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More on the Mars Ice Cap
bfwebster writes "In a striking example of how a preliminary (but wrong!) scientific conclusion can persist for decades, Space.com has a story about how the south polar ice cap on Mars is mostly water, not mostly carbon dioxide (dry ice), as has been stated since the late 1960s. The new finding is based on analysis of Mars Observer readings that show that the souther polar ice cap is too warm at certain seasons to be dry ice. This finding has negative implications both for those claiming that liquid flow structures on Mars were caused by C02 instead of H20, as well as those who were hoping to use all that CO2 for terraforming."
Why are they using this flimsy temerature evidence that the ice is water and not C02? It seems to me that they could use a spectrometer to determine its exact chemical composition...
Okay, we know now that most of the ice cap is actually water. So....
What does that mean? Will that mean a new space initiative aimed at a manned trip to Mars? More satellites hovering over the red planet?
I guess what I'm asking: will we actually do anything productive with the news of water on Mars? If not, are we simply wasting hundreds of millions on Mars, when many other projects exist for NASA?
The Political Programmer
I think that highest problem with Mars' terraforming is not of "biochemical" nature but astrophysical. Mars doesn't have a huge satelite like Earth (relatively speaking, of course - Moon is one sixth of Earth's mass) to regulate its rotation. As a consequence Mars doesn't really have stable seasons (well, Earth doesn't seem to have them either, but for a completely different reason :)) and I believe that this is a huge impediment in any kind of a terraforming effort
The Raven
..we find out the real story and send a probe to Mars/Europa/Whereever else to settle this indecisiveness. It's not that hard.
Is there anybody on /. who is actually OPPOSED to the idea of terraforming another planet? In the article it says some folks are going on about making our own place more livable, yadda yadda yadda, but I don't really see why anybody would be opposed to the idea of expanding humanity's reach. Please don't mod me flamebait, I'm really interested in knowing why anybody would think it's a bad thing...
*ahem*
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore... in the old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long. Seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will only be about a mile and three-quarters long.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such a wholesome return of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
-- Mark Twain
^^^ Just about says it all about this bit of reasoning, don't you think?
"When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me"
I just read that article referenced in this posting, from 2001 about how liquid CO2 & / slurry of CO2 snow and such caused the gullies. Do the steps listed in that article sound viable? Ok, the pores in the gravel and rock are filled with frozen CO2, and covered over by more CO2. They they claim that the CO2 in the pores heats and because of pressure, will not sublime directly to a gas as is usually the case and would almost certainly be the case on mars since the air pressure is so low due to low gravity, but that heat that is causing the CO2 in the gravel rock pores to melt and become liquid in the first place , which I presume is coming from light from the SUN, would certainly seem to me to have already melted the CO2 layers on the ground which would have sublimed into a gas long before any significant heat had reached these gravel pores to cause the CO2 in the gravel to change phase. I don't have the numbers on the insulative factors of frozen CO2 on hand, but it seems to me that it would have well nigh all have sublimed given external heating from the surface -down- from the SUN long before significant heat could be reaching trapped CO2 beneath the surface, that in fact would not be trapped at all and would just sublime itself. Unless, are they suggesting the heating was coming from underneath, due to internal heat of mars core? That seems unlikely because that isn't going to vary with the seasons, so they must have meant heat from the SUN, and therefore I'm quite confused as to how they think this was going to work. It seems rather farfetched to me. Like an explanation for gullies that -has to involve CO2 because they -know- the polar caps are frozen CO2.
--- I am not a NASA planetologist so the above may be flawed.
It is not yet clear whether the interior of Mars has ANY "liquid" magma left or not. It is much smaller than Earth and has probably lost its internal heat already.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I see milleniums full of humans reproducing the earth on dead planets throughout the universe. We've just got to make sure the earth doesn't die during child birth.
I have a serious question.
The people in this forum who deny the 'Greenhouse Effect' (and whenever there's an article about the environment, there are plenty saying things like "We don't have enough data..." or "It's a bit arrogant to think that man can have an effect on the environment..." or "It's bad science...") how come they don't they come out and blast the science of terraforming a planet like Mars?
not when we spend 397 billion per annum on tanks and missles, ya know, useful things
water will "burn off" more quickly in the practically non-existant Martain atmosphere. complex greenhouse gasses like flexocarbomethane (meh?) and wonderful CFC's that don't go into space and can actually withstand the constant hard radiation comign in from the sun without breaking up into smaller lesss useful bits.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.