Scientific American article
Pay Dirt: Martian Soil Fit for Earthly Life
Phoenix finds alkaline soil with plenty of minerals
By JR Minkel

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73 & clear skies from Bruno IK2WQA
Founder SETI ITALIA Team G. Cocconi

Scientific American article
Pay Dirt: Martian Soil Fit for Earthly Life
Phoenix finds alkaline soil with plenty of minerals
By JR Minkel

. . . great find eh - Thanks Bruno

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

If Mars once had liquid water in the past, as all the evidence seems to point towards, then, microbial life would have developed.

Latest reports suggest life may have started as early as 500m years after Earth formed. See here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7483451.stm

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Of course meteors could have transferred microbes from the Earth to Mars. Maybe a large chunk of meteorite could have bounced back with enough velocity to escape Earth and then eventually hit Mars. Or a Tunguska-type meteor could have gotten low enough into the atmosphere to pick up bacteria and then skipped back out, eventually to hit Mars. Maybe just some of those bacteria could have escaped incineration.

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Of course meteors could have transferred microbes from the Earth to Mars. Maybe a large chunk of meteorite could have bounced back with enough velocity to escape Earth and then eventually hit Mars. Or a Tunguska-type meteor could have gotten low enough into the atmosphere to pick up bacteria and then skipped back out, eventually to hit Mars. Maybe just some of those bacteria could have escaped incineration.

Then again, it could've been the other way around.
Life could have first originated on Mars and the come to Earth the same way...

As a believer in the panspermia theory, I think we aren't too far away from discovering that the seeds of life aren't limited to Earth, Mars, or even our own solar system. They are everywhere in the universe, looking for a suitable environment to take root.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia

Also, since the seeds are of a common code, I think life on other suitable worlds will be more similar to life here than it will be different. Sure, there will be some differences since their environments will be different, but I think they will share many similarities.

As for intelligent life, you need the right balance of resources. If you have too much resources on a lush world, intelligence may not evolve quickly. When our world was lush, big giant lizards the size of skyscrapers roamed the land. They didn't need to be too intelligent since there was something to eat at every turn. It wasn't until the Earth got smacked by an asteroid and caused competition for limited resources that intelligence started to evolve.

I think Panspermia is largely considered to be discredited within the scientific community...or at least within the astrobiological community and scientists trying to determine the origin of life.

As most biologists will tell you, Panspermia isn't really an answer; it just adds an extra dimension to the question. It also annoyingly seems to push against Occam's Razor.

An origin of life here on Earth has steadily accumulated a large body of evidence and a strong theoretical framework ever since the Miller-Urey experiment. It fits our understanding of carbon and its interactions within the early Earth's environment. Also, very recent research suggests that the building blocks of primitive genetic code may be present in our Sun's debris disk and would have rained down on Earth heavily around the time life first arose.

"Building blocks" don't equal "exogenesis." By themselves, they're merely fuel for the processes on Earth which eventually developed life.

You may find this interesting:
A video that accurately illustrates some of the solid theoretical framework around thermal vents as a mechanism in the origin of life on Earth-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg

I don't know that the idea of panspermia is discredited, but the supposed evidence is all either very inconclusive or has been totally discredited. Personally I'd like it to be true because it would make the universe a warmer, fuzzier place. But at the moment it seems pretty doubtful. And as Taurus says, it raises many questions and answers none at all.

Occam's Razor is very sharp. It's a lot more plausable to believe life originated here, no matter how quickly, than to imagine it originated in a much more hostile environment and then was carried here across dozens or millions of lightyears by mechanisms unknown. Either proposition seems to require that life be "easy" for the universe to make, but geospermia doesn't require traveling. And if life is easy then there's certain to be a lot more of it out there.

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"Good against remotes is one thing. Good against the living, that's something else." (Han Solo)

I don't know that the idea of panspermia is discredited,

In scientific community idea of panspermia is very, very, very discredited,
as Taurus says.

but the supposed evidence is all either very inconclusive or has been totally discredited. Personally I'd like it to be true because it would make the universe a warmer, fuzzier place. But at the moment it seems pretty doubtful. And as Taurus says, it raises many questions and answers none at all.

Occam's Razor is very sharp. It's a lot more plausable to believe life originated here, no matter how quickly, than to imagine it originated in a much more hostile environment and then was carried here across dozens or millions of lightyears by mechanisms unknown. Either proposition seems to require that life be "easy" for the universe to make, but geospermia doesn't require traveling. And if life is easy then there's certain to be a lot more of it out there.

I agree.

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73 & clear skies from Bruno IK2WQA
Founder SETI ITALIA Team G. Cocconi