# Liquid water under surface on Mars



## Sporadic Aura (Sep 13, 2009)

Liquid water exists on Mars, boosting hopes for life, NASA says - CNN.com


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## Energumen (Apr 24, 2015)

Microbial life is possible, they say. I think there might be more developed species of life underground.


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## Death Persuades (Feb 17, 2012)

Sporadic Aura said:


> Liquid water exists on Mars, boosting hopes for life, NASA says - CNN.com


Here’s why NASA’s Mars rovers are banned from investigating that liquid water - ScienceAlert


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## Vis Vitalis (Jul 30, 2012)

Please let there be Martian fish under the surface. I've always wanted to go fishing for mutant sea creatures.


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## LibertyPrime (Dec 17, 2010)

*_* there is probably fresh water underground and we could drill for it!


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

FreeBeer said:


> *_* there is probably fresh water underground and we could drill for it!



How much would the first bottle of Mars spring water go for?!


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## LibertyPrime (Dec 17, 2010)

PaladinX said:


> How much would the first bottle of Mars spring water go for?!


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## Kavik (Apr 3, 2014)

They're not allowed to get close to what they're assuming is water to test its chemical makeup so how do they know it's H2O? I've always read, and did a research project, on the fact mars has liquid CO2. It even has CO2 icecaps and it snows/sleets CO2.


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## Ziwosa (Sep 25, 2010)

This sucks, because it further hints that the possibilities on life forming could be way higher then we imagine. And that the chances of the great filter not yet being behind us went up. If life is so common that even our neighbor planet has it, why have we still not found detected anther's intelligence in the universe? So I hope to god they don't find any life forms or that if they do they find that Earth originated from life on Mars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter


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## Kavik (Apr 3, 2014)

Ziwosa said:


> This sucks, because it further hints that the possibilities on life forming could be way higher then we imagine. And that the chances of the great filter not yet being behind us went up. If life is so common that even our neighbor planet has it, why have we still not found detected anther's intelligence in the universe? So I hope to god they don't find any life forms or that if they do they find that Earth originated from life on Mars.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter


Life is likely common when relative to the scope of the universe. But with our limited range of sight and spacefaring capabilities it's a long shot to find anything.


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## He's a Superhero! (May 1, 2013)

Good news for the Mars One mission!


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## Ziwosa (Sep 25, 2010)

Kavik said:


> Life is likely common when relative to the scope of the universe. But with our limited range of sight and spacefaring capabilities it's a long shot to find anything.


You'd expect life would start developing technology to overcome those issues.
I mean, we already have theoretical warp drives ...


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## Kavik (Apr 3, 2014)

Ziwosa said:


> You'd expect life would start developing technology to overcome those issues.
> I mean, we already have theoretical warp drives ...


I would. As I'm sure humans will also do their damnedest to overcome them. Even with that type of technology I wouldn't put it past intelligent life to miss each other thanks to the sheer size of the universe. There are trillions of planets with potential life. If distance or looking in the wrong direction isn't the culprit then some aliens might simply not be able to recognize each other.

The reasons for why we haven't encountered alien life yet could be speculated nearly endlessly. The only thing I wouldn't believe is that earth is the only planet with life or an intelligent species.


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## Enantiodromia (Feb 12, 2013)

Ziwosa said:


> This sucks, because it further hints that the possibilities on life forming could be way higher then we imagine. And that the chances of the great filter not yet being behind us went up. If life is so common that even our neighbor planet has it, why have we still not found detected anther's intelligence in the universe? So I hope to god they don't find any life forms or that if they do they find that Earth originated from life on Mars.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter


The most amusing/horrifying Great Filter scenario I've read so far is the Griefers one at the end of this piece:
On the Great Filter, existential threats, and griefers


* *





Griefers: suppose some first-mover in the interstellar travel stakes decides to take out the opposition before they become a threat. What is the cheapest, most cost-effective way to do this?

Both the IO9 think-piece and Anders' response get somewhat speculative, so I'm going to be speculative as well. I'm going to take as axiomatic the impossibility of FTL travel and the difficulty of transplanting sapient species to other worlds (the latter because terraforming is a lot harder than many SF fans seem to believe, and us squishy meatsacks simply aren't constructed with interplanetary travel in mind). I'm also going to tap-dance around the question of a singularity, or hostile AI. But suppose we can make self-replicating robots that can build a variety of sub-assemblies from a canned library of schematics, building them out of asteroidal debris? It's a tall order with a lot of path dependencies along the way, but suppose we can do that, and among the assemblies they can build are photovoltaic cells, lasers, photodetectors, mirrors, structural trusses, and their own brains.

What we have is a Von Neumann probe -- a self-replicating spacecraft that can migrate slowly between star systems, repair bits of itself that break, and where resources permit, clone itself. Call this the mobile stage of the life-cycle. Now, when it arrives in a suitable star system, have it go into a different life-cycle stage: the sessile stage. Here it starts to spawn copies of itself, and they go to work building a Matrioshka Brain. However, contra the usual purpose of a Matrioshka Brain (which is to turn an entire star system's mass into computronium plus energy supply, the better to think with) the purpose of this Matrioshka Brain is rather less brainy: its free-flying nodes act as a very long baseline interferometer, mapping nearby star systems for planets, and scanning each exoplanet for signs of life.

Then, once it detects a promising candidate -- within a couple of hundred light years, oxygen atmosphere, signs of complex molecules, begins shouting at radio wavelengths then falls suspiciously quiet -- it says "hello" with a Nicoll-Dyson Beam.

(It's not expecting a reply: to echo Auric Goldfinger: "no Mr Bond, I expect you to die.")

A Dyson sphere or Matrioshka Brain collects most or all of the radiated energy of a star using photovoltaic collectors on the free-flying elements of the Dyson swarm. Assuming they're equipped with lasers for direct line-of-sight communication with one another isn't much of a reach. Building bigger lasers, able to re-radiate all the usable power they're taking in, isn't much more of one. A Nicoll-Dyson beam is what you get when the entire emitted energy of a star is used to pump a myriad of high powered lasers, all pointing in the same direction. You could use it to boost a light sail with a large payload up to a very significant fraction of light-speed in a short time ... and you could use it to vapourize an Earth-mass planet in under an hour, at a range of hundreds of light years.

Here's the point: all it takes is one civilization of alien ass-hat griefers who send out just one Von Neumann Probe programmed to replicate, build N-D lasers, and zap any planet showing signs of technological civilization, and the result is a galaxy sterile of interplanetary civilizations until the end of the stelliferous era (at which point, stars able to power an N-D laser will presumably become rare).

We have plenty of griefers who like destroying things, even things they've never seen and can't see the point of. I think the N-D laser/Von Neumann Probe option is a worryingly plausible solution to the identity of a near-future Great Filter: it only has to happen once, and it fucks everybody.


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## Ziwosa (Sep 25, 2010)

Kavik said:


> The reasons for why we haven't encountered alien life yet could be speculated nearly endlessly. The only thing I wouldn't believe is that earth is the only planet with life or an intelligent species.


Of course, I love to speculate around this. As it's just so open ended and at the same time very profound. Perhaps alien life is all around us, but we're just not noticing it due to humans lacking the intelligence to do so. Kinda like ants aren't really aware of our presence. What do ants think when they cross the roads we built?


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## Kurt Wagner (Aug 2, 2014)

*ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS* *ALIENS*


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## Kavik (Apr 3, 2014)

Ziwosa said:


> Of course, I love to speculate around this. As it's just so open ended and at the same time very profound. Perhaps alien life is all around us, but we're just not noticing it due to humans lacking the intelligence to do so. Kinda like ants aren't really aware of our presence. What do ants think when they cross the roads we built?


I do too. I mostly said that to stop myself because I was about to take off with hundreds of speculations. :frustrating: 

To the above. Perhaps. Or an alien species experiences the world with different senses than we do.


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## LibertyPrime (Dec 17, 2010)

Ziwosa said:


> This sucks, because it further hints that the possibilities on life forming could be way higher then we imagine. And that the chances of the great filter not yet being behind us went up. If life is so common that even our neighbor planet has it, why have we still not found detected anther's intelligence in the universe? So I hope to god they don't find any life forms or that if they do they find that Earth originated from life on Mars.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter


O_O what if we are the first civilization in the entire freaking galaxy which is this advanced? There might be NOBODY else out there...if there was anything before us <.< they would have had enough time to get to at least stage 2...so where are they?

Maaaybe it just takes special conditions and a butload of time for life to develop sufficient complexity >.> which again would mean we are the first to reach this close to type 1 level civilization.


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## peter pettishrooms (Apr 20, 2015)




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## marblecloud95 (Aug 12, 2015)

Elect Donald Trump and he'll personally fly out to Mars with a straw and suck all the water up.


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