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Flowing Water Discovered on Mars

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the john-jones-homeworld dept.

Dolphy writes "BBC News has the latest big scoop on the Mars phenomenon. Researcher Tahirih Motazedian apparently uncovered proof quite some time ago of flowing water and surface change on Mars."

79 of 364 comments (clear)

  1. First water... by chill · · Score: 4, Funny

    How long before they find the first Martian Starbucks? Probably right next to the McDonald's and Walmart.

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  2. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by pyrote · · Score: 4, Funny

    ya, just release some alge or other brackish tolerant plant and wait a few million/billion years.

    --
    THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
  3. Of course its there by gowen · · Score: 3, Funny

    It even has a name. In Martian the word "Grok" means "to know", "to eat", "body" and, of course "water".

    M. V. Smith

    PS: Anyone want to join my weird telepathic sex cult?

    --
    Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
    1. Re:Of course its there by 10Ghz · · Score: 4, Funny
      Anyone want to join my weird telepathic sex cult?


      Hmmmm... I find your ideas intriguing and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter...
      --
      Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
    2. Re:Of course its there by big_gibbon · · Score: 2, Funny
      PS: Anyone want to join my weird telepathic sex cult?

      You already know the answer

      P

  4. Water's not the only liquid in universe by _Eric · · Score: 3, Interesting

    One thing I always wondered is why the hell rivers have to be water on mars.

    Mars's surface temperature goes down pretty low at night to some -100 degree Celcius, at which nitrogen (roughly our air) is liquid as well (at earth ground pressures).

    Can't all those riverbed come from other liquid that only flow at night time and vaporize during daytime. As we only observe the daytime mars, the "water" is always gone.

    Anybody have an idea about that?

    1. Re:Water's not the only liquid in universe by Crossplatform · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If the liquid nitrogen is evaporating during the day what is the ambiant light source for the pictures? Just a thought but good point.

      --
      Sex is what happens when people think no one else will ever find out
    2. Re:Water's not the only liquid in universe by Apps · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Wouldn't the fact that there is only a very thin atmosphere on Mars and therefore very low pressure change the temperatures at which substances change to liquid?

      perhaps at -100C at these low pressures water is a liquid.

    3. Re:Water's not the only liquid in universe by umofomia · · Score: 5, Informative
      Mars's surface temperature goes down pretty low at night to some -100 degree Celcius, at which nitrogen (roughly our air) is liquid as well (at earth ground pressures).
      Um... the temperature at which nitrogen turns liquid is -195.8 degrees Celcius. With Mars' lower air pressure, I'm sure it's even less.

      Meanwhile, even at the poles, Mars does not go below -150 degrees, so there is no place on Mars at which nitrogen will turn into a liquid.

    4. Re:Water's not the only liquid in universe by panurge · · Score: 5, Informative
      First, the boiling point of nitrogen is much lower than -100C. And the atmospheric pressure of nitrogen you would need to get a river to flow when the temperature dropped would mean a planet much bigger than Mars.

      Second, the remarkable thing about water is that based on simple chemical rules it should not be a liquid at ordinary temperatures: ammonia, with a similar MW, is a gas. It is the strong hydrogen bonding between water molecules that gives it the high melting and boiling points, and the very wide range between them. The ideal liquid to sustain life has a wide range between MP and BP, dissolves a wide range of substances, is itself mostly unreactive, is made from elements common in planets, does not react with oxygen, hydrogen, carbon or sulphur in the liquid state at ordinary pressures, and is easily formed in chemical reactions (which implies a small molecule). Water fits the bill extremely well. Another liquid which is quite good is ethyl alcohol. The other small molecules (ammonia, nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide, methane, methyl alcohol, hydrogen cyanide) all fall down badly or one or more of the criteria.

      Water may not be the only liquid that makes a suitable carrier for life, but it would be really hard to find a more suitable one. Human experiments to use alcohol instead are rarely successful for very long.

      --
      Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
    5. Re:Water's not the only liquid in universe by _Eric · · Score: 5, Informative

      OK one step further: Martian Atmosphere

      Surface pressure: 6.36 mb at mean radius (variable from 4.0 to 8.7 mb depending on season)
      [6.9 mb to 9 mb (Viking 1 Lander site)]
      Surface density: ~0.020 kg/m3
      Scale height: 11.1 km
      Total mass of atmosphere: ~2.5 x 1016 kg
      Average temperature: ~210 K (-63 C)
      Diurnal temperature range: 184 K to 242 K (-89 to -31 C) (Viking 1 Lander site)
      Wind speeds: 2-7 m/s (summer), 5-10 m/s (fall), 17-30 m/s (dust storm) (Viking Lander sites)
      Mean molecular weight: 43.34 g/mole
      Atmospheric composition (by volume):
      Major : Carbon Dioxide (CO2) - 95.32% ; Nitrogen (N2) - 2.7%
      Argon (Ar) - 1.6%; Oxygen (O2) - 0.13%; Carbon Monoxide (CO) - 0.08%
      Minor (ppm): Water (H2O) - 210; Nitrogen Oxide (NO) - 100; Neon (Ne) - 2.5;
      Hydrogen-Deuterium-Oxygen (HDO) - 0.85; Krypton (Kr) - 0.3;
      Xenon (Xe) - 0.08

      So we're talking carbon dioxide. Pressure is 7mb or 7hPa or 0.7kPa (earth pressure beeing around 1000hPa or 100kPa)

      Here's a phase diagram of CO2

      So at such low pressures, CO2 is vapor at diurnal temperature ranges. My theory seems not to hold. Please go back to sleep.

    6. Re:Water's not the only liquid in universe by Xilman · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Second, the remarkable thing about water is that based on simple chemical rules it should not be a liquid at ordinary temperatures: ammonia, with a similar MW, is a gas. It is the strong hydrogen bonding between water molecules that gives it the high melting and boiling points, and the very wide range between them.

      While that is true about water, it's also true about ammonia! There's quite strong hydrogen bonding in ammonia, which is why its boiling point and freezing point is so much higher than methane which genuinely doesn't have any hydrogen bonding. Methane has molecular weight of 16, ammonia of 17 and water of 18, so all these hydrides are quite similar in that respect. Their boiling points at atmospheric pressure are -161.6C, -33.4C and 100C respectively.

      ... does not react with oxygen, hydrogen, carbon or sulphur in the liquid state at ordinary pressures, and is easily formed in chemical reactions (which implies a small molecule).

      I fail to see why a life-sustaining fluid must not react with oxygen at ordinary pressures. (I fail to see why it need not react with the others noted for that matter, but oxygen is the odd one out.) Oxygen is such a viciously reactive gas that it reacts with almost anything that isn't already heavily oxygenated. There is only free oxygen in the Earth's atmostphere because it has been generated by living organisms which have reacted water with CO_2 to produce useful stuff and a nasty toxic byproduct. Organisms capable of withstanding the corrosive atmosphere came much later and those which actually require free O_2 even later.

      A biology that didn't use a hydrolysis reaction wouldn't produce a oxygenated atmosphere and ammonia would very probably serve well as a working fluid. An ammonia-water mixture would possibly be even more suitable.

      Paul

      --
      Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
    7. Re:Water's not the only liquid in universe by fusiongyro · · Score: 4, Insightful

      With the life we know, this indeed holds true. But I'm sure there could be life based on any number of weird building blocks, we just don't have them here.

      With a little application of the anthropic principle, why should we expect other life-bearing planets to be wildly different? I agree with your point that we shouldn't be looking just for what we have here, but we have two reasons to do that: 1. we know our data is good, and 2. we really don't know what else to look for.

      In fact, it reinforces my total agreement with you that [D|R]NA is not necessary for life. I believe that a good minimum for definining life is just adaptive behavior, i.e. evolution. Of course we aren't inclined to say things like evolutionary algorithms or simple adaptive chemical processes "are" life... but perhaps part of the problem with that is that we simply haven't let these things go on long enough to recognize them as life.

      In a universe this vast, it seems impossible to me that we could be the only life. One thing which I expect we'll find if we explore the universe in greater detail is that it's full of weird things. The weirdness of life doesn't come across when we sit at home in ultra-introspective mode, categorizing the minute differences between insects as though they're legendary incredible differences. The weirdness will come across when we're confronted by complex interrelated chemical and physical processes on other worlds, and our biologists won't want to call it life, while the rest of us will (or vice versa).

      For once a little manifest destiny would have been just fine. Instead, we're peering through expensive telescopes, while our ancestors are pointing at the leaning tower and asking us why we aren't dropping things from the top of it.

      --
      Daniel

    8. Re:Water's not the only liquid in universe by tigersha · · Score: 3, Informative

      There is a large difference between D/RNA and water. Water is an extremel simple molecule and acts as the carrier for the processes in life. Nucleic acids are
      extremely complicated molecules that are used to store information (used to encode proteins)

      Now, it is quite possible to envision an organism which uses some non-nucleic acid information storage system. However, for the trivial carrier molecule there is not really that much choice.

      There are only so many simple molecules out there.

      In the medium-complexity range, whould there we any other chemical structures which could replace proteins? I am not a biochemist...

      I agree that we should not look for life just as ourselves. Alien life would probably not have DNA and might not have proteins. So we should not look for those.

      However, they would probably be water based and therefore that is a good starting point.

      AFAIK there is not many reasons to replace Carbon either, so they would probably be organic too. Another thing to look at.

      Anyways, I am not an biochemist, again. Soany comments from the experts are welcome.

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    9. Re:Water's not the only liquid in universe by W32.Klez.A · · Score: 2, Funny

      Obviously, Hubble has a flash.

    10. Re:Water's not the only liquid in universe by Pharmboy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In a universe this vast, it seems impossible to me that we could be the only life. One thing which I expect we'll find if we explore the universe in greater detail is that it's full of weird things. The weirdness of life doesn't come across when we sit at home in ultra-introspective mode, categorizing the minute differences between insects as though they're legendary incredible differences. The weirdness will come across when we're confronted by complex interrelated chemical and physical processes on other worlds, and our biologists won't want to call it life, while the rest of us will (or vice versa).

      Purely as a layman: It seems the more I look at human biology, and the potential alternative lifeforms, I begin to conclude that while there MAY BE lifeforms based on something besides carbon, or that are carbon based but look very different than us, I would image most lifeforms in a similar state of intellegence (or lack thereof)DO look similar to us in many ways. I have to image that two eyes (stereoscopic vision) bipedal, and two of most everything is universally desirable. While 3 or more may be better, the benefits are not worth the evolutionary cost.

      Paraphrasing Carl Sagan, maybe things look this way because if they were any other way, we wouldnt be here to look at them. Maybe most intellegent life will only form on planet that are .75 to 1.5x the size of earth to maintain the proper atmosphere, with a temperature that is within 30C of earth, etc. Maybe our kind of life only happen in non-binary systems, on planets that have an axis that is offset to the plane of their rotation, creating regular seasons (or maybe not). Not that Earth IS the standard, it just falls WITHIN the standard, so we are here to ask. Maybe life MUST be carbon based, maybe. Maybe we are not quite so unique, and its that all or most intellegent life looks disctictly similar to us in many ways outlined herein.

      The irony is, if we found 12 different 'species' that were more or less at the same intellegence level (10000BC to 10000AD our perspective) they may actually look similar to the races on Star Trek. Biped, different features enhanced (Ferrangi with big ears, Vulcans with a logic based society, Klingon's with a warrior based society, etc). I don't mean LITERALLY we meet Klingons, but real species may be as similar simply because evolution works toward a similar model anywhere: Biped, two of everything, about 60 to 100KG in size, internal skeleton, and the variations are due to the variations of that planet. We would probably be just in the middle of this evolution. Maybe Grays are more toward completion of this evolution, if they exist.

      Another case of life imitating art. However, unlike Star Trek, I am pretty sure they won't all speak American English. ;-)

      --
      Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
    11. Re:Water's not the only liquid in universe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Take a dish of water and put it under vacuum. See how it boils? That's lower pressure causing boiling at lower tempurature, son.

      Hmmm, mine's not boiling. Do I have to plug the vacuum in first? Hmmm, no change.

  5. High res images by t0qer · · Score: 5, Informative


    Higher res images


    (o) <----put that karma right here :P



  6. Don't Really Know If It's There Or Not... by aerojad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Until we stop looking at pictures and send some more probes and people over there. It can be done, and we'll finally know for sure.

    --

    SecondPageMedia - Wha
  7. It may be water by CGameProgrammer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I seriously doubt liquid nitrogen can exist at that low pressure. I figure either BBC is way off (their science stories are always a bit out there) or it really is water. There is certainly ice at the poles and below the surface... we've discovered that.

    --
    ~CGameProgrammer( );
  8. Things we could do with the water... by jade42 · · Score: 5, Funny

    1. Beach resort
    2. Evaporate it for salt
    3. Water fights
    4. Endless discussion about life on Mars
    5. Experiments to see if fish could live on Mars

    --

    Brought to you by the Artificial Idea Factory.
    1. Re:Things we could do with the water... by JCholewa · · Score: 2, Funny

      > 6. "Miss Wet T-Shirt" competitions...?

      At sixty degrees below freezing, you'd kill all the contestants.

      I like my skimpily-dressed women alive, thank you.

      -JC

  9. In the exalted words of our esteemed former VP... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."

    - Vice President Dan Quayle, 8/11/89

  10. I don't want life on Mars by Matimus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Although its exciting, It would seriously hinder us from engineering Mars into a livable planet. If we discover life there, people will have a big problem with messing up the eco system. I am all for dumping tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, warming the place up, and planting a bunch of trees. It would still be a long time before the environment would be safe for humans.

    --
    GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
    1. Re:I don't want life on Mars by bfinuc · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I disagree for two reasons:

      1) Going to Mars would probably suck. For example, I think living in Anarctica sounds a lot better. I predict the population of Mars will never exceed that of Antarctica.

      2) Finding life on Mars would be a massive boost to understanding life in general. I bet that if things get better in the next few centuries it will be because mankind improves things on Earth, and that understanding biology is going to be important in that process.

      So destroying life, however primitive, on Mars, is probably a bad bet, because colonizing Mars isn't going to help anyone anyway, and studying alien life may very well..

      --
      I bragged about my Karma at a job interview but I didn't get the job.
    2. Re:I don't want life on Mars by gl4ss · · Score: 2, Insightful

      you lack the imagination to think 10 000 years forward, heck, 100 000 years should do it, or just make it a nice round million years. far by that if we don't get nuked to stone age(and even if we do) we can do it for relatively cheap and then we will do it.

      colonizing mars is not going to help anyone anymore than colonizing america.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    3. Re:I don't want life on Mars by Matimus · · Score: 5, Funny

      If we colonize Mars, the Native Martians get screwed, and then we will start to feel sorry and let them open up casinos to make up for it.

      --
      GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
    4. Re:I don't want life on Mars by sql*kitten · · Score: 2, Funny

      Going to Mars would probably suck. For example, I think living in Anarctica sounds a lot better. I predict the population of Mars will never exceed that of Antarctica.

      You know, the Spanish empire ignored North America because it thought it was just a useless, barren wasteland. I can imagine them saying something similar. The Moon is a like Antarctica, Mars is more like northern Canada - difficult, but liveable.

    5. Re:I don't want life on Mars by Zak3056 · · Score: 2, Funny

      I predict the population of Mars will never exceed that of Antarctica.

      And I predict that no one will ever need more than 640k.... oh, wait...

      --
      What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
  11. Oil :P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    That black stuff looks more like oil to me... Maybe mr. Bush will rush to Mars next.

  12. Send Some People Already! by ThresholdRPG · · Score: 5, Interesting

    All of this speculation really gets us no closer to any valuable knowledge than any probes, robots, or analysis from the past.

    We really need to get some actual PEOPLE there to gather some real data. This photo interpretation is only a little bit better than Rorschach Ink blot for crying out loud.

    The only real good that comes out of this is hopefully it will generate interest in the nimrods who don't see the value in getting some people on the planet.

    To quote Arnold: "Get your butt to Mars!"

    --

    -Michael
    Threshold RPG
    1. Re:Send Some People Already! by dubstop · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The more likely it is that there is life on Mars, the more circumspect we should be about sending people there. I can't see how it would be possible to send people to the surface for any duration, without running a significant risk of the mars biosphere becoming contamined.

      Just by being there, we could destroy a biological system that has evolved in isolation for billions of years.

  13. At what temprature does water freeze on mars? by rf0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was just thinking at what temprature does water freeze on mars? Surely if there is running water it raises hope that there might some microbes living in it, however I would think that it might depend on the temprature water. Anyone got any ideas? Or am I just talking rubbish?

    Rus

    --
    Cheap UK and US VPS
  14. Current Data: Inconclusive by MegaFur · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's a nice idea, but, as usual, the details don't seem to reinforce the headline much. I can't blame Slashdot (much) for being sensational this time--the story submitter copied the headline from the BBC article. Although the submitter did manage to make it just that tiny bit more sensationist by removing the quotes from the word flows.

    The article says how the observed phenomena do all these various things that water should do. As Eric points out, water is not the only liquid. More generally, the question of importance is: what are the other possible causes for the observed phenonena? All we've really got are Dark Streaks and possible Dynamic Fluid Flow. That's not really so much to go on. Sure something's definitely happening down there, and it could be water or some other fluid--but that's all we know right now.

    --
    Furry cows moo and decompress.
  15. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by ThaReetLad · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The problem is that martian gravity isn't strong enough to keep a thick enough atmosphere for complex animal life. IIRC every martian spring the frozen C02 at the poles vapourises and migrates to the equatorial regions, where it heats enough that some of the gas achieves (a very low) escape velocity. Mars is constantly leaking gases, and oxygen, being lighter than C02 would escape even more easily. You may be able to generate a thick C02 atmosphere for a short time, but once the temperature started to rise you might start loosing gas faster than you could produce it.

    --
    You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
  16. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by Max+Romantschuk · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If we presume that we could get the atmosphere right and get a working plant/microbe/insect life going, I still doubt we could manage to balance the ecosystem properly.

    We still haven't charted all species on our own planet, and figuring out how they all interact in the ecosystem is a greater effort still.

    It's not that I think it's impossible, I just doubt that the first attempt at terraforming would de successful. Using a subset of the possible flora and fauna would help a lot though.

    Thoughts?

    --
    .: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/
  17. and at the same time by lingqi · · Score: 4, Interesting
    radiation on mars is killer

    darn, eh?

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

  18. I want life on Mars... by FFtrDale · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Ours! Most of us old farts were sure when we were children that there would be colonies on Mars before 2003.

    Maybe Mars will be a great place to try our hand at terraforming, but whether there's life there or not, we'll see outrageous political battles over the attempt. Let's go anyway! Perhaps it'll have to be some far-off planet that gives us the chance to really engineer the place without massive protests by people on Earth who aren't doing anything themselves. That's no reason not to go to Mars and see what we can find out about the place with actual people there on the ground.

    And sure, [i]t would still be a long time before the environment would be safe for humans." Hey, this planet isn't all that safe for humans in the first place. Let's go.

    --
    Think, write, think, edit, think...then post.
  19. Uhm. by skrotnisse · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why the rush in making Mars an inhabitable planet when we are doing just the opposite on Earth?

    Shouldn't we at least try to fix THIS eco-system before we go screw another one?

  20. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by Noodlenose · · Score: 3, Informative
    Gosh,

    don't you kids read Kim Stanley Robinson? Mars terraforming has never been better researched and presented than in K.S.R.'s Mars Trilogy.

    Read and learn all about Mars.

  21. Re:I want life on Mars... by WindBourne · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Most of us old farts were sure when we were children that there would be colonies on Mars before 2003. There would be except for the horrible politics that occurs here. Just when X-33 was about to yield some results, W. Kills it. We should be through the testing phase of it.
    Nixon killed NASA by cutting the budget massivly and leaving us with the shuttle. The original version would have gone to space at a fraction of the price of the current shuttle.
    Clinton totally perverted the Space Station from being a possible low-cost factory type assembly into a multi-nation nightmare.
    Raygun and Bush were not much better. Suggest ideas and then cut the budget. When projects are underfunded, we have accidents becuase managers up top push for what bit of money you have to go further. Engineers get ignored.
    The only thing holding us back is our politicians. I only hope that Zubrin is able to privitize space travel as our current politicians are killing it - literally.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  22. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by ZigMonty · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Mars is constantly leaking gases, and oxygen, being lighter than C02 would escape even more easily. You may be able to generate a thick C02 atmosphere for a short time, but once the temperature started to rise you might start loosing gas faster than you could produce it.

    Define "short time". Are we talking a million years? 10,000?

    Even if the atmosphere only lasts a short period on a geological timescale, it would still give us plenty of time for useful colonisation. Maybe even enough time to develop a way to make the teraforming permanent. Remember how old our civilisation is. A couple of thousand years is a very long time.

  23. Mars is geologically active? Cool. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I read this story and my first thought was "Is mars still volcanically active?" Not by earth standards, but supposedly, it is.

  24. But Quayle did save NASA by tjstork · · Score: 2, Informative


    Hey, the guy wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but, during the really big budget deficit days of the late 80's and early 90's, Bush Sr was like, well let's axe NASA. Dan Quayle intervened to get NASA put back into the budget.

    --
    This is my sig.
  25. Not new! by Squareball · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Over 2 years ago Richard C. Hoagland was on Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell and sad discovered this very thing after looking through images that came back from our mars explorer.
    Enterprise Mission
    So not only is echelon real, not it's confirmed that RCH was right all along. Starts to make these conspiracy shows a little more credible doesn't it?

  26. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by eclectro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is a very big fantasy some people have.

    There are a couple of reasons Mars has an atmosphere 1/100th of our own.

    One reason is because Mars has less mass than the Earth. Hence there is less gravity to "hold" onto a thick atmosphere like what we have on Earth.

    Secondly, Mars did have a denser atmosphere at one time, but was probably eroded away by the solar wind. The loss of a strong magnetic field probably didn't help things either.

    To prevent the erosion of some future atmosphere, you probably would need to restart the magnetic field. Maybe you could drill down to the core and plant a big bomb to restart it.

    So terraforming is still (extremely) hard after all. I didn't get into the astronomical amount of energy required to do it either.

    So it looks like that if you wanna live on Mars you're gonna have to strap on some airtanks.

    And don't forget the long-johns either, because it's cold there too.

    --
    Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
  27. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by johnkoer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Mars is constantly leaking gases

    Sounds like my dad after a couple of burritos

    --
    Johnkoerner.com
  28. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by morgajel · · Score: 4, Funny
    ok, thanks for the list-
    now we just gorra remember to bring the following with us:

    • one of jupiter's moons to add mass and hence gravity
    • a bunch of magnets
    • a bigass bomb
    • longjohns

    thanks for the info, I'll get back to ya:)
    --
    Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
  29. Water on Mars - who cares? by juushin · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I really don't see -- and am hoping to be enlightened by the Slashdot masses -- why it is so interesting if there really is water on Mars. I clearly understand that this may be an indication of simple forms of life, ie. microorganisms, inhabiting the planet, but what does this really do for humanity over the long run?

    Does this lead people to think that the herculean effort of trying to terraform a planet like Mars is more feasible?

    Does this lead credence to the concept of Mars previously having been inhabited by more complex organisms?

    Does this...

    1. Re:Water on Mars - who cares? by vidarh · · Score: 2, Insightful

      For one it would dramatically simplify colonization of Mars: You wouldn't have to bring huge quantities of your own water, and you'll have hydrogen readily available for fuel (for return flights). Both dramatically reduce the mass you'd need to transport to Mars to set up and maintain a colony.

    2. Re:Water on Mars - who cares? by dylan_- · · Score: 2, Interesting
      why it is so interesting if there really is water on Mars.

      If there is simple life on Mars, there is the possibility that life in this Solar system began on Mars, not Earth. Problems with life beginning on Earth are that it was too hot (around 4 billion years ago when they figure life should have begun) with meteors crashing into it continually so that the surface was basically a sea of lava. Mars was more hospitable at that time.

      We've found fragments of Mars, blasted off by impacts, on Earth, so life could have been carried here that way.

      If any life on Mars is completely different to Earth life, OTOH, it would be fascinating to see how different approaches could work...also, life developing entirely independently on two planets within our solar system would strongly indicate that life was quite common within the Galaxy.
      --
      Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
  30. Just like a rush to War in Iraq by bareman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why would we wait to fix a current problem before making a new one.

    Fixing stuff is hard work. Wrecking things is easy, maybe even... fun.

  31. Some of us knew this more than 2 years ago by Slashdolt · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Placitas, NM, 07/19/2000 -- New research by investigators for the Enterprise Mission (www.enterprisemission.com), a private, not-for-profit space science research organization, has revealed strong evidence of present day liquid water on Mars in recent Mars Global surveyor images. Coming on the heels of the June 22nd, 2000 NASA press conference in which Malin Space Science Systems investigators Michael Malin and Kenneth Edgett asserted the possibility that Mars may have had liquid water in the geologically recent past, this new photographic evidence confirms that liquid water is almost certainly existent on Mars today."

    The rest is below.

    http://www.enterprisemission.com/press-water.htm l

  32. Life on mars = ??? by Drunken_Jackass · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So I was wondering. If there is, in fact, water on mars. And if because of that, there was life on mars - microbiotic. What would we do?

    Aside from all of the theoligical implications, what would our response be? Would we collect it to near extinction ala early biologists (let's kill it, stuff it, and put it under glass) or would we just leave it alone? Would we bring it back here (unlikely) and if so, where would we put it?

    I always kind of assumed that if we found life, it would be more simple than science fiction has postured, but i never really thought of the implications of that simplicity.

    --
    There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
  33. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by Havokmon · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I still doubt we could manage to balance the ecosystem properly.

    Who said it needs to be managed? IMHO, the end justifies the means. We want the end result to support HUMANS, not Tigers, not butterflies. If they fit into what the ecology becomes, then dandy.

    It's not that I think it's impossible, I just doubt that the first attempt at terraforming would de successful. Using a subset of the possible flora and fauna would help a lot though.

    IMHO, "Success" means Humans can live there without oxygen backpacks . Just because we know it WON'T turn out as we predict, doesn't mean that it can't be 'successful'.

    --
    "I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
  34. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by mezelf · · Score: 2, Informative

    I am not an ecelogical expert (by no means), but in my opinion, you will still need to be very careful about what plants you bring there and you will probably need to manage them very closely. When you don't bring animals with you (birds spring to mind), that means that none of the seeds the plants produce get eaten (except for what the people harvest). This means that plants can and eventually will start growing where no people live (yet). If they are the wrong type, they could exhaust the soil, preventing anything else from growing there for quite some time.

    This hasn't happened on Earth, since here, the entire planet is covered with all sorts of fauna and flora (OK, it wasn't like that right from the start, but it took a very long time to get it this way. Time that humans simply don't have).

    It isn't quite the same thing (plants can't move), but just think about what happened when someone brought a few rabits to Australia, some centuries ago.

  35. Re:In the exalted words of our esteemed former VP. by croddy · · Score: 5, Informative

    qualye quotes (like gore quotes and bush2 quotes) are more often false. snopes does attribute this one to him though.

  36. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by operagost · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A good analogy would be the introduction of kudzu to the American south.

    --

    Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
  37. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by Listen+Up · · Score: 2, Insightful


    Well, if the US is teh first country to reach Mars, creating huge amounts of CO2 won't be a problem at all. After a few years, there will be enough pickup trucks and SUV's to give us the same lovely greenhouse effect we have here on Earth right now :-)

  38. Re:In the exalted words of our esteemed former VP. by Himring · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hah! I just googled part of that quote and it's attributed to GWB gov., GWB pres., Quayle, Gore, Reagan, etc.... Now I see why Internet sources in term papers are frowned upon.... Far harder to dispute is the pic of clinton peering over the DMZ between N. and S. Korea with the lens caps still on the binoculars....

    --
    "All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
  39. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by superdan2k · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Balancing the ecosystem may not even be necessary. Emergent complexity and mutations (plenty of UV gets through to the surface of Mars due to minimal/non-existent ozone in the atmosphere) should suffice. Initially, all we should need to do is introduce an initial group of species, and let them fill in the gaps.

    As Crichton so elegantly put it, "Life finds a way."

    I think the real issue at hand is not whether we can terraform Mars, but how we will.

    In Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, this very item was debated and you could tell that the author had done his homework -- the two options are the cold-thin-quickly-breathable route, or the thick-CO2 route, using plant life to convert the atmosphere to breathability over a 10,000 year period.

    As a colonist, I'd prefer the route to breathability much more than the thick vegetation. But common sense tells me that the planet would be more sustainable and robust if it went CO2 first and a large amount of surface life was allowed to grow...

    --
    blog |
  40. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by sab39 · · Score: 3, Informative

    One thing I've wondered ever since reading RGB Mars is how much of the science postulated in the trilogy is based on verifiable current knowledge, and how much is speculation?

    For example, the books postulate huge underground aquifers - clearly, based on this story, that's something we haven't been able to determine yet. "There might be water" vs "There's enough water to fill several oceans" is a big leap!

    How much of the other science that KSR relies on for terraforming to work (eg the chemical composition of the atmosphere and the chemicals that are available from the Martian soil) is based on things we actually know about Mars, rather than just guesses? Anyone have the background to know how likely these guesses are to turn out to be true, based on our current knowledge?

    For that matter, does anyone even know the up-to-date status of this story and just how much water is supposedly there?

  41. Geothermal heat? by DigitalSorceress · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In the article, they mention that geothermal heat could be causing the ice to melt... This dredges up some foggy memories: I seem to recall having heard that Mars no longer had any active volcanism, and that mantle may have solidified (a lack a magnetic field being a strong indicator of this)

    I'm not a geologist (or exogeologist for that matter) and so I'm not claiming any special knowledge here, but it keeps bugging the back of my mind - Any insights?

    --

    The Digital Sorceress
  42. Re:In the exalted words of our esteemed former VP. by Himring · · Score: 2, Informative

    Wtf? I just checked out what www.snopes.com had to say on this quote, and at the page:

    http://www.snopes.com/quotes/quayle.htm

    It says this, at the top of the previous paragraph, before giving a list of quotes:

    "Most of the ones on the following list are actual Quayle quotes" ('most of the ones'?... nice writing there wannabes).

    K, so, like, which 'ones' are real 'ones' and which 'ones' are not?!?

    Geez. Again, don't use Internet sources in term papers....

    --
    "All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
  43. What's really important about water by antares256 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In order to send people, we would need to know that there are in-situ resources the crews could use. It would be far too expensive to send all of their consumables with them. Water provides many useful products: direct consumption, Oxygen to breathe, fuel for return, Power for fuel cells, etc...Same situation for the Hydrogen discovered on the Lunar Poles by Lunar Prospecter

    We know from Odyssey that there is hydrogen in the subsurface (at most a couple of meters from the surface), and it has been proposed that there is permafrost on Mars. If there's a brine of liquid water, it makes the job of extraction much easier.

    As for radiation...Dirt makes a good radiation shield (a couple of meters piled on structures would do), so does water.

    What's really interesting is the question of where did the water come from? If it's in the highlands near Olympus Mons, then it had to be pushed into the surrounding strata somehow (and the most likely scenario was a "warmer, wetter" period early in Mars's history i.e. Large Liquid Ocean).

    This will probably be discussed at this year's LPSC.

  44. I just have one thing to tell you... by Jace+of+Fuse! · · Score: 2, Funny

    I just have one thing to tell you...

    It's not water... ...It's Pepsi twist... ...and that's not Mars you're looking at...

    The sound of unzipping...

    --

    "Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

    Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
  45. pack a bowl by EvilStein · · Score: 2, Funny

    Water on Mars? Woah...that might make some really kick ass bong water!

  46. first paper mill? by jessemckinney · · Score: 2, Funny

    How long before the first paper mill?

  47. Liquid water can exist on Mars by bluyonder · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As I understand it the median atmospheric pressure on Mars is very close to the triple point of water. In my opinion this is not a coincidence. The fact that Mars atmosphere is balanced at a point where liquid water will form indicates to me that water is a controlling factor in Mars' environment. Since the median pressure on Mars is close to the triple point of water that means, at the lowest altitude areas on Mars, liquid water could exist on the surface at temperatures just above freezing. The water would quickly evaporate though because Mars' atmosphere is so dry.

  48. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by bluyonder · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yes, but it would be a very useful experiment. What we learned we could apply back to Earth.

  49. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by diablobynight · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Star Trek Fantasy? Oh you mean like warp drives, transporters, phasers, and all the other fantasies. I bet two hundred years ago, they would have laughed for a year if you said you could hop in a ship and travel to the moon. Or that a submarine could stay underwater as long as it had enough food, for it's crew, or that we would have nuclear weapons. Were getting smarter, and fast, we'll be there in no time at all. I learned math my parents never learned when I was a freshman in High school. We learn younger and younger as well.

    --
    Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
  50. Re:I want life on Mars... by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Insightful
    >A trip to mars right now is a one way trip.
    >
    >How, oh wise one, would you get back? Where would you find someone skilled enough to go to Mars that was willing to go there to die? Much less a whole crew?

    How would you get back? You probably wouldn't. So what?

    Skills 1? Spaceships fly themselves for the most part. Martian colonists on one-way trips are spam in a can until they land.

    Skills 2? After spending six months in a can reading geology textbooks, they break out the pickaxe and start digging and taking pictures. Any of us reading this could do more in five minutes on Mars than has been done in the past 30 years.

    Volunteers? You ask for them.

    "Congratuations. You're going to Mars.

    Since there's nothing on Mars to spend your money on, we are going to pay one person of your choosing your "salary" of $100K/year for the rest of your life, or until you come back, whichever comes first.

    We will put you on the cheapest spaceship money can buy. Some of you will blow up on the pad. Some of you will have air leaks and suffocate or freeze en route. Some of you will burn up on re-entry. But at $50M per launch, some of you will land on Mars.

    Your mission, en route, is to read about rocks and learn how to use a microscope. Once there, your mission is to break big rocks into little rocks and tell us what you found.

    Your ship has an RTG (or better yet, a small nuclear reactor) that provides your capsule with electricity to break water into oxygen for you to breathe, alcohol to drink, and hydrogen for you to refuel your engines with. If you manage to find enough water, you will also be able to use that hydroponics lab to grow food for a while.

    Some of you will figure out how to get enough food, water, heat and oxygen out of your setup to last for months, maybe years. Some of you will live long enough to make it to the point where we've already landed half a dozen unfueled crew and sample return vehicles.

    We will pay you or your beneficiary $100,000 per pound of Mars rock that comes back. The return vehicles can carry 500 pounds. Whether you launch that thing with 500 pounds of rock, or 350 pounds of life support, your 140-pound ass, and 10 pounds of rocks, hey, that's up to you.

    I won't lie to you. Many of you will not be coming back, but we will see to it that you have one hell of an adventure."

    Every day, people sign up for what is fundamentally the same deal: If you're willing to do something you believe in, even knowing you might die, we will give you the equipment to do it. Soldiers have vastly better odds of survival than my Mars colonists, but keep in mind that they do it for a tenth of the pay.

    Believe me, a faster-riskier-cheaper manned space exploration programme would have no shortage of volunteers.

  51. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by sab39 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, duh ;)

    I hoped it was clear from my comment that I was well aware that much of the science in RGB Mars is fictional. On the other hand, in reading the books it's also clear that the author did a vast amount of research on Mars and used a lot of real, verifiable science as the foundation of the fictional science.

    What I'm curious about is where the line lies between true current science and fictional speculative science in these books. Especially with regard to information about Mars itself.

  52. conspiracy theorists be damned by barakn · · Score: 2, Informative

    Credible scientists as well as the lunatics were claiming the stains were a sign of water quite a while ago. What is new about this most recent observation is that newstains have been found (i.e. we now have photos before and after their formation). This just strengthens an old argument; it isn't a new argument.

    --
    "I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
  53. Re:In the exalted words of our esteemed former VP. by tmortn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You know if you take that absolutely literally its funny as most people take it but few understand that fundamentally the guy is right on.

    Relatively speaking compared to other planets mars is in roughly the same orbit as earth.. I belive withen 1-2% difference actually.

    The canals are more and more likely turning out to be the result of flowing water or possibly CO2... good chance of both.

    With water or CO2 there is OXYGEN. cO2 O is for oxygen, the 2 stating there are 2 oxygen atoms per molecule. H2O has one atom of oxygen per molecule. With the energy to split them there is oxygen to breathe. Combine that fact with Mars 'temperate' climate compared to venus's lead melting surface temps and mercuries sun blasted nature mars is the closet planet with abundant life sustaining resources 'easily' available . Far more so than the moon. if you doubt that compare the energy requirements to to extracting them from moon regolith someday, you will get the point rather fast. Next on the list is probably Titan ( around Saturn I believe ).

    The way Quayle said it was funny but damn people, cut the man some slack.

    --
    I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
  54. More details by Drog · · Score: 3, Informative

    Another article on this (with a ton of links) can be found here.

    --

    Looking for political forums? Check out "The World Forum".

  55. Re:Terraforming wont be so hard after all.. by tmortn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Recent info from the surveyor is indicating in the northern climes the dirt is ~75% water by volume. in other words its dirty ice not icey dirt. Question is how deep it goes. The surveyors limitation is the first couple of feet.

    One thing to remember though is if there is that much on the surface there is likely more deeper.. and the deeper you go the higher the preasure gets and the surface of mars is not far out of waters range for existence so the possibility of underground aquifiers in liquid form is getting stronger and stronger.... IE you might just be able to drill a well on mars much as you would on earth with the added complication of keeping it from boiling off once exposed to surface preassure/temps.

    Enough for oceans ? I dunno. imagine if the earths oceans evaporated. For there to be enough underground water to replace them either that water seeped into the ground or there is that much down there already. However the idea of the evaporation that takes place on mars is that it does it and the atoms/molecules reach escape velocity. Dosn't mean there can't be alot of water down there but 'oceans' in terristrial terms I doubt very much. Can still be a honking lot of water though.

    --
    I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
  56. Re:More advanced probes are going there. by Mythias · · Score: 2, Funny

    Coming next season on Comedy Central: Battlebots on Mars!

    Watch as the US and Europe clash in combat as their Martian rovers battle for planetary supremacy!

  57. PDF of this research by corleth · · Score: 2, Informative

    For anyone that is exterested, there is an extended scientific abstract of this work, here, to be presented as a poster on Thursday evening at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas. This is a serious conference (I'll be there as usual), and so we'll soon see whether this stands up to scientific scrutiny.

    Having read the abstract, and work by Mike Malin (PI of the camera on Mars Global Surveyor) and co-authors, who proposed that these features were water some time ago, I think that there still needs to be more work (and more importantly, supporting evidence, e.g. spectral) before there will be a concensus that the streaks are indeed caused by water. However, the fact that there is clearly a change means that, if these are caused by water, then they are certainly VERY recent (i.e. a few years), which has profound implications. The question would then need to be asked, is the water flow due to an active hydrological system caused by climatic and orbital change, or is it related to volcanic/hydrothermal processes? The latter seems unlikely as there is no evidence, to my mind, of an unusual thermal anomaly in the vicinity of Olympus Mons. Also, there are streaks like this in many other areas of Mars. However, it may be possible to set up a hydrothermal system without an easily detectable thermal anomaly - I don't know for sure. I'll try to ask the author what she thinks next week.

    -Karl

    Dr Karl Mitchell, Planetary Scientist, Lancaster University, U.K.