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NASA Has Found Evidence Of Oceans On Mars
An unnamed correspondent points to this Sunday Times story, writing: "They have discovered ocean beds on Mars." The "they" refers to NASA scientists relying on information from the Mars Global Surveyor, which has transmitted "detailed pictures of rocks that could only have been created by sedimentation." A full announcement is expected next week from NASA -- wouldn't it be nice if they would simply release news as it happens rather than create News Happenings?
I'm sure the same government that can't keep scandal after scandal under wraps has been concealing the fact that alien life exists for many years now.
Your troll was stupid. If you're going to troll, at least post something funny.
Have a nice day.
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One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
They've decided that there was water on Mars. The last report, from a few months ago, speculated that the valleys and stream-like erosion had been produced by liquid-hot rock flowing across the surface.
It'll only be a few months until they take this back in favor of something else.
I don't think we'll know for sure until a man stands and spends some considerable time there.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
One of my perpetual frustrations with the scientific community, is thier insistance on putting forth possible answers and explinations as facts while working with only a relativly small amount of data. The water on Mars question has been "proven" and "disproven" about a dozen times already based on the same available data. I have nothing against scientific research, on the contrary, I belive it is a most worthy pursuit. But I get sick and tired of the incredible hubris of stating "such and such" as scientific fact when really all they are submitting are inducive/deductive leaps based on given persons way of observing given data.
"I'm making perfect sense, you're just not keeping up."
Doesn't anyone remember Cold Fusion? NASA is doing exactly the right thing by delaying their PR until they've published in a peer-reviewed journal.
No, more resources should be spent on space exploration; so that when a natural disaster/calamity of extinction level status strikes the earth we have a backup copy somewhere else.
By your argument, you should only have one server for a site; just a really expensive one to handle everything. One power surge/script kiddy/cracker/etc later, you have lost everything.
Despite you, the human species is valuable enough to me to warrant an off-site backup.
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
According to this page on weather.com, you wouldn't want to swim anyway.
Of course, I can't think of anything I'd want to do on a day with a high of -82F other than sit by a warm fire and drink hot chocolate.
How the fuck is this a troll? Moderations and cheap $3 crack don't mix.
A full announcement is expected next week from NASA -- wouldn't it be nice if they would simply release news as it happens rather than create News Happenings?
Don't begrudge the NASA dudes the "hype" generated by pre-announcing an announcement. Though it is kind of annoying on some level, every bit of focus that is put to NASA work (and that of other related teams like those of NEAR) is another PR victory for the whole space-exploration effort.
If we don't want to be stuck on this ball long after we've depleted it (since we show few signs of stopping that trend) , we'd better get out there and look for other options for resources... which requires exploration.
Plus, it is kinda cool....
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
Aris
What mars DIDN'T have was a strong magnetic field. Mars' geothermal core cooled (partly due to the planet's smaller size insulating it less, and possibly it may have less nuclear isotopes buried in it (again, proporitional to its mass) so it probably generated less heat in the first place.)
A magnetic field shields the planet from solar wind. Channels the charged particles around the planet, or down to smack head-on into the poles (forming the aurora borealis). Without a magnetic field, they strafe tangentially through the outer atmosphere, sandblasting it away. A molecule here, a few molecules there, over millions and eventually billions of years the atmosphere gets eroded away.
When the atmospheric pressure dropped too far, the oceans evaporated, probably freezing along the way as the planet lost its insulating blanket. The water vapor was just more atmosphere, to be sandblasted away by the solar wind.
Same thing would have happened to earth if we hadn't had the van allen belt and all protecting us. Planets farther out (such as the gas giants) don't have to deal with as intense a solar wind, and can rely on their own gravity to attract and retain gas faster than it gets stripped even without a magnetic shield. But they don't get much light or heat from the sun, either.
Rob
Sedimentary rock is (at least on Earth) precipitated out of water. Metamorphic rock is igneous or sedimentary rock that has been subjected to extremely high temperatures and/or pressures. Just thought I'd clear that up. Sorry for the nitpick :)
My other sig is also a
The reason for this is that water is a polar fluid, meaning that it has an electrical charge...
Water as a whole does not have an electrical charge - it is a neutral molecule.
in the case of water, a negative charge on the oxygen atom and a positive charge on the hydrogen atoms. This charge is weaker then the normal charges that bind atoms into molecules, so that the water molecules stay slightly connected to each other but aren't connected into a larger molecule...in other words, they become a liquid.
This is commonly called "hydrogen bonding". You are right in that is one of the major reasons that water exists as a liquid. However, your explanation is s drastic oversimplification - there are many other interactions that also increase the cohesive forces in liquids. Acetone and hexane and thionyl chloride and [substitute compounds of choice here] are liquids and yet lack any hydrogen bonding. Long- and medium-chain hydrocarbons (think oils) are liquids although they pretty much lack any polarity whatsoever.
As things stand on Mars now, the pressure is low enough that only traces (if anything) of liquid water on Mars.
What exactly do you mean by sulfur hydroxide? That kinda puzzled me.
there was never enough pressue to turn any fluid but water into a liquid.
I wouldn't go quite that far...
My other sig is also a
All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
NASA's budget, IIRC, is pretty small.L /FS-003-HQ.html"> NASA's budget</a>
<a href="http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/facts/HTM
Something like 14 billion a year. Given that the US GNP is close to hundreds of trillions of dollars...
Regardless of whether I'm correct or you believe me about the money, sedimentation, as a process, does not work with volcanic activity or wind. It's defined by the existence of a liquid and solutes, things dissolved into the liquid.
IE, a sediment. Take sand, mud, clay, etc, in a jar of water, and let the stuff settle down and compact into rock, stone, whatever. This process just isn't defined by wind or volcanic activity, where volcanic activity melts and reforges pre-existing stone, and wind wears down and erodes pre-existing stone.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
>>It's sad, and it shouldn't be, but they have to have press releases to maintain their "market share" >It does not seem very sad to me. Agreed. If NASA didn't promote themselves by publishing information, people would be wondering what the benefits are. Their budget could be (more) in jeopardy.
Life is similar to a simile. [Author is, like, unknown]
The religious zealots do not claim that there isn't life on other planets. They claim there is not intelligent life on other planets.
Connah
Connah
"Your mouse has moved. Windows NT must be restarted for this change to take effect."
All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
Why being a scientist while a bunch of doctors could come handy ? Wazzup with that relativity theory, does it save human lives ? The answer is in geometry and its two well known kind of angles: obtuse and acute.
Goodnight
Remember that on Earth, multicellular animals and plants evolved in the oceans first, then moved to land. With less time available on a planet like Mars, they might have got somewhere in the oceans but never made it out.
Is it just me, or is NASA changing its mind about water on Mars more often than Florida changes its mind about the election?
Someone just multi-lingualed your article, and you called if off topic? C'mon!
Perhaps you can do a better job of sending a probe 60 million miles away and communicating with it with a 15 minute signal lag? Don't bash NASA, they aren't morons, they just have finite (very little) resources which they have to spread among many projects. Most of that goes to ISS and only very little is left for probes. Also, reentry with smooth landing on a planet from orbit is probably one of the hardest things to do for a space probe. Even on Earth, cosmonauts crash-land and astronauts used to do a splash-down, both in extremely well shielded capsules. Not exactly a smooth landing and not good enough for a probe. Moreover, for Earth reentry we have almost instantaneous data/telemetry link.
Awww, come on. The newsies are already in Florida and have to be wanting to cover something else. Witness the speed with which the newsies can throw something together and the plethora of extra resources they have. When you have money to pay a set of helicopters to fly along with a friggin' Ryder truck to Tallahassee, NASA can make this move faster.
Sports press conferences are laid on inside of a day--sometimes, inside of hours. Science news is, in general, a lot more interesting and a lot more important than sports. So why do we have to wait a month [at times]?
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-- Geof F. Morris
... a Beowulf cluster of these?
Thank you.
-- Patrick Bateman, Esq.
How do we know that these were oceans of water ? They could be something else, though I haven't the slightest clue what. Someone more knowledgable comment on why it must be water?
It's sad, and it shouldn't be, but they have to have press releases to maintain their "market share"
It does not seem very sad to me. Keeping up the public interest in the work seems like a very reasonable thing. Keeping up the interest of the folks paying for the work is what happens around the world to anybody doing anything. The only persons exempted from this reality are the independantly wealthy doing something as a hobby.
Billions of taxpayer dollars do not fall into the "just leave me alone while I just do stuff" category.
Kudos to NASA for keeping on top of the marketing game. What would be sad is if they lost the savy realization that this is what they must do to keep funding on track.
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Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Of course it would, but that would mean that NASA would understand good PR. No, they like to hold things close to the vest, preferring pomp and circumstance to timely news. NASA's still stuck in the Sixties as far as their public relations shop runs.
Anyone who's read NASA Watch for some time knows how clueless NASA's PR shop is. But they were getting better under the late Brian Welch, who, I feel, was working to improve the immediacy and efficacy of NASA press coverage. Welch was instrumental in the Dreamtime work done on ISS, and really had a thing for using Webcams on stuff. He initially opposed Keith Cowing's press accreditation efforts, but I really do feel that Brian "got it".
But in this era of "faster, cheaper, better", NASA PAO seems to be still thinking "slower, costlier, bad theater".
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-- Geof F. Morris
Sure they are ocean beds. Just like those river beds which were later found to be formed from wind.
NASA is just desperate for cash, so they resort to sensationalism to get support for their budget bills in Congress. As an astronomer, I think that space travel is great, but it shouldn't come at the cost of our collective dignity.
I can see the headline now--"NASA, the boy who cried 'Life!'"
Nasa did a good job with the Viking probes, and they used 1970s technology. Nasa can do fine, they just need money to do it with.
Hmmm. Maybe someone needs just a TINY sense of humor? Hmmmmmm?
-Kef
We won't say "Pig F#%!er" in front of Jesus, even if you step on our toes! The Linux Pimp
--It's Pimptastic!--
The polar caps are partly water and partly solid CO2 ("dry ice").
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Moderate this up!
All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
This is actually pretty well understood. Mars doesn't have as much gravity as the earth (1/3 g), so it's been gradually losing its atmosphere over time. These days, its surface is pretty close to being a vacuum. Water boils in a vacuum. The water vapor was lost into space along with most of the rest of the atmosphere.
Find free books.
All generalizations are false.
--
I like to watch.
If you were thinking of fossils of multicellular plants or animals, I'd bet a six-pack you'll be disappointed. Multicellular life appears as an afterthought in the history of life on Earth, whereas bacteria seem to have evolved almost as soon as the era of heavy bombardment ended. We probably live in a galaxy teeming with life -- all of it single-celled.
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Wow, that would explain a few things...
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Well, then, we'd better let one go. What's on the agenda?
Reads: Government smuggling arms to fascist rebels, secretely importing Cuban cigars; Scientists have conclusive proof of life on Mars; and that you, sir, are romantically involved with Ms Iowa.
Damn. I was hoping we didn't have to reveal the fascists just yet, but looks like we're stuck.
All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
Are you sure mars had large amounts of nitrogen to begin with?
This is a bigger issue than I think a lot of people here on Slashdot realize. Here's an illustrative example from one of my classes:
My Software Engineering teacher was talking about how many things you'd have to engineer into the space shuttle (she used to work for NASA, so this was an area of expertise for her) - she opened it up to the class so we could get an appreciation for how complex complex systems really were.
The suggestions were, for the most part, right on: Things like navigation, communication, life support. Then one person, the one sitting next to me, piped up.
"What about the gravity controller?"
Dead silence.
"You know, the part that controlls the gravity on the shuttle...."
"Um... we can't do that yet." I had to explain. It absolutely floored me - this person in my class seemed to believe that we had actually had that level of technology.
So yes, NASA has a long way to go before it's what the public expects.
-Denor
You're welcome.
All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
sweet.. guess there is some reason to go to mars.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Are you sure mars had large amounts of nitrogen to begin with?
Certain? No. However, there is very strong empyrical evidence - both Earth and Jupiter did. Both still have plenty. Fractioning effects would cause distribution to vary with distance from the sun, but they wouldn't just leave a gaping hole in Mars' orbit.
Another possibility is that it's all bound up in ammonium salts or bound up in nitrate rocks via mechanisms like the one you mentioned for water. I don't *remember* hearing about vast amounts of nitrates on Mars, but I'm not an expert on Martian geology, either.
All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
well at least we know where the next Baywatch series is to be shot.
How we know is more important than what we know.
In this case, that would have meant releasing this information several million years ago!
This might just be me, but haven't they already established that there was indeed water on Mars in the past, leading to certain patterns of erosion and valleys and such. Stories like this and this and this (all from about a year ago) make me less impressed by this "announcement."
I think Nasa is just trying to do ANYTHING to get rid of their bad rap from the "faster, cheaper, more crashes" approach that led to the Mars debacles.
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RumorsDaily
What the hell? This was supposed to be funny, and was moded up to 4 last night for being funny. Now it's 3 for interesting. For crying out loud it was supposed to be a joke...change it back to funny! It's a joke! And how did this thread about conspiracy theory get to talking about masturbation anyway?
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
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This seems like they're leading us towards the inevitable conclusion that yes there is in fact life on Mars. They probaly did find conclusive evidence with the Viking lander, but they felt that the public wasn't ready yet. Now everybody's going goo-goo over evidence of water that "raises the probability of life on Mars". Then they find rocks in Antarctica that looks like a chunk of Mars with fossilized microbes. Now oceans.
Say it already! Say there is life beyond this little rotten planet! Spill the f!@$!@#ing beans. Let go of the religous zealotry that says that life only exists on this planet.
And in the end, the Greys will thank you.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
So when do we go? You know... get on the big ship and abandon earth to go live on mars just to find out that "Oops, we forgot to convert to metrics... there is no water."
Give the quality of Mars movies released from hollywood lately any one of us (meaning /. readers) could easily do much better with a camcorder and a handful of red dirt!
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
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Mathematics will always come back to hunt you down, in so many ways
Now that some sea beds have been located, it would seem like a very likely place to search for fossil evidence of life. Makes the chances much better. Rather than making a wild guess, we can now narrow down the search to where evidence may most likely exist. Interesting.
Mars = Arrakis
:wq! DOH!
Space worms landed on Arr*cough* Mars and drank up all the water. They roam underground eating up tiny bacterium that managed to find water that the worm left behind. Prediction: We will all find our new narcotic on Mars that will be way better than caffeine.
Wait a minute. We don't beleive in aliens. And books arn't necissarily true either. Hmm, nevermind.
Roy Miller
--Roy
Ha, I thought you were talking about Europe (the continent). Blah, I thought that was intriguing so I went to my local friendly search engine only to discover you meant the moon orbiting Jupiter, not the fairly silly continent.
Well, if anyone wants to see pictures of this water under Europe phenom, you can check them out here.
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RumorsDaily
But this would also mean that what happened in Mars did not happen 100000000000000000000 years ago...
I'd think not, especially considering that 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 (100 quintillion) years is far older than our ~13,000,000,000 (13 billion) year old universe.
=p
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
NASA is, unfortunatly, competing with movies when it comes to gaining an audience. They have had to come up with marketing ideas, press releases, merchandise, and such to compete for public attention.
It's sad, because gone are the days when all their money could be poured directly into pure research. Now they have to justify all their advances to a public that wants the glitz of Star Trek but don't realize where our science actually is at technology wise.
It's sad, and it shouldn't be, but they have to have press releases to maintain their "market share", because the politicians force pure-research departments to compete with hollywood.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
Did you mean volcanos or Vulcans? If it's the later, then you can bet on a biological process. Naturally, I'd have to wonder why Vulcans would even want to do such a thing.
FWIW, if I recall my geology correctly ,sedimentary rock is generally not formed by volcanic activity unless the dust emitted by the volcanos were suspended in a liquid and then slowly precipitated out over time and under great pressure. Ignatious rock is formed by volcanic activity.
Of course, NASA hasn't made the offical announcement. So, we'll just have to wait to see what that is on December 7th.
RD
The water was probably split into loose hydrogen atoms (or protons) and oxygen by solar radiation in the upper atmosphere. The protons drifted off wit hthe solar wind and the oxygen bound to metals in the planet's crust. Water vapour is very heavy, and probably wouldn't escape so easily.
Actually, water vapour is much lighter than molecular oxygen, molecular nitrogen, or carbon dioxide. The nitrogen, at least, wouldn't have bound that readily to metals, and so would have had to boil off. The lightest simple nitrogen compound is ammonia, which has about the same molecular weight as water; if ammonia could boil off, then it's likely that water vapour could too, if I understand correctly.
Not that I'm disagreeing with your mechanism; I'm just pointing out that direct escape probably happened too. Your mechanism nicely explains why Mars doesn't have an atmosphere rich in hydrogen compounds (water, methane, ammonia).
well if that aint the pot calling the kettle black.. What pisses you off is that when I troll I get +1 bonus.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Information gathered from orbiters shows that surrounding the northern lowlands is an aparent shoreline of a coean that once covered most of the Northern hemisphere. The shoreline is a long similarly textured area that has relatively the same altitude. The only spots along the assumed shoreline that have an anomolous altitude are 2 regions that display evidence of abundant vulcanism.
Also there is a type of impact crater on Mars charicterized by what is called "flow ejecta," meaning that the material ejected from the crater flows like a liquid. This is believed to occur when there is subsurface water (liquid or solid). Some believ that subsurface liquid water still exists on mars.
There are also countless indications water erosion, from ground water sepage leading to the collapse of the ground above (like whats happening in mexico city. In some places the ground is sinking by 30 centimeters a year), to massive flows carrying huge ammounts of sediment.
on the other hand, this may be the first time this sort of evidence has been gathered. But the conclusions are not exciting. Now hearing that there was NO water on Mars, that would be freaky.
This just in: the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board has decided to resume manual recounts due to possible sedimentation on Mars...Bush to appeal to Supreme Court immediately!
-=-=- Successful people do what unsuccessful people don't want to do...
All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
No CO2 doesn't stay liquid even at 1atm. It takes a lot of pressure to keep dry ice from subliming straight to a gas. Which is why they called solid C02 dry ice i guess.
Considering the quality of the Mars movies released recently, any 'home movies' NASA makes could easily do much better.
The Technonaut
A full announcement is expected next week from NASA -- wouldn't it be nice if they would simply release news as it happens rather than create News Happenings?
;)
Oh, you mean like the media did when Bush... I mean Gore... wait, I mean Bush... won the presidency on the 7th?
Yeah, that'd be great!
] D
Since Mars has roughly 1/3 the Earth's gravity, bust enhancements can be made 3X bigger without becoming too heavy to manage. Woo hoo!
On what concerns evidence of Oceans in Mars then NASA would be clearly loosing. About that tons of people talked about that. Even yesterday I noted that on this post : "...a planet that _possessed_ an ocean and _probably_ several seas..." For me and many investigators there are no doubts that the North Hemisphere was an oceanic basin. Personally I came into this conclusion in 1998, after seeing the powerful blowups in Acydalia Planitia where huge masses of water caved channels of a kilometer deep in short frames of time (aka scablands). And this phenomena is everywhere in Mars. As if suddenly, something provoked waters to move wildly all over the planet. Once I had a site talking about this...
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;)
What admires me is that after 30 years of several investigators showing and proving that water existed in Mars, after bashing all of them with Hoaglands and "Elvis leaves Mars stage" we seem to see old detractors claiming they found "oceans"... First I would like to see how many oceans they found... Second if they will dare to remember 30 years of investigations and people knoking NASA'a doors. And if they will remember their participation as main detractors of "water in Mars". Until June, Malin was known as Mr. Thirst, as he didn't believe about any water in Mars and any evidence on "Dry Mars" was immediately published in his site.
And frankly he continues this story... People, THERE IS water in Mars. 90% of it flew into Cosmos. Believe me. We still don't have the reason WHY it happened. For this we need a systematic and VERY detailed map of Mars and not Malin's slideshow. But we know most of HOW it happened. Mars lost its atmosphere and went into cooking mode for some years. When the mess cooled down, most water was already gone. But not all. And the remaining 5-10% are still there. And not in Malin's high latitudes... well... only (good boy Malin but you didn't do all homework). Water is still flowing on Mars. Right on the equator.
Look:
http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/html/m08061/m0806185.htm
http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/html/m04018/m0401877.htm
http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/html/m04492/m0449202.htm
http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/html/m08059/m0805951.htm
http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/html/m08076/m0807686.htm
I mentioned this a few posts ago btw...
And they are only a fraction of the evidence. But, probably the best part. And about this and aliens. Mr. NASAoids, are we going to wait ANOTHER 30 years for some Dr. Tuckletacker FIND on YOUR name that there is water and aliens on Mars? Hey, hey, hey... Yeah, maybe I'm talking about those aliens that COULD have built the Face... But I think, we pretty well know WHAT aliens COULD have built such thing, correct? And WHAT LEVEL OF INTELLIGENCE these poor things had... And we pretty well know that that's not the first and last piece of evidence. The dark patches and mostly the dark dunes are also a good piece of evidence...
Oh these aliens.... Naaa their too insignificant to take time to write an article... What about bigger aliens? Well, if we wanna talk about the possibility of more serious aliens so we should go a little away from Cydonia... And we will not find pyramids and faces or even constructions but something else... Which does not fit on calculations... Oh yeah, send Hoagland bashing me and proving I'm talking about HyperSchyzics
All of this stuff is amazing. First there is life on Mars, but after checking their facts, it turns out that this can't be conclusively proven. Now they tells us that there once was water on Mars. Will this be debunked in the future as well???
Another interesting point to make is that geology seems to be a bit of an art as well. Make a story to fit the facts (very little) and go from there. In a science such as chemistry we can see exactly what is happening, in real time if like. With geology, it seems that people have come up with reasons as to how and why these things occured without any proof. Note, this is not meant as a slight against that geologists that look at rocks and say, yes, that is that sort of rock, terrible to build on, you'll have to put the foundations down another 20m, but the sort that make claims, which they think have some scientific basis when there is none.
Next they have everyone believing that 90% of the photos of "the red planet" aren't doctored. Think I am being paranoid. Don't believe a word I say. Ask any remote sensing person (a good place to start would be the local surveying department), and they will tell you the same thing. Even those photos coming out the Jet Propulsion Lab are doctored (and this came from someone who work at JPL). The reason. The "red planet", isn't as red as it's nickname suggests. It is actually more of a orangy color.
Shouldn't Nasa investigate our own oceans more thoroughly first, they won't find aliens in long dead oceans on Mars.
Everyone knows that the real discovery is here on Earth. X-Com knew for years that the terror from the deep is hiding here on Earth.
The Aliens are here and hiding in the oceans....
I know you're an anonymous troll but if look at people who actually have the ballz to log in you will notice a little number. You will note that my little number is smaller than everyone else's little number (well, except for about 50 thousand other people that is). That says that I've been here for a long time and I aint goin' away. Oh, and by the way, I'm not your friend.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Having seen a proof for 2+2=5 via imaginary numbers and the resulting -1=1, this Fox Network like story is getting on my nerves. Stop discovering life and get us off this rock already.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe they're telling the truth, and that they're releasing the information as soon as they're reasonably confident they have their facts straight? Wouldn't that be far simpler than some bizarre conspiracy theory?
Honestly, I think some people here need to take a frickin' break from the online world and get some fresh air from time to time. There are indeed evil/twisted/whatever people in the world, but not nearly as many as some people think.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Las puntas correspondientes innomadas a este domingo miden el tiempo de la historia, escribiendo: Han descubierto camas del océano en Marte. Refieren a los científicos de la NASA que confían en la información del topógrafo global de Marte, que ha transmitido los cuadros detallados de la roca que se habrían podido crear solamente por la sedimentación. Un aviso completo espera la semana próxima de la NASA -- no sería agradable si release/versión simplemente noticias como suceden que más bien que cree los sucesos de las noticias?
I was always under the impression that it was a generally accepted fact that Mars once had oceans and that it presently has water (well ice) at both polls. Or am I completely wrong?
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enterfornone - logging in for a change
Its no secret that NASA's funding is flagging badly, there's no real underlying mission to the space program anymore, and morale and the quality of people at NASA are the worst they've ever been.
At this point one of the few feasible projects left for them that would generate a lot of excitement would be a series of missions to mars with the expectation that there might be evidence of life, past or present. And the only way they can presuppose such a thing is to find evidence of water.
Unfortunately this seems to have put "water on the brain" of these guys, and they're just seeing what they want to see at this point. The last several years series of cries of "Water!" "Nope... false alarm", "Water!" "Nope, false alarm", "Water!" is getting downright silly. Its understandable that they want desperately for it to be true, but I think the objectiveness of the scientific process is suffering due to the conflict of interest.
A lot of this kind of stuff gets presented at the AMerican Geophysical Union Meeting in mid-December in San Francisco.
I agree it is old news. However there have been re-interpretation of Viking/Observator with the new Surveyor pics. Old oceanic features disappear under high resolution, and new ones appear. Means more work for the eggheads.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ water_mars_001201.html
Just to note that a huge number of Earth's aliens (us, we discovered them a long time ago !) don't have access to water (and are dying of that). So if Nasa could turn the telescopes back on this surface, it'd could be helpfull...
Courtesy of the Babel Fish Can at least get a rough idea... The innomadas ends corresponding to this Sunday measure the time of history, writing: They have discovered beds of the Mars ocean. They refer the scientists of the NASA who trust the information of the global Mars topographer, that has transmitted the detailed panels of the rock which they would have been possible to only create by the sedimentation. A complete warning waits for the next week of the NASA -- it would not be pleasant if release/versión simply the news as they happen rather that that creates the events of the news?
This rating is Unfair ( ) ( ) Fair (*) Funny
Sigh... If only. Modding would be so much more fun.
Uh, put more soberly:
The official press release about the news conference was released 12/1, a week in advance, which is completely normal. This is the way this sort of thing has always been done, it's just that 99% of the time you don't hear about the news release that told you there'd be a press conference. (When you're on the internet, this happens -- geez, get used to it.)
Obviously if you're going to hold a major news conference you want to give the newsies plenty of time to show up, run up the antennas on their satellite trucks, and prepare good questions for the reporters. You also want the scientists around the world who are going to be eagerly watching this live the opportunity to set up conference rooms with cable feeds.
NASA's science news is of a different nature than its space program news. Technical news can be issued immediately, but science news does not, technically, belong to NASA: it belongs to the scientists who discovered it. All science results are "embargoed" based on the precedence of the science team in question, so that they can publish their results and get the career credit and institutional credit that they deserve for devoting, probably, years of their life to an obscure niche of science. They get this one chance to shine in the sun; NASA gets 'em every other week or so (though rarely as big as this one may prove). So NASA patiently waits for the release of the published science results until they can officially announce anything.
Another thing: Science news, when it's reported prematurely, is often distorted. (Prime example: early orbital results for NEO asteroids always seem to result in Tuesday's DOOM IS NIGH headline being replaced by MAYBE NOT the next day. This leads to public disrespect for science, among other deleterious effects.) By refusing to issue breathless incomplete press releases as soon as pimple-faced slashdot readers demand, NASA increases the chance that:
There's more, probably, but that's it in a nutshell. This leisurely approach works; peer review is better than press-release sniping.
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{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
> Anyone who's read NASA Watch for some time knows how clueless NASA's PR shop is.
No *shit*! I attempted to watch NasaTV over the net this past weekend, to watch the interesting stuff going on.
They showed me "live" video of a zoom on a joint. For a solid hour. This is *while* the two astronauts were outside doing stuff. The astronauts have suit mounted video cameras, you know, like they tried with the football helmets years ago? There are also a half dozen payload bay cameras.
And all they showed me was this static zoom of a piece of white painted steel. For a solid hour.
Dumb bastards (1) or poor bastards (2). Either way I won't waste my time checking in on their 'transmissions' any time soon.
(1) Dumb as in "They had good downlinks of the suit mounted cameras as the astronauts went about their work, but for some idiotic reason decided to broadcast a 'live' static shot of some piece of metal."
(2) Poor as in "They don't have enough money to afford more than one full motion video downlink at a time from the Shuttle, and they have to use that on mission critical things, like what the joint is doing and thus whether the 80 ton load is shifting on them."
Either way, we're screwed out of a spectacular experience.
Why o' why we spend all these time discovering these stuff on Mars? Should be spend all these resources to improve our Earth first?
Same logic:
Why o why are we spending all this time discovering new stuff about AIDS? Shouldn't we spend all these resources to keep healthy people alive first?
What happened to Mars probably won't happen to Earth, but then again we don't really know what happened to Mars...or to Venus for that matter. If Mars once had life, we'd be able to study the fossils and possibly see just exactly how fragile a planet sized ecosystem really is. To say nothing of just studying it's weather to get a better understanding of what's happening here on this planet.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
And friction of feet or shoes against the soil is 1/3 the Earth's. So those babes should try not to move too suddenly, or they will fall down.
I found a link off of www.space.com of pictures of some of the evidence of oceans on mars. It also has many more interesting pictures.
A full announcement is expected next week from NASA -- wouldn't it be nice if they would simply release news as it happens rather than create News Happenings?
Sounds more like they're doing what reputable scientists normally do -- don't hold a press conference until the paper is published.
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