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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.
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.
--
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