[meteorite-list] Astrobiologists Find Stuff

[Michael Mulgrew]

Sterling,

Look deep underground (tough to do from Earth), any life remaining on
Mars will likely be found there.

Michael in so. Cal.


On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 11:46 AM, Sterling K. Webb
<sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> Count,
>
> You said:
>>
>> ...Asimov was making a wild ass guess as to the
>> 10,000 to one Oxygen/Chlorine ratio and he never
>>  presented one paper to support his hypothesis.
>
>
> Asimov wasn't presenting a scientific paper. He was
> writing a popular article in a popular magazine. There
> are no referencew in magazine pieces. Again, he wasn't
> making hypotheses; he was presenting the well-known
> science of the time. The cosmic abundances were being
> determined for forty years before this article was writteen.
>
> Here's a current table of the values:
> http://www.kayelaby.npl.co.uk/chemistry/3_1/3_1_3.html
> and a bit clearer example at:
> http://old.orionsarm.com/science/Abundance_of_Elements.html
>
> Counting atoms for cosmic abundances is tricky. People
> have tried by counting atoms in Earth's sea water, in the
> crustal rocks of the Earth, by analyzing meteorite abundances,
> by spectroscopic analysis of the Sun and of other stars.
>
> The table in the first reference gives figures for all of these
> sources; water, rocks, meteorites, Sun, stars... (I don't know
> which one Asimov was using.) It works because our star
> and rocks (planets) are all made out of the same stuff and
> similar stars are made from almost identical stuff.
>
> The ratios may have been refined since 1957, but they haven't
> changed that much. And Isaac only mentions one "noble" gas:
> neon.
>
> As for Mars, I have another argument. Mars had a warm wet
> past. Any simple life there probably started then. So, life has
> had 3-4 billion years to get its act together. IF there is life on
> Mars, don't you think it would evolve a little bit in all that time?
> Do something that would get our attention? Leave visible
> evidence of its presence? Life expands, spreads, complicates.
> If there were life on Mars, wouldn't it have done SOMETHING
> in three billion years?
>
> I don't believe in patient little microbes that do nothing for
> billions of years. It says to me that there's nobody home...
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb