Why do astronomers think there might be life on Mars? Detailed answer

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Why do astronomers think there might be life on Mars? Detailed answer

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Why do astronomers think there might be life on Mars?

As you know, scientists are conducting various experiments to search for life in the universe. Naturally, it is easier to explore our solar system in search of life than to study outer space. Some scientists believe that one of the places where some form of life can exist is Mars.

Why did they choose Mars? Mars is considered a twin of our Earth. In terms of distance to the Sun, Mars follows the Earth. Its diameter is half that of the Earth, and Mars makes one revolution around the Sun in almost two years. But the duration of the Martian day almost coincides with the Earth.

When observing Mars, astronomers noted some details that indicate that some form of life may exist on Mars. First, Mars, like Earth, has seasons. Indeed, with the change of seasons, changes are observed on the surface of the planet. In spring and summer, dark areas of the surface darken even more, their color from bluish-green turns to yellow. Maybe it's vegetation?

According to astronomers' forecasts, the planet's atmosphere contains a small amount of water vapor, which can contribute to the development of life. In 1887, Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer, announced that he had observed something resembling canals on the surface of Mars. "Could the Martians have built them to get water in the arid regions from the polar regions?" scientists asked.

In 1976, two American Viking spacecraft landed on the surface of the planet. With the help of equipment on board the spacecraft, the soil was examined in search of traces of life, and the results were transmitted to Earth. These studies have shown that either the presence of microorganisms is possible in the soil, or the Martian soil is completely different from the earth. If there is life on Mars, it is in a very primitive form.

Author: Likum A.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

When did the Olympic Games start?

The biggest award an athlete can receive is an Olympic gold medal. Did you know that the idea of holding the Olympic Games is over 2500 years old? According to Greek legend, the Olympic Games were organized by Hercules, the son of Zeus.

There is evidence that the first Games were held in 776 BC. e. on the fields of Olympia. They were held once every 1 years for a millennium, until in 4 AD. e. the Romans did not cancel them. The ancient Greeks considered the Games so important that they measured time by the intervals between them. Four years were called the Olympics.

The Classical Olympic Games in honor of the supreme god Zeus have been held in Greek Olympia every four years since 776 BC. e. Wars stopped during the Games. Only free male citizens were allowed to participate in them, who competed in running for short and long distances, in pentathlon (javelin throwing, running, jumping, discus throwing, wrestling), the so-called pankration (fistfight and wrestling), as well as in chariot races. Philosophers and poets took part in the Games, presenting their works there. In 394, the Roman emperor Theodosius banned them as "demonic games." They were resumed in 1896 in Athens (Olympic Games of our time) on the initiative of Baron de Coubertin. Both men and women participate in them. Since 1924, the Winter Olympic Games have also been held. The number of Olympic sports is constantly growing.

Games were the embodiment of the Greek ideal that the body, like the mind and soul, should be developed. Nothing could prevent the Games even if there was a war, it had to stop. 15 centuries later, the Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin had the idea of resuming the Olympic Games. In 1894, at his suggestion, an international congress of 15 states was convened. This congress unanimously recognized the need to revive the Games and hold them regularly, once every four years. Two years later, the first modern Olympic Games were held in a rebuilt stadium in Athens, Greece.

Today's Games include sports that did not even exist in antiquity, such as basketball, water polo, football, cycling, shooting, field hockey. The modern Olympic Games are organized by the International Olympic Committee. And each country has a National Olympic Committee, which is responsible for its country's participation in the Olympic Games.

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Large animals and deadly diseases 25.10.2015

Cancer affects not only humans but also animals. But everything is different - someone more often, someone less often. There are species that are especially resistant to cancer, and these, oddly enough, include the largest mammals: elephants and whales. Why "oddly enough"? We know that cancer starts with cells that have lost control of division. Obviously, the more cells in the body, the greater the chance that something will go wrong in one of them - during division, for example, an error can creep into the synthesized DNA chain. However, elephants, despite their size and long lifespan, get cancer even less often than smaller species. This paradox has been called the Peto paradox, after Richard Peto, a British epidemiologist at Oxford who noticed it back in the 1970s.

Obviously, long-lived large animals have some additional mechanisms that suppress the occurrence of malignant tumors. Among the genes on which the development of cancer depends, there are proto-oncogenes and anti-oncogenes. If the first ones start to work not as they should, the cells "go crazy" and become cancerous; accordingly, the same will happen if the anti-oncogenes that monitor whether the cells behave correctly are broken.

Two years ago, researchers at the Institute for Development in Montpellier proposed a model that took into account the behavior of proto-oncogenes and anti-oncogenes depending on the size of the animal. The model simulated different distributions of mutations over several thousand generations. The conclusion turned out to be this: proto-oncogenes and anti-oncogenes react differently in evolution to an increase in body weight. The greater the body weight, the more difficult it is to activate the genes that can provoke a tumor.

One of the mutations that makes it more difficult to activate proto-oncogenes may be due to the fact that the number of tumor suppressors in the genome simply increases. Joshua D. Schiffman of the University of Utah and colleagues from the University of Arizona and the University of Pennsylvania write about this in their article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. First, the authors of the work analyzed the mortality statistics of elephants, and again once again made sure that they are really resistant to cancer more than many other species: only 5% of pachyderms die from tumors, while, for example, in hyena-like dogs, cancer kills 8%, not talking about 25% of people.

Genome analysis has shown that African elephants have as many as 40 copies of the p53 gene, while Asian elephants have between 30 and 40. This gene is one of the best known anti-oncogenes. The p53 protein recognizes damage in DNA, and if there are enough of them, it turns on the genes responsible for apoptosis - programmed cell suicide. A large amount of genetic damage makes the cell dangerous for the whole organism, so the easiest way is to get rid of it altogether. Obviously, it is the huge number of copies of p53 that arose in their genome millions of years ago that helps elephants avoid cancer (humans, by the way, have only two copies of p53).

You can, of course, do otherwise - try to repair damaged DNA, however, when elephant cells were irradiated with ionizing radiation, no activation of DNA-repair genes and proteins was observed, but the cells began to actively die. That is, the elephantine way to avoid a malignant tumor is to simply kill the spoiled cell in time. One has only to regret that evolution could not provide our genome with an extra dozen copies of p53; perhaps in the future, biotechnology will allow such an operation to be performed, and new people will be born with increased protection against cancer.

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