The Planet Quiz Show

	The Planet Quiz Show

Short Answer: Earth!

Long Answer:

The Viking Lander experiments of 1976 showed that the chances for active biology occurring on the surface of Mars were slim. Viking detected no organic compounds of any kind in the Martian soil. Thirty years later with the Mars Global Surveyor, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Mars Odyssey spacecraft circling the planet and two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, active on its surface, our ideas about life on Mars are once again in flux. Martian surface features show that they have been modified by water. Oceans existed on Mars for intervals of time great enough for them to have become salty, and Mars has sedimentary rocks, a clear indication of liquid water having been present for long periods of time. Although life on the surface of Mars may be absent, life at depth beneath the surface in warm reservoirs of groundwater may be abundant. The Mars Global Surveyor appears to have discovered numerous channels on the surface of Mars which have carried groundwater released during the last several years from the interior of Mars.

Current thought places most of Earth’s biomass, the amount of living matter, beneath the oceans where continental plates are being pushed up and are separating, some of it in conditions well above the boiling point of water.

During the summer of 1996, NASA and Stanford University scientists believed that they had discovered fossilized bacteria contained in a rock lobbed off Mars about 16 million years ago when a large meteorite struck the Red Planet. The rock eventually found its way to Earth and fell as a meteorite about 13,000 years ago in Antarctica where it was discovered on December 27, 1984. A second Martian meteorite with similar “proto-life” has also been investigated. The consensus at present is that these meteorites did not contain any fossilized organic matter.

Europa, the smallest of the four large Galilean satellites circling Jupiter, may have a warm water-ammonia ocean beneath its thin icy crust, making it a candidate for extraterrestrial life. In the future, NASA plans to send a probe to Europa to drill beneath its icy crust.

Groundwater on Mars: A gully on the wall of an unnamed crater in Terra Sirenum, at 36.6°S, 161.8°W, was initially imaged by Mars (Global Surveyor) Orbital Camera MOC on December 22, 2001. It showed nothing noteworthy at the location where a change would later be observed. A group of nearby gullies exhibited an unusual patch of light-toned material. As part of the routine campaign to re-image gully sites using the MOC, another image of this location was acquired on 24 April 2005 (image S05-01463). A new light-toned deposit had appeared in what was otherwise a nondescript gully. This deposit was imaged again by MOC on 26 August 2005, at a time when the Sun angle and season were the same as in the original December 2001 image, to confirm that indeed the light-toned feature was something new, not just a trick of differing lighting conditions. In August 2005, the feature was still present. Modified NASA caption… The enlarged image below shows the same Martian crater after modification by groundwater between 2001 and 2005.

IS THIS GUY FOR REAL? Some life forms on Earth tend to get a little crazy at times! Don't ever say you cannot be in two places at once. Here, Mr. Becker is in four places at the same time: Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. This is exactly the place on Earth where these four states come together.

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