even if we assume getting human to Mars is easy, getting human to Europa will still be a huge deal.

I can see using robot to Mars and bring back tested candidates to a Moon-Orbiting station where human do the final detail tests.  Moon-orbiting station instead of earth-orbiting station to prevent easy contamination of earth atmosphere.

Upon resolution of the question by direct human test, we can then decide if we want to go there to take a first hand look.