Sunday, November 20, 2022

"Permeability is key here."-Suzanne P. Schwenzer 


Skip ahead to 7:00. It's literally dead air up till then.

This video is probing reaction pathways on Mars, to paraphrase it is trying to find exact means by which exact species could live on Mars. 

Astrobiology is a peculiar field. When in the history of history has an 'ology become so robustly staffed long before the first sample is discovered? Such is the red carpet lain before the first alien we can find. Mars isn't among the more habitable places. Remember, 'habitable' for astrobiologists is "can you name a critter that can live there." Mars looks like you could have in the past, Europa however might have life right now and if it doesn't there is almost certainly something from Earth that could thrive there. Venus can't support life at any altitude, but it wouldn't take much investment to get it there. Mars, would take much more investment. Arguably all the frosty ocean worlds could be more habitable than Mars.

This LPI is only looking at Mars and primarily set to ID 'fossils'. Anything that could have lived on Mars had to eat, but what? And had to leave a trail of waste, also unknown. But what is even possible? This LPI narrows it down. 

Our speaker relies heavily on her argument and didn't bring the best slides. The better slides come around 33:10.

  • About 34:00, impact sites on Mars are one place where the heat to drive life could be after the very beginning era of Mars. But not in the middle of the crater. At the lowest places, where liquid could pool and the basin could be permeable. This will also Apply to Titan and the Dragonfly mission.
  • 39:40 She doesn't really call it out that I noticed, only because her assumed audience would already know it, but the chemicals she names have enough chemical energy to drive some sort of metabolism.
  • 40:40 the slide is... not showing you outright, but proving the chemical reaction paths that microbes could capture energy from. 
All planetary scientists have come to note that Mars history is very episodic with a background trend of cooling. In other words Mars climate change has been constant cooling, no decadal period had the same habitat. However in local environments, say an old melt-dyke, or an impact crater (Gale craters development is wholly explained using the heat of impact alone,) you really could have a stable environment for a while, centuries, and this LPI is showing that you could have the food too.

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