Slashdot Mirror
Evidence Of Water On Mars
mondrian writes: "Space.com is reporting that NASA will announce next week it has found evidence of water on the Red Planet." And an Anonymous Coward writes: "The BBC is reporting that NASA has found unconfirmed evidence of water springs in the Valles Marineris, the deepest feature of the Martian landscape. Apparently this is liquid water, not the frozen water that most were expecting to be found at the poles. If confirmed, the search for Martian life will take a big change in direction because of this."
Could it be Ponce DeLeon(?) was on the wrong planet?
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www.chowda.net
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YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
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Liquid water *does* exist only in the handramats :-)
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
What a breakthrough! One shouldn't discount the possibility of little microbes swimming about in the water. A space probe would be in order, provided NASA figures out what a meter is.
Nasawatch has some more good coverage of this.
License: By reading this you are agreeing that you agree with me.
The first turning point should be up...especially right before spattering into the surface again.
Send another Rover, Mars needs gadgets.
I believe Dan Quayle had some very probing, worthwhile thoughts on this:
"There is water on Mars, which means there is oxygen. Since there is oxygen, this means we can breathe."
We need this person in a decision-making capacity where space exploration is concerned.
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grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Let us hope that the water is of higher quality than what comes out of the tap at my place, because nothing can survive in this stuff....
all persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental. - Kurt Vonnegut
If there were to be life in that pool, regardless of what evolutionary level, can you imagine what the benefits to science would be? Einstein's visit to the Galapagos yielded the results it did because the ecosystem was almost completely isolated from the outside.
Anything found in the pits of Mars would be completely isolated from Earth's biosphere. Not a couple dozen miles of ocean - completely isolated. Would it have DNA? Cell membranes? Mitocondria, which many theorize to be a symobite within the cell, almost a seperate lifeform? Does the lighter gravity of Mars let the cell size be larger? Does unicellular life have more possibilitites on Mars because of this increased cell size? Or is it all a question of surface area? Or, is there no life at all?
We can conclude nothing about life on other planets because we have only one sample. Earth. Surely it's a bargain to go to Mars and double the sample size, and if there were to be life on Mars, it'd likely be here.
Millions of questions, and maybe a few answers...
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
a long-lost Martian swimming pool. So they like their water a little chilly...
people seem to be missing the obvious mix here: sugar + water mean only one thing: we can now make Kool-aid in space.
- j
Hopefully this will mean far more interest in the exploration of Mars. In fact I would go so far as to predict that this discovery makes a manned mission to mars in the nearer future far more likely, not to mention easier.
And if life is found (which seems quite possible considering the strange places micro-organisms have been found), goverments around the world will be slavering to try to get their hands on a possible new biological weapon. Er.. I mean, to try to find out where it came from and whether it's related to life on Earth, of course.
HEADLINE: NASA FINDS OCEAN ON MARS! PLANS TO EXPAND NEW HAWAII RESORT!
This is just a sad truth. For NASA to get to Mars, we need a space station and a moon base. This is going to take time, money, a lot of political schmozzing, and more time. Thus, they got to keep the fire stoked.
perhaps you meant Darwin?
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
newton vs. pound, no meters involved...unless you want to be really anal and point out that a N = kg * m / s^2, but that's beside my point, you're still a moron.= =======
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If ignorance is bliss, wipe the smile off my face
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
"Don't be green..."
"We've got a bug!"
I can't wait to get my hands on a Noisy Crickett...
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
Not that i'm in any position to criticize you, but i personally prefer "f"ing things with a little more substance than space= =
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If ignorance is bliss, wipe the smile off my face
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
THINK ABOUT THIS (_Y_) -----me mooning you!
atleast my kind isn't afraid to post anonymously fag.
can't wait till they find out there is sand on mars! ;)
Got shack?
ShackCentral Network
Worlds best gaming network!!!
Martians may have submarines but if the water isn't too deep they may only have galoshes which is good for us because then they won't be able to sneak up on us without making a slosh-slosh sound and we will go "A-ha!" and shoot them with a high-powered particle beam gun which I am designing for NASA only to be denied further funding after 30 years of my life have been put into it, oh the futility, perhaps I could become an astroswimmer and dart through the Martian river system like a trout, Martian trout.
My question is: how did they find this out? Did they see a telescope looking back at them from twice as far away and realized it was their reflection, or what? Don't get me wrong, I'm not questioning /.'s sources, I'm just wondering if NASA really is omniscient or something. And if so, could they please share the secret with me???
That water probably follows a high tide/low tide like we do, (maybe with not as much enthusiasm, but hey)... Which will erode the rock and strata around it, giving us an excellent way to guage the planets evolution. Just like we do with our ice core samples in Antarctica.
Given a lack of Oxygen in the atmosphere, and much of it tied up in an iron oxide mineral (hence the color red), theres a good possibility that IF anything died in that water, it would be preserved for quite some time.
Now that we have a starting point, we can start searching for water migratory patterns from and to that body... Discovery of underground springs, sedimentary layers, and possibly even point to an extinct water cycle on that planet. With a river cutting channels through rock, the study of that planets formation will become much easier, as (just like earth) you can begin to add plate tectonics into the picture sooner. Underground springs and aquifers could, using nanotechnology, be explored providing a map of the martian underground.
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
newton vs. pound, no meters involved
Point taken.
unless you want to be really anal
And you certainly aren't anal, right?
but that's beside my point, you're still a moron.
I see. I suppose I am also a "fucktard".
Now, if you stick to posts like this and you should be fine.
If they really have discovered H2O on the planet Mars then the possibility of life being there is extremely high. This doesn't mean little green men, but microscopic organisms. Only sure fire way to prove it is to successfully send something over there to take readings. And we haven't been to successful with that. So its all a question of when.
Maybe by the time we do, those little microbs will have evolved into little green men.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
I submitted this story, with a link to this brief article 5 hours ago and it was rejected. I don't want to whine, but its a shame to see the same story posted as news HOURS after it broke, but quoting a different website.
The only effective difference between the posting on Spaceref.com and Space.com is the fact that the former is more cautious about what is effectively still a rumour, and the later is willing to declare it fact when we won't actually know most of the details until they make the official announcement.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Space.com is reporting that NASA will announce next week it has found evidence of water on the Red Planet."
Typical slashdot, refusing to wait for the formal announcement and let NASA get the water out to the mirrors first.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Reading Maxim magazine one day, and they had a little sidebar on imported ice. Yes sir, at about $40 for 2 ice cubes, you too can have imported ice, direct from France, with your imported wine on that imported table. It's the ultimate sign of vanity! Well, until someone goes and discovers water on other planets and imports water from there....
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The following message was received from a radio telescope in South America and decoded using a massive experimental cluster of Palm computers:
Hello. This is Mars. We noticed you've been looking at our water. Feel free to visit, but be prepared to pay our very expensive water park entrance fees. Also, there will be an airport fee assessed for each passenger landed on our planet.
By the way, that last probe you tried to land here is in our custody. We already patented spacecraft 4,000 years ago, and we will naturally expect to collect royalties on the numerous patent violations you have committed over the last few decades.
In addition we have noticed several transmissions made by past probes of sounds and images which had been previously copyrighted.
Finally, we have taken note of the large amounts of space junk produced by your planet. As 90% of our population are attorneys, they have really been looking forward to such an attractive source of lawsuit revenues.
Please enjoy our planet. Bring your own sunblock, and try not to pollute the water.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
...there will always be a nagging doubt about where it came from. I mean, what if we didn't sterilize one of our previous probes properly?
Now, the first thing that leaps to mind is that they would be able to recognize the DNA of the microbes as being either common to Earth or not. OTOH, how fast could Earth microbes mutate to adapt to Mars?
For that matter, how do they sterilize probes anyway? Is it really safe to assume that the cold vacuum of space kills all microbes?
So, I hope they find some really funky 3-eyed lungfish flapping around in the mud down there. Then we'll know for sure.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"Scientists discover water, water pipe on Mars. Apparently the war against drugs is only beggining..."
Einstein's visit to the Galapagos yielded the results it did because the ecosystem was almost completely isolated from the outside.
Don't you mean Darwin?
user@host 1% make love
Remember the Viking lander? I've had an itching case of technolust for a manned Mars mission for longer than I can remember.
It would be just swell if there turned out to be life on Mars (OK, if it were completely unrelated to life on earth, it would be Fucking Amazing). But it'll be plenty amazing to me, and to plenty of other people I know, if we can just get there.
Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?
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Socrates was asked where he was from. He replied not "Athens," but "The world."
some of the sugar found in the heavens.
If nothing else, the water, the sugar and the red dirt should combine to make some serious Kool-Aid(tm).
I have heard a lot of theories about matter flying into the Earth from Mars depositing life here.
Has anyone thought about the potential for large amounts of matter coming from another source outside of our galaxy that could have potentially collided with the Earth and with Mars?
Since I'm not a big planetary buff, what are the timelines of the estimated beginning of life on Earth and Mars? Do they coincide (within a few million years)? Any input on this idea would be cool.
-S
Scott Ruttencutter
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
Sugar in space, water on Mars and earth.
Did it ever occur to you that we might be molecules in someones slurpie/slushy/squishy drink?
Hhhhmm... no sleep for me tonight... going to be up all night thinking about that one.
The tunnel of light at the end? The ride up the straw... that explains things.
Oh, and to the bitchy AC complaining about the slogan: ;-p
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I like to watch.
No one else seems to have thrown this out, so I figure I may as well. Does it seem odd to anyone else that at a time when the Mars program is coming under attack from all sides for ineptitude and wasting taxpayers' dollars, NASA releases this startling evidence?
And, in case you didn't read the article, they're not finding rivers, lakes, or even pools. They're talking about some seepage, either from the floor of very deep canyons or the sides of cliffs in said deep canyons. Not be over cynical, but NASA has a hard time locating a probe correctly on the surface of Mars. Is it really accurate to say that they can detect tiny amounts of seepage? I have a feeling that these findings are quite ambiguous and one possibility is that they're seepage, but it's neither the only nor the most likely of possibilities. Couple that with the extreme thinness of the Martian atmosphere (which prevents liquid water from existing at the average elevation) and the fact that the atmosphere is not that much thicker in the canyons and you have the makings for an incredible disappointment the likes of which haven't been seen since Viking.
But leave it Slashdot to blow it out of proportion. Perhaps we should wait until NASA actually makes the statement until we make plans for wakeboarding on a foreign planet, no?
The above post should be read to the tune of Baz Lehrman's "Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen" speech.
Insightful, yes, funny, but when you're 11, you shouldn't be reading on /. all day. Go out and program! Write your own version of Pac-Man, complete with homing missiles, explosions, and profuse gore.
(Rant: )
Once you start on Slashdot, there's no going back. You start getting Karma, then you start craving more. First you post stuff that's insightful, maybe informative... after a while it trickles down to a few points of "interesting" here and there. "5"'s become rarer and rarer, then you do the unthinkable.
You resort to humor. All out "hope they don't think this is a troll", karma-whoring humor, the kind that only flies on Slashdot.
And before you know it, Slashdot is your browser's home page, and it starts taking up all of your free time. All of a sudden, there's precious little time to program, and you can forget about keeping your pretty GPA above C-level :-).
I broke 90 today. Karma that is. Weeks ago I've stopped reading /. all the time, but the Karma keeps pouring in. I feel dirty. I'm a karma whore. I've only been on this frickin' forum since November, and I'm at 90+ karma. I could troll all day and all night for a week and still post at (Score: 2) by default.
I've moderated 6 times, mostly on weeks when I was too busy to post.
People think I'm funny, insightful, interesting (and overrated, but those moderators suck! ;).
These are presumably rational adults, and I'm not even 18!
It's with this in mind, that I've decided to take a vacation from Slashdot. That means checking /. no more than three times a day. Three shall be the number of the checkings, and the number of the checkings shall be three. Check thou not 4, neither check thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out!
Okay... sorry, just letting off steam.
And that also counts checking my "User Info" to see how much Karma I've gotten. Honestly, the stuff's pretty much useless once you reach 25, and can post at Score: 2. Of course, it's always nice to have some padding in case the moderators get bitchy.
And no more than 1 post a day from me, either. Maybe two if I'm on a roll. But that's it, except on days ending in "y". Then three's the limit.
I'm gonna sit down and program, play video games, go with friends to see movies, maybe get a <gasp> j-o-b, and maybe find a like-minded member of the female species to play videogames with, or whatever it is you're supposed to do with the opposite sex.
I'm going to code a decent game or two this summer. Maybe just one if I actually succeed at finding that elusive MOS. (You can bet your ass they don't hang out in chat rooms!)
I'll update my personal web page. Read more books. (An even 50/50 between reference manuals and sci-fi/fantasy novels).
Just as long as I can refrain from posting to Slashdot. Hey, maybe this means that I can finally disable cookies on my browser. (Mozilla's still crashy, even M16, so I can't use it for day to day stuff. M13 was good, though, and I did use that as my main browser for a time.)
Maybe I'll even update my Sourceforge project.
Whatever I do, I've just got to stay clear of this forum... it's addictive. As one reader's sig says, "I miss my free time, Rob". I agree so wholeheartedly it's not even +1, funny anymore.
I do have a suggestion, though. Weight the karma based on the posts you're trying to achieve.
If you think too many people are clowning around, make a "funny" post worth .5 karma and an "informative" post worth 1.5. If you think it's getting to dry, post a silly story and reverse the above. Change it around, but keep posters aware of the current settings.
And get rid of that damned "overrated" markdown. Moderators should be given better tools than "overrated" to articulate exactly what is wrong with that post.
Finally, kudos to the best change I've seen in /., that is the change of the default threshold from 0 to 1. ACs (and, yes I'm being hypocritical right now, but bear with me) keep getting lamer all the time.
So, I'm out of here for a while... tomorrow I'm going with a group of close friends (some of whom are actually, Females, to see Titan A.E., regardless of what Jon Katz may think of it [IMO, Katz himself is proof that just because someone bashes something/someone, it doesn't mean that they deserve that criticism.] Jon, kudos for Hellmouth and Geeks, both of which I strongly identified with. Keep cranking out stuff like that, and leave movie reviews to videogame-playing, anime junkie coder types like CmdrTaco :-).
And a big kudos to the Geeks In Space. Love the show (and no, I'm not taking a vacation from listening to GiS! Crank out that episode 31!)
Ahh... in the morning I get to decide whether to use SDL, Clanlib, or GGI for my game. So many choices, so little time. And, of course, it'll be GPL'ed so all y'all can enjoy it :-).
Good night, Slashdot. See you less often, for the time being.
But please don't take it personally. (It's not you, it's just me... I think I need more space... it's too much of a commitment... can't we just be friends? ;-)
Feel free to moderate me into oblivion, or to leave it at the default AC score of 0. It really makes little difference to me, and honestly the impact you'd be making either way is negligible. Nobody reads at zero anyway, unless they want to see posts like this one.
Perhaps we need to get rid of "topics" as they're known, and have a giant message board for all stories. That could get interesting.
Your poster geek-in-training, the kind who's going to keep free software alive as the old demigods fall off the 'Net... signing off.
Look, everyone here seems to be thinking suger + water = Kool-Aid. This is all well and good, but there are bigger issues at stake. The real issue is: If we can find some intergalctic yeast, we can turn the universe into one gigantic brewery. Now that's practical science. Suger + water + yeast = FUN!
"If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated"
Do you ever see words such as "their's", or "her's"? Then how in the name of Hell can you possibly think that "it's" is appropriate in this context?
The problem is that, unfortunately, I do see words such as "their's" or "her's" a lot lately...probably for the same reason that I see "it's" used incorrectly a lot (and probably by the same people).
People, Plurals and possessives do not have apostrophes. Thank you.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If water is to be found on Mars, especially liquid water then there may be a hope for life on the red planet yet. However, for life to survive this liquid water must be fairly stable, in other words it cannot be freezing and evaporating but must remain liquid for extended periods of time. Considering the annual mean temperature of Mars it is very doubtful that this could be the case, but then who knows. Life has turned up in some interesting spots on the earth that no one every thought could happen. Just my two cents...
Nathan P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
Domains for $15
One of the more interesting ramifications of this and the sugar article is that it shows just how much we can learn about space without ever actually going there ourselves.
:)
The water was discovered by an orbiting satellite, and the sugar was discovered by analysing radio emissions, of all things. So we can prove that it's there without actually looking at them ourselves.
Moral of the story: It's very possible that funding Space Exploration with people isn't as important as funding cosmological research, which seems to get results far beyond anything we could imagine. The fact that we can discern that there's sugar in the center of the galaxy and water on Mars when we can't even travel there is really impressive.
Besides which, if we sent an astronaut to Mars they'd probably get his height wrong.
Nicholas
disclaimer: opinions contained therein are not neccessarily those of my employer.
Hell, I'd like to drink that water. Shaken not stirred.
Coca-cola announced today that it intended to purchase the planet Mars. We've decided it would be easy to set up a new production site on mars now that there is water available in addition to the recently discovered Space Sugar (soon to be TM). Since thats the two main ingredients for our number one selling soft drink, the rest should be easy to either import, or if we're lucky, find on mars.
In an added bonus, the planet is already Red so little redecoration is needed by our part. We haven't figured out how much paint it will take to paint a white curving stripe across the planet though.
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
That's probably why the martians keep shooting down our spacecraft...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The problem is that, unfortunately, I do see words such as "their's" or "her's" a lot lately.
Don't you mean that you see those words "alot" lately?
:-D
However, "Galapagos^2" is still a good title, as Mars is certainly a lot more isolated from most of the life on Eartch than the Galapogos isles. It would be Galapagos^3 when we first find life outside of the Solar system...
Mars probe killed by rocks? No way, says Captain Nemo, A big squid did it.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
I know. Man, you're anal. I just have a habit of using an apostrophe when using the possesive form of a word, and of course in the case of "it", this is wrong. My mistake, lack of proofreading. Sorry.
On a side note - who moderated me down? That's not a troll. Look at my post in the last thread - that's a troll (and proud of it!) Dan Quale did actually say that, and I think it's relevant.
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grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Come on People there are plenty of other reasons to goto mars, its just that the governments of the world are more concerned with making people happy than exploration and scientific reaserch.
Just becuase we find water and maybe life on mars makes the public go giddy. Though water says nothing of intellegent life. Take Earth for example tonnes of water, No sign of intellegent life in a 100 light year radius.
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Ender
Nothing to see here
That was about the funniest thing I've read in quite a while.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Lets try this:
You're a humorless bastard, and your moderation point is moot, since more people mooded him up. but I'm sure you and your butt feel real special right now.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I now have 117 karma. My heighest was 118. my lowest was -9 :P
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Sorry, you need a pretty much world wide ocean in order to get tides. The Mars moons are tiny, but the sun causes a modest tide, so that's not the problem.
When Alexander the great reached the Indian Ocean while conquering the known world, his sailors had very big problems with the tide, since it does not exist even in the Mediterranean Sea, which is quite big, and has a connection to the Ocean.
The tides in a mud pool on a planet with much weaker tide forces would be a billion or so times smaller. (Not that I've made any calculations.)
It's certainly possible. There's been a fair bit of serious discussion that part of the reason that life started as rapidly as it did on Earth (basically about as soon as it could survive at all) because it was seeded with amino acids and stuff from comets. Those comets obviously coalesced from the same nebula that the solar system did, and thus the material in them antedates the solar system.
But there's a big difference between picking up organic matter from outer space and actually picking up living organisms! That organic matter was probably randomly distributed between the handedness of various asymetrical biomolecules. That means that the "choices" made by Earth life (i.e. left handed amino acids and right handed sugars) were just random. Deeper details, like the number and identity of DNA bases, amino acids, etc. could be radically different and still support viable life.
In contrast, life transported from one planet to another would not just retain its choices about which handedness of molecules to use, but also a host of other things. Some of those things include the basic structure of the cell, translation tables to convert DNA sequences to protein sequences, and even some amount of the sequence of highly conserved portions of the genome. Believe it or not, you could probably find actual genetic links between the Human genome and the genome of Martian bacteria if, in fact, they came from a common origin!
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
and spelled things the right way...
Get yer "I like the colour of this metre of optical fibre" ass back the lory, prettyboy.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
IANASOO (I Am Not A Something-or-Other)
I mean, damn, if it's so difficult to glark an acronym that you provide the expanded form, don't use it! Your common-part acronym, odd-part expanded notation is, frankly, a joy to behold.
Actually, according to
THE PLANET MARS AND ITS INHABITANTS
BY
EROS URIDES (A MARTIAN),
Even the north and south Arctic regions, after their seasonal thaws blossom forth with vegetal growth, as astronomers on your Earth have observed. These regions produce their quota of food by being utilized as pasturage for our cattle. Immense amounts of forage are also gathered for the long Martian winters, when a greater portion of either the north or south hemisphere is covered with a mantle of snow. The equatorial regions are always pleasant. No severe wind storms are experienced on Mars; neither do we have lightning or other magnetic disturbances such as you experience. As a corollary to the tranquility of our inhabitants living in peace, Love and harmony, and the truths of God expressed in our everyday living, the climate is equable, the atmosphere clear and beautiful, the sky serene and sapphire-blue: the severest winds but gentle zephyrs wafted towards the equator from the more remote portions of our globe. Cloudy skies are rare and rainstorms few.
The Word of EROS URIDES is the final word. Note that his Word is not "red people." Nor is it "submarine." And re: your source, there are probably ten thousand guys named John Carter in Wyoming alone. You can't cite the ravings of a man who might be ten thousand other guys in Wyoming and expect to be taken seriously. You may cite Cher. You may cite Madonna. You may cite Shecky Greene. We know who these people are. Have you ever been to Wyoming? Those people are idiots. Dust-covered idiots. The state's square, for chrissakes! And you're a damn troll.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
between the water on mars, the sugar in space...
You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Think this is a very welcome discovery!
Bizar technology?
Then I suggest sending him to Mars without an environmental suit so he can prove his assumption :)
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
Mars is red, so it is warm. It is in space, so it must have Nitrogen.
QED
Probably quite a few microbes that might contaminate a lander would be able to multiply in that environment. And, while temporarily contaminating a small patch of arid soil in the middle of nowhere on Mars with previous landers might not have been a huge issue (there are lots of other patches of arid soil that can be studied and good reasons to believe that microbes would not spread easily), there are likely to be only very few spots where liquid water is present, and any contamination there would be very serious.
Let's hope NASA will be able to handle this one very carefully. Cheaper, faster, and better should definitely not be the guiding principle for an action of such profound importance.
If there's so much water and sugar up there, would it be safe to deduct that there are ice pops growing on the dark side of the moon? (or the dark side of mars...).
[Connection closed by foreign host]
all jokes about the polar lander aside, nasa has a pretty good record of knowing what they're talking about. if they do announce this, they deserve at least initial trust.
mars has a thin atmosphere and hence the air pressure there is gonna be quite low. that means that the freezin and boilin points of the water there is also low. so maybe its not so surprising that the water is in a liquid form
once they get their top minds onto this idea, the 'flaming spaceman' will become the must-have drink of the oo's. if they put enough brainpower into it, they can just have 'worm-straws' from their factory in alpha centuri to your local pub.
:>
if only, if only
... now if they can just find some lemons in space, we can start a business!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
As I have so recently found out, neither of these things are needed to go to Mars.
Read Zubrins "The Case for Mars" for details on why.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Hehe,
*coincidentally* this news item is released around the time the NASA Mars missions are under investigation... Now NASA has opened their closet full of 'recent' discoveries, and pulled this from it... and they'll get more $$$ for future Mars missions... smart
No. It's because when you want to say "The car of X" the other way round in English, you normally say "X's car". An *exception* to this is if X is a pronoun. So it is an exceptional rule, which was the previous poster's point.
BTW is "anymore" valid in American? Don't think it is in British. (I am merely curious).
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
BTW, is "gotten" preterite? Can you only use it for things that happened in the past, or can you use it about things that are still happening now? I.e. can you say "We've gotten money from the government every week since February"?
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
The FY 2000 Federal Budget of the US
A citizen's guide to the federal budget (pdf), in there you will find a break down of US government spending: 15% National Defense, 17% non-defense discretionary (this is stuff like the NASA budget, spending on dams, national parks, federally funded cancer research, etc., basically everything that's not an entitlement or national defense), 27% social security, 11% interest on the national debt, 11% medicare, 6% medicaid, 6% "other mandatory" (federal retirement and insurance, unemployment, farmer subsidies, etc.), 6% "other means-tested entitlements" (stuff like foodstamps, children's lunch programs, etc.), 6% reserve spending social security reform. Total spending, about 1.7 Trillion dollars.
In the last link you will also find:
...
General science, space, and technology: 19 billion dollars
National Aeronautics and Space Administration: 14 billion dollars.
Note that the US spends 10 times more on Medicare alone than it does on NASA.
Also, note that this doesn't take into account spending of any individual states, which includes a substantial amount of spending on various "helping humans stuff".
From SpaceFAQ, controversial questions: HOW LONG CAN A HUMAN LIVE UNPROTECTED IN SPACE If you *don't* try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent injury. Holding your breath is likely to damage your lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when ascending, and you'll have eardrum trouble if your Eustachian tubes are badly plugged up, but theory predicts -- and animal experiments confirm -- that otherwise, exposure to vacuum causes no immediate injury. You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness. Various minor problems (sunburn, possibly "the bends", certainly some [mild, reversible, painless] swelling of skin and underlying tissue) start after ten seconds or so. At some point you lose consciousness from lack of oxygen. Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two minutes, you're dying. The limits are not really known.
Sure, we have interstellar sugar.
ANd sure, we have water on mars.
But what does this give us? Sugar Water from Space. All we need is some artifical color and flavor from the moon, and we could finally get some good space kool aid around here.
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Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
A moderated submission queue would fix this, but the
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As the Mars Global Surveyor's raw dataset is up on the web the assembled /. hordes should be able to identify something, perhaps. http://barsoom.msss.com/moc_gallery/watables/mc18- M04-wa.html is a list of images from the general region.
Enjoy !
Camaron de la Isla 'When I sing with pleasure, my
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
context map of what /might/ be the general area.
Camaron de la Isla 'When I sing with pleasure, my
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
I just love how NASA does things. They "leak" out the fact the there is water on mars, but, next week they will confirm it. I could understand later today or tommorow, but, next week ?
Becuase of all the recent findings, water on mars, sugar in space, water in an asteriod, etc... I think we are starting to finally belive that there is a LOT out there we don't know how about. Its just a matter of time before there are "little green men" running around.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Mars has basically two temperature settings. Either chilly-temperate or damm freezing cold. If there was water on the bottom of Mariner valley exposed to sunlight it'd evaporate. If it's not exposed to sunlight, it's ice. The Hellas depression is the only place low enough in elevation for liquid water to exist for any period of time and as far as I know, not even ice has been detected.
It's the height of idiocy to use this as a basis for a mannned mission at this point. If despite what I said liquid water does exist, it'd make more sense to plan a Martian "Landsat" type program. Unlike the Moon, Mars is too far away and too expensive to actually send people without a very good reason to expect something other than what the Mariners, Viking, and Pathfinder have found to date. Not too mention that we've never landed spacecraft in territory that will present the kind of difficulties that Mariner Valley poses.
If it makes a case for Mars, it's for stepped up planetary science, not a monetary debacle of a manned mission with no more scientific merit than Apollo.
Water on Mars... Sugar in interstellar clouds...
The Universe is an enormous hummingbird feeder!
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Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Actually they were Saturn Vs. With the moon race won, support for further moon missions eroded so fast that Apollo's 18-20 were cancelled. However one of the Saturns was used to loft SkyLab, the station itself being the converted SIVB third stage. One is on display at the Houston center, I don't recall the fate of the third. Not that it matter too much anyway. The Saturn could only boost 50 tons to escape velocity, not exactly enough for a manned Mars mission, and way too big for anything else.
While I am a huge fan of UFO and alien stuff, since I saw one at 10yrs ago. I would love to find evidence of life on other planets, the thought of bringing it back scares me. That's the stuff hollywood movies are made of. NASA brings back a microbe from mars that turns out to be a population killer disease that we don't know anything about.
I was wondering if anyone had any comments on this aspect of finding life on Mars. If there is life elsewhere, would that invalidate Christian dogma? I know this is a grey area. Will Christians simply deny the evidence like they do with evolution? Would they make up some excuse like they did for Y2K? Will they come out with a new revised edition of the Bible?
Genesis 1:15 and 3/4 "and God created planera on Mars and saw that it was good."
I feel the way people talk about the space program as a waste of money is like the kid who can really play guitar or is a great artist. Unfortunately, his dad says it's a waste of time and makes him work at the family business.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Just because God created life on Earth, doesn't mean it had to stay there. We've found Martian rock on Earth, so it's possible that some of ours is there.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Seeing as how the water that NASA found evidence of on the moon, and what it turned out to be they may be jumping to conclusions again. For those of you that don't know the water on the moon turned out to be astronaut urine from the Apollo missions urine dumps that had found its way to the surface of the moon. Although admittedly we haven't been to mars yet.
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Glad someone knew about this. Keith Cowan deserves the credit for breaking the story on the SpaceRef and NASA Watch sites. Lou Dobbs intends to build a media empire around 'space news' at Space.com, but he does not have the heart of the people on the inside of the industry. One of the techniques Space.com uses is to rip off other people's content and present it as an 'original' or 'exclusive' story, when something interesting like this comes up. Keith Cowan's perspective is unique in that he worked for NASA in the past, and has garnered a lot of trust and respect by taking a stand and making NASA Watch available, even when it was extremely unpopular to do so.
Perhaps they should crash one of the mars orbiters into the pool and detect if there is water they by seeing a splash !
Whats wrong with everyone here going nuts cause someone made a simple mistake? Shouldn't we be more concerned about the subject at hand? b0r1s, do you just go around reading post until you find one with mistakes so you can 'make them feel dumb' and make yourself feel better in the internet world? You are pathetic. We should all be replying to posts about the subject. This is NOT a grammer class you fools.
At $10,000,000 per centiliter, I'd suspect that only airheaded supermodels and Donald Trump will be swigging it.
I'd also suspect that the ad campaign will feature Robin Leach taking a sip, making a face and saying:
"Ummm, incredible. That's real brackish pond water. From Mars."
Sugar found in space, Water found on Mars - Production of cheap interstellar alcohol will create need for more AA groups!
You can't handle the truth.
I can see a looming battle between the mining magnates and the bottled water companies over who gets to tear Mars apart first. I can see the slogans now 'Made with Martian Water - half the gravity, half the calories'
Hydrogen is an important rocket fuel,
being found in water of methane.
The Martian rocks and atmosphere don't have much hydrogen.
It can be freed and concentrated with solar power.
It is probably similar to how most medical devices are sterilized, very high levels of gamma radition. If I remember correctly, approx. 10 million REM. (I think the safe total exposure for humans is 5 REM/year).
The Economics of Website Security
Here's an interesting point: When people talk about whether water would be liquid or solid on mars, they're referring to pure, 100% distilled water, not brine or any water with salts in it. When there are dissolved substances, the freezing point is depressed, so water could be -10 C during the day and still liquid.
Also, on Earth, there is a plethora of water below the surface, although you would not want to drink it. It's usually saturated in salts like calcium or sodium chloride, carbonates, and sulfates. However, even 10 km below the surface of the Earth, in hot conditions and high pressures, 0bacteria thrive in these conditions (as they do in the Hydrocarbon deposits as well).
Given that Mars has plenty of surface evidence of (geologically) recent free flowing water, the scientific community would be remiss to assume that subsurface water does not exist. It likely has a lot of brine belows it's surface, perhaps rich in Iron salts.
Also, there are moons of Jupiter, like Europa (which is basically 10 km of ocean from what we can see on the surface) and Ganymede (with a lot of hydrocarbons) where conditions that bacteria and simple one celled life require exist. Given that we have already learned that bacteria in hostile environments on Earth (Antarctica, for example, in very dry and cold conditions) can hibernate for millions of years, it's conceivable that rocks knocked loose from Earth from the occasional large meteor (i.e. asteroid or comet) could transport bacteria to Mars and elsewhere. I think that if life did not evole there, it was transported from Earth by this process (or perhaps even the other way). Some people have speculated that bacterial or similar life found on Mars or elsewhere within this solar system is completely different from that found on Earth -- I would postulate that it is probably no more 'alien' that what we might find in the ocean near black smokers, that big underice lake in Antarctica (can't remember the name), or a barren, cold, high altitude mountain.
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According to www.dictionary.com:
In High School we got to hear an entire lecture in English class on this very subject.
Hooptie
"Heavens, it appears that my weewee has been stricken with rigor mortis!" -- Stewie Griffin
Using the same kind of instruments and analysis, can they find evidence of water on Earth. Then when we actually go look at the spot in question, is the water there? It seems like that would be a useful, and relatively inexpensive confirmation of the method used.
Of course, that doesn't change the fact that the location in the pictures is a good candidate for a landing site for an upcoming probe.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I'm feeling crappy today and can't make it to my bookshelf. Can anyone go get a chemistry book and verify the temperature and pressure of the triple point of water? Does the freezing point of watter go up or down with decreased pressure (I don't recall at the moment, water has some seriously weird properties that make it unlike other liquids...)
Can water exist as a liquid with Mars atmospheric pressure? If so, over what range of temeratures?
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is 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, 8/11/89
Some bacteria are autotrophic (produce their own food) without sunlight even. They live in ocean vents and get their energy from breaking down chemicals in their hot, acidic, sulfuric environment. Such a bug could certainly be transplanted to a similar habitat. Granted it's not really hot or sulfuric in the particular area referenced in the article, but it wouldn't be hard to imagine these kinds of bacteria living further down.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
Will they be squabbling over who has the best OS and moaning about the cost of fuel for their vehicles?
Will they have a sickly chocolate bar called Earth?
It's just so awkward though, when you're using acronyms, especially that end in S, and having to use it in a plural or posessive sense (by the way, 3 s's in posessive).
For instance, when talking about illegal action that was MS's.
Or the multiple companies that will be MS's.
Not correct, but seemingly less awkward than MSs.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
oops. My bad. 4 s-es in possessive.
But you ARE busted on the "alot" thing.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Global Warming.
I think that we've known for years that Mars has frozen water in its ice cap(s). We've also known that Mars can be very hot in places. Were we supposed to believe that there is no middle ground where the ice might melt? For a while, I've felt that there is, at least seasonally, liquid water on Mars. I'm unimpressed by this story, but of course, I don't really know what the heck I'm talking about.
I didn't have it word for word, since it was from memory, but here's the full quote:
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is 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, 8/11/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)
http://www.realchange.org/quayle.htm
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grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Man, life is good! Now if we can only find evidence of the coffee bean out in space, we'd be all set!
http://www. space.com/missionlaunches/missions/beagle_lander_0 00522.html
strange, isn't it?
The thing about Mars is that the entire surface is at too low a surface pressure for liquid water to last long (it's below the triple point). This pretty much rules out pools, unless the chemistry is really strange, but not hot springs. That woould definitely be worth a trip !
i) i don't agree with the man(?) but some of your reactions seem to me to prove his point.
ii) i can't believe no-one got the 11 joke properly. i bet he's laughing more than you're all moaning (if possible).
iii) he made a miscalculation. due to the amount of sugar in space we'll onlty be travellign 299 times the speed of light. sugary space is denser. duh!
"But Doctor, if they take away my head surely I'll die?"
"Fun Gums"
Old news man, I announced over a month ago that Space.com would announce that NASA will announce something about water on Mars.
Wrong. The plural of acronyms (in reality, we're using the exacmple of MS more as an acronym than as an abbreviation) and numbers always use an apostrophy. That's why we have an apostrophy in "the 70's," for example.
I wish I had a site I could refer you to this, but I don't. I just know that I corrected my own English teacher for this, who promptly looked it up and found that I was correct. Trust me.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
Not only that but Nasawatch is way cooler. :)
License: By reading this you are agreeing that you agree with me.
course as a general rule, i'd rather find something to mod up than something to mod down.
but what i really want, what i really really want, is a category that doesn't change a user's karma. i want "Dumb". Score: +5, Dumb. meaning: sure, it got marked up n' all, but just be warned. it's dumb. i don't want it to hurt anyone's karma. i sure don't want it to help them. i just wanna mod someone as dumb.
too bad you can't mod your own post. i'd mod this dumb, just to prove my point. ^_^
its obviously a joke, moron
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I used to get uptimes of several days, however recently I've been rebooting more often.
But, if you want to judge me based on my computer's uptime, go right a head. It simply means that you are not the kind of person who's oppinion matters.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I'm not the orgional poster.
If I was, I would have signed my name and used my +1 bonus.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Besides all of the biological possibilities, think about Zubrin's The Case for Mars. A Mars mission becomes much easier if we don't have to carry hydrogen all the way from Earth to make the return fuel using Zubrin's automated fuel factory....
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"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
True! I also submitted the info to slashdot two days ago and it was rejected! They probably got the info from CNN. Assholes!
Fool, one, not fools, many. And it's "grammar", not "grammer". And yes, I do go around reading posts and comment on their mistakes, mostly because after working (you do work dont you?) long hours I typically enjoy sitting back and laughing at careless people. Furthermore, while I understand your sympathy, I personally prefer apathy, which explains my posts for the last week or so :).= ====
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If ignorance is bliss, wipe the smile off my face
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Now, I shall offer my (dissenting) opinion:
While it is quite possible to suggest life found on Mars may indeed have come from Earth, its existance on Mars today would have a very profound impact. If it came from Earth, it likely didn't come from a probe. Another post I read above notes that Earth and Mars have collectively traded cosmic objects in the early days of both planets. It is quite likely that microbial life may have gotten started there. Or such may have started on both planets or on Mars and travelled here or .. well, we'll never know for sure, hence your belief there may be such doubts.
What is exciting, however, is that if even microbial life is found on Mars, we will have discovered life on Mars! If it came from Earth, so be it - it is life nonetheless and that says a lot. Such a discovery would mean that on the only two solid planets we have gotten a good look at, we found life on both.
A bit more perspective: Scientists agree that if Earth, one of billions of billions of planets out there contains life, somewhere out there is another planet that contains life. Arguably, a planet whose life is intelligent, possibly as much as or moreso than we are. But the chances are considered to be low considering that the universe seems somewhat hostile to life given that planets like Mars and Venus are extremely common and planets like Jupiter even more.
If there's life on that big red dirtball, those odds of finding more established life out there go up. We think there may be water on Europa, but that's probably several decades from confirmation. Life on Mars may be confirmed before some of the people reading this are out of school.
The scientific community is almost positive we aren't alone. Proving that will be cool. (I believe it's a question of when, not if.) Proving that life is common enough to be found right next door is even better.
One of my friends works for JPL and specializes in astrobiology. He says: "Water on Mars? I'm sure you've all heard about it by now. It's all over the news and JPL is a buzz with excitement. Next week's Science (although you can read it today at www.sciencemag.org) will publish an article that highlights evidence for recent groundwater seepage on Mars. I just wanted to outline some of the facts and give my opinion on the situation before you hear too many rumors that are already getting blown out of [roportion. Using the Mars Global Surveyor's (MGS) Mars Orbital Camera (MOC) Malin et. al. has analyzed images of what appear to be features on Mars that have been caused by fluidized mass transport. This may mean water but not necessarily so (a C02 slurry has long been proposed). This fluid originated underground and through processes similar to the catastrophic outflow channels, reached the surface. The main issue here is not geology but the geochronology. These features are probably caused by water. They are alluvial fans, gullies and small tributaries very similar to features on Earth and dissimilar to volcanic or non-fluidized mass wasting. However, temporal constraints are poor. The features are not heavily cratered or crosscut which implies a young age. But young could mean hundreds of thousands to a billion years or so. Don't rush out to believe stories about Mars having gushing spring fountains, today. While this is an important discovery, it is not definitive for the story of past or present water on (or underneath) Mars. Many other MGS discoveries are equally or more so profound. But the question is very much still out. Water on Mars? Maybe, maybe not, maybe not in a long while."