User:Robertinventor/Simple animals could live in Martian brines - Extended Interview with planetary scientist Vlada Stamenković: Difference between revisions

:: {{WNIQ}} The temperatures for the highest levels of oxygen are really low -133 °C, so, is the idea that this oxygen would be retained when the brines warm up to more habitable temperatures during the day or seasonally? Or would the oxygen be lost as it warms up? Or - is the idea that it has to be some exotic biochemistry that works only at ultra low temperatures like Dirk Schulze-Makuch's life based on hydrogen peroxide and perchlorates internal to the cells as antifreeze?

::'''VS''': The options are both: first, cool oxygen-rich environments do not need to be habitats. They could be reservoirs packed with a necessary nutrient that can be accessed from a deeper and warmer region. Second, the major reason for limiting life at low temperature is ice nucleation, which would not occur in the type of brines that we study.

'''''(background information)''''': His first suggestion here is that the cool oxygen rich reservoirs could have warmer water come up through them from below. He doesn't say where the warm water would come from, but one possibility is from geological hot spots. Our orbiting spacecraft have not yet found any, but Olympus Mons has been active as recently as 2.5 million years ago<!-- see for instance Neukum et al in the background sources -->. If sources of warmer water could rise to the surface from below and encounter these cold oxygen-rich brines, life could make use of oxygen where the two mix.