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Evidence Found of Lake, Catastrophic Flood on Mars
angkor points to this article on spaceflightnow.com, excerpting: "Scientists 'have discovered a large former lake in the highlands of Mars that would cover an area the size of Texas and New Mexico combined.'"
Yes he was.
Why would so many people believe something as preposterous as the world-wide flood actually happened about 5000 years ago or so if it wasn't in the bible?
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Exactly what was catastrophic about it? Did people die? Were towns washed away?
This is mars we are talking about. Impressively large flood, yes. Catastrophic flood, I don't think so. Worst case, some large rocks got moved about.
Bob.
I like the concept of the STU.
Unfortunately NASA can not do metric conversion even if their space craft depend on it. Since, like most world citizens I have no concept of how big a mile is, it is a relief we can all speak in STU.
Everyone knows that Texas is big (except for Alaskans). Not as big as a decent Australian state(or electoral division or farm) but bigger than any of those puny little European countries.
I can envision Texas sitting in the bottom quarter of Western Australia, or taking up two thirds of South Australia, and I can start to think in terms of how often I would have to fill my car to drive around it.
But New Mexico! Nobody knows or gives a shit about them. Keep to multiples of Texas or nothing!
Why are so many people inclined to believe that Mars had a catastrophic flood but they don't believe the Earth had a similar event take place 5000 years ago?
Yeah, but there are "fringe scientists" out there who claim they've spotted Banyan trees(!) and vegetation in the JPL archives... IIRC Arthur C. Clarke decided to make an idiot of himself by backing these claims. I can just about stretch to contemplating a hypothesis that some sort of primitive, unicellular slime mould manages to eke out a precarious existence in the sub-zero temperatures, extreme aridity and all-round Antartica conditions. After all, there are bacteria that manage to survive by living on the bottom of pebbles in Antarctica. But Banyan trees?... sorry, you lost me there...
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
NASA seems to alternate between press releases of "Water/Life on Mars", "Yet Another Module of a Usless Space Station Launched", "Some 'Kids' Program" and "30 Years Since We Last Did Something (Orbit/Moon etc)".
I am a firm believer in space exploration but I'm really starting to loose faith in NASA. The search for life in the universe is important but should it really be the program's primary goal? IMHO, we should be trying to commercialize space (for humans not just satellites). NASA should help corporations build space hotels, start charging a $million a flight and fund their science that way. The Mars fossils aren't going anywhere! With a good space infrastructure looking for life becomes much easier.
Reply, don't mod.
I know I've asked the this question before: But why is it that everytime there's a story about life on other planets we have someone start talking about the "religious zealots" and how this is going to upset their faith? Like for some reason everyone who is religious will just pack their bags and go home and never give religion another thought.
Well here's a thought... the vast majority of religious people (like the vast majority of the population) probably don't care if there is/was life on other planets. For those that do care the vast majority of them welcome the idea and want to know more about it (myself included).
Yes there are some religious people who are short-sighted and have to put God in a box and declare that everything happened a certain way. For those of us who are not short-sighted its fairly easy to reconcile faith with science. We realize that God is much bigger than any science or logic. The Bible doesn't say that Evolution didn't happen, it just says that God had a hand in creating all that is. For all we know he used evolution to do it and put billions of life-forms all over the universe!
Finally all this begs the question, Why do you care if some people believe that God created the world in a certain way? They have free speech, they don't seem to be here bothering you. If you believe their wrong fine but why bring them up here where has nothing to do with the topic at hand?
Is it because you are equally short-sighted and believe that all religious people in the world believe a certain way because of the acts of a vocal few?
The Anti-Blog
Not to get into the middle of a semi-religious debate, but there are strong parallels between the Mosaic concept of the Flood and Plato's Atlantis, destroyed by what he calls "a sea of mud"--if we are to believe his geography, somewhere in what is now West Africa south of the Atlas mountains. The capitol of this "Atlantis" consisted of a series of circular channels and land areas forming concentric circles whose source must have been a now dry river flowing south from the Atlas. The clear implication is that a dam upriver was breached and that the subsequent flooding produced the sea of mud described. This may have been the result of natural seismic activity or it may have had something to do with the war described by Diodorus Siculus in which Atlantis was attacked by the female warrior Amazons.
The animal part of the story, on the other hand, has clear astrological implications, as do the animals who gather around the newly born "king" at Bethlehem. See "Hamlet's Mill" for a discussion of the association of "floods" with the precession of the equinoxes and the "sinking" of the equinoctial star beneath the celestial equator.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
None of which will benefit people like me, of course.
You're right, you know. The space program should be cancelled, so the money can be used to ensure that bags of chips and six packs of beer can be regularly delivered to your door by courier.
...so damned dangerous.
_ do nt_kill.html
If you (and possibly your community) are the type that have a quiet, personal faith that sustains you during the difficult parts of your life....
...well, even though I (and many others) may find the first principles behind it (that there is an invisible, omnipotent and omniscient being who created us all and who has rules for us that we must all abide by or be consined to the flames) absurd, there's no law against the absurd, and you're not hurting anyone. There's no reason for anyone to piss in your cornflakes.
But you unfortunately - on the surface - share the same faith with a bunch of people who twist religeous writings to serve their own ends, and who simultaniously use these twisted interpretations to absolve them of any responsibility for their actions.
Somebody with the absolute conviction that an otherwise unconsciencable act is sanctioned by their God is a VERY dangerous person, the same way that a psychopath or sociopath is dangerous. The normal rules of conduct no longer apply.
So you get people who feel very strongly that "abortion is murder", but believe that killing doctors who perform abortions is just fine (because it is sanctioned by God,and thus not "murder")
And so on and so forth. There are so many examples that I don't think it's necessary to trot them all out. You don't have to search very hard to find examples of religiously-motivated abhorrant behaviour.
And this behaviour is very much inter-faith. All the major world religions preach peace, tolerence, understanding, and a virtuous life, and evey one of them has bred fanatics who have killed, raped, burned, and opressed (from individuals to entire populations) in the name of their God.
A common theme amongst these fanatics is an insistance on the absolute infallibility of their scriptures and the letter of these scriptures (or at least the part of it that they feel gives them leave to do whatever it is they want to do) Anything that can debunk or disprove these scriptures makes is more difficult to gain converts and continue spreading the disease. A world with no religious zealots would be a very fine place indeed.
So it's not that anyone believes that "all religious people believe a certain thing because of the acts of a vocal few" but rather that "the acts of the vocal few are so damned dangerous that they have to be contained somehow".
Note that you don't necessarily have to be burning witches or firebombing abortion clinics to be dangerous. If you seek the supression of the teaching of truth (because it contradicts your scriptures) you are dangerous. If you seek to deny people certain rights (because your scriptures claim such people are hated by your God) then you are dangerous. If you seek the supression of certain books or works of art because you feel they are counter to the wishes of your God, you are dangerous. Etc etc ad nausium.
Probably the best illustration of what I'm taking about here comes from the fine folks at The Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/onion3734/god_clarifies
The fanatics are the ones speaking for you, like it or not. They tar you with the same brush.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
See, here's the deal. See that big yellow light bulb in the big room with the blue ceiling? We know, sooner or later, that that light's going to burn out. We also know that, before it does, it'll get real big. If we're not off Earth by the time it happens, there won't be any people left. And that's assuming we don't manage to render ourselves extinct by any of the other ways we're doing our best to kill ourselves off with. Either way, the space program is our only means of assuring that the human race goes on without Earth. Maybe it doesn't benefit you directly, but your heirs will benefit. It assures that you will have heirs, period.
Yeah, maybe it's military applications that get the funding. But that's no reason to throw them out, when they can be used for good for a change.
Probably Mars colonization will never benefit people like you and me. But how about colonization of the asteroid belt? Lessons learned in Mars investigation could apply just as well. And if you're too short-sighted to see the benefits to you and me in mining the asteroids (how does "ridiculously large supply of raw materials" sound), I suggest you visit your opthamologist today.
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
Oh, I dunno, maybe 'cause some of us have children who will probably have children, who will have children, ad infinitum, and at some point life on Earth may no longer be viable. It would be nice to have someplace else to go.
Or it might be interesting to find out whether or not life ever got started someplace else besides here, and if so, how it relates to life on this planet so that we have more information on which to base our decisions on how we manage Earth.
There is more to life than the here and now.
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.