Because the land is so obsessed with Mars

It is centuries ago, that Earth passed Mars was a moment of peace. From the first time we saw hanging in the sky – as close to other worlds, lighter than other worlds, irritating redder than other worlds – we greatly enjoyed alternately feared and hung our hopes for life in the lonely cosmos itself. The romance is as passionate as ever. There are currently eight active spacecraft in orbit or on the surface of Mars – two of them rover. On May 5, NASA launches yet another, InSight Mars Landers, who will be the first ever a probe tip deep into the Martian surface. The big question – whether it is or is life on the Red Planet – is animated one that all this work, and it is a question that gets close, intelligent and easy to test reading the new book, Life on Mars: What to know before to go, David A. Weintraub, professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt University. Weintraub explores the history of our passion Mars that errors in our quest to have made – think Percival Lowell and Giovanni Schiaparelli imaginary channels on the surface of Mars or the progress we have made in our understanding of the real world. In an interview with time we discussed all this and more. So why Mars? There are many other beautiful planet in our solar system alone, not to mention the billions of others who we now know is out. Because the planet Mars to Earth? We fell to convince them of its similarity to the Earth in Mars hundreds of years ago. Some of it is quite reasonable. It has ice caps like Earth, has seasons, its rotation corresponds almost exactly the earth, gave a similar amount of sun as the Earth, and while smaller than Earth, is another rocky, terrestrial planets. All that made it easy for us to tell them that life chances are there originally. What’s more, its proximity to the Earth meant that we have. One day that life on the road and the meeting could in his book talks about the “principle of plenitude”, which is a beautiful concept, although it is not immediately clear what we mean in the world. What is it and how does the visual impact on Mars? The idea was born about 1500 years ago that God would not have wasted his creative energy that produce a full lifeless planet cosmos. It wants to serve the living things of God, so if you plan to have planets around the world, it is also necessary to fill them. This is obviously a very religious background of the principle of abundance. We come from such a point, but it still strikes us powerful fullness – all we have done, is coffee in the statistics rather than religion. The chemistry of life is common – hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, water – and now we know how often planets. If there are so many of them so many other stars rotate, it should at least be definitely life on some of them. We have to think led in the past we had found life on Mars. In 1970 there was a lot of excitement when Viking landers detected organic processes appeared, and in 1990 there is more buzz when it seemed that the fossils of bacteria were found in a Martian meteorite. Both alleged discoveries proved to be false. And of course there was the non-existent channels. It is our scientific rigor distorted by wishful thinking? At first, it was just part of the problem that the telescopes were not very good. In addition, they were peering through the Earth’s atmosphere, astronomers and then the atmosphere of Mars that distort both the image. There are dark and light limits on the planet’s surface that looks sharp; Schiaparelli and Lowell later, confirming only that the lines were longer and straighter than they are, and were they made by intelligent beings. We would still like to live on Mars to see, and that influences the types of studies we make, and the kind of results we seek. But today we take care of when to determine what we see is real evidence of biology or less. We know that Mars could have been a fighter. It had thicker atmosphere once, and had a lot of water. So what killed them? First, I would not say Mars is already dead, while the moon is dead. Mars still has an atmosphere, and temperatures that allow you to keep for a while ‘every year on the surface of liquid water. But Mars has the ozone layer and is too small to have a magnetic field. The lack of ozone means that ultraviolet energy can penetrate into the atmosphere and water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen on bust. The hydrogen bubbles above the atmosphere remaining and the absence of a magnetic field device, the solar wind can flow over, and strip the hydrogen removed. Yet his book says that there is still a lot of water on Mars – enough to cover the planet to a depth of 69 feet. It is not the life to take a chance? And ‘less than it seems. For starters, Mars is only half the diameter of Earth, which has a quarter of the surface of Mars that water would have a depth of only sixteen or seventeen away on foot, and in a world similar to Earth. There is still a lot, but the planet lost 80 to 90 percent water, you can once again; what remains is collected mostly in ice caps or underground. But yes, if we could somehow dissolve all the water and find it and apply it on the surface, we should have used a lot when we were there. Ultimately, life on Mars is a question yes or no. E ‘or is there or not – at least as microbes, perhaps in these groundwater resources. What’s your best guess? If I bet my house, I would not bet. As a scientist, but I will keep an open mind and betting is a way to do science anyway. Therefore, for a while ‘at least, I want to keep the robots go there, keep throwing stones and dig core, and see what they find. What it is elsewhere in the cosmos? Life is easy or difficult? I think that intelligent life probably incredibly difficult. We know that life on Earth existed before 3800000000 years, but then had a total of three billion to have made two billion years the two cell organisms or more, and after the beginning of life, before arriving on plants and animals . Meteorites have been found with nucleotide bases in them and make up DNA, and this is the kind of material that would rain down on the planet, as they grow. Thus, a single cell or a virus can not be difficult. I would not be surprised if we do detect primitive life; I would be surprised if it’s smart. One day people can finally live on Mars. Will you be one of them? I can not imagine an exciting, life-affirming, more amazing adventure, rather than trying to establish a colony on Mars, try to put human footprints for the first time on another planet. So, yes, I would go tomorrow. But only if: a) I knew the way for me there to come and visit the Earth and play with my grandchildren – if I have each day, which is – would b) my wife to come with me, and c) I knew the chance that I could survive high – it’s nothing to figure out is guaranteed, even here on earth – and) I knew that, as much as possible, we had already confirmed that Mars so as not to pre-existing life forms that they will not be responsible for Martians to delete.
image is copyright (NASA / JPL)