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Recent Evidence Of Water On Mars Near Equator
mkasei writes "SpaceRef has an early press release with image from Brown University which reports evidence of recent liquid water near the surface of mars. What's important about this find is that it is near the equator making it more readily accessable for a mission, be it robotic or manned." Update: 07/25 09:49 PM by M : There's also a BBC story about water on Mars as well, and a brief Nature article about the possibility of water on Callisto.
there have been some planetary scientists who speculate that the features seen by Malin (Science, 30 June, 2000) could have been formed by no water at all (dry debris flows) or by debris flows fluidized by carbon dioxide. sorry no references off the top of my head. i'll look them up and post them later.
Evidence of water on the surface 100000 years ago makes it very likely that there's water elsewhere (eg, a bit deeper than the surface) still. Like you said, it's short in a geologic sense -- it's almost impossible for there to have been water 100000 years ago and have it all gone by today.
i think the major interest in the recent equatorial water is its implication for (near) modern life-supporting habitats. makes the existence of martian life (perhaps even extant life) look more promising.
Dan Quayle was right! Remember when he said that there were canals on Mars, filled with water? And that they were probably used to irrigate "potatoe" fields?
my reading of the press release is that the brown u. researchers are claiming cyclicity in the martian climate. this climate would allow conditions ca. 100 ka ago that allowed ice to be stable. also, i would need to think a bit more about this, but i would imagine that the soil and dust mantle could have a stabilizing effect on the ice, making it possible for it to not immediately sublimate, even at pressures and temperatures outside of the stable p-t field for solid and liquid water.
If you jump over to the BBC there reporting something like enough water to cover the planet upto 25 centimeters. It's all trapped in ice just a few meters below the surface. I guess we really won't know until Odyssey reaches the planet to scan it with THEMIS
In related news, NASA has also released an offer to bargain with commercial entitities who may wish to deal in the MARS TLD. ICANN, logically, has contested this.
That must be some pretty good imagery they have considering almost the entire planet is rust coloured anyway...
Its the short sightedness of people like you that is dooming the human race.
You haven't been paying much attention to the latest on in-situ propellent production that has been pushed by Zubrin. Basicly you only carry the fuel required to get you to the destination and when you are there you start a small chemical plant that creates the required return propellant out of chemicals present in the martian atmosphere. It is a proven process however its the kind simple and elegant solutions that don't seem to sit to well with today's NASA.
I for one would drink it after it's been run through a simple little reverse osmosis unit.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Looks like the remnants of the ice comet Brennan sent crashing into Mars to me!
I'm glad we don't have to worry about those dangerous Martians anymore...
(For those who don't get the reference, read Protector, by Larry Niven)
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Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Even I have seen traces of water flows in Mars in places much more near the equator:
http://cydonia.ksu.ru
And I am one among many... And not only in water. Take a trip to NW Hellas and look at the traces left by the "wind devils". No the problem is not on these atmospheric phenomena but on what they denude and how this soil seems to "recover".
Hey what about me? Am I being denied the possibility of a life on Mars? Evolution intentionally deprived me of my autonomy!
Most current Mars missions are being sent at about one-quarter to one-half the price of a single shuttle launch. A manned mission is another story, but all the current unmanned Mars missions are amazingly, incredibly cheap.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Actually, there are 3 bills up that claim will "blast open the closed door to a national space economy".
Private investment may allow things to happen faster then you think. Read up at
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=378
For a good time call www.sawkie.com
Yeah, you'd be able to see the system call. You could probably make it more insidious using exec or something embedded in the print statement. But since they'd know where the damage came from, it's not a good idea be malicious in a .sig (not that it's a good idea to be malicious anyway, but you get the point... :-)
About the h38 instead fo h36. My email used to be wrhodes1@san.rr.com. I was too lazy to change it all the way (and it works just as well -- h5000 would work fine). Run 'perldoc -f pack' to see some helpful info as well.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
After all, ice doesn't necessarily have to be water.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Dude I don't know where you've been, but a lot has happened since 1975.
'Course, nothing on the scale of Kennedy's aspirations, if you're thinking of national efforts.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
This article neglects the abuses of the National railroad act that were to follow.
In essence it is a confirmation that corporations must occasionally be sanctioned as a matter of necessity.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
What a stupid, unscientific, web-site.
It ignores much when it is convenient to its lousy hole-ridden theories.
Shame on you.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
oh man, that'll piss Cheney off real good!
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Are you kidding? Quite a life???
Imagine being penned up with Billy Pilgrim!
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Well, had I done that I would be. But I didn't.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
What about the space beer? As others pointed out, there's simply evidence of fluid due to erosion... I say it's space beer! ;-)
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
You actually answered your own question :-) If you land on the equator, you get the boost on takeoff. That extra push from the planet means you don't have to carry as much fuel, letting cut overall weight or put in more science.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
It will never be done. Informative my butt.
It is FAR FAR more likely that China will be our new competition in the Space Race. They are prepared to send a manned mission to the moon within the next few years, and I doubt they will stop there simply because they have the whole Fascist government Pride thing going for them and a whole lot of cheap labor.
My guess is that unless we step up our space program China will get up there, find a way to start mining some asteroids (or hell, the moon...) and get extremely rich extremely quickly, possibly even begin to export part of its population into space within the next 100 years. Maybe sooner if they beg/borrow/steal a lot of US/Japanese technology.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Ok. I think trying to get a mission to Mars going is just too hard (politically). How about another tack though. Try arguing for a mission to the moon. After all if the US could do it 30 years ago it should be a cinch now .. right. Of course once a shuttle is given extra fuel to go round the moon .. people are gonna say ... if that guy could go up as a tourist then then next tourist could whiz by the moon and maybe even we could rig something up to land ... after all we're so much further along now than then ... or are we ?
So if you get missions to the moon then a mission to Mars suddenly looks more desirable because people can once more get into space exploration with the vanishingly faint but non-zero probability of tourists going there.
Pete
Bitter and proud of it.
It's already been thought of. Go read Man Plus and its sequel Mars Plus by Frederik Pohl.
In the original book they strap an IBM mainframe in a backpack to the main character, cut out his lungs and drop him on Mars. It's fun for the whole family.
Could you please point me to some sources of evidence on this? I've heard some of the theories about bacteria from meteorites and what-not bringing life to the planet, but i wanna know more... Enguiring Minds wanna know..
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
It's not just budget problems that hold NASA back... its a lack of the enthusiasm we once had for the space program. We once had a president who directly challenged the space program to reach new heights (like the MOON), and we once had a sense of competition with the USSR challenging our space ego. Since then, the last man to set foot on the moon is a senior citizen and our rate of progress has GREATLY diminished. The budget isn't to blame. If a mass, genuine interest were shown (not just by us techies, but by our elected officials, and the general public as a whole) in reaching new goals in space, the budget would be there and it would get done. Hopefully with the talk of Russia re-entering the race, something of merit will get done... something more than just crashing a robot into a nearby planet.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
Actually, we'll probably go for money before circumstances necessitate a survival situation. Money has long been the driver for exploration and expansion. There's a lot of money to be made in space, it just takes a considerable amount of investment to jump-start the cash machine.
To paraphrase Carl Sagan: Extraordinary returns require extraordinary capital.
IANAG, but I imagine water is the most probable liquid to be found for the non-extreme kinds of temperatures that Mars has. What other liquid could be flowing in large amounts enough to erode the ground? I'm sure it's not oil, or we'd already be there digging it out. Maybe it was Pepsi? :)
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Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
IANA Astronomer/Geologist/whatever, but why, when evidence of erosion patterns is found, do they always assume it was water that made them?
Why couldn't it have been some other fluid? Why don't they say it's evidence of some sort of luquid or fluid?
Can any knowledgable geologists help me out?
I bet it was trying to tear out the eyes of our beloved cydonia! (what! that's not cydonia?)
Some posts are talking about using the water for drinking...
Well I don't know.
I've been warned about just drinking the water in a foreign country and now you're talking about drinking water from another planet?
I sure would hate to be spending my time on mars on the can.
Recent satellite images of Mars reveal rust colored spots which scientists believe are Amelia Earhart's crashed airplane. "We believe Mrs Earhart was abducted by martians," said one scientist, "we think she had quite a life on mars and finally decided to try to fly her airplane around the planet. However she was unable to make it all the way around and crashed somewhere near the equator."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yeah, and it's kinda shaped like the hand-print switch-thingy that Arnie used to set off all the air in Total Recall. It's clearly some huge and unnecessarily complicated conspiracy.
$20 to $100B? This is easy for Bill Gate to fund the project so that he can be as far away from the goverment as possible.
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Sig
abbr.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
actually lots has happened in last quarter of 20th century. for every year there is a more money being invested into r&d than the previous one. offcourse now we dont have any high-profile projects (star wars?) so its harder to notice improvements. i believe that most money nowadays goes into it and biotechnology. now that hugo project has been finished we can except huge influx of new medicine.
also it takes for a new technologies between 10-20 years to become widespread thus we mostly see applications that have been developed during 70-ies and 80-ies (minidisc, cd, mobile phones...)
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
But is a 100,000 year of water basin worth a costly mission to confirm it
you are missing the point. we are not sending manned mission to mars to confirm water. importance of liquid water existing on the surface of the mars is that our future manned missions are going to be much cheaper (we dont have to take water with us) while we are not going to have to be confined to polar regions of the mars.
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
actually i wander about this one too. as far as i know most of the mars mountanious regions are located on equator. shouldnt this make landing harder ?
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
The real pinch is assembling the talent and funding. The current climate would lead to profoundly idiotic questions from the White House and the lamer members of congress about cost and whether it would be good for business.
The other human issue is how well a crew could stand the mixture of isolation and inability to avoid their fellow crew on such a trip. The situation could become a pyschological pressure cooker that could put new meaning to "going postal."
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
I just can't get excited about 100,000 year old lakes on Mars. I'm not sure why. Hubble, ISS, Voyager, stuff like that - really cool.
Well, quite a few pictures taken by Hubble show things in state they were millions or even more years ago, so the possible water in Mars is rather recent stuff compared to that... ;)
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
-- Agthorr
Well perhaps we should spend the money on education to teach people like you how to spell!
Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
"Information wants to be paid"
I noticed the /. blurb mentioned making the mission easier because the liquid was near the equator? what does this have to do with it? how does it make the mission easier? I understand lifting off into space is easier from the equator, but landing?
I'm good with numbers -
Throw enough resources and money at the problem and the trip is engineering child's play. The martian gravity well is nowhere near the problem the earth's is. The trip could even be staged with fuel sent ahead by slower orbits while the crew waited for more optimal transfer possibilities and for the fuel and gear to arrive ahead of them.
If it was childs play, what happened to the last three martian probes? (yes, I know what HAPPENED, my point is that it happened at all...) Sending fuel and food ahead in a slower orbit is only usefull if it actually GETS there. And I seriously doubt our ability to get it there with enough reliability to stake a mission on it.
Then again, missions without risk gain us nothing. So, if you can find folks willing to starve to death on mars, I say go for it.
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel. -
With budgets being slashed and Nasa having trouble getting robots to land, what does everyone think the reality of a manned mission in our lifetime is?
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel. -
-53C is the global average, rather than the equatorial average. Mars gets as warm as 27 C. The pressure is also dependent on the altitude, just as it is on Earth, and Valles Marinaris is 7 km deep. The highest pressure is up to about 9 millibars, well above the 6 millibars of the triple point of water. (See the nine planets for a handy reference).
In low-lying equatorial regions, you can temporarily get conditions that support liquid water.
Of Course, being the fringe, they have alot of other weird things as well.
The way I look at it, when you turn up the sensitivity on the radar, you tend to get more noise along with extra advanced warning.
It comes with the territory.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Earth's atmospheric pressure is 1 atm or converting to kPa, 100 kPa. Martian atmospheric pressure is about 1% of Earth's or about 1 kPa (10^3 Pa on the chart). Average Martian surface temperatures at the equator are -53C or 220K. Now looking at our chart again, we see that at this point, water cannot exist as a liquid, but only as a solid (ice). As day/night termperatures shift, water will alternate between solid and gas only, never even passing through the liquid state, and once a gas, not likely to collect on the ground, but remain suspended as ice crystals high in the air. So for now, the collecting frozen water from near the poles, storing it in canisters , and transporting those to any camps remains the only realistic wat of getting water on Mars.
fortunately, it's just executing a print statment, however, you could easily replace "print" with "system" and your encoded command.
that makes total sense considering other forms of ice seem to be much more common in our solar system.
Looks like a giant bony hand is submerged in the sand. Wait until the "Face on Mars" supporters get a hold of this pic...they'll enhance the image and find evidence for a wedding ring, nailpolish, wrinkles.
Not quite.
Liquid "water" is possible on Mars, in the form of brines - essentially, salts dissolved in water. Mix a bunch of table salt into a glass of water and put in in the freezer - some may freeze, but as it does, it concentrates the salt in the liquid portion until equilibrium is reached. Remember that pure water is rare, it is much more likely to have salt in it (Earth's oceans).
So, instead of looking only at the phase diagram of water, take a look at the binary or ternary phases diagram of water and various salts - some brines are liquids at -53C.
And there are other ways of making water on Mars - the atmosphere contains a few parts per million of water vapor. Yes, vapor, not ice. Run that past a zeolite bed, an extreme dessicant, and the level drops to a few parts per billion. Eventually, the zeolite absorbs about 20% of its mass in water. You then close the container, heat it up, and the water vapor is driven off to be collected and liquified. We don't have to go to the poles for water. The energy balance on this scheme works out to around 10 kWh per kilogram of water produced, quite doable with a few radioisotope thermal generators.
I recommend to every one Robert Zubrin's excellent book, The Case for Mars. You can buy it from the Mars Society, linked below.
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Vpered na Mars!
"Maybe we don't have to go to the poles to find water ice. It's easier for a spacecraft to survive at the equator," Mustard said.
Does anyone know why it's easier for a spacecraft to survive at the equator? Is Mustard (I love that name!) just referring to colder temperatures?
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
The how and why of washboard roads.
I don't understand. So what's the big deal? It's just water. I know, everyone is hoping that Water = Life. But there are many other components necessary for life. The presence of water does not mean life exists or ever existed. In fact, frankly, the chances that life has ever existed on any "water" planet are pretty low. This article is just NASA pushing out more propaganda trying to save its funding.
100,000 years ago?
Was that when the last Martians left to colonise Earth?
I am anarch of all I survey.
When I was born, we had just made it to the moon. I wish I could have been alive to witness that moment. In my 30 years, there hasn't been a single truly amazing technological accomplishment like reaching the moon. Sure, things have gotten smaller, faster, and cheaper. But nothing Earth-shattering has happened that just makes us sit down and say "Wow!"
We've been on cruise control for 32 years. That's bad. Any country--and indeed all mankind--needs a goal. Something to shoot for, keep the scientists thinking, keep everyone dreaming. Just waiting out the recession and waiting for profit reports for the next quarter isn't sufficient motivation for mankind to continue advancing in meaningful ways. Not only do we need to create wealth, we need to continue scientific advances. Humans have always explored "the next frontier," be it out of greed, curiosity, or necessity. There is plenty of room on Mars for all of these, eventually.
Apparently the Russians are planning a manned mission to Mars by 2020 and are asking for international cooperation. That's fine, but I hope America takes the lead as it has in the past. Especially considering Russia's financial situation there's really no way they're going anywhere unless they get a ride with the rest of the world.
In any case, I'd much prefer my tax dollars to be spent on meaningful scientific research that gets us to Mars or a colony on the moon rather than our many entitlement programs. If we'd even spend 1/5th of our entitlement budget on scientific R&D we'd have an outpost on the moon followed by a manned mission and outpost on Mars rather than paying people to stay at home and watch TV instead of working.
i wanna taste the water the little green men drink...
Nosce te Ipsum
Whoa! Nice work. The salts. Man, you schooled 'em with that one. That's straight off a scantron test.
That sure do make too helluva much sense that you'd encounter brines on the surface of a planet, don't it? I mean what with our own beloved oceans all full of magnesium and sodium and whatnot. And Mars supposedly having dried up oceans. That sounds like a damn salty situation to me.
And the cruel thing is that those bitter tears of the earlier poster when he realizes what a fool he was and cries himself to sleep will remind him in their saltiness of his own failure to observe the obvious.
Agreed. The BBC article is much more reasonable. It doesn't however provide any details with respect to the theorising of the existance of ice crystals binding together dust on the surface of mars - a much more reasonable hypothesys.
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
The area the hand is located also looks like an eye socket, with the nose in the middle of the picture.
very freaky
that was debunked years ago as a play of light, is anyone else freaked out by a hand that looks like it was torn off of Predator in this picture: http://www.spaceref.com/redirect.html?id=0&url=ima ges.spaceref.com/news/2001/01-006a.jpg
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
I smell an economic bottleneck.
We live on a water based planet and have a water based economy.. this was not necessarily clear when water was plentiful enuf to be free, but now as it becomes scarce we see how much of our society is undergirded by it.
Hence we are going to Mars with water technology.. water as the base for hydrogen fuel and oxygen for a manned mission. And we wish to terraform Mars, taking hundreds of years and quadrillions of dollars to conform a planet to our needs.
Why don't we do the quicker thing and conform ourselves to the planet's needs?
Consider that we have broken through cloning technology, genetic engineering, etc. before having solved the long distance space transport problem to the degree that would suit the human biology. In other words, it's historically and technologically easier to adapt *ourselves* to Mars, rather than vice versa.
We should engineer carbon-breathing people, able to breathe rarefied Mars air and survive under cold and heat and low gravity..although this would necessitate a fundamental revision of the ATP cycle and other biological processes, in generational terms it may be easier than basing everything on water, which is very rare in the universe. We may benefit here on Earth by reformatting our biology, as we have been steadily destroying the ecology that created us.
Goat sex free since 2001
This is a complete fantasy. The "small chemical plant" would be far to big and heavy to send - even if such a thing were practical, which is highly speculative to put it politely.
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I just can't get excited about 100,000 year old lakes on Mars. I'm not sure why. Hubble, ISS, Voyager, stuff like that - really cool. But is a 100,000 year of water basin worth a costly mission to confirm it - maybe - but I guess I'd rather see the money spent on things like ISS expansion, better weather sats, comm stas, etc, etc. I think spac exploration is great, but folks calling for new manned or unmanned missions to mars everytime a new sign of old water is found seem unrealistic. Don't get me wrong - the robotic camera that sent back panoramic views of Mars was incredible. But we've been there, done that and have awesome pics of the surface. DO we really need to spend billions finding out what the red dirt is made of? I guess you can say that about any mission, but I support most of them. It just seems like Mars missions are stretching teh realism of current space budgets
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
CNN.com is running running basically the same story -Theed
This guy should be banned from /. for life. He needs to wake up so he might discover what fucking century he's living in. This isn't the 1800's and frankly if any one needs shipping anywhere it's him. Preferably to the nearest penal colony or sanitarium. Who's moderating here anyway?
A 7-Eleven spokesperson added "This profound discovery will shave years off our plans to offer Slurpies(R) on the Martian surface, and represents a giant leap toward the goal of ubiquitous instant refreshment." While current plans include only the popular Coke and grape flavors, an insider confirmed that the 7-Eleven R&D department is already hard at work creating flavors unique to the Red Planet, such as "Extreme Exfoliating Sandstorm Fury", and "Cup of Dirt and Rocks".
Lookie in the middle of the picture at the hand-like formation©©©think the Cydonia "face" people will make something of it? The unfortunate thing is that if it IS an alien hand, it looks pretty threatening©©©what with the claws and all©©© : Teacher007 ~~Keeping the adolescent world safe from themselves~~
On the other hand, if they asked for people to send in money so they could send NStynch and the Backdoor Boys to Mars, sans life support, you'd see parents and older siblings reach straight for their wallets/purses.
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
You moderators need to remove really really stupid posts like this one.
Check out the White Mars hypothesis.
While there certainly frozen water at the poles, an argument can be made that most of the "water" features seen across Mars were made by carbon dioxide in a process comparable to pyroclastic flows from Earth's volcanos.
NASA has a vested interest in finding water on Mars, and while it's understandable there's no excuse for ignoring valid alternate hypotheses.
Shame on you.
I really take offence to that. I posted a link to a perfectly respectable site offering an alternate hypothesis.
Anyway, we'll have a pretty good idea of where things are headed in a few months. Mars Observer will either find indications of carbonates and subsurface water, or it won't. My money is on "won't".
From the article:
I realize that's a very short time in geologic time, but that's an awfully long time to consider there's still useful amounts of water anywhere near the equator:
Astronaut 1: Where's the water?
Astronaut 2: Water?
Astronaut 1: You know...for drinking, creating fuel for the trip home...that sort of thing.
Astronaut 2: Oh, that! I dunno...it was here a 100,000 years ago!
Still, it's interesting data about the changes on Mars.
Imagine the good press you'd get from that!
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Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
Now, in addition to the face of Cydonia, we have a giant claw (just look at the bottom of the picture): four fingers with opposable thumb. It looks like it was trying to reach up to the cliff and slipped. What other body parts are we going to find???
I agree, we have other things we could spend the money on. However there is something called the advancement of Man that we must not neglect. Without such programs deemed "not necessary" we would not further our technology and our understanding of the universe, and we would therefore be stuck, which would eventually kill us. The space program has provided earth with many advancements which have saved countless lives and bettered life in many ways. I know it would make more readers of "Seventeen" happy if we handed out free food to poor people, but I think the money is being well spent.
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~ now you know
The only Negro problem is that idiots like you still make comments and think thoughts like the one you posted. I have an idea, why don't we give you a mule and ship your ass to Venus, I hear the air is nice there...
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~ now you know
Refer to My post about this
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~ now you know
I remember hearing that about Europa, another Jovian moon, but not Callisto. Scientists do seem to get excited about new indirect observations of things they can't observe directly.
This story is not about space travel; it's about geology and climate change. The scientists saw some terrain features that looked like the result of glacial processes, with a latitude distribution suggesting a global advance and retreat of ice.
Many planetary scientists think they can learn more about Earth by studying other worlds. They probably see manned missions only as a way to get better observations.
Some of us astronaut wannabes should pump some liquid water from the Earth's crust and take a cold shower. Then the air within 3 meters will be a little cleaner, mitigating the urge to evacuate the planet.
The issue is not water per se -- although as one poster pointed out, existence of water could make a manned mission much cheaper. The issue is that liquid water and an energy source are the only two things that life on Earth seems to require. Thus, wherever liquid water is, there would likely be life. The implications of discovering life on another planet would be profound, and well worth the expense.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I, for one, am sick of stories related to how humans could, one day, occupy or travel to another planet or moon. As well all know, since the walk on the moon during the cold war, no nation or community of nations has taken a substantive step to occupy or physically visit another planet or moon.
/. will see it. Generally, humankind does not prepare for such a monumential undertaking unless it is threatened or if a catastrophe has occurred/is about to occur. In other words, unless a meteor hits earth or some other horrible event occurs, I doubt humankind will be motivated to do nothing more than talk the talk. By then, it would probably be too late to save mankind by moving/finding a new planet.
If such an event has yet to occur, then I doubt to see it during my lifetime and I doubt any user at
Moreover, the initiative to travel or occupy another planet or moon would likely not ever be based on intelligent astronomical or planetary curiousities but, rather, it would likely be based on human's animal instincts to survive. If this was not true, then does mankind not currently possess such intelligent curiousities and the technology for a substantive developments?
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
Compared to Earth, the atmosphere of Mars is very thin. On Earth the average pressure exerted by the atmosphere on its surface is 1,013 millibars (mbar), but on Mars the average surface pressure is only 8 mbar, less than one hundredth that of Earth. The atmosphere of Earth is predominately nitrogen (78.1%) followed in abundance by oxygen (20.9%), which is due to the activity of photosynthetic organisms such as algae and plants. Earth's level of carbon dioxide is so low (0.035%) that some algae and plants are limited by their ability to obtain it for photosynthesis. In contrast, the Martian atmosphere is largely carbon dioxide (95.32%), followed in abundance by nitrogen (2.7%), argon (1.6%), and oxygen (0.13%).
I heard about the underground ocean in 6th grade! Honestly, this is nothing new. Maybe the editors are posting extra stories to divert all the traffic on the Sklyarov story and 511 comments.
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"And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion...." -- J.S. Mill
They use the term to differenciate from ammonia ice, etc. There are numerous other elements that form ice, and those are found on other planets more commonly than water.
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"And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion...." -- J.S. Mill
Cool, but I bet she'd kick your ass if you tried to locate it.
I've always thought Callisto was more interesting than Xena and Gabrielle. When I met Hudson in person, there was real angst behind those eyes.
Slashdot: Everything in Moderation, including Moderation itself.
I recommend to every one Robert Zubrin's excellent book, The Case for Mars.
while we're at the recommendation stage - I heartily recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy which combines scientific fact (yes, it answers the water/pressure/ice question) with an excellent story.
Red Mars at Amazon
(the other two books are Green Mars and Blue Mars)
Yan
Gilina: "I can't believe you're not Sebacean."
John: "Human. It's kinda like Sebacean, but we haven't conquered other worlds yet, so we just kick the crap out of each other."
Farscape, PK Tech Girl
I think this line's only filler
...to sell the broadcast rights to Fox to finance the mission.
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Uh, I suppose that's why the article used the word "ice" as in the hard, decidedly non-liquid form of H2O.
If there is life on Mars, I bet it's scared of us.
No sig here. Move along. No sig here. Move along...
the possibilities are endless! I can just see the commercials now: "This is the true story of seven space-monkeys picked to live in a spacecraft and have their lives taped. Find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real." They could have regis come in and regulate, or maybe the weakest link lady. And then to add another twist, you could vote your least favorite astronaut off the ship. Cost-cutting and fun for the whole family! More oxygen for the rest of us! And then when they all finally got to mars, the martian life that of course would be found and corralled, could become part of the show. It would be like road rules vs real world! Competition to get home! Somebody sedate me
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practically an AC
What would be the porpourse of spending millions of dollars to send someting to a forien planet to study it when it will do know good to us here on Earth?Why not spend it on something worth our wile like buying computers,books for schools reparing the shit for roads everyday.What is your opion?
Why go out and spend millions of dollers so that we can find a different planet to live on?It's our fault the earth is in this condition.There's pleanty of time before the earth run's out of reasourses,in that time I think we should use the money to repair the earth instead of using it to get ready for something that's going to happen billions of years from now.I'm only 10 but I can tell what's best for the planet.
As one of the authors of the Nature article, I'd like to respond and say that it is not about liquid water, but rather about water ice. The ice collects in the dusty surface during certain climate conditions, then sublimates (solid->vapor) under warmer conditions. However, there are many situations that others have touched on that allow liquid water to exist on the surface of Mars under current conditions, at least temporarily. The phase diagram only tells us that it is not thermodynamically stable, not whether it may exist unstably (i.e. boiling away). This is a kinetic problem. Imagine that water exists in liquid form underneath the surface (i.e. the added pressure of the rock above moves you into a stable zone in the phase diagram). Then if some of this water is moved to the surface , it will take some time for it to freeze or evaporate. Again, though, this isn't the case for our terrain that we reported on in Nature.