Mars Astrobiology: Recent Status and Progress - Planetary Exploration and Science: Recent Results and Advances - page 236

and for a viable future international controlled Mars terraforming, for the firm and
continuous future international manned exploration of that planet to, ultimately,
colonize it for an equilibrated sustainable Human use (de Morais 2004 ).

8.9 Conclusions

We began this chapter about Mars astrobiology telling about the history of observa-
tions and studies of the “Red Planet”; analyzed several scientific and technological
information regarding the mixture of physical, astronomical, mathematical, chem-
ical, geological, biological, and engineering information on Mars; showed many
informative images; described up-to-date data on the search for possible extinct or
extant life at Mars, with the role of liquid water within that planet; and discussed
the probable future manned presence on Mars (de Morais 2004 ).
Of all subjects in this quest for life on Mars. via several missions to it, I have
three conclusions:

1. Missions' data and its analyses show there is no compelling strong evidence
of biological activity, past or presently, on planet Mars. But it was confirmed
that Mars had a large reservoir of liquid water in the past ( 2 Gyrs ago) and it
also confirmed the presence of a great quantity of water ice on its subsurface.
It was also discovered biological-important hydrated minerals and carbonate
salts present on Mars. Those associated with the planet's internal geochemical
heat possibly contributed to the evolution from geochemical reactions into
biogeochemical ones in subsurface permafrost and hot springs. It needed much
more mathematical calculations and the greater reduction of statistical error bars
in order to fit these above biogeochemical parameters (kinetics of reactions,
entropy, thermodynamics of geochemical transformations, molecular quantum
potentials, spin associations, biochemical functions, etc.) to the observed col-
lected data (de Morais 2004 );
2. Astrobiology is an interdisciplinary science. We are searching for biosignatures
in this other planet surmising that the natural processes for the arisen of
life, which took place here on planet Earth, are the same to the ones which
hypothetically took place on Mars. This is an epistemological empirical thinking.
But we know from the history of science that empirics is a mental tool which can
lead to “better” or “not better” scientific conclusions about any phenomena. As an
example, our empirical thinking on physics at the submolecular scale was proven
to be completely wrong, and we had to formulate other set of “better” models -
quantum physics. So, nowadays even if we are not finding any sign of biological-
related organic chemistry on Mars, we should not discard the possibility that
geochemical reactions within Mars might have followed other paths, e.g., via
quantum physics (tunneling, etc.), evolving into biochemical reactions which we
cannot detect with present focus and techniques. We could be open minded about
the possibility that there could exist other kinds of metabolisms not involving
water directly (de Morais 2004 );