āhospitable to tagalong life from Earthā is relative right? From what I know of Mars, nothing from Earth will survive there as anything other than a dormant spore, no matter where you are on the planet.
I certainly wouldnāt be booking tickets with plucky optimism about living on the land; but Iād probably bet a few hundred bucks on some earthly extremophiles being just ducky either under such polar ice as their is(dormant much; but not all, of the time), and possibly subsurface in some of the lower-elevation parts of the planet, where there is still something vaguely resembling an atmosphere.
Perhaps more importantly: If earthly life, of any flavor, can survive (in a metabolically active way) on Mars, odds are good (Iād put considerably more money on this one) that the overlap between āplaces earth life can liveā and āplaces remnants of mars life are holding outā is significant.
Thatās the real downer. It doesnāt matter if 99% of the planet is too brutal to do anything but kill spores slowly, if the 1% that might contain something of vast scientific interest is the same 1% that earthly life would be happy to have a go atā¦
The lack of liquid water is a real buzzkill for Earth based life. The Atacama Desert on Earth has similar conditions in places, and is notably devoid of even bacterial life in the soil.
Thatās why Iām perfectly unconcerned about writing off 95+% of the planetary surface as biologically viable. Too dry, too cold, atmosphere so thin that the vapor pressure of just about anything biological is remarkably high by comparison. Itās just that if there are any exceptions, those exceptions are probably where the martian life would be making its last stand as well (unless itās something radically different from life as we know it). Thatās the contamination that Iād be concerned about avoiding.
Martian. When did academic English stop distinguishing adjectives from nouns? Why?
uGH, let aplanet be, woodyah?
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