How We Might Calculate the Probability life Might Exist on Other Worlds Like Mars, Jupiter's Moons Europa, Ganymede, Or Even the Moon of Saturn Named Enceladus
It's believed life may be possible on any of these four bodies, and it's possible life could exist on Jupiter like worlds, a possibility Carl Sagan considers in his book Cosmos (Einstein said the secret to creativity is to hide your sources, how would he hide the cosmos?). Sagan considers there may be life like the sinkers and the floaters, the floaters a kind of herbivores and the sinkers more mobile and try to stab the floaters and harvest the chemicals like methane found in the atmosphere of Jupiter. I think the problem here is that life needs a surface as they have found in the interstellar frequency of life chemicals like sugars needed for life, these chemicals are only found on bodies like asteroids that have a surface. It's believed by many Jupiter has no surface though my belief is it has a slush surface below the top so the Great Red Spot has a permanent foundation in order to explain it's permanence. Sagan's other idea that the spot is a permanent tropical storm seems improbable to me because a tropical storm is a bubble of heat that rises and fizzes out. With all the extra heat of Jupiter the storm would dissipate in just hours not even the days of a tropical storm of more prosaic realms nearby on Earth. My explanation is that the GRS may be the crater of a large impactor, and that more permanent the interruption of the field lines may even be the cause of the ice ages since the much larger field of Jupiter could be modulated to control the sun. (All the astronomical explanations of the ice ages need cycles and being astronomical they would be permanent, cycling in and out indefinitely. If there were a few impactor events in the history of Jupiter and the Earth, this might explain most of the major glacial epics in general, with non glacial periods of great duration between Jupiter impactors like the GRS to damp the field when there would then be astronomical oscillations of the cooler Earth. Milankovitch's explanation doesn't have this general advantage which might even lead to general weather control , as I say on this page).
Though I thus believe Jupiter may have a slush surface I speak of a surface for life in more general chemical sense. I once in my teens had the idea that life might exist on the surface of some stars that had the oscillation of fields like the solar cycles in the 11.2 year solar flux (by the way this is quite near the 11 year cycle of Jupiter's orbit. This seems obvious but earlier researchers discounted the Jupiter influence because the cycle is not an exact fit and, with many cycles Jupiter would be ruled out. My reply here is that while Jupiter's orbit is indeed not 11.2 years, the satellite Io creates a huge torus of sulphur around Jupiter at an angle and the precession here is more fitting to fit the period of the solar cycles, the sulphur is highly magnetic (this was how the ancient Greek philosopher Thales discovered electricity by the spark of amber.) The magnetic field of Io thus could thus influence and modulate Jupiter's great field of 100 Gauss, modulating the solar field of just .5 Gauss which then might cause the ice ages e.g in the Permian or archeozoic, otherwise the sun's field of just half a Gauss wouldn't be strong enough even to much influence itself, ect. The 11 year solar cycles would be constant (trees have 11 year cycles of the rings they evolved to, even so the general cool weather would only be caused by an impactor like perhaps the GRS impactor, and the sun never burns too hot for life in the much longer interglacial times in history so I think we can all rest at ease about global warming as I say on my Weather Control page, ect. )
In my teens I thought of the possibility of life on stars with the oscillations of the fields because life needs the oscillation of flow, sort of like how life may have evolved in tidal pools with the cycling in and out nutrients of the tides. Though like most teens I was in great need of a win then so though I thought of this, actually a sort of modern version of Sir Issac Newton's I later realized that the mere flux of the field was not the same as general chemical stability, a sort of small realm where life also has a surface to compute. Stars and presumably Jupiter type worlds wouldn't have this because of the general chemical instability of the constant updrafts of too many chemicals shearing the stability of the evolution of the life before it could evolve. We read that the winds of Jupiter are only like 100 mph and a Cessna would not feel too bad if sailing if and out of these storms so it might seem that Sagan's idea is possible at least for some Jupiter type worlds. I tend to rule life out for Jupiter itself because of the strong chemical influence life would have on Jupiter's atmosphere, as Sagan says, 99% of the air was created by life, oxygen. We might assume life on Jupiter like worlds would be eternally held down by the constant updrafts of the caustic chemicals, but to believe life was always on the defensive and unable to win seems unlike like in evolution, or in a shortened form of this, no life is probable there or on most Jupiter like worlds. Sagan doesn't consider it as more than a possibility, and though good for hope for creative science, I tend to discount Sagan about this. My conclusion is that Jupiter like worlds with life may have a special chemical signature, and Jupiter seems to not have it though other worlds like Jupiter might. There's methane, but the methane seems undigested by the burp of small cells or higher life. Where's all the computation?
My question is as I say, how might we calculate the possibility of life on other worlds. It's well known life has to have the 5 elements of earth Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus and, Sulphur, or the old exercise motif named CHINOPS, (Cheops is not in the afterlife now!). How is it we know this, we know because life can't exist without these elements, so this seems like a vehicle, and the are certain things we have to have for it to run, it has to have to run, it needs gasoline, it has to have wheels (though this may not be that essential, jet powered squids have jet propulsion. We could say the wheel was invented in evolution because each tiny atom is wheel, so life invented the wheel or discovered it we might say.) If we have a car the van has to have some source of power, steering and brakes. And so too with life what can't life do without, much as we might as what life can't do without or with. Even so we could say cars in their basic sense have a lot of problems and we could say in a basic sense it's the same going in a Rolls Royce or a Volkswagen, more than 3/4 either way, or uphill both ways is good for exercise! Travel is travel, zone A to zone B. I would add that the other elements in life beyond the basic ones add the change, the change that makes it like the insurance company says we need to thrive not just survive, after all insurance is about the living and life. And if we say that life must change more chemicals in life than just the basics are better. Without more than just the basic compounds of CHNOPS life couldn't evolve as fast or as well. An abundance of more than just the basic chemicals would be of more value particularly because of without more elements than the basic five the life would be sort of rigid and so more self limiting. Creating life may be more necessary than evolving it because to evolve it needs to have a foundation.
And if it's evolving life needs liquid water. And if it has to have liquid water it needs moderate heat, not just light since life is found deeper underground away powered by heat. Life needs water, heat and a surface. Almost all the oceans life lives near the shore. And 75% of the world's people live near the shore, lacustrene to the max, the big stream is the ocean. (Lacustrene means pertaining to lakes and oceans.). Not lacustrene, like a stream., if we have the waves and weather fronts flowing (they actually found this under the oceans). The fish are all or moist near the shore, the ocean is like a vast desert of water, water water all around and not a drop, of sand. (In ancient times all they had was the hourglass and sundial for a watch.) I believe life evolved in small tidal pools, where the most life is found in research for ease of study, where most types of life are found at once. The tide comes in, the pool fills up and all these types of life are there. We can imagine this happened over millions of years of life, it has a source of water, a resource of nutrients and a source of change, to start the evolution of life or at any rate more advanced life if it's believed by many life was originally sulphur based like near vents, these could have been near pools too. They're searching for life in the vast system of lakes and rivers under Antarctica, like the liquid ice in lake Vostok, one of the largest freshwater lakes by volume in the world, liquid water under the ice by pressure. They are trying to find in life in lake Vostok to see would be what life might be like in the presumed ocean beneath worlds like Europa and Ganymede, oceans of liquid water presumed there by the low mass and high volume of these worlds. If you have liquid water and a source of water and a tide to slosh it around, perhaps the radiation of Jupiter is keeping that water liquid, then we have both perhaps nutrients because presumably the water is sloshing the minerals around, and the heat or whatever of the tidal flexing, this is why it's thought by some it's possible there's life on Europa, and that since there's a liquid fountain of water seen from Saturn's moon Enceladus, it's as though life might be there. Even so if this was common over geologic time, all the water would be lost outward and so for life to exist inside enceladus there must have been no fountain of water from then to now. Thus either no process to create the fountain or a near time in geology of the fountain would be needed for life inside Enceladus.
Mars might have life, since the old days and much Rand D of those like Shaparelli, and there was intelligence on one side of the telescope and we know which side and he knew which was which as Sagan notes in Cosmos..
Titan is the large moon of Saturn with the methane oceans, like life. Titan I tend to rule out because though it has the oceans of methane, one of the building blocks of life, Titan has the problem that though it has methane it hasn't got the rest of the building blocks. This has to be life under pressure if there is life there it must be able to change relative to the extremes of the other chemicals. If life evolved on earth on the surface and much more rarely lives in the deep this (benthic) life under pressure is improbable by way of our own experience. Action reaction pairs of each chemical reaction like plus and minus charges would have to be both more extreme to withstand the pressure and yet balanced to allow change. Life on Earth favors large numbers of smaller changes in evolution and even down to the atomic level, metals are not life's need or greatest hit! High voltage with it's high pressure under balance on a power wire so a chipmunk can walk without shock with no external connection, or living under ocean pressure in balance is indeed relative, but pressure is pressure, voltage is voltage, and chemical ionization in the extreme is not presumably better for life. (Indeed this is one of my lines of objection to relativity itself. Relative balance of force may allow no change in the speed of light so no labor is in the universe. If all is in balance in inertial frames, there is no change. Only with gravity added in is there a "real" more nonrelativistic picture, the Earth is more at rest than the moon, and the sun more than the Earth in the nonrelativity of gravity. Click here for more about my method to hopefully add more to Special Relativity, General Wave Dynamics;)
If Europa has the ocean of liquid water, some would say the heat for that ocean is coming from the radiation from Jupiter but this has the problem that the radiation has to go through the ice on the surface, which shows enough melting to have lots of craters, the heat would have to go through the ice and they would have melted, ruling out this possibility some have conjured of the inner radiance powering life there leaving either the possibility the ocean is liquid only by tidal heat, and this would rule out life on the surface of Europa too because the radiation is so intense, the cosmic rays. If life exists inside worlds like Europa or Ganymede or even Enceladus presumably it would create oxygen and the oxygen being lighter than the water would seep out through the top of the ice and over time we would expect the size of the ocean would contract and we would expect to see signs of this in the outer ice layer of Europa via contractions of the ice. This is one of the main reasons I don't believe in the possibility of life inside Europa, the craters are ancient enough to show signs of life. Another problem with evolution of life in Europa or Ganymede is there is no surface other than the interface of the water and ice for life to evolve, and ice isn't conducive to life, it's too slow for life to have started evolution, not much of a surface because a surface under water. The first land life on earth was what are called stromatolites, slushy sort of sponges that lived near the shore by fossils the oldest kind of land life, they just got there in the marshes, they didn't evolve underwater, they evolved in the tidal pools the interface of the land and the water. The beach is a good place, we like to got to the beach in the summer because it so rich in life, thus we would say life needs a good place to evolve and needs a good surface. This is why we may find life under the south pole or deeper as they are finding perhaps in lake Vostok, my belief is that life first evolved in easier places to evolved and then it added it's reach to healthier and special realms. These more extreme biomes evolution wouldn't have been able to adapt to in the start of evolution. E.g. prions viriods or viruses were not original to evolution. It's believed larger life evolved first, then the smaller life. This would be like the history of machines, we started out with big simple machines and now we are building smaller machines. So to say life on Mars would be like the least life on Earth, lake Vostok I believe is not a valid argument that doesn't follow from the premise. To say conditions are like on Mars and that life exists here under those conditions is not to say life may have ever existed on Mars under those conditions, sure life exists in extremes, but like a small business' mere 20 percent survival rate means to start life in even moderate extreme conditions may be much more improbable than extending it once it starts. Mostly my objections to life elsewhere in the solar system are about temperature and chemical extremes and the need for moderation in evolution to start life, many types of foods in moderation were the perscription for life for ancient Greeks like Hippocrates.
For life to have existed on Mars the best bet would have been in the oceans where we see evidence for erosion in the river valleys and the craters. The giant river valley Valles Marineres, "valley of the mariners" is seen. If we have the water flowing around the craters by the science of stratigraphy (from the word for "strata or layer") we could put a limit on the last time liquid water was flowing on Mars. Craters after liquid water would have no erosion. Note that in the following where I argue for a shallow ocean of mostly iron there's evidence this was of short duration and shallow because we see many craters only partially worn away.
The last erosion by water of the craters seems to put a limit on the last time that liquid water flowed on Mars. Later times had no liquid water because they would have eroded the craters more than just some over many millions of years. But the Valles Marineres took a certain amount of time to form, so before it started to form we presume there was no liquid water either, or at least that we could extend the time of liquid water from the last water flow via stratigraphy back to the time of the formation of the Valles Marineris. Or I would say if there was lots of liquid water before Vallis Marineris why wasn't it formed before then. We can therefore say when the last water flowed and then extend the reach back to the formation of this canyon, but no further would this degree of liquid water have existed.
The Vallis Marineris is 7 times the length of the grand canyon so it might seem it would have taken much longer to have formed than the Earth's own grand canyon, but the grand canyon is actually quite young, a few million years, even though the rocks that make it up are wiser and wiser like me or just my celebration! I believe the Vallis Marineris may have formed rapidly because if you look at the erosion patterns, the tributaries have a sharper dropoff than streams on Earth have Mars has two general zones, a Northern lowland and a S highland, both mostly plains. If the Vallis Marineris was formed over lots of time there would be more elaborate systems of tributaries seen, there are just the plains above and then the water seems to just fall over the side and into the Vallis Marineris and no inbetween. I believe the original crust of the highlands was therefore chemically different from the highlands because of long weathering before that. The Southern plains were sort of solidly welded together but once the water reaches the Vallis Marineris, and reaches the water of the highlands there would be chemical erosion. I think the Vallis Marineris may have been formed in just a few million years. If it were formed slowly there would have been more elaborate channels and meander patterns like we see on older rivers of Earth. When there is a system of drainage by long evolution anywhere the streams meet, the elevation and erosion of both rivers is much the same. But there are fewer rapid dropoffs except by reduced times of erosion. I believe the patterns of the Vallis Marineris show something like corrosion by acid, or perhaps by rusting and oxidation of the rocks of the N by the oxygen in the ancient air and water of Mars. some have wondered where all the water came from to begin with, the answer might be as on the Earth most of the water comes from steam of volcanoes. So Olympus Mons the largest volcanic construct in the solar system is right ahead of the Vallis Marineris, it starts where the Olympus Mons is. Thus we have a real steam from Olympus Mons and it flows right into the Vallis Marineris. This might lead to a rather large ocean in the N hemisphere of Mars. And it might simplify the chemistry of Mars. The high energy reaction of the oxidation of the formation of the Vallis Marineris would have created a sort of uniform chemistry of Mars. This is why and how all of Mars has iron everywhere, a planetwide layer of iron.
If you have the surface covered with this lake and just for two million years, this is a far shorter time than the billion or so from the formation to the evolution of life on the Earth. And all five of the chemicals of life aren't in abundance, there's just one ocean. So we think of the ocean as a sort of artificial iron ocean. And unlike the oceans of the Earth the ocean of Mars didn't have constant tides each day, to inflow nutrients and compute to higher and higher life with each cycle. About the surface area, life needs a lot of surface area to start. Of you want a good life search for a lot of life so the saying goes. The more chances to start life the more probable it will evolve. This is why on Europa with no surface area much compared to the Earth this wouldn't be more improbable for evolution of life.
If you go under the earth the temperature goes up 100 ft per degree. The gravity is weaker on Mars no doubt but there is pressure and though the water is liquid on the surface I think it may be possible there could be liquid water deeper down. The ground water might start to seep and move. Even though water moves a foot in 100 years here, it does flow so we could imagine the water would gradually seep through the rocks and start to flow. Perhaps it would flow and form channels and rivers and larger lakes like lake Vostock.. If the pools start to form we imagine a sort of hydrological cycle, that would be necessary for life to exist, but like a hydrological cycle at the least there isn't so much water. We might imagine a sort of system of life on Mars with a hydrological cycle underground. And because the gravity is lower the realm of habitable zone would be larger than the Earth's where there's heat nearer us. We imagine steam vents from these realms, and they may be possible and I think they are worth looking for. Most of the pressure on Mars would be the cause of heat not radioactivity, they find the asteroids are actually warm and in radiation. The inner pressure may thus be common to most heavanly bodies. And since no steam is seen if there are underground realms on Mars like this there is only the alternate source of water flow, the evaporation and condensation of the water for flow. If in high school science if you take a jug of water and put it on the shelf and let it evaporate, sure enough it does, not with steam we might imagine the water would trickle up and rise and this would be a way to complete the hydrological cycle. We might not have steam but the water would trickle up as it was heated, it could flow on all the roofs and back to the river channels. I have my doubts about this because in any event it would be much slower than the flow like around geothermal vents of our oceans. Remember the lack of steam vents seen puts a limit on the heat output of the pressure of Mars and thus a limit on the heat in the possible underground system if it exists. The main problem here wouldn't be lack of minerals beause the water would circulate minerals since after the shroud of iron water the other rocks reemerged by erosion, just that it would be so slow the life wouldn't have enough change. Another problem would be lower air pressure that would perhaps leak out and stop the cycle, even so with the large volume thess realms could be in due to the lower gravity and not just a narrow zone like on Earth where the pressure and temperature are too high there could be sealed off realms where life has evolved.
We may be able to calculate based on considerations like these, the actual probability of the evolution of life. It's been known now we can actually calculate how fast viruses are evolving and by doing all the possible options in iteration the virus has, we can find out how long it takes to solve the given problem we have and stay ahead of the virus by developing drugs that give us more power in time than the virus has. This is essentially like a computer, we evolve, and the virus, one computer against the other. And the same would be for life. The virus has a certain amount of computing it's a small amount but it is a computer. We can imagine the matter of life itself in tidal pools or wherever as having a certain amount of resources. It's known by some in the field of computers that any computer given enough time can solve any problem and smaller computers take more time to solve problems than bigger computers. We think of the matter on Mars as breathing the life, this was why they thought there was a false result on the experiments to see if there was life on Mars. The clay acts a lot like life and has respiration as if life had incorporated the processes of the clay into its own physiology. it's the incorporation of natural processes like these that may have started the evolution of life.
If we know all the chemicals in the tidal pool, and the tide comes in and out, we know the surface area they have, we know all the components they have we not what's necessary to be there and the advantage of having light, and so on then we may do the same thing we do with the viruses. The computing power is there, we know the resources, so we can know how long it would take for those compounds to be more, alert! And I think this method might be of worth to find out the probability of life on other worlds and whether there would life on what world. If we can calculate the probability of life by these types of equations combinted with lab work we really might not have to send expensive machines to many realms. I think there will be no life on the surface of Mars anywhere. And to calculate beforehand we may save a lot on research. And we could understand our own life better. Another possibility is to try to build self assembling machines out of the same chemicals as life may have evolved from.
To calculate what a virus does with its resources might not be nearly as valuable as what we could do with ours.
I don't believe the there was any life on Mars was of such short duration of liquid water even if there are those underground circulating rivers and stuff, the flow of water would be so slow just by evaporation and condensation, life wouldn't be able to have started.
While I don't care if there are bacteria on other worlds there are those who say thank goodness our dog is finally getting enough cheeze.
Even so we might send a probe to Europa and drop a heated probe with a heated wire down to the ocean of water. And just for the celebration of life we might see if there is any life there.
Use of the equations and as in artificial life we might improve the Drake Equation to know which Earthlike or other world to do the most research on.
For instance the Earthlike worlds with a coast with tides and most Earthlike worlds with a smaller coastline wouldn't have the advantage of computation to create the life, and for this reason I think worlds with both tides and especially if the coastlines when the life might have evolved are most extensive would have the most probability of life.
It's thought that the best move may be to find the chemicals of life in vitro, but by using these methods we might find the solutions with a mainframe, the beach of the world.
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Though I thus believe Jupiter may have a slush surface I speak of a surface for life in more general chemical sense. I once in my teens had the idea that life might exist on the surface of some stars that had the oscillation of fields like the solar cycles in the 11.2 year solar flux (by the way this is quite near the 11 year cycle of Jupiter's orbit. This seems obvious but earlier researchers discounted the Jupiter influence because the cycle is not an exact fit and, with many cycles Jupiter would be ruled out. My reply here is that while Jupiter's orbit is indeed not 11.2 years, the satellite Io creates a huge torus of sulphur around Jupiter at an angle and the precession here is more fitting to fit the period of the solar cycles, the sulphur is highly magnetic (this was how the ancient Greek philosopher Thales discovered electricity by the spark of amber.) The magnetic field of Io thus could thus influence and modulate Jupiter's great field of 100 Gauss, modulating the solar field of just .5 Gauss which then might cause the ice ages e.g in the Permian or archeozoic, otherwise the sun's field of just half a Gauss wouldn't be strong enough even to much influence itself, ect. The 11 year solar cycles would be constant (trees have 11 year cycles of the rings they evolved to, even so the general cool weather would only be caused by an impactor like perhaps the GRS impactor, and the sun never burns too hot for life in the much longer interglacial times in history so I think we can all rest at ease about global warming as I say on my Weather Control page, ect. )
In my teens I thought of the possibility of life on stars with the oscillations of the fields because life needs the oscillation of flow, sort of like how life may have evolved in tidal pools with the cycling in and out nutrients of the tides. Though like most teens I was in great need of a win then so though I thought of this, actually a sort of modern version of Sir Issac Newton's I later realized that the mere flux of the field was not the same as general chemical stability, a sort of small realm where life also has a surface to compute. Stars and presumably Jupiter type worlds wouldn't have this because of the general chemical instability of the constant updrafts of too many chemicals shearing the stability of the evolution of the life before it could evolve. We read that the winds of Jupiter are only like 100 mph and a Cessna would not feel too bad if sailing if and out of these storms so it might seem that Sagan's idea is possible at least for some Jupiter type worlds. I tend to rule life out for Jupiter itself because of the strong chemical influence life would have on Jupiter's atmosphere, as Sagan says, 99% of the air was created by life, oxygen. We might assume life on Jupiter like worlds would be eternally held down by the constant updrafts of the caustic chemicals, but to believe life was always on the defensive and unable to win seems unlike like in evolution, or in a shortened form of this, no life is probable there or on most Jupiter like worlds. Sagan doesn't consider it as more than a possibility, and though good for hope for creative science, I tend to discount Sagan about this. My conclusion is that Jupiter like worlds with life may have a special chemical signature, and Jupiter seems to not have it though other worlds like Jupiter might. There's methane, but the methane seems undigested by the burp of small cells or higher life. Where's all the computation?
My question is as I say, how might we calculate the possibility of life on other worlds. It's well known life has to have the 5 elements of earth Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus and, Sulphur, or the old exercise motif named CHINOPS, (Cheops is not in the afterlife now!). How is it we know this, we know because life can't exist without these elements, so this seems like a vehicle, and the are certain things we have to have for it to run, it has to have to run, it needs gasoline, it has to have wheels (though this may not be that essential, jet powered squids have jet propulsion. We could say the wheel was invented in evolution because each tiny atom is wheel, so life invented the wheel or discovered it we might say.) If we have a car the van has to have some source of power, steering and brakes. And so too with life what can't life do without, much as we might as what life can't do without or with. Even so we could say cars in their basic sense have a lot of problems and we could say in a basic sense it's the same going in a Rolls Royce or a Volkswagen, more than 3/4 either way, or uphill both ways is good for exercise! Travel is travel, zone A to zone B. I would add that the other elements in life beyond the basic ones add the change, the change that makes it like the insurance company says we need to thrive not just survive, after all insurance is about the living and life. And if we say that life must change more chemicals in life than just the basics are better. Without more than just the basic compounds of CHNOPS life couldn't evolve as fast or as well. An abundance of more than just the basic chemicals would be of more value particularly because of without more elements than the basic five the life would be sort of rigid and so more self limiting. Creating life may be more necessary than evolving it because to evolve it needs to have a foundation.
And if it's evolving life needs liquid water. And if it has to have liquid water it needs moderate heat, not just light since life is found deeper underground away powered by heat. Life needs water, heat and a surface. Almost all the oceans life lives near the shore. And 75% of the world's people live near the shore, lacustrene to the max, the big stream is the ocean. (Lacustrene means pertaining to lakes and oceans.). Not lacustrene, like a stream., if we have the waves and weather fronts flowing (they actually found this under the oceans). The fish are all or moist near the shore, the ocean is like a vast desert of water, water water all around and not a drop, of sand. (In ancient times all they had was the hourglass and sundial for a watch.) I believe life evolved in small tidal pools, where the most life is found in research for ease of study, where most types of life are found at once. The tide comes in, the pool fills up and all these types of life are there. We can imagine this happened over millions of years of life, it has a source of water, a resource of nutrients and a source of change, to start the evolution of life or at any rate more advanced life if it's believed by many life was originally sulphur based like near vents, these could have been near pools too. They're searching for life in the vast system of lakes and rivers under Antarctica, like the liquid ice in lake Vostok, one of the largest freshwater lakes by volume in the world, liquid water under the ice by pressure. They are trying to find in life in lake Vostok to see would be what life might be like in the presumed ocean beneath worlds like Europa and Ganymede, oceans of liquid water presumed there by the low mass and high volume of these worlds. If you have liquid water and a source of water and a tide to slosh it around, perhaps the radiation of Jupiter is keeping that water liquid, then we have both perhaps nutrients because presumably the water is sloshing the minerals around, and the heat or whatever of the tidal flexing, this is why it's thought by some it's possible there's life on Europa, and that since there's a liquid fountain of water seen from Saturn's moon Enceladus, it's as though life might be there. Even so if this was common over geologic time, all the water would be lost outward and so for life to exist inside enceladus there must have been no fountain of water from then to now. Thus either no process to create the fountain or a near time in geology of the fountain would be needed for life inside Enceladus.
Mars might have life, since the old days and much Rand D of those like Shaparelli, and there was intelligence on one side of the telescope and we know which side and he knew which was which as Sagan notes in Cosmos..
Titan is the large moon of Saturn with the methane oceans, like life. Titan I tend to rule out because though it has the oceans of methane, one of the building blocks of life, Titan has the problem that though it has methane it hasn't got the rest of the building blocks. This has to be life under pressure if there is life there it must be able to change relative to the extremes of the other chemicals. If life evolved on earth on the surface and much more rarely lives in the deep this (benthic) life under pressure is improbable by way of our own experience. Action reaction pairs of each chemical reaction like plus and minus charges would have to be both more extreme to withstand the pressure and yet balanced to allow change. Life on Earth favors large numbers of smaller changes in evolution and even down to the atomic level, metals are not life's need or greatest hit! High voltage with it's high pressure under balance on a power wire so a chipmunk can walk without shock with no external connection, or living under ocean pressure in balance is indeed relative, but pressure is pressure, voltage is voltage, and chemical ionization in the extreme is not presumably better for life. (Indeed this is one of my lines of objection to relativity itself. Relative balance of force may allow no change in the speed of light so no labor is in the universe. If all is in balance in inertial frames, there is no change. Only with gravity added in is there a "real" more nonrelativistic picture, the Earth is more at rest than the moon, and the sun more than the Earth in the nonrelativity of gravity. Click here for more about my method to hopefully add more to Special Relativity, General Wave Dynamics;)
If Europa has the ocean of liquid water, some would say the heat for that ocean is coming from the radiation from Jupiter but this has the problem that the radiation has to go through the ice on the surface, which shows enough melting to have lots of craters, the heat would have to go through the ice and they would have melted, ruling out this possibility some have conjured of the inner radiance powering life there leaving either the possibility the ocean is liquid only by tidal heat, and this would rule out life on the surface of Europa too because the radiation is so intense, the cosmic rays. If life exists inside worlds like Europa or Ganymede or even Enceladus presumably it would create oxygen and the oxygen being lighter than the water would seep out through the top of the ice and over time we would expect the size of the ocean would contract and we would expect to see signs of this in the outer ice layer of Europa via contractions of the ice. This is one of the main reasons I don't believe in the possibility of life inside Europa, the craters are ancient enough to show signs of life. Another problem with evolution of life in Europa or Ganymede is there is no surface other than the interface of the water and ice for life to evolve, and ice isn't conducive to life, it's too slow for life to have started evolution, not much of a surface because a surface under water. The first land life on earth was what are called stromatolites, slushy sort of sponges that lived near the shore by fossils the oldest kind of land life, they just got there in the marshes, they didn't evolve underwater, they evolved in the tidal pools the interface of the land and the water. The beach is a good place, we like to got to the beach in the summer because it so rich in life, thus we would say life needs a good place to evolve and needs a good surface. This is why we may find life under the south pole or deeper as they are finding perhaps in lake Vostok, my belief is that life first evolved in easier places to evolved and then it added it's reach to healthier and special realms. These more extreme biomes evolution wouldn't have been able to adapt to in the start of evolution. E.g. prions viriods or viruses were not original to evolution. It's believed larger life evolved first, then the smaller life. This would be like the history of machines, we started out with big simple machines and now we are building smaller machines. So to say life on Mars would be like the least life on Earth, lake Vostok I believe is not a valid argument that doesn't follow from the premise. To say conditions are like on Mars and that life exists here under those conditions is not to say life may have ever existed on Mars under those conditions, sure life exists in extremes, but like a small business' mere 20 percent survival rate means to start life in even moderate extreme conditions may be much more improbable than extending it once it starts. Mostly my objections to life elsewhere in the solar system are about temperature and chemical extremes and the need for moderation in evolution to start life, many types of foods in moderation were the perscription for life for ancient Greeks like Hippocrates.
For life to have existed on Mars the best bet would have been in the oceans where we see evidence for erosion in the river valleys and the craters. The giant river valley Valles Marineres, "valley of the mariners" is seen. If we have the water flowing around the craters by the science of stratigraphy (from the word for "strata or layer") we could put a limit on the last time liquid water was flowing on Mars. Craters after liquid water would have no erosion. Note that in the following where I argue for a shallow ocean of mostly iron there's evidence this was of short duration and shallow because we see many craters only partially worn away.
The last erosion by water of the craters seems to put a limit on the last time that liquid water flowed on Mars. Later times had no liquid water because they would have eroded the craters more than just some over many millions of years. But the Valles Marineres took a certain amount of time to form, so before it started to form we presume there was no liquid water either, or at least that we could extend the time of liquid water from the last water flow via stratigraphy back to the time of the formation of the Valles Marineris. Or I would say if there was lots of liquid water before Vallis Marineris why wasn't it formed before then. We can therefore say when the last water flowed and then extend the reach back to the formation of this canyon, but no further would this degree of liquid water have existed.
The Vallis Marineris is 7 times the length of the grand canyon so it might seem it would have taken much longer to have formed than the Earth's own grand canyon, but the grand canyon is actually quite young, a few million years, even though the rocks that make it up are wiser and wiser like me or just my celebration! I believe the Vallis Marineris may have formed rapidly because if you look at the erosion patterns, the tributaries have a sharper dropoff than streams on Earth have Mars has two general zones, a Northern lowland and a S highland, both mostly plains. If the Vallis Marineris was formed over lots of time there would be more elaborate systems of tributaries seen, there are just the plains above and then the water seems to just fall over the side and into the Vallis Marineris and no inbetween. I believe the original crust of the highlands was therefore chemically different from the highlands because of long weathering before that. The Southern plains were sort of solidly welded together but once the water reaches the Vallis Marineris, and reaches the water of the highlands there would be chemical erosion. I think the Vallis Marineris may have been formed in just a few million years. If it were formed slowly there would have been more elaborate channels and meander patterns like we see on older rivers of Earth. When there is a system of drainage by long evolution anywhere the streams meet, the elevation and erosion of both rivers is much the same. But there are fewer rapid dropoffs except by reduced times of erosion. I believe the patterns of the Vallis Marineris show something like corrosion by acid, or perhaps by rusting and oxidation of the rocks of the N by the oxygen in the ancient air and water of Mars. some have wondered where all the water came from to begin with, the answer might be as on the Earth most of the water comes from steam of volcanoes. So Olympus Mons the largest volcanic construct in the solar system is right ahead of the Vallis Marineris, it starts where the Olympus Mons is. Thus we have a real steam from Olympus Mons and it flows right into the Vallis Marineris. This might lead to a rather large ocean in the N hemisphere of Mars. And it might simplify the chemistry of Mars. The high energy reaction of the oxidation of the formation of the Vallis Marineris would have created a sort of uniform chemistry of Mars. This is why and how all of Mars has iron everywhere, a planetwide layer of iron.
If you have the surface covered with this lake and just for two million years, this is a far shorter time than the billion or so from the formation to the evolution of life on the Earth. And all five of the chemicals of life aren't in abundance, there's just one ocean. So we think of the ocean as a sort of artificial iron ocean. And unlike the oceans of the Earth the ocean of Mars didn't have constant tides each day, to inflow nutrients and compute to higher and higher life with each cycle. About the surface area, life needs a lot of surface area to start. Of you want a good life search for a lot of life so the saying goes. The more chances to start life the more probable it will evolve. This is why on Europa with no surface area much compared to the Earth this wouldn't be more improbable for evolution of life.
If you go under the earth the temperature goes up 100 ft per degree. The gravity is weaker on Mars no doubt but there is pressure and though the water is liquid on the surface I think it may be possible there could be liquid water deeper down. The ground water might start to seep and move. Even though water moves a foot in 100 years here, it does flow so we could imagine the water would gradually seep through the rocks and start to flow. Perhaps it would flow and form channels and rivers and larger lakes like lake Vostock.. If the pools start to form we imagine a sort of hydrological cycle, that would be necessary for life to exist, but like a hydrological cycle at the least there isn't so much water. We might imagine a sort of system of life on Mars with a hydrological cycle underground. And because the gravity is lower the realm of habitable zone would be larger than the Earth's where there's heat nearer us. We imagine steam vents from these realms, and they may be possible and I think they are worth looking for. Most of the pressure on Mars would be the cause of heat not radioactivity, they find the asteroids are actually warm and in radiation. The inner pressure may thus be common to most heavanly bodies. And since no steam is seen if there are underground realms on Mars like this there is only the alternate source of water flow, the evaporation and condensation of the water for flow. If in high school science if you take a jug of water and put it on the shelf and let it evaporate, sure enough it does, not with steam we might imagine the water would trickle up and rise and this would be a way to complete the hydrological cycle. We might not have steam but the water would trickle up as it was heated, it could flow on all the roofs and back to the river channels. I have my doubts about this because in any event it would be much slower than the flow like around geothermal vents of our oceans. Remember the lack of steam vents seen puts a limit on the heat output of the pressure of Mars and thus a limit on the heat in the possible underground system if it exists. The main problem here wouldn't be lack of minerals beause the water would circulate minerals since after the shroud of iron water the other rocks reemerged by erosion, just that it would be so slow the life wouldn't have enough change. Another problem would be lower air pressure that would perhaps leak out and stop the cycle, even so with the large volume thess realms could be in due to the lower gravity and not just a narrow zone like on Earth where the pressure and temperature are too high there could be sealed off realms where life has evolved.
We may be able to calculate based on considerations like these, the actual probability of the evolution of life. It's been known now we can actually calculate how fast viruses are evolving and by doing all the possible options in iteration the virus has, we can find out how long it takes to solve the given problem we have and stay ahead of the virus by developing drugs that give us more power in time than the virus has. This is essentially like a computer, we evolve, and the virus, one computer against the other. And the same would be for life. The virus has a certain amount of computing it's a small amount but it is a computer. We can imagine the matter of life itself in tidal pools or wherever as having a certain amount of resources. It's known by some in the field of computers that any computer given enough time can solve any problem and smaller computers take more time to solve problems than bigger computers. We think of the matter on Mars as breathing the life, this was why they thought there was a false result on the experiments to see if there was life on Mars. The clay acts a lot like life and has respiration as if life had incorporated the processes of the clay into its own physiology. it's the incorporation of natural processes like these that may have started the evolution of life.
If we know all the chemicals in the tidal pool, and the tide comes in and out, we know the surface area they have, we know all the components they have we not what's necessary to be there and the advantage of having light, and so on then we may do the same thing we do with the viruses. The computing power is there, we know the resources, so we can know how long it would take for those compounds to be more, alert! And I think this method might be of worth to find out the probability of life on other worlds and whether there would life on what world. If we can calculate the probability of life by these types of equations combinted with lab work we really might not have to send expensive machines to many realms. I think there will be no life on the surface of Mars anywhere. And to calculate beforehand we may save a lot on research. And we could understand our own life better. Another possibility is to try to build self assembling machines out of the same chemicals as life may have evolved from.
To calculate what a virus does with its resources might not be nearly as valuable as what we could do with ours.
I don't believe the there was any life on Mars was of such short duration of liquid water even if there are those underground circulating rivers and stuff, the flow of water would be so slow just by evaporation and condensation, life wouldn't be able to have started.
While I don't care if there are bacteria on other worlds there are those who say thank goodness our dog is finally getting enough cheeze.
Even so we might send a probe to Europa and drop a heated probe with a heated wire down to the ocean of water. And just for the celebration of life we might see if there is any life there.
Use of the equations and as in artificial life we might improve the Drake Equation to know which Earthlike or other world to do the most research on.
For instance the Earthlike worlds with a coast with tides and most Earthlike worlds with a smaller coastline wouldn't have the advantage of computation to create the life, and for this reason I think worlds with both tides and especially if the coastlines when the life might have evolved are most extensive would have the most probability of life.
It's thought that the best move may be to find the chemicals of life in vitro, but by using these methods we might find the solutions with a mainframe, the beach of the world.
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