Chlorophyll on Mars? (1 Viewer)

[CharlesD]

Brian,

Interesting point. Maybe (if this observation turns out to be actual chlorphyll) this is something analagous to lichen? Maybe this hypothetical Martian lifeform has adapted from earlier, more hospitipal, times and has managed to survive in an environmental niche, taking what materials it needs from the very rocks themselves?

This is what makes the idea of exobiology (or exogeology) so interesting to me. The laws of physics are the same, but the environment, history and details are different from those on Earth. If this observation does pan out I believe it would be impaerative to go "all out" in our exploration of Mars. We should send dozens of orbiters, landers and rovers at every lauch opportunity, and of course send humans there as soon as is possible.

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Machine 'intelligence' is another facinating topic. Right now I believe we are incredibly far away of creating true machine intelligence, and further more I don't think we know enough to even know if true machine-based intelligence is even possible.

Computers are incredibly complex creations, but at the basic level they are only capable of very simple operations. Any pseudo-intelligence that is displayed by a computer comes from its programmer.

Whether repeated simple numerical calculations can ever emulate intelligence is unclear, and at this point, we certainly don't understand the mechanism of intelligence well enough to even think about simulating it.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

we might live to see humans landing and walking on Mars

Sorry Jack, but I disagree with you there. I'LL be dead (which assumes anybody that much older than me will be too) before any of that happens.....sorry, I'm just being pessimistic. :frowning:
But seriously, I agree with the peer review thing. While scientists are more-often-than-not nobel in their pursuits, all they really want to do is get their work published, peer reviewed, and hopefully cited by other scientists so their work is meaningful. I heard it's the ultimate downer when you've conducted research, publish the results, get it peer reviewed, and HAVE no one cite your work. Ah, the toils of PH. D's.....
There's the possibility of chlorophyll on Mars they say? I wonder what kind it is.....

 

[Julie K]

Dome,
I think you're being a tad too pessimistic. If anyone can ever conclusively prove the existance of present or past life on Mars, then I think there will be quite a push to send humans to Mars. The general public controls the NASA budget, and the general public has a fascination with Mars. Can you imagine what it would be like if someone could conclusively point to a real live Martian? Even if it is just a bacteria or single-celled plant I would like to think that most folks, once those other issues which are not to be named settled down, would be excited.
As an aside, this is one of those things that really irks me about those "Mars face" folks. They continually claim that NASA is covering up evidence of a Martian civilization. Geez, but why anyone cover up something that would forever end your budget troubles? I know, I shouldn't try to apply logic or reason to this kind of thing...

 

[Jeff Pryor]

Life on Mars. Hmmm...I'm one of those people who are genuinely interested in the Face and other supposed artifacts in the Cydonia region. But aside from that, I do believe life exists on Mars, or once did when the planet had oceans. And if we can prove it, then there's a very good chance life of some kind exists elswhere in the solar system, if not the galaxy and the universe. Other good candidates for extraterrestrial life would be Europa and Titan. Our solar system contains so many different kinds of worlds, who knows what we will find.

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As for artificial intelligence, I believe that if it ever happens it will be by accident. We might build a computer one day, maybe the most advanced computer of that time, that will eventually and without warning begin to become self-aware, but we will not have the slightest idea how we did it.

 

[Jay Taylor]

First posted by BrianW:
That the brute force of a calculating machine can be utilized to win a chess match is no reason to believe that intelligent machines will ever exist. Those who say that there will never be intelligent machines (those that have not been silenced, that is) still stand on solid ground since an intelligent machine has yet to be created. Show me a machine that enjoys winning a game a chess, and I’ll believe that intelligent machines can exist.

Of course you are right Brian. I incorrectly described the analogy and the opinion of many people before computer chess games were developed. I should have described the situation as “Many thought that machines would never be developed that could beat them at a game of strategy that previously only humans could play, such as chess.” Now we take such things for granted.
I have no doubt that intelligent machines will eventually be developed. They may be parallel processing machines with billions of processors. The Connection Machines CM-1 & CM-2 with 65,536 parallel processors were a good start:
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My point to all of this being that the search for extraterrestrial life forms and the development of artificial intelligence may take similar paths and face similar opposition. Confirming whether or not chlorophyll is actually present on Mars is one of the exciting first steps in this journey.
Jay Taylor

 

[BrianW]

Thanks, Charles, for that insight. Your comment about the diminishing hospitality of the Martian environment and the notion that life may derive nutrients mostly from minerals reminds me of the ecosystems recently found around undersea volcanic vents – very inhospitable, almost no nutrients, yet a complex ecosystem of just a few organisms thrives.
And speaking of the Face of Mars, I recently watched the latest episode of Invader Zim (another brilliant episode) and couldn’t help but think of this thread. I’ll never be able to look at the Cydonian landscape again without thinking of the, um, squishy consequences if we don’t get to Mars before some invading armada.

 

[Danny R]

Show me a machine that enjoys winning a game a chess, and I’ll believe that intelligent machines can exist.

What is your definition of machine? Since our bodies are chemical machines, I can safely say I've got just such an intelligent machine in my head. But of course you are refering to an artificial device created solely by humans.

Developing a true AI is a certainty I believe. Can it be done now? Probably not in the near future. The brain contains billions of nerves... each one interconnected to thousands of others.

Electrical CPU's today don't come near to this complexity yet, having handfuls of connections for each transistor, and numbering only in the millions of total components each.

Of course since the circuits of any eventual AI will probably come close to duplicating the way our neurons work. So will the naysayers think we haven't actually done the job and just copied what we already had?

Adding a comment to another topic expressed above, I have always failed to understand why the existence of alien life poses any threat to any religeon here on earth. Nothing I've ever read says Earth is the EXCLUSIVE place of any dieties creation. To feel threatened seems to me an extention of the "center of the universe" belief that Galileo was fighting the leaders of his day about.

 

[Jay Taylor]

Being very careful where this thread is leading:

There are many reasons that some people feel threatened by discovering life on other planets. One reason is that the scenario from the movie “Independence Day” may take place. They don’t want signals to be sent to stellar systems such as ours, using focused high power transmitters such as the one at Arecibo, Puerto Rico. They fear what may happen if there is an answer.

Another reason is some people won’t feel as special if they discover that they are not one of the most intelligent beings in the Universe. Humans are currently one of the most intelligent creatures known. What happens when we encounter extraterrestrial life forms whose intelligence dwarfs our own? This is the same problem we may eventually face with artificial intelligence in machines.

But in my opinion the main reason some people fear discovering intelligent life elsewhere delves into a forbidden subject on this forum and we shouldn’t go there.

 

[Holadem]

intelligent creatures known

(mphasis mine).
I am curious as to who the competition might be?
--
Holadem

 

[Jay Taylor]

Animals with a high brain to body mass ratio are thought of by some scientists to be the most intelligent. One of Carl Sagan’s books, “The Dragons of Eden” has a chart showing this ratio for various animals.

As I recall the animals with the highest brain to mass ratio were (I don’t know the correct order):

Several different species of Dolphins

Several different types of Whales

Humans

Great Apes

Sorry I can’t be more specific. It was many years ago when I saw the chart.

Before discounting the idea of dolphins and whales having a comparable intelligence to humans, consider how advanced our civilization would be if humans had no arms or legs.

Jay Taylor

 

[CharlesD]

As far as the religion angle goes I have heard well known "religious leaders" in the US guarantee that, based on scripture, there is no intelligent life in the universe other than on Earth. I do not share their religious beliefs so I have no idea how correct their interpretation may or may not be.

I don't know if machine intelligence is possible or not. It would be a mistake to equate the number of neural connections in the human brain with numbers of transistors in a computer chip. The most advanced chips essentially do no more than early CPUs with a fraction of the number of transistors. All that extra circuitry is designed to essentially speed up those same basic set of operations.

AT the core it is still doing some basic math, storing and retrieving the results and comparing their values, that is all. When computers do clever things its because one or more clever humans have figured out every detail of that clever thing and written a program to tell the computer how to do it. I would argue that we don't know enough to even know whether we can emulate intelligence with computers, no matter how fast they multiply numbers and no matter how many numbers they add multiply and divide at the same time.

 

[Dennis Reno]

...so I have no idea how correct their interpretation may or may not be.

Since, by definition, it is their interpretation, I would venture that they don't speak for everyone, even those that share the same religion.

Any word on when NASA is going to launch the mission that is supposed to return samples from Mars?

 

[Ashley Seymour]

Chlorophyll on Mars? Ok, so we send a team of scientists to Mars to do research. But up their baggage limit and give them enough MRE's for many years. Because they should stay there and not come home. Columbus discovered what all but the Vikings though was a new world. He brought back, or is purported to have, sexually transmitted diseases. Then De-Sotto set out on a mission of conquest and brought enough European diseases to virtually wipe out the Native American population.

You know, a series of unmanned probes would do a pretty effective job and a reasonable cost. And they would be disposable.

How long before a machine is as intelligent as a human and can pass a Turing Test? From 30-50 years. Very simply, in 1950 paper Alan Turing described a concept of a test where a human judge interviews both a computer and one or more human foils using terminals. If the human judge is unable to reliably unmask the computer then the computer wins.

Now, I don't know what the name of the test is where the computer then gets up, walks off hand in hand with his little wifey computer, puts on some Frank Sinatra records and works on making a bunch of little computers.

 

[CharlesD]

But Ashley, no probe we can make is a substitute for a trained, knowledgeable human on the spot. No probe could replace a geologist or biologist standing right there when it comes to finding and choosing the most useful samples from the Martian surface, not until we can make machines that can appreciate Sinatra anyway

 

[Ashley Seymour]

Charles,

I carried on this discussion in another thread recently. But you are right. Today. But even a crash program to get to Mars would be out there 20 years. In that time our probes and machines will be the equal of any human explorer on the Martian, or any other planet surface. And how many expeditions will we send? One more in 25 years, then 30 years, and then on a more regular basis? The further we go in time the more our machines, and computers will be developed and we won't need to send humans.

If we are watching from Earth and want a machine to look under a rock, we send the signal up and a few minutes later we know what is there. But the reason we would have been tiped off to the idea of looking under the rock, would because the machine would have suggested it. And it probably wouldn't have wasted the time to ask us anyway.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking the current state of computer and AI technology is the basis for making determinations of what we will do years out in the future. The exponential growth of these machines will in the future obviate many things that we do now.

 

[Max Leung]

Before discounting the idea of dolphins and whales having a comparable intelligence to humans, consider how advanced our civilization would be if humans had no arms or legs.

Good thing giant squids and giant octupi have teeny brains (ratio-wise), otherwise they'd be masters of the planet...their tentacles are their arms, legs, hands, and mouths (um, sorta)!
My interpretation of human evolution is that of a very very long-term feedback model. The first protohumans had slightly bigger brains, and slightly more useful appendages than the typical hoofed and pawed mammals. So which is it? They got smarter because of better dexterity, or bigger brains? The answer: BOTH! One feeds into the other, at various stages of species evolution. This would be analogus to Moore's Law...over time, the complexity of (emergent) behavior as a result of this process grows exponentially over time.
Another analogy: A queen bee larvae begins life eating and sleeping, and ends it as a super-organism consisting of thousands of bees which gather nector, build new nests, nurse young, communicate the location of food, and so forth. All within a span of a year or less.
It could be argued that a bees-hive, ant colonies, or termite nests, when each seen as a single organism, exhibit behaviors that rival that of most of the higher organisms on this planet.
Forget the whales, dolphins, apes, and humans: The insects have it made!

 

[Julie K]

Good thing giant squids and giant octupi have teeny brains (ratio-wise),

Actually, octupuses (the prefered spelling) have the largest brain of the invertebrates and have good short and long term memory. They can learn by trial and error and remember what works. They have eyesight as good as ours. But perhaps the reason they haven't done better for themselves (although they do inhabit virtually every bit of the sea) is that (1) they are solitary animals and (2) most only live for 1 or 2 years. As a further, totally pointless nitpick, squids have eight arms and two tentacles, octopuses have eight arms and no tentacles!

The Mars sample return missions were originally going to begin in 2005. The entire Mars exploration plan was reworked after the MCO and MPL failures and now the earliest date for a sample return is 2011 or later. Of course, if conclusive proof of life is found soon, this schedule might be accelerated.

Ashley, I think you're being way too optomistic about machine capability. Even if we can construct machines that are nearly human-like in capability here on Earth, we need those machines to be small, light-weight, heat/cold resistant, shock resistant, radiation hard, and be able to run off of low power, before they can be sent to Mars. I'll bet that will be much harder to achieve.

 

[Jay Taylor]

AI researchers aren’t comparing transistors to neurons. They’re comparing processors to neurons, each complete with it’s own memory and interface to other processors. The Connection Machine contained 65,536 processors, not transistors, each with it’s own RAM and self-changeable interface circuitry. A better analogy to a single neuron than a transistor would be your entire home computer.
There are numerous links to web sites describing The Connection Machines CM-1 & CM-2 in detail but here’s an excerpt from this link:
Link Removed

, hence the name "Connection Machine".

Eventually we will have machines with billions of processors.
Although this may not happen in our lifetimes I believe that a long term goal is for machines with perhaps billions of processors to go beyond passing the Turing test. One of the reasons for developing AI in machines is so that it can solve complex problems that humans are unable to resolve. I would hope that eventually its responses to a Turing test would be so astonishingly intelligent that it would not be considered to be human.
Jay Taylor
(Edited by Jay Taylor on April 7th to reduce agitation level. )

 

[Max Leung]

Ah! I've only been studying insects and mammals and people recently. As gross as bugs are, some days they're much more likeable than people.
What's the difference between an arm and tentacle on a octopus and squid? I vaguely remember something about octopus having suckers and squid having claw(s). Or maybe it's the other way around. It's been a while since I had squid and octopus sushi!

 

[Julie K]

Tentacles are generally longer than arms and have suckers only at the tip instead of along the whole appendage. Although, as in the case of the giant squid, that tip is a flattened club containing hundreds of suckers. The tentacles grab the prey, then transfer it to the arms and finally to the mouth. Both squids and octopuses have sharp parrot-like beaks.
BTW, I agree with you about the bugs