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Flowing Water Discovered on Mars
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."
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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.
ya, just release some alge or other brackish tolerant plant and wait a few million/billion years.
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
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.
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?
Higher res images
(o) <----put that karma right here :P
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
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( );
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.
"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
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
That black stuff looks more like oil to me... Maybe mr. Bush will rush to Mars next.
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
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.
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
darn, eh?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I read this story and my first thought was "Is mars still volcanically active?" Not by earth standards, but supposedly, it is.
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"
Mars is constantly leaking gases
Sounds like my dad after a couple of burritos
Johnkoerner.com
now we just gorra remember to bring the following with us:
thanks for the info, I'll get back to ya:)
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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.
qualye quotes (like gore quotes and bush2 quotes) are more often false. snopes does attribute this one to him though.
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?
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.
>
>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.
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.
Another article on this (with a ton of links) can be found here.
Looking for political forums? Check out "The World Forum".
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.