Life Leaves Subtle Signature in the Lay of the Land, UC Berkeley Researcher Report

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/r.../25_life.shtml

UC Berkeley Press Release

Life leaves subtle signature in the lay of the land, UC Berkeley
researchers report

By Robert Sanders
25 January 2006

BERKELEY - One of the paradoxes of recent explorations of the Martian
surface is that the more we see of the planet, the more it looks like
Earth, despite a very big difference: Complex life forms have existed
for billions of years on Earth, while Mars never saw life bigger than a
microbe, if that.

"The rounded hills, meandering stream channels, deltas and alluvial
fans
are all shockingly familiar," said William E. Dietrich, professor of
earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley.
"This caused us to ask: Can we tell from topography alone, and in the
absence of the obvious influence of humans, that life pervades the
Earth? Does life matter?"

In a paper published in the Jan. 26 issue of the journal Nature,
Dietrich and graduate student J. Taylor Perron reported, to their
surprise, no distinct signature of life in the landforms of Earth.

"Despite the profound influence of biota on erosion processes and
landscape evolution, surprisingly,...there are no landforms that can
exist
only in the presence of life and, thus, an abiotic Earth probably would
present no unfamiliar landscapes," said Dietrich.

Instead, Dietrich and Perron propose that life - everything from the
lowest plants to large grazing animals - creates a subtle effect on the
land not obvious to the casual eye: more of the "beautiful, rounded
hills" typical of Earth's vegetated areas, and fewer sharp, rocky
ridges.

"Rounded hills are the purest expression of life's influence on
geomorphology," Dietrich said. "If we could walk across an Earth on
which life has been eliminated, we would still see rounded hills, steep
bedrock mountains, meandering rivers, etc., but their relative
frequency
would be different."

When a NASA scientist acknowledged to Dietrich a few years ago that he
saw nothing in the Martian landscape that didn't have a parallel on
Earth, Dietrich began thinking about what effects life does have on
landforms and whether there is anything distinctive about the
topography
of planets with life, versus those without life.

"One of the least known things about our planet is how the atmosphere,
the lithosphere and the oceans interact with life to create landforms,"
said Dietrich, a geomorphologist who for more than 33 years has studied
the Earth's erosional processes. "A review of recent research in Earth
history leads us to suggest that life may have strongly contributed to
the development of the great glacial cycles, and even influenced the
evolution of plate tectonics."

One of the main effects of life on the landscape is erosion, he noted.
Vegetation tends to protect hills from erosion: Landslides often occur
in the first rains following a fire. But vegetation also speeds erosion
by breaking up the rock into smaller pieces.

"Everywhere you look, biotic activity is causing sediment to move down
hill, and most of that sediment is created by life," he said. "Tree
roots, gophers and wombats all dig into the soil and raise it, tearing
up the underlying bedrock and turning it into rubble that tumbles
downhill."

Because the shape of the land in many locations is a balance between
river erosion, which tends to cut steeply into a slope's bedrock, and
the biotically-driven spreading of soil downslope, which tends to round
off the sharp edges, Dietrich and Perron thought that rounded hills
would be a signature of life. This proved to be untrue, however, as
their colleague Ron Amundson and graduate student Justine Owen, both of
the campus's Department of Environmental Science, Policy and
Management,
discovered in the lifeless Atacama Desert in Chile, where rounded hills
covered with soil are produced by salt weathering from the nearby
ocean.

"There are other things on Mars, such as freeze-thaw activity, that can
break rock" to create the rounded hills seen in photos taken by NASA's
rovers, Perron said.

They also looked at river meanders, which on Earth are influenced by
streamside vegetation. But Mars shows meanders, too, and studies on
Earth have shown that rivers cut into bedrock or frozen ground can
create meanders identical to those created by vegetation.

The steepness of river courses might be a signature, too, they thought:
Coarser, less weathered sediment would erode into the streams, causing
the river to steepen and the ridges to become higher. But this also is
seen in Earth's mountains.

"It's not hard to argue that vegetation affects the pattern of rainfall
and, recently, it has been shown that rainfall patterns affect the
height, width and symmetry of mountains, but this would not produce a
unique landform," Dietrich said. "Without life, there would still be
asymmetric mountains."

Their conclusion, that the relative frequency of rounded versus angular
landforms would change depending on the presence of life, won't be
testable until elevation maps of the surfaces of other planets are
available at resolutions of a few meters or less. "Some of the most
salient differences between landscapes with and without life are caused
by processes that operate at small scales," Perron said.

Dietrich noted that limited areas of Mars' surface have been mapped at
two-meter resolution, which is better than most maps of the Earth. He
is
one of the leaders of a National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported
project to map in high resolution the surface of the Earth using LIDAR
(LIght Detection And Ranging) technology. Dietrich co-founded the
National Center of Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM), a joint project
between UC Berkeley and the University of Florida to conduct LIDAR
mapping showing not only the tops of vegetation, but also the bare
ground as if denuded of vegetation. The research by Dietrich and Perron
was funded by NSF's National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics, the NSF
Graduate Research Fellowship Program and NASA's Astrobiology Institute.

wrote in message
oups.com...
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/r.../25_life.shtml

UC Berkeley Press Release

Life leaves subtle signature in the lay of the land, UC Berkeley
researchers report

By Robert Sanders
25 January 2006

BERKELEY -

snipped....


When a NASA scientist acknowledged to Dietrich a few years ago that he
saw nothing in the Martian landscape that didn't have a parallel on
Earth,


Excuse me! Is this a bad joke!

Please show me an earth landscape some four times the size of
North Dakota completely covered, inundated and defined by
these.......countless billions of /identical/ and unexplained things
like these.......

http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/180...5L5L6.jpg.html

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...nity_m014.html


Show me on earth such a thing. I dare you.

After a year the geologists still can't explain them
without organics being involved. They can't, ask them.
They won't answer beyond the Nasa mandated description
of 'hematite rich spheres'. A description, btw is not an
identification.

They won't even talk about the spheres anymore.
Discovery non grata~

The following pdf could be considered the defining paper so far on the
findings of the Mars Opportunity rover. After a full year on the
surface a detailed overview of the discoveries are presented.
The authors of this paper read like a who's-who of the astrobiology
and geology communities.


An astrobiological perspective on Meridiani Planum
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~kaufman/ppt...y/Knoll_05.pdf



In the above extensive paper the sum total of references to the much
discussed and mysterious spheres, or blueberries as Nasa termed
them, follows:


"The remaining 10% is comprised of hematite, most
conspicuously as 2-6 mm spheroidal concretions that
occur throughout the outcrop"


That's it! In twenty words or less.

Now we must conclude one of two things from this

1) The spheres are uninteresting, they are unimportant.
Less than twenty words is all they deserve.

Or

2) The researchers are dodging the issue to the maximum
extent possible. They mention them, but that's it.

Which is it??? And why???


They chose Meridiani because of the strong and unusual signature
of hematite there. A form of iron deposition which very typically
is associated with bodies of water. Such iron deposition on earth
is also /almost always/ the byproduct of microbial activity.
But those facts we knew in advance.

The hematite is why they went there, where did it come from?

It turns out the hematite is entirely in the mysterious spheres or
blueberries found everywhere at Meridiani. Only traces of hematite
are found in the soil or rocks the spheres are embedded in, it's
......only in the spheres.

Determining the source of the hematite requires understanding
the processes that formed the spheres. They were the
'talk of the town' from day one, the most eagerly awaitied Nasa
new conference of the entire mission was the blueberry bowl
measurements. Figuring the spheres out would merely be...

THE PRIMARY SCIENCE GOAL

Science is about figuring out the unknown
NOT RUNNING FROM IT.

What that paper does ...not... say, is by far the most interesting
result of the rover missions to date.

In twenty words or less.



Jonathan



Various wide angle images of the spheres.

http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/136...5L7L7.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/180...5L5L6.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/123...5L6L6.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/530...5L5L6.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/183...5L7L7.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/131...5L7L7.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/020...4L5L6.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/012...5L5L6.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/569...5L7L7.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/013...5L7L7.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/533...5L5L6.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/389...5L7L7.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/440...5L5L6.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/505...5L6L6.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/152...5L7L7.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/162...5L7L7.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/164...5L7L7.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/164...5L7L7.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/170...5L5L6.jpg.html



Various micro images of the spheres

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...nity_m014.html
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2956M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2956M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2933M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2953M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...nity_m182.html
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2953M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2953M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2959M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2957M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2933M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2957M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2956M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2956M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2936M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2956M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2907M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2977M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2977M2M1.HTML












Dietrich began thinking about what effects life does have on
landforms and whether there is anything distinctive about the
topography
of planets with life, versus those without life.

"One of the least known things about our planet is how the atmosphere,
the lithosphere and the oceans interact with life to create landforms,"
said Dietrich, a geomorphologist who for more than 33 years has studied
the Earth's erosional processes. "A review of recent research in Earth
history leads us to suggest that life may have strongly contributed to
the development of the great glacial cycles, and even influenced the
evolution of plate tectonics."

One of the main effects of life on the landscape is erosion, he noted.
Vegetation tends to protect hills from erosion: Landslides often occur
in the first rains following a fire. But vegetation also speeds erosion
by breaking up the rock into smaller pieces.

"Everywhere you look, biotic activity is causing sediment to move down
hill, and most of that sediment is created by life," he said. "Tree
roots, gophers and wombats all dig into the soil and raise it, tearing
up the underlying bedrock and turning it into rubble that tumbles
downhill."

Because the shape of the land in many locations is a balance between
river erosion, which tends to cut steeply into a slope's bedrock, and
the biotically-driven spreading of soil downslope, which tends to round
off the sharp edges, Dietrich and Perron thought that rounded hills
would be a signature of life. This proved to be untrue, however, as
their colleague Ron Amundson and graduate student Justine Owen, both of
the campus's Department of Environmental Science, Policy and
Management,
discovered in the lifeless Atacama Desert in Chile, where rounded hills
covered with soil are produced by salt weathering from the nearby
ocean.

"There are other things on Mars, such as freeze-thaw activity, that can
break rock" to create the rounded hills seen in photos taken by NASA's
rovers, Perron said.

They also looked at river meanders, which on Earth are influenced by
streamside vegetation. But Mars shows meanders, too, and studies on
Earth have shown that rivers cut into bedrock or frozen ground can
create meanders identical to those created by vegetation.

The steepness of river courses might be a signature, too, they thought:
Coarser, less weathered sediment would erode into the streams, causing
the river to steepen and the ridges to become higher. But this also is
seen in Earth's mountains.

"It's not hard to argue that vegetation affects the pattern of rainfall
and, recently, it has been shown that rainfall patterns affect the
height, width and symmetry of mountains, but this would not produce a
unique landform," Dietrich said. "Without life, there would still be
asymmetric mountains."

Their conclusion, that the relative frequency of rounded versus angular
landforms would change depending on the presence of life, won't be
testable until elevation maps of the surfaces of other planets are
available at resolutions of a few meters or less. "Some of the most
salient differences between landscapes with and without life are caused
by processes that operate at small scales," Perron said.

Dietrich noted that limited areas of Mars' surface have been mapped at
two-meter resolution, which is better than most maps of the Earth. He
is
one of the leaders of a National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported
project to map in high resolution the surface of the Earth using LIDAR
(LIght Detection And Ranging) technology. Dietrich co-founded the
National Center of Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM), a joint project
between UC Berkeley and the University of Florida to conduct LIDAR
mapping showing not only the tops of vegetation, but also the bare
ground as if denuded of vegetation. The research by Dietrich and Perron
was funded by NSF's National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics, the NSF
Graduate Research Fellowship Program and NASA's Astrobiology Institute.

Subtle until life evolves to the point of making bulldozers and
concrete. I wouldn't think Lake Powell would be hard to spot.

Greg

"Don't Be Evil" wrote in message
oups.com...

Subtle until life evolves to the point of making bulldozers and
concrete. I wouldn't think Lake Powell would be hard to spot.


Intelligence is unnatural, it's a fluke, a one in a million earth like
planets mutation that also happened to get very lucky. So lucky
that intelligence thrives even though it's destined to destroy
itself.

Intelligence is a plague that only alters and destroys what is natural.
Science must search for those few remaining places where intelligence
has yet to corrupt, so that we can know what the planet should
really look like.

Intelligence, as the antithesis to natural, is evil.

We have the modern scientific method to thank for
turning the greatest and most wondrous creation
in the entire known universe....into pornography.
Oh I'm sorry, pornography is the natural human
form. Excuse me, I forgot.

The scientific world is backwards, it's upside down.
Good is evil, evil is good...it's insane. I used to wonder
what it must have been like to live back in the
Dark Ages.

Ya know, we don't have to wonder, just look.
We're smack in the middle of it.



Jonathan

s












Greg

"j" == jonathan writes:

j "Don't Be Evil" wrote in message
j oups.com...

Subtle until life evolves to the point of making bulldozers and
concrete. I wouldn't think Lake Powell would be hard to spot.

j Intelligence is unnatural, it's a fluke, a one in a million earth
j like planets mutation that also happened to get very lucky. So
j lucky that intelligence thrives even though it's destined to
j destroy itself.

Only human arrogance would equate intelligence with humanity.

In other words, there is more than one intelligent species on this planet.

--
Lt. Lazio, HTML police | e-mail:
No means no, stop rape. | http://patriot.net/%7Ejlazio/
sci.astro FAQ at http://sciastro.astronomy.net/sci.astro.html

Intelligence, as the antithesis to natural, is evil.

.... hum... maybe yours is really so (^_^). What's your problem ? Too
much traffic in your area ? Your boss is a D.H. ? You are using windows
3.1 ? What's wrong with you to say such depressing things ?

I presume that intelligence is the spontaneous tendency of nature to
reach "happiness" and self consciousness.
I have the feeling that nature tends to life and life tends to
intelligence, and intelligence tends to happiness.

Of course we are in the realm of philosophy and these are just
opinions. We have to wait some millenium or so to get some signal from
outer-space civilizations... then just ask them.

Cheers,

Greg Ruo