Geothermal Activity on Mars?

An anonymous reader writes "This article on the New Scientist site reports that Mars Odyssey has detected warm spots (20-40 degrees warmer irrespective of sunlight, day or night) in the Hellas basin."

Comments

Re:Evidence of ice towers?

[AndroidCat]

On careful re-reading, I notice that the writer of the story is a bit sloppy about mixing statements and his own conclusions.

That would provide the opportunity for the Mars Global Surveyor to capture high-resolution photos of the area, suggests Hoffman. The ice towers could grow as high as 30 m in the lower Martian gravity, and would stand out against the darker soil.

Did Hoffman make the 30 m comment or did the writer? There seem to be a few places where this happens, as well as mixing comments from various people. Is Rachel Nowak a pen-name for Procrustes? (Greek mythology, read a book!)

"Canals" versus "Channels"

[vudufixit]

Schiaperelli is also accidentally responsible for a lot of postulating about the existence of intelligent life on Mars. He observed dark "channels" possibly caused by natural water flow. In Italian, they are called, "Canali" and were mistranslated into English as "canals" which would tilt most folks' thinking in the direction of intelligence on Mars.

Too battle hardened

[DumbSwede]

The trouble with extrapolating that battle hardened microbes will displace all competing microbes, is to overlook some of the main features of evolution. There are enough desolate places on Earth to breed such creatures, and they are populated by such creatures, but these hardy creatures don't displace the E-Coli in your gut. Why not? The adaptations to flourish in harsh environments depend of chemical tricks and adaptations that only work in harsh environments. Your lake weed example actually illustrates this point. These weeds evolved in very similar lake environments, and exploded in population only from lack of natural predators and parasites. Cactuses are very "battle hardened" plants, and yet are very unlikely to take over your Minnesota lakes.

Should someone intentionally introduce Martian microbes to similar extreme environments here on Earth, we might see something similar, but contained within those extreme environments, and having little impact on that portion of the biosphere we usually experience. Sure it would have some environmental impact, but likely not disastrous. Most likely it would integrate with the local ecology, though perhaps not in way we would like. Esthetically you feel your lakes have suffered by introduction of a weed that wasn't native to the environment 100 years ago, but it's not the end of the world. Only evolution in action. The contamination of these lakes could have happened naturally, and a similar adaptation cycle would have occurred. I suspect introduction of alien species has little true long term impact on the biosphere. Which is not to say such disruptions are desirable, or don't have severe local impacts, aesthetically and economically.

I would say it is likely we can bring back samples and contain them.
If we have an accident, it is unlikely the microbes will spread because they are not adapted to the immediate environment.
Should they somehow gain a toehold in an environment favorable to them, they will likely integrate with the ecology in some way, not totally displace it.
All and all, I think these points argue well for taking the risk of sample return missions, the reward being unknown insights into biological processes.

One final aside, I would use the International Space Station as a first containment stop for a sample return mission, and have written to NASA on this point. Not because is greatly enhances safety (and it probably adds to cost), but because it gives psychological reassurance to the general populace that NASA is doing everything to ensure safety, and it gives the ISS a true mission.

Re:Question.

[cpeterso]

why do cultures insist on renaming other cultures' countries? Why is Germany not called Deutschland in English? That's like someone telling me his name is Larry and then I insist on calling him Daryl. This is disrespectful.