Topic: University of Colorado team finds definitive evidence for ancient lake on Mars

[Orstio]

Click here to read the article ...

A University of Colorado at Boulder research team has discovered the first definitive evidence of shorelines on Mars, an indication of a deep, ancient lake there and a finding with implications for the discovery of past life on the Red Planet.
 

  This is reconstructed landscape showing the Shalbatana lake on Mars as it may have looked roughly 3.4 billion years ago. Data used in reconstruction are from NASA and the European Space Agency. [/span][/b]  Image credit: G. Di Achille, University of Colorado[/span][/b]    . . .[/t][/t][/t]

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[Kurgan]

I wouldn't  be surprised to see seasonal "seeps"  eroding the surface now.  I remember arguing the exact opposite at SDC all those years ago.  Now I'm inclined to think that the methane is comming from biota in a sub-surface water system.   

[payloadcontroller]

If I recall correctly there HAS been evidence of possible seeps.   I am not ready to come down on one side or the other of the biota question. But one of the novels I'm working on currently HAS had me researching extremophiles a lot, so it wouldn't surprise me either way.

[Orstio]

While you're researching extremophiles, keep the water bear in mind:

http://www.everything-science.com/sci/Forum/Itemid,82/topic,5142.0

I think there is probably too much peroxide in the Martian soil for life, but then again, these little water bear guys survive in everything from glaciers to volcanos, so you never know what's sprouted up on another planet.

[payloadcontroller]

The water bears are kind of cute.    But I was thinking about the extremophiles that are found in the substrata a mile or more down and are quite happy there. Or Deinococcus radiodurans, otherwise known as "Conan the Bacterium." Either of those could probably survive on Mars. There has been speculation that they may have been seeded on Earth FROM Mars by hitching a ride on a Martian meteoroid.

[Kurgan]

A wiki tidbit:In 2003, U.S. scientists demonstrated that D. radiodurans could be used as a means of information storage that might survive a nuclear catastrophe. They translated the song It's a Small World into a series of DNA segments 150 base pairs long, inserted these into the bacteria, and were able to retrieve them without errors 100 bacterial generations later.        VERY cool!    I always thought that extremophiles evolved in a 'comfortable' environment and then adapted to the extremes. So, my thinking reguarding Mars has always been predicated on how long it was viable to life before the core cooled and the magnetosphere lost. I might be totally wrong about that as well.

[payloadcontroller]

Yes, I've seen the papers on using D.r. as information storage. It can be mutated through artificial means but not natural means.  One interesting fact about Mars is that, while it may not have much of a magnetosphere, the soil is composed in great percentage of magnetite.

[Dingo1]

Read "A Traveler's Guide to Mars" by Dr.  William K Hartmann.  Excellent guide to a Mars, and a well written Geological guide based on existing evidence.  Recent announcements are just confirming what the evidence has shown