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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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Higher res images
(o) <----put that karma right here :P
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
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.
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
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.
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.
OK one step further: Martian Atmosphere
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.
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.
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.
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
qualye quotes (like gore quotes and bush2 quotes) are more often false. snopes does attribute this one to him though.