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Mars Channels Discovered; Possible Aquatic Origin
Carey Frey writes " CNN reported today that 'NASA scientists have uncovered
evidence of wide, ancient channels that could have formed from the flow of enormous volumes of water.' The movie Mission to Mars opens tonight. I suppose this is all just a coincidence?"
Yeah, right. The production crew spent literally weeks planning the trip, getting to Mars and digging all those channels. "Coincidence," indeed!
Ok everyone calm down.
There still remains the chance that these "water canals" could be nothing more than an underground subway system for a race of super-intelligent beings.
Let's not fly off the handle and start talking water before we're sure it's not just something simple.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
The NASA scientists use a laser-based system to detect fluctuations in the surface conditions that enable them to infer the existence of very large underground channels that could have been created by vast flows of water when Mars was much younger. As importantly, the information confirms that Mars used to be in a state of great geologic upheval, as demonstrated by the enormous latent volcanoes on the surface.
Very interesting article; this much water on a planet creates the prospect that life may have one day existed on Mars. Also, I think I might be pretty close to a first post. Oh well.
In a word, no. They've already known a lot about visible outbreak channels just based on photographic evidence, but these are actually buried. The were found by doing tricks with gravitometers and the like. The Mars stuff at JPL is definitely worth looking at. The high resolution topographic maps from MOLA are particularly interesting- especially while reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
This is another good example of waiting for the right time to release information.
It is very obvious that this is no coincidence, but I am not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. Trying to manipulate people to get attention is a bad thing. Trying to advertise science is a good thing. I guess this is a little bit of both. All I hope is that this information is not "modified" to sound more interesting.
This fits into the same category as sending old Senators to space and finding rocks form Mars which supposedly contain microbes.
did anyone else see the commercial for 'mission to mars' where the guy says 'that DNA looks human!' after looking at a tiny snip of a DNA helix rotating in full 3-d glory(thats how real geneticists do it! .....right?)? heh, yea i can frequenty determine the species of origin of some random DNA by simply simply looking at a few base pairs on a monitor! puhlease.
I guess the people who made the movie (Touchstone I think, Disney owns them I know) are kinda in hot water because one of the trailers says "Twenty five years of conspiracy are about to be unveiled" and NASA consulted HEAVILY on the movie (as they have done for MANY Disney movies in the past)... NASA didn't know that trailer was going to run and from their reaction, it seems they're quite miffed about it. Apparently its all about the treatment of the face on mars in the movie..
From pre-reviews I've heard, there are points in the movie where the audiences actually shouted "GOOD! I'm glad you're dead!" and the reviews haven't been all that good but I think I'll see it anyways...
On the fact of life on Mars now or in the past, its way possible. Just yesterday I read on the AP Wire that in this metal mine in California they've found these microbes that thrive in 115F environments and eat iron and secrete sulphuric acid... never before seen and they have no idea how they got there and anyone previously would have guessed life would never have existed there. Similar to the things that live down at the vents at the ocean floor miles down (well, 2) every guess beforehand would have been that life could not exist in such a toxic environment. After hearin about all that, I don't see how anyone would be really stupefied if they found microbes and maybe bigger things on Mars, though Europa looks amazingly promising in comparison...
Esperandi
"They're definately from water all right," said Dr. Willie Makeit, Scientist from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, "Well, either that or massive quantities of hot grits, but come on, that wouldn't be possible..."
30 years after finding the canals scientists concluded today that they could have been created from flowing water, to what do they attribute the lag time?
"Pong," says Makeit, "when the initial data came back in the 70's Pong had just came out and we were all playing it on the big screens here at the Center, we must have missed it and shelved the data."
Still, there is much controvercy, not all the scientists here at Goddard belive they were created by flowing water.
Jimmy de Loche, a newcommer at NASA thinks there was a more interesting explaination to the canals formation.
"If you look at the ridges, they're not smooth, kindof jagged, this suggests fragmantations, a blast of some sort, what I think happened is that a civilization not unlike our own nuked itself into extinction on Mars, poor bastards. No doubt a war over hot grits and Natilie Portman open sourced and Petrified statues."
When pressed on the issue of where he came to this conclusion, Mr. Makeit goes into convulsions, rants almost incoherently about slashdot, troll tuesday, and "Will Rob fucking impliment submit box moderation already!". This reporter was very taken aback with these words.
What do they mean? Who is Rob? Trolls in this day and age?
Tune in tomorrow for answers to these and other important questions, same Linux-Time, same Linux-Channel.
-- iCEBaLM
In addition to the discovery of channels on Mars, previously called 'canals,' the following headlines began to appear....
-- Scientists detect existance of 'eathre,' previously called 'aether;' now known to be the medium in which the Planck-sized subspace foam floats.
-- Observatory locates giant space dragon living in the Moon's trojan points that sporadically emerges to swallow the moon in an event called an 'eklypps.'
-- Biologists observe quantum-tunneling effect of organic particles that allows manure to generate flies spontaneously.
...and, of course:
-- Giant flaming objects expected to fall from sky soon because of the wrath of the great god Iridium.
--
Well... that is one theory.
The second more plausible theory put forth by a certain group of NASA engineers is suggesting that these canals are simply remnants of "lava" flows that occurred when the red planet was still "hot".
I think I'll go with the second theory myself. We see much the same phenomena on volcanic islands such as Hawaii. Underground lava flows creating rivers of molten rock.
Of course everyone likes to toss around the water theory, who wouldn't? But realistically, these channels are due more to the lithography and not a fictious hydrosphere.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
If you enjoy pulp science fiction, try Ben Bova's _MARS_. It's an easy breezy read.
If you want a 3-book-long lovemaking session to the planet Mars, I highly suggest Kim Stanley Robinson's _RED MARS_, _GREEN MARS_, and _BLUE MARS_. They get progressively more boring and uninspired as the series progresses through more and more abstract characters, but they are still extremely decent reads that make a slight effort to represent Mars in all it's beauty. The franchise milker _THE MARTIANS_ is also out as of a few months ago. Haven't checked it out, but I expect it to be just as fatally flawed as the others. Oh well.
Yeah... And there's also Ray Bradbury's _THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES_.. Or was it CS Lewis? I forget and don't care, because I didn't like it.Oh yeah, and there is now an official Mars Flag or something. It's three vertical stripes going [RED] [GREEN] [BLUE}. Quite cool.
Mars is vastly more interesting than you might expect. Read up on it if you like.
http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/billa/t np/mars.html is an EXCELLENT start if you want to learn more about the planet at a glance.
http://www.marssociety.org links you to the Mars Society, a delusional group of Mars Freaks who want to settle the planet or something. But they're still cool.
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/ has a very supercool solar system simulator that can show you what the planets look like from almost anywhere at almost any time. It's quite accurate and cool. Not open source yet, but i'm sure with some coaxing and good project management, they might be willing to release it. It's written in C and shit, so it'd port pretty easy i'd imagine. The data sets might not be public domain though. Oh well. Go see it anyway.
Enjoy.
-troll taker
Have a look at this link Think Mars. Its a site advocating human exploration of Mars. There's a petition that you can sign to urge world leaders to commit themselves to the exploration of mars.
Even in Mars's (1/3 g?, I forget) gravity, I really doubt that a 200 km wide cavity could hold up. On Earth with good hard rock, 50 m is about all you get. What am I missing here?
I'm going to get flamed for this, but I am sick and tired about hearing about news stories and movies that glorify the concept of "extraterrestrial life." Oooh, look! Some canals on Mars! That obviously means that there was intelligent life there once, right? And there probably still is! Hello? No! These days it seems you can't look anywhere without hearing about some sort of search for life. They say there's life on Jupiter's moons. My tax money is being criminally spent on a "Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence."
.. that they are created beings and that they are loved by their Creator unless they are homosexual. We've already got great states in the country, like Kansas, who are taking the proper step of banning the theory of evolution from the classroom. We need to go one step further and ban movies and stories like this, because they advance the "idea" of life beyond Earth as being possible, and that destroys the value that human life has. James Cameron and his film crew may be a bunch of chemicals that rose out of a pit of primordial goo, but I am special, and God loves me.
How long have they been looking for life? A long time, that's how long. What do they have to show for it? Absolutely nothing. Yet they continue to perform this "search" with the same zeal that they started it with. Why not? They've got people giving them money hand over fist, apparently oblivious to the fact that it would be less wasteful to simply light the money on fire.
This country's liberal establishment is big on things like Europa, SETI, and Mission to Mars. This is the same establishment whose members personally slaughtered four million children in the womb last year. If they can show, or at least advance the idea that life on Earth is not unique, then they further their agenda. Their agenda is to reduce the value of human life. That is what they stand for. If they are allowed to portray life as some sort of cosmic accident, people will be more receptive to their crimes against humanity and against morality.
When you've got programs like SETI, moons like Europa, and movies like Mission to Mars, it's no wonder our kids are filling each other full of bullet holes. They need to be told that they are not some sort of cosmic accident
Mars is essentially in the same orbit... somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
I can't tell you how good it is to see a decent Christian witnessing on Slashdot.
You're absolutely right about how this is behind all those kids shooting each other. Obviously, if there's "life" on other planets, that means life on Earth is pretty worthless, doesn't it? Plentiful throughout the galaxy, cheap as dirt: The two concepts are inseparable. It's also a sly move by the media to condition people to accept the evolution hypothesis -- and with government funding, too! What else is the space program but a big supposed "demonstration" of the supposed fact that the Earth is nothing special! Well, if God went that far out of his way to create it, I guess he must have had some reason. But try telling them that. Some super expensive technology is all it is, just government money wasted on fake science for the fat cats in Boston to "prove" their little theories.
I'm telling you, I've had about enough of it.
------------------
By the way, I have to tell you about this, this is just not right: Just now, as I was telling you about all this, my computer just sat here for four minutes, literally, and my browser wouldn't do a thing, everything but the title on the window went white and the computer, you know, the CPU part, it went on with this grinding noise and a light went on and stayed on while it made the noise for four whole minutes! I don't think that's right, and I made sure to buy Windows 95 because I know it works and I can trust a big company like that. It's just not right! My boy said it was "swapping" but he don't know nothing, who's it swapping with? That's nonsense! What does he know, he just plays with some silly Slacker Slackwearer program every day after school! And something called Apache, I know what that's about -- the Indians were pagans, I wasn't born yesterday! Then he tells me he's learning a language to talk to the computer -- he calls it "See", well I told him "I can't 'See' it from here!" and I laughed. Well you know how boys can be, he got all hurt and all that, but he'll have to learn to take a joke if he's going to give people crazy talk about talking to a computer in a special language for it! I'll have to put a stop to that nonsense right now. He's getting old enough to be looking for a job, not playing silly games. Computers are a good hobby but he should be learning an honest trade.
yeah, that 2001 really sucked. I guess that's why it's on so many critics' top 20 lists and stuff :)
---
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Yucky doo, what a lousy movie. I just came back from its opening at Silver City in Kitchener-Waterloo (Ontario, Canada :P) and it was not a good movie.
The movie starts off well, but slowly and steadily deteriorates until the final blow - the alien. Anyone who sees it will immediately understand what I mean.
Save yourself 122 minutes and watch something better.
OFTC: By the community, for the community
I had the unfortunate pleasure of seeing this movie tonight. Although the special effects are Ok the story is conived and drags on and on (2 hours+)
If you want to see it I recommend waiting for the video
Kastor
Let's see:
Cripes. I think we all need to lay off the "X-Files".
Have you SEEN this movie? No? Good, don't.
It's about the cheesiest thing since starship troopers. Tim robbins and gary sinise (sp?) can't save this movie from being a cheese-fest. It has almost every cliche from "no, i won't let you die" to "the mission should have been yours." Awful direction, a botched script. Not to mention obvious product placement! Dr. Pepper, SGI, etc..
The one good thing about the movie is that it is a realistic portrayal of what an actual mars mission could look like in thirty years. That was cool.
Jim was a CS major as an undergraduate (Brown) and got a MS in CS (Stanford). But he love space stuff so he decided to become a planetary geologist. Jim was (still is?) an ice hockey goalie. This should really tell you something about him. He once crashed the IBM mainframe (JCL, yuck) by screwing around with variables in APL program. He actually liked APL. He is the only person I know that was told by his thesis adviser to stop writing more chapters (papers) for his thesis. No Jim, you're done, stop writing!
Maria Zuber used to play women's basketball as an undergrad (Penn). She also played with us on our intramural basketball team. We sucked, but Maria did okay. The other teams would let her shoot as she was the only female in the entire league. And should could hit the outside shot.
In our small building, the floor that I had my office on only had one woman on it (our secretary). When Maria moved to our floor we had an office warming party to celebrate her introduction into what we called the last bastillion of male supremacy. This meant beer then more beer, then off to the bar.
When Maria got married, a bunch of us gave her a basketball, ears of corn (don't ask), and a car baby seat as her wedding present. She wasn't pregnant, but what the hell, she was Catholic and came from a large family. BTW, the priest thought it was a great gift.:-)
BTW, I got this nick (craw) when I was in grad school.
The word you were looking for was 'recall'...
They did kind of rock, in that cheezy pre-science science-fiction sort of way.. The Venus series was better than 'The Martian Chronicles', but 'Back to the Stone Age' was the best of the bunch.. Not nearly as unbelievable as the rest, well, except for the basic premise that the earth is a hollow shell. I never could do anything but laugh about the 150 year-old Civil War officer on Mars who communicated by sheer force of will.. I guess that's why they had him discover the 'Gridley wave' independantly in the later books..
Why the hell did he have this 'Jason Gridley' character linking most/all of his series? Except as a weak expositive device, he served as nothing more than a running joke!
.sig: Now legally binding!
A note: even though my pseudo-review may seem negative, I genuinely enjoyed the movie and I think it's interesting and important to see.
Just came back from it about 3 hours ago. I found it to be exceptionally short and anticlimatic. I also saw a Discovery channel show about the production of the movie, and I was surprised to learn the extent NASA's influence. The movie excapes pesky concepts like "physics" and "reality."
I was going to describe in depth the flaws in the movie's logic in referring to human (and Martian) DNA, as long as several errors relating to the physics in question. Realizing it was quite boring and I couldn't fit all the errors, I ditched it. Simply put, the movie creates a tremendous over-simplification of DNA and the human genome, and generally ignores the laws of high school physics. The thing they did the best was to copy 2001: A Space Oddessy and include rotating circular space stations to reduce cheesy zero-g filming. Dizzing camera movement, done by someone obviously vying for a photography nod, sort of kills that though.
One high point: Story Musgrave (a real astronaut) was in the film for a few minutes, albeit without lines. A couple low points: product placement is all over this movie. An Isuzu concept car sits on the screen for the first ten minutes of the film. Some Dr. Pepper saves the space shuttle. M&M's are used twice as to create (over-simplified) DNA models. An SGI display screen is used to relay video transmissions from earth to the space shuttle. Kawasaki and Pennzoil cover the Mars Rover as if it was featured on Nascar.
Even more offtopic...here's a shot from the commercial.
Welcome to Slashdot. Please do not feed the trolls.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
My date and I just sat there and picked apart all the screwy crap in the movie (at least I got to see it as a complimentary screening).
* Computer generated voices do not asphixicate (sp) from the lack of oxygen (in the scene with the "micrometeorite" )
* Repeat after me: KE = 1/2 mv^2. You know how fast the micrometerite have to travel to punch thru the spaceship's hull *and* armor? (Even the older apollo modules have a "bumper" for micrometeriorites".
* Even at 50% atmosphere, your eyeballs will be popping. Atmospheric pressure is 14.7 psi, 50% atm will mean a difference of 7 lbs per sq inch.
* Why would you want to transmit "DNA" as 3D coordinates? Woudn't transmitting it as "AGTC" be a LOT more efficient? And even if you *did* transmit it in 3D coords, you would still need a forth character to denote the DNA nucleoside bases. And, man, do you have any idea how big the Human DNA Genome is?
* Death by decompression is a lot worse than what they showed...
* Signal Latency from Mars is NOT 20 minutes, it's a lot lower than that.
Well, aside from that, I thought that the Kawasaki rover and the SGI panels were a cute touch 8-)
-=- SiKnight
Ok people hold on your horses. If NASA is claiming that it has discovered any channels and is giving an "aquatic origin" to them then they are just playing pure BS. Because for the last 20 years a lot of people has been talking about this and getting pissed off for talking too much. Do you think this is fantasy? Absolutely not. People were even kicked out of Yahoo.com's lists in 1996 for these ideas. In fact it was the first time I noted a clear use of censorship on the net.
Note that this has nothing to do with Hoagland and his cohortes. Yes, a lot of people around this trend has a pro-Hoagland view but also there are a lot who can't see this bastard 10 kilometers in shoot range. And also a lot of them talked about these channels in views completely far from any aliens, ET's or Shadow Govs.
What ruled people inside and around NASA to hunt for the dissidence is still not fully clear. But the fact his that there is a big lobby around NASA that tries to establish the idea that Mars is "old, dry and quiet". Not at all. Mars was highly wet for quite a long time. Somewhere in time. maybe 1-2 billions , maybe a few millions years ago (people don't agree quite on this) something happened on Mars. It could be one impact. I and other people consider they were several big impacts. Mars turned into a cauldron. Due to impact, Mars waterways ran wild. In some places water managed to dig channels with a few kilometers deep (I, personally, analysed such photos in 1996). It even flew and fell back in some places. And probably Mars went so hot that it started to evaporate. Due to the low gravitation, most of it was lost into Space.
Btw. Cydonia is mostly the result of such event. Specially if one analyses the South-Eastern/North eastern region of the plateau, then one can see a large evidence of a powerful washout among landscape formations. But it is not the most spectacular. The most spectacular I have seen was a weird erosion that suggested that water acted there as a fountain falling on rock. And made a hole 1 kilometer wide.
Not clear. What is clear is that humanity (at least US society) is largely willing to overlook the sanctity of life, vis-a-vis abortion (visited upon the only form of human life that is defined as 100% innocent of any crime of thought or deed).
But while theoretically God could create Life again, the Judeo-Christian God is widely represented as having made Himself quite clear that we're a "one-shot deal".
Though, other religions view creation as ever-occurring, or at least repeating, and some of those "other religions" include Christ-based (and perhaps Judaism-based) ones.
Personally, what I believe is that it is our valuing of human life that strengthens both our willingness and our ability to preserve all life, throughout the universe, regardless of size or "intelligence", in the long run, if that is indeed an aspect of our "destiny". If we don't value each human life as unique and special, the slope from there to not valuing any form of life at all is steep, short, and slippery.
Indeed, if that ever becomes widely accepted as "fact", we should then become a better species.
But that isn't quite what is being promoted by much of today's scientific/educational system, which generally depicts life as nearly inevitable given a (comparatively) small amount of the right elements, input energy (solar or geothermal), and a modest amount of time (a billion or so years).
Note that I agree strongly with the sentiments you express, just not so much with your belief that "they" wish to prove them as true! So thanks for your beautiful post!
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.