Mars Algae Found!

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dexter

ROOT
Registered Senior Member
Just kidding, but I was wondering what you guys had to say about an idea of mine. Well, not completly mine, I did see it on a movie once (Red mars, mars attacks. . . the one with Val Kilmer in it). But the idea is to send an engineered form or algae or some other photosynthesizing/oxygen synthesising algae (or moss) to mars, something that we code pretty much ourselves to house the rxn of martian atmospheric gases into gases that we could all enjoy in our lungs. Of course this isnt really possible, and I'm not saying we should do it a.) as to not disturb the natural enviroment of mars(we already f'd up this planet, are we really going to do it to that one too?). and b.) If we had the technology to terraform a planet, you'd think we could fix our own.

Now, I am not convinced that our planet is even failing in any way, as far as I'm concerned global warming is a liberal myth, and the rising tempatures are really due to natural cycles that the earth goes through. Since this seems to be the most logical and simple explanation I will take it.

back to the point: What, in your opinion, would work for terraforming mars. genetically engineered plants? What?
 
Due to natural cyclus that Mars goes through it will naturally warm up and create itself a bio sphere in around 500 years I repeath this will happen naturally without human interventation, the crashing of amonia rich asteroids in the martian atmosphere and the placing of large orbital mirrors and greenhouse producing fasilities will have nothing to due with this facts... weight that latest one doesn't even exist.
 
So if Mars goes through natural cycles, when was the last time it created a biosphere and when didi it vanish again and why? Where is your evidence for your hypothesis and latest prediction?
 
I think it would definitely be ok to terraform Mars. From pictures and the latest, there is nothing on that planet except red dirt and atomsphere.
 
That global warming is only a natural cycle is a right-wing pro-corporate myth, 99.9 % of scientists agree.

Mars seems to have little water to support plant life, so I don't know how any terraforming could get started.
 
Vega said:
Lets blast some algae over to mars to find out!
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While I would be very interested to agree, NASA seems to go to great lengths to ensure the bio decontamination of everything it sends because microorganisms always have the possibility of surviving(maybe not by science we know, but in the words of Jeff Goldbloom from Jurassic Park "Life Finds a Way")

I think that many people are arguing that by contaminating the purity of mars, we will learn less about the origins of our solar system. We have never had an untampered peice of universe to really study(hands on, not w/ robots).

It would be cool of we could patition the next government that sends a package to mars to include a bit of our specially engineered algae. Though if it takes off, we might have some competition in the next 3.5 billion years.
 
NASA seems to go to great lengths to ensure the bio decontamination
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Well they certainley say so didn't they...
They certainley did so for the moon, does anybody remember that apollo mission where they retrieved a part of a lander that had been there for decades and right on that part there were living organisms. weird coincidence I guess.

My point: they proberley already tried it.
The simple fact is that we do not know enof of genetic manipulation to make plants/algae capable to live on mars. (We can already make stuff that actualy survives on mars, we even have stuff that "can" survive on the moon)
 
francois said:
You said it, dude. The creator of this thread is a penis. Man. er, thing.
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Sorry, but it seemed more interesting than "A query on the terraformation of mars"
 
dexter said:
Sorry, but it seemed more interesting than "A query on the terraformation of mars"
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You're right. It sure did. :mad:

Actually, I've been thinking about this for years. Before Val Kilmer, at least. If you were to terraform Mars with algae, the first step would be finding a place with water. The second would be getting your algae cabon, oxygen, nitrogen, and all that stuff.

The atmosphere (all .8 kPa of it), is 95% CO2 and only 3% nitrogen. It also gets cold enough there that the CO2 condenses into dry ice.
Seasonal winds transport water vapor (ice), and the soil contains lots of iron oxide, or rust.

Assuming you could get a microorganism to withstand the solar radiation and temperature extremes, you have pretty much all the stuff necessary for life. An algae that could fix nitrogen and pull oxygen from rocks would do the trick. Maybe an iron based life form would work better, but who knows if that's possible.

If you could somehow design a lifeform like this, it would be exeedingly slow at breaking down rocks and turning them into gases, as it would have to operate in exeedingly cold temperatures.

The real problem with Mars; however, is it's lack of a magnetic field. Any atmosphere you could produce would get stripped bare by solar winds, as has been happening for a long time now.

Best to build cities in bubbles, or maybe underground.
 
I am suggesting the synthesis of O2 from the decomposition of CO2. It is the same way photosynthesizing plants produce oxygen from the consumption of CO2.

Here is an idea I just had(1 second ago): How about building the culture within some of the famous martian canyons? They would provide protection from winds and some solar raditation, the only problem would be; are they getting enough solar power to power their energy cycles?

Hypothetically do you think; if we had a beaker on a hotplate on the mars surface, with boiling water and a genetically engineered photosynthesizing plant that could survive in boiling H2O, would it survive? I am not a botanist, so I'm not terribly familiar with these things. What about the NH3 concentration on mars? is there any that you know about? This could be used to synthesize more N as well as H.

While all of these ideas are purley hypothetical, and would be very difficult to accomplish without the help of human hands on site, as well has some crazy advances in chemical synthesis/decomposition techniques(though I know that the Amonium technique would be fairly easy on a small scale, say enough for a bubble.)

All in all, thanks for listening to my rambling in/coherintness.(spelling?)
 
And because plants gain their structural Carbon from CO2, we are building life out of martian elements :)
 
I wonder why people always think of plants for photosynthesis. The requirements for phototrophic bacteria are far lower.
One of the main problems however, is the absence of water.
 
You said it, dude. The creator of this thread is a penis. Man. er, thing.
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Heh.
Well, I pretty much came into this thread knowing that it would be either a.) full of shit or b.) a ruse.
Why? Because, I'm pretty sure there's nothing up there with the ability to find algae...
Although, I suppose Spirit and Opportunity are still dinking around up there, but I don't think they're sophisticated enough to be able to actually claim 'algae'.

Anyway.
The water problem could be solved by targeting ice.
Once a cycle got started, more and more water might be put into the atmosphere from the hidden reserves underground.
Maybe.
Would need to warm things up considerably.



There are, of course, ethical considerations. The possibilities of extant life on Mars have not been ruled out and introducing robust Earth organisms into the mix could easily wipe them out and leave no trace for us to study. The loss to the life sciences would be incalculable.
 
the most likly life form that could trife on mars are Polyextremophiles

These buggers survive in arid climates with low levels of carbon in the soil and withstand huge amounds of radiation.

Basicley they can live under the best martian conditions, the quistion is, if they can survive the worst conditions.

try looking for "Deinococcus radiodurans" on the internet
 
maybe I said it wrong
roots provides the stems and leaves with water and dissolved minerals.
your right that some of it comes from the CO2 in the air but the bigger the plants generally the more they get from the ground.
Offcourse there are exeptions like you have evreywhere there are even "plants" that don't have any roots and completley get there stuff out of the air but I even wonder if they are named plants.
 
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