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Active Volcanoes On Mars?

Posted by timothy on from the magma-like-what-remains-of-my-heart dept.

rm-r writes: "The BBC has a story here saying that two of the largest Martian volcanoes could still be active. The warmth provided by these could have produced conditions fit for life to develop." The article quotes Professor Tracy Gregg of the University of Buffalo, who says: "Of all the volcanoes on Mars, these volcanoes have the largest and greatest numbers of channels associated with them, indicating that there was a lot of water around when they were forming, though there doesn't appear to be any around now."

4 of 21 comments (clear)

  1. Areothermal heating? by vrmlguy · · Score: 2
    I wonder if this could be used to keep manned bases warm? Geothermal heating is used in several locations here on Earth, it shouldn't be too hard to adapt the technology for Martian use.

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  2. It's no joke. by Spamalamadingdong · · Score: 2
    It may turn out that we will need to take our most polluting power generators up there with us just to improve the atmosphere. :-)
    Nobody's suggesting sending up coal-burning powerplants (no coal, and the sulfuric acid particles would cool things off) but some researchers have suggested setting up chemical plants on Mars to manufacture and release fluorocarbons (the same things being phased out by the Montreal Protocol, IIRC) into the atmosphere. Fluorocarbons are quite stable and are potent greenhouse gases; a few million tons a year would be enough to affect the climate of Mars significantly. Once you've evaporated the CO2 ice caps you'd have a lot more atmosphere on the Red Planet and you could think about terraforming.
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  3. There may be warmth ... by JoeGee · · Score: 3

    but in my opinion to classify these volcanoes as "active" is to jump the gun. For one thing, we have never been there to label them "extinct".

    There certainly may be the possibility of exploiting Mars' remaining internal heat for heating and energy needs, but first -- let's get there. :)

    We have other resources we can use in the meantime until we determine whether or not areothermal energy (thank you Kim Stanley Robinson) is worth exploiting.

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  4. How very familiar this is by Caid+Raspa · · Score: 3
    Struggling for financial support, a research group releases preliminary results showing the importance of further investigation. The results are interesting, but the scientists seem to be much less sure about this than the BBC reporter.

    This is more common in medicine. How many times a year you see news like 'Pine needles cure cancer' or 'Cat hair causes strokes'. They are always preliminary, the most important result being 'We need more data'.

    Perhaps the funding of scientific research should be more stable. That would prevent these 'preliminary' news.