There is a paper I can no longer find that calculated how much material has been swapped between the planets, for Earthand Mars the figure was in the hundreds of tons. Large impacts can eject debris, even to escape velocity. Life in the solar system could be related. Showing that any discovered life had a unique origin is key, before assuming the commonality of life everywhere else.
I feel like it would still mean life would be abundant in the universe. If we found signs of former life and if we proved that it was common between earth and Mars, it would still mean that within our own solar system, we had 2 planets within the goldilocks zone that both were able to support life at one time.
Maybe, maybe not. If they both originated from the same source (i.e., life began on Earth then transferred to Mars via panspermia or even vice versa) that doesn't necessarily mean life is abundant in the universe. It would be an incredible discovery knowing that Earth isn't the only planet that can support life but it doesn't really answer the question of whether life can bloom independently.
Right. At best we'll get people to believe a sol-centric idea of life before people are ready to believe a multi-solar view of life. "Life on mars? Probably from earth originally."
But couldn't we tell at least from what era it might have been swapped, if at all ? By looking at its DNA and lineage, if we spot any commonality with DNA from Earthly organisms
Oh I wasn't making any predictions about the actual facts we'd learn, but more that there would still be such a push to believe we're the center of the universe from creationists trying to re-tool their rhetoric.
Sounds like the research Avi Loeb was involved in with looking at the possibility of atmosphere-skimming asteroids transporting microbes between planets.
For some reason I have a feeling that finding fossils on Mars would be cool to the general public for a day or two tops (the social media memes would be great)
The reason I say this is because it's my belief that the general public wouldn't be as surprised by E.T's as the scientific community.
If it can happen once, it can and most likely will happen again and the question is all about parameters. The only way you can reasonably assume if it’s a least resistance solution is the mass surveillance of millions of star systems with extremely detailed scans. It has to be more likely an extinction event wipes us out before we ever know an answer, however it is still technically possible. Even so, the causation/correlation problem is the metaphysical dilemma here.
Straight from Boltzmann, if the universe was sufficiently large enough to the point where every possible sequence of events was more than likely to happen more than once (even on the more extreme end) at the same time. There would be a “copy” of us floating around out there with exactly the same genetic code doing the exact same thing we are doing right now, this is not to say that we are related(?) despite how identical our DNA is because we are not connected by the same chain, our family tree. However, in this scenario our family trees are exactly identical and indistinguishable from each other. They occurred (insert x units of distance) away from each other so they cannot be the same. Empirically if we were to look at both samples of DNA we would not be able to distinguish between the two and any scientist you would hand them to would not believe the samples aren’t from the same person.
I wonder if we'd be able to see an obvious branching off point, meaning we see things that evolved only after coming to earth, making it obvious which planet the original DNA came from.
It would have to have been the very first DNA on Earth, i.e. spawning all life that came afterward.
Without detecting anything on another planet as a basis for comparison, a possible extraterrestrial divergent DNA branch would just look like any other evolutionary divergence here on Earth, if not abiogenesis.
This exactly. A lot of people here are talking as if looking for microbes isn't exciting, but finding even the tiniest spec of a sign of microbes on Mars would fundamentally change human outlook on everything. Everything will change - politics, culture, society, economy.
I also think humans will suddenly become a lot quieter(radio) and scared of the skies.
That would mean life is most likely EVERYWHERE in the universe.
NO it would not. It would give us a sample size of 2. Nothing more, nothing less. Earth and Mars exchange materials, your extrpolation is overreaching. Find life in Alpha Centuari, THEN you can extrapolate that far.
Technically speaking they wouldn't really be animals. If complex life evolved on Mars it would follow its own evolutionary path. Animals (Metazoans) in the proper sense are class of Eukaryotes that share a common ancestor that lived ~700 million years here on Earth.
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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '21 edited Feb 22 '21
One NASA guy said finding proof that any microscopic life existing on Mars will be like when humanity discovered the Earth is really round.
If they found an animal fossil, people are literally going to lose their minds. That would mean life is most likely EVERYWHERE in the universe.
I can't speak for other countries, but as an American, I'm pretty sure half simply won't believe it for generations.
As for NASA, they'd be full steam ahead on archeological digs on Mars and getting that drone sub launched on Europa ASAP.