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Mars Rover Sniffs First Hint of Water?
mhw25 writes "It is reported that the Mars rover Spirit is already well into its scientific mission, and may be detecting hints of water. The mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer has returned its first image, with probable evidence of carbonates and hydrated minerals. We may know more after the rover rolls off its landing base, after making a 120 degree turn to avoid the airbag blocking its front ramp, to start analyses on soil from Thursday or Friday. An ongoing intrigue is already developing - a scientist reckoned that some of the soil around the airbag 'looks like mud, but it can't be mud'."
Where there is water, there may also be a brewery. These Martians may be eons ahead of us..
Trolling is a art,
An ongoing intrigue is already developing - a scientist reckoned that some of the soil around the airbag'looks like mud, but it can't be mud'."
In a bioengineering course I took once we were playing around with various materials prior to creating various cements and I found that many very fine grained ultra dry powders exhibited qualities one might presume were qualities exhibited in mud. Specifically, the appearance of folding up in waves like there were some bonding force holding things together when pushed. Applying various degrees of static charges to the materials appeared to amplify these effects allowing for clumping as well.
I am curious though as to why they dont think it could be mud if they are indeed suspicious of water being present?
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Will this affects W's up-coming space announcements?
...yup...
There is water on Mars. The ICE CAPS were first noticed about FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
More breaking news as it becomes available. Thank you.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
If there are martians, they're most certainly living underneath the unforgiving surface. I would love to see Rover snap a pic of someone peeking his head out from a hole in the ground.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
The rover may soon be the first to go mudbogging on Mars... So that is why Bush wants to go to Mars.
Oh boy oh boy! Three breasted women are FOR REAL?
ender-iii
Water is believed to be a pre-requisite for life.
Well, that and a 1x4x9 ebon slab.
The coolest voice ever.
"It looks like mud, but it can't be mud.
I skimmed the article, and did not see it explained anywhere. Why, exactly, can it not be mud?
Thanks in advance!
ThisIsAnExampleAccountGL@yahoo.com
first you welcome our true masters and then you celebrate one of their failures? Are you begging for an anal probing?
Isn't that what commets are primarily composed of? I fully expect H2O molecules to be present on Mars and every other planet. This should not be a suprise to anyone.
Mars lander stuck in mud. News at 11
Prediction for when the rover finally starts to rove: The good news: It finds water. The bad news: It sinks and vanishes in the mud.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
it is clear that it is very different from any of the three previous Mars landing sites explored by Vikings 1 and 2 and Pathfinder. For example, those plains all had about 20 per cent of their surfaces covered with rocks. Around Spirit, the figure is just three per cent.
Looks like our previous visits have made them clean up for company.
The coolest voice ever.
Not to announce major scientific discoveries in the press before they have been properly peer-reviewed?
Cold fusion, anyone?
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People who use that fucking "I for one welcome our _____ overlords" joke suck almost as bad as people who say w00t. I mean really, why dont you say something about how all their bases are belong to us as long as we are flogging deceased equines. Ugh!
nt
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
I don't believe that they were always thought...or have currently verified the caps to be H20. Some have speculated that it is frozen C02.
... and furthermore
It's below freezing on the surface (no atmosphere to retain heat). Not to mention that whole thin atmosphere thing doesn't provide enough pressure to prevent liquid water from boiling away anyway.
Mud is water spatially mixed with soil, but not chemically bonded. It would freeze (as we saw in Boston, when they froze the soil for three years straight to prevent it from collapsing during the Big Dig).
--Dan
You one ugly motherfucker
Perhapse the constant sub-zero temperatures.
no comment
one word: poopies
Well, forgive my Astrophysics ignorance too, but I'd imagine that mud is wet dirt, correct? And wet dirt needs water, which is not yet known to exist...
That's my take on it, anyway.
-James.
It looks like mud, but it can't be mud.
Yeah, just like that picture of a rock from mars looks like a face but can't be a face, and that picture of that smoke looks like the image of satan, etc...
So what if it just looks like mud? It's a freaking lo-res black and white photograph! I'll be intrigued when you say It feels like mud and is a mixture of soil and water, but it can't be mud!
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
But it will probably turn out to be a mirage.
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
Oil that is, looks like mud but doesn't require water. First thing you know old Jed's a millionaire!
w00t!
I've been looking around various sites, but mostly keeping up with news about Spirit through google news. What is THE best site for up to the minute reports?
There is no water, and even if there was water, it is so cold that it would freeze before it had a chance to mix with the soil. Correct?
ThisIsAnExampleAccountGL@yahoo.com
im not so skeptical...but FWIW, having public access to the raw data wouldn't be such a bad idea, since all of this is taxpayer funded.
to conclusions based upon early data before the rover has even "hit the road." We'll be getting more and better data.
As an example. One of my geology profs was studying an outcropping of calcium-rich meta-igneous rock (meta basalt). He kept finding a mix of calcium oxalate minerals on the surface of the rock in numerous places, but couldn't understand how they would be a weathering product. Oxalate minerals are unusual in nature.
Then it dawned on him. Oxalates are common in kidney stones. He bought a live trap and captured several wild rats. Then he kept them in a lab and realized they like to urinate in the same place. What appeared to be a strange chemical weathering reaction was actually just evaporated rat urine.
Point is, first impressions may be incorrect and additional data and study leads to more accurate conclusions. Sometimes those later conclusions are more interesting (or comical) than the original hypothesis.
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(posting A/C since a. it may fuck up my (and cubicle-mates internet connection and b. i work in a related fashing with it)
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...they are fucking with our minds to make us either create more targets for them to shoot at at a later date or confuse the shit out of us that we give up invading their space and leave them alone. I mean we have all seen Mars Attack havn't we, they like to make a joke of things?,/br>
Remember how they made a bong out of a nuclear missle?
Now its the "chuck some water at the robot survivor to confuse it" while we reload.
Jonathanjk.com
Last I heard they'd found bound water, and the surface was a lot hotter than they expected it to be. In the last image release I notice they show a graph of the temperature (presumably up near the Pancam) at ~1m above the surface - the great thing about Mars' atmosphere is how quickly it get's cold the higher you get - i.e. very. Like, your feet could be warm and your head would be a solid block of ice.
:)
The kinda cool thing is the TES data shows a current temperature map at surface level - you notice at Gusev Crater (where spirit is, about 15S, 185W - so basically around halfway down the right edge of the picture) the temperature is somewhere around 0C, +/-10 degrees or so.
The *really* cool thing is, when they were getting ready to make the rover stand up and strut its stuff, they went through extra checks and testing on Earth because the landing site was a lot warmer than they expected - there's every chance that it's above 0 there, in fact, there's every chance that (on the surface at least) Spirit is enjoying much better weather than I am right now.
It's common knowledge that Mars' equator regularly gets up into the positive numbers, even up above 20c, the only real question as to the feasibility of liquid water in these regions is whether there is any ice left there to melt, or if it is all up at the poles (or underground). Due to the low triple point of water on Mars, and the theory that it's just coming out of an ice-age, there's every chance there is no liquid left around there to melt, but there's certainly a chance there is.
Fortunately, we have a rover up there that will be able to tell us for sure in a few days
I think that the root of my misunderstanding was that I did not notice the question mark in the title of this story - I read it as "Mars Rover Sniffs First Hint of Water!" - so you can see why I was confused. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
ThisIsAnExampleAccountGL@yahoo.com
Actually it would probably boil first. Freezing is a much slower process. The lack of atmospheric pressure would get to it long before the temperature ever did.
Big deal, mud on mars.. wake me up when the hot three-breasted mutant alien chicks are wrestling in it :)
All and all, I don't understand why a range of microscopes has not been standard issue on all Mars lander missions.
Letter To Iran
Why not ask the prop guys?
...and not a scientist, I've always wondered...Why do we feel like all life *needs* water? Who's to say the martians don't live on nitrogen or uranium or plaine old red rocks? Or that they don't thrive on some yet undiscovered stuff.
/. :), but it always seems silly to me when NASA keeps says "we need to find the water to find the life!" Says who?
I know I don't have a clue what I'm talking about (hence posting to
I agree, it's definitely all scandalous.
I thought it was bad enough when they attempted to tell us that the stars are more than 10,000 light years away, as if the universe were older than that.
Maybe the soil in the area of the rover was once mud (before it was frozen) and the bouncy air bags were so f**king hot when they bounced on the ground that it melted the mud and left funny patterns?
Of course... by now though, it'll be frozen again.
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I don't follow this stuff too closely, but isn't this like the 9th time we've "almost" found water on Mars?
So, it would boil because there was not enough atmospheric pressure to keep it in liquid form? Would it create something similar to steam, or would it just completely dissipate - in other words, would it covert to a gas, or would it just ... um ... cease to exist?
ThisIsAnExampleAccountGL@yahoo.com
Aren't there certain bacteria that can survive the long, harsh trip through space? What if they were attached since liftoff, survived the trip through space, survived the burn in the thin atmosphere, and wound up being deposited in a somewhat moist area? Even if there wasn't MUCH water, if there was SOME water, they could, in theory, manage to survive slightly under the surface. Even the tiniest petri dish could wind up with a breeding ground for life on Mars and so long as there's some atmosphere to contain the water and the gases emitted by the bacteria, it could be a spark for future life on Mars.
Sorry if I'm rambling illogically. I'm not well versed in the Martian atmosphere, so feel free to shoot my naive, young hopes down if I'm totally out in left field.
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i was under the assumption (i read this somewhere today, can't find it now) that the "water" was just bound into minerals, possibly like gypsum or something.
The interesting thing here is that the software that JPL is using to actually run the mission is freely available for download via the Web (it's called MAESTRO, Slashdot had a story about it a few days ago.) Anybody who wants to can download this software and learn how to use it. If NASA wants maximum credibility they should dedicate like one or two days out of the mission and let scientists from the Institute for Creation Research run the mission. They wouldn't even necessarily have to drive the rover, they could just run the instruments like the mass spectrometer and look at the results themselves. Like I said, the software is already available for free so NASA wouldn't even have to train anybody. It would do a lot for their image and make them look totally impartial if they were to involve the ICR in their mission. It would definately help out those who accuse NASA of a liberal bias (and if no such bias exists then they should have nothing to hide, right?)
I guess The Beagle got too excited on entry and wet all over the damn planet.
And I thought my dog could wizz for a long time...
"My fingers Emit sparks of fire in Expectation of my future labours." William Blake
W00t. What's it all about? Is it good or is it whack?
Seems that NASA has actually lost the edge in robotic space exploration. Remember this little gem of a story submitted by someone from Switzerland and posted by Michael(who else).
Oh, PUHLEEEZE. Not more lame conspiracy theories. Heck, maybe the lander is just out in AZ somewhere, eh?
/. community ranged across the entire bell curve, but this is a new low, even for here.
If you REALLY believe that the US govt could maintain a fiction on such a scale, without word ever leaking, then my posting this is probably a waste of typing.
If you want access to the raw data streams, file a FOIA request. Or go build a 'scope and listen to them for yourself. You can be _pretty_ sure the latter signals aren't doctored. Unless, of course, all this 'data' was simply pre-programmed before launch, right?
I knew the
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It would evaporate. IOW, vaporize. IOW, transition to gaseous form. This effect can actually be observed by boiling water at different altitudes. At sea level, water boils at around 100C. At higher altitudes, the boiling point is less, due to lower atmospheric pressure. Mars is just a really extreme case (ie, VERY low atmospheric pressure), and as such, the water would boil at a relatively low temperature. Possibly low enough that, rather than freeze on the surface, it would evaporate.
is if Rovers camera spotted a fossil in the 'mud"...
Scan for life, Mr. Data...
Yep.
Would it create something similar to steam, or would it just completely dissipate - in other words, would it covert to a gas, or would it just ... um ... cease to exist?
Not steam, no. Steam is still a form of water, like ice. The molecules simply decouple and turn into individual hydrogen and oxigen atoms (albeit it's possible there's some intermediate compound, I don't remember).
As for the low atmospheric pressure, the triple-point of water is 6.1mbar, and Mars' surface atmospheric pressure varies between 3-10 (or thereabouts) - Gusev, being a crater in the lowlands is probably at the high end of that scale, and comfortably above the triple point of water.
I could be wrong of course, but let's see over the next few days what comes back from spirit (I'm not saying we'll find water, just that we may very well find conditions where water *could* exist in a liquid state)
Wow, so whatever it is that keeps those two hydrogen atoms attached to the oxygen atom would just disappear? Or is it the atmospheric pressure that keeps the atoms together in the first place?
ThisIsAnExampleAccountGL@yahoo.com
You can see here that natural processes most likely have occured in a similar manner Mars as they do on Earth. The rover is going to check out these rocks tomorrow or the next day if all goes well. It is exciting to see discovery and the scientific process in action. Who knows maybe water is very common there and thats what eroded this hole into this rock. In any case, sooner or later we are going to turn up water on mars, find life, and reaffirm how precious life on earth in its abundance indeed is.
Physics 101: stuff dosen't cease to exist. Ever.
It changes into another form (there's solids, liquids, gasses, and plasma), or it's turned into energy (ala fire, explosions).
Water woild boil on mars about in the same way that leaving a pan of water out will allow it to evaporate. That's what boiling is. Fast evaporation, marked by pressure causing bubblets to form and escape through the surface.
Maybe they should put some sort of a wedge on future rovers. After landing, perhaps the first rover act will be to turn over the egress pad and sniff underneath to see what the landing stirred up.
For the last 3 years, we have been announcing that the economy is improving.
Here's a link to all the pictures taken so far.
Perhaps that was the real fate of Beagle 2? Sunk into the mud, or even worse, fallen into water....
Sorry, vacuum will not cause water to decompose into hydrogen and oxygen. It will remain water molecules, albeit very disperse ones. Breaking the molecular bonds between H and O in water requires an input of energy - electrical as in electrolysis or thermal - creating a dissociated plasma (very high temperatures). Vacuum is not sufficient to break molecular bonds.
This is what P-T diagrams are all about. Here's one for water. Note that there is a region where you can go straight from solid water (ice) to water vapor (steam) - sublimation. This is what would happen, in short order, to ice on mars. Unless, of course, it was bonded to soil or another molecucle (hydrous form) rather than being molecular water.
But I'm not a chemist...
I've been looking around various sites, but mostly keeping up with news about Spirit through google news. What is THE best site for up to the minute reports?
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
This site has TONS of great links, animations, movies, cartoons, news, and everything else. I hit it and branch off from there many times a day.
Yes, it will turn into steam.
However, im not sure if it would be visible to anyone there. The steam you see when boiling water on Earth is actually water droplets condensing out of the gaseous water. And no, the molecules will not 'decouple'.
Most spacecraft, especially those which are on missions to other planets, etc. undergo strict procedures to prevent the scenario you have mentioned. The contamination of other celestial bodies is not desired, especially if there is a risk of eliminating existing life in the process. This is why Galileo was flown into Jupiter to destroy it, because the chance of it crashing into Europa (which has life potential) was to great. I wonder, however, if we'll ever try to terraform planets such as Mars or Venus using bacteria, algae, or other methods to produce a livable atmosphere. If we don't discover any life on Mars, but find enough water, I think that would be the next logical step.
I can't wait until my Party Seniority qualifies me for one that runs off of blood. Those are totally cool--the exhaust smells like sausages.
Wouldn't it be kind of funny if the rover rolls off the platform and becomes stuck in this "Mud"?
I'm guessing that it may be possible that there is thermal activity just under the surface of the landing site which is keeping the surface warm enough to have "mud" and possibly some sort of underground water deposit that is seeping through the ground in this area...
But I guess the NASA scientists are better at this than my arm-chair quarterback approach...
Then again, I can just see the press conference..."We found water on Mars"..."The rover got stuck in the mud"...
So, water boils - regardless of temperature - when its vapor pressure equals the atmospheric pressure. So if you take your sealed pressurized bottle of Evian to Mars and you open it so that the pressure equalizes to that of the Martian atmosphere, the water will suddenly (and quite violently) reach its vapor pressure and boil.
The resulting "steam" will be steam for just a few seconds because the H2O molecules will be likely broken up by ultraviolet energy (a process called photodissociation). Mars has no atmosphere to speak of, so it has no pretection against UV.
It's possible there's a process other than photodissociation that gets to the water molecules first - I'm not sure. Low gravity also plays into it.
Letter To Iran
Utter rubbish. Water doesn't dissociate into hydrogrn and oxygen just by being boiled. The interatomic forces holding the molecule together are not broken. You can make it dissociate by electrolysis but it does not happen through boiling. If it did it would be quite inadvisable to light a match anywhere near a kettle, given that a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen is just a bit flammable!
Each water molecule is polarised (quite strongly as it happens): although it is overall electrically neutral, one end is rather positive and the other end is rather negative. You get residual interactions between the positive end of one molecule and the negative end of the next one along. When the water molecules are extremely cold they are held in a lattice structure by these residual dipole moments. This is ice. When you add some heat the water molecules jiggle around, and eventually have enough energy to break the lattice and move around freely, though they are still attracted to each other because of the electrical dipoles. This is water. Add some more heat energy and the jiggling water molecules move so fast that they have enough kinetic energy to break out of the energy well of the intermolecular bonds. They can move around at will and each molecule can go where it wants. This is water vapour. The temperature at which these changes occur depends on pressure for reasons that you can go and look up.
What you see as steam when a kettle boils is actually liquid water that cools and recondenses into countless tiny droplets above the kettle's spout.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
I wonder if they have anyway to test the depth of this "mud" before they pull off the lander? Wouldn't it be horrible if the multi-million dollar lander finnaly pulled off the platform and became stuck in the surrounding dirt?
WURD!!
carbon life needs water to form hydrocarbons which are the building blocks of the complex molecules of life.
its hypothesized you could base life on some other elements (like silicon), but since we've never seen it, we wouldn't even know *how* to look for it, much less recognize it if we did, short of a silicon based life form seen moving around...
-
or it's turned into energy (ala fire, explosions)
Not to be pedantic, but they are both chemical reactions, and so incapable of destroying matter. What you'll get is one bunch of compounds (eg carbon) turning into another (eg carbon dioxide).
It requires a nuclear reaction to actually annihilate matter and turn it completely into energy. The energy released in a chemical reaction comes from breaking/making bonds between atoms and molecules, not from breaking down the atoms themselves.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
This "microscope" is really more of a good magnifying glass. It won't image microbes.
Letter To Iran
If there is water on Mars, you can bet it is b/c of the hard work of aliens who blatently took and used SCO IP!!!
That Marvin Martian always looked like the type who was capable of such a thing...
as you may recall from high school physics, if you lower the air pressure enough, water will boil away at low temperatures.
Mars has 1% of earth's atmosphere which means any liquid water on the surface would instantly boil off, especially at the warmer equatorial regions.
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244.8175
and
-28.333
somehow -51 became -15
thought it looked a bit warm
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
How are we supposed to know that any of this evidence or these results are even real?
You can't. You're a conspiracy theorist, and can't be convinced of anything.
the MER team knew the exact results that they wanted this mission to produce years before launch
And similarly, you conspiracy theorists have already decided that the Mars landings which haven't even begun being built yet are fake.
The tone I get from the writeup and the linked articles is really misleading; they make it seem like the rover team is claiming to have seen evidence of liquid water *right now* on the surface. I've been watching the daily JPL briefings since touchdown, and they've never made such a claim. The geologists have been using terms such as "mud-like" to express the mechanical behavior of the soil, not its content. The other evidence for carbonates, etc., only hints at liquid water *at some point in the past.* Think many thousands/millions of years ago, not last week.
At each conference they've been careful to explain that there are many competing theories at the moment, only *some* of which require the action of liquid water. I guess that didn't really filter through to the media, though. If you get NASA TV in your area, check out the briefings. They're broadcast live at 9am PST, 12 noon EST, repeated on C-SPAN 1 around 4pm EST (usually), and are very informative, presentations and questions alike. Except for one reporter from Astronomy Magazine, who alternately makes me laugh and throw heavy objects at the screen.
so whatever it is that keeps those two hydrogen atoms attached to the oxygen atom would just disappear
:-)
That's electromagnetism, and no, it wouldn't just disappear
The hydrogen and oxygen atoms combine to form water because of the electrical charges of the atoms. Despite having equal numbers of protons (positive) and electrons (negative), they each have a very slight overall charge (because of the distributions of the electrons - they're not uniformly distributed all the time, essentially). These charges attract, and form bonds between the atoms.
Atmospheric pressure helps keep the individual oxygen molecules together (as do those same electrical charges, as the molecules themselves are slightly charged), so you have a puddle of water rather than a cloud, but it doesn't keep the atoms in the molecules, if you see what I mean.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
into countless tiny droplets above the kettle's spout
There's no kettle, no spout, no atmospheric pressure, little gravity and enough UV energy to give you a good tan in about 5 seconds. Beyond your third grade physics lesson, what exactly happens to the water under those circumstances?
The prevalence of Hematite on Mars strongly suggests there was an abundance of water on the planet at some point in its history. Hematite, an oxide of iron and a compound chemically similiar to rust, forms in the presence of water.
Of course, Mars may have been bombarded with a bunch of Hematite asteroids, but it seems unlikely given the absence of craters.
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
This has links to tons of great information, images, QuickTimeVR, 3d images, videos, history, cartoons, and lots more about Mars and this MER Spirit mission in particular. Great as a springboard to look up more info as these issues (mud, water, etc.) come up.
. . . I am very interested in eventually moving to Mars. It would be a bonus if there were lakes, so I could go ice fishing, but you can get the full "ice fishing experience" without them.
My real question, as someone who has camped outdoors in very cold temperatures, is this: could the combination of a shallow (half-meter) trench, a heavy-duty lean-to, and a heavy-duty sealed winter sleeping back (along with oxygen, of course) get one through the night?
Also, as Minnesotans are well-known for their masochistic, 'can-do' approach to weathering winter weather, are there any Minnesotans planned for the manned Mars mission?
You're right, of course. I cought that after I read what I submitted.
:D
Oh well, guess I faild physics 101
And then, having said that, he remembered the word "valency"...
:-)
It's not exactly that the atoms themselves are slightly charged, and I no longer trust my memory of Chemistry enough to explain further. Suffice to say, it is the electrostatic force of attraction between the protons and the electrons that bind the hydrogen and oxygen atoms together to form water molecules. It's more like they "share" an electron each, though, than that they're charged.
The water molecules *are* charged, though, due to their shape - they form a sort of shallow v shape, with the oxygen at the point and the hydrogens at the end of the "arms".
And now, I'll stop wasting your time, let a real chemist take over, have my hot chocolate and go to bed
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Wow. Ok, genius...explain how there is ICE ON MARS! You're a legend in your own mind, aren't you? See sig...applies to you...
[sig] 10 + 10 = 100 [/sig]
Shouldn't we wait until the rover has cleared the landing site before getting our hopes up ?
I think I had my Hematite removed years ago, but it did form in the presence of water, and a LOT of gas.
Thanks.
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
I tried to get the 300K image from the lander, and that's my download speed. Phooie!
And I don't see any particular reason to believe any of this unless more qualified observers can repeat the experiments...
Hey, I know! We can send Jerry Falwell. Or Pat Robertson. I'm sure either of those two would make much better observers than any highly competant NASA engineer. Hell, at least you know their motives are pure.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
mud is basicaly a colloidal suspension of dirt particles in water;
1 colliodal suspension is a collection of particles in elctrostatic repulsion in a fluid, and
2 a fluid is a gas or a liquid.
then if your not anal about the water or even the liquid part, then you could say it's mud as I don't believe that mud has a scientific definition.
Mars doesn't have enough atmopheric preasure for H2O to exist in it's liquid state, essentialy the boiling point of water is less than it's freezing point on mars so no water, just ice or steam. When a solid turns into a gas, by passing the liquid state it's called sublimation, that's what happens in your freezer when the ice cubes keep getting smaller over time.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
afaik steam is the gas-form of water, when the steam cools down it condensates to liquid water, but the bubbles in boiling water are water in gas form, not vaporized liquid water.
Flamebait? Troll certainly, flamebait - not at all.
Following his theory:
Maybe temperature in the poles is low enough that freezing occurs before boiling.
Then, water in other latitudes would evaporate, get transported to the poles by wind and freeze there. Accumulating over time, drying the rest of the planet and drawing a nice white pole.
Disclaimer: I have no idea that could be even feasible.
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
Earth, Wind, Fire and ... ?
Semantically I'm not sure. I tend to use the term "water vapour"; it seems less ambiguous. But when people point to the foggy cloud of water droplets just above a boiling kettle they tend to say "Ooh, look! Steam!"
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
You were referring to (low-temperature) boiling.
The process you are actually talking about is ionization, not boiling.
Water exposed to space in sunlight in the immediately vicinity of the earth would rapidly boil, then ionize.
The ionized and glowing gas can actually be seen from the night-side of the earth, for example, when a space shuttle does a waste-water dump. It looks like a cirrus cloud.
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
Water has three states:
solid (ice)
liquid (liquid water)
gas (water vapor)
Steam is actually an aerosol form of liquid water. In other words, it is microscopic liquid water droplets suspended in the air.
Steam quickly evaporates, i.e., converts to water vapor.
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
Anyway, the quote was elicited only when one of the reporters there asked "to me it looks like mud, any chance it could be". The reply was that although it might look like mud, it couldn't be, followed by a description of the behavior of fine particles (they can flow, etc.).
I'd say that to use this as a quote that "scientists say" it looks like mud is a bit disingenuous.
Opinions my own, statements of fact may contain errors
What would be really interesting is if Deinococcus radiodurans survived the trip. It can withstand vast amounts of radiation and its very very difficult to prove sterility. This stuff can breed in nuclear waste, it could be happily living on the surface of Mars right now.
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where did I say that boiling water causes it to dissociate?
Let me refresh your memory:
So, it would boil because there was not enough atmospheric pressure to keep it in liquid form?
Yep. [...]
The molecules simply decouple and turn into individual hydrogen and oxigen atoms
My physics lesson may have been third grade but it seems like you have one or two misconceptions that at the very least need clarifying before you give everyone else the benefit of your wisdom. To say there's "no atmospheric pressure" isn't true either. There's a millibar, which is low compared to sea-level pressure on Earth but nowhere near negligible. Gravity will have an effect on the escape veocity of gases near the top of the atmosphere but otherwise does not significantly affect the small-scale molecular kinetics. I must say I'm curious about your UV theory though. If UV makes water turn into hydrogen and oxygen why don't people ionise on a sunbed? Or on the beach? For that matter, why are there still oceans on Earth? Plenty of UV radiation reaches the Earth's surface. Perhaps you could supply some actual equations and figures to back up your claim? I'm sure I'd love to see them...
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
You mean it's going to be warmer on Mars than it will be in New England on Thursday night?
Can I go on the next trip?
-- http://frobnosticate.com
It's not mud! It's not mud! It's quicksa
Ask me about my vow of silence!
Beyond your third grade physics lesson, what exactly happens to the water under those circumstances?
/.er trying to get smart. (welcome to the club)
not much. go back and check your high-school physics: long before h2o would dissociate you'd have charged plasma for an atmosphere. that doesn't seem to be the case now, does it? actually the Viking landers found about 0.03% water vapor in Mars' atmosphere.
oh well, another
The average is 7mb. That's 0.007% of Earth's. How low do you want to go before you call it "negligible"? And in any case I'm not trying to contest the atmospheric pressure on the surface of Mars, since we all know that water will boil there, right? Unless you picked that up from something I also didn't write.
hydrogen and oxygen why don't people ionise on a sunbed? Or on the beach?
I don't understand - are you comparing solar radiation striking Mars to a beach on earth?
will have an effect on the escape veocity of gases near the top of the atmosphere but otherwise does not significantly affect the small-scale molecular kinetics.
Ummmm. OK, so water won't be broken down by gravity (not that I'd... expect it to) but will allow it to escape into space. And what happens when it does that? Why is there far more argon there than H2O?
Plenty of UV radiation reaches the Earth's surface
Ozone ring a bell?
I'm sure you're way smarter than me, but you're also excellent at quoting out of context.
But I guess more importantly, are you saying that if I release enough water into the Martian atmosphere I'd get clouds and stuff? Because, well, water is just fine there, right? There just isn't enough of it?
you are mistaken. hint: what's the ionization degree of mars' atmosphere at ground level?
The typical earth airbag combusts hydrocarbons -- making co2 and water... What was in this airbag? I think hydrocarbons are a poor energy carrier per weight -- so maybe their airbag was a h2/o2 one? in any event -- possible contamination from airbag, anyone?
What the reaction from various religous groups would be if definitive evidence was found on Mars for current or past life. Most certainly conservative Christian groups would denounce the findings with a litany of "scientific" refutations.
In a way, Bush could be seen to be in conflict with his most personal beliefs by supporting missions to Mars, especially since he enjoys wide support from the aforementioned conservative Christian groups. On the other hand, these missions may provide enough evidence to say with reasonable certainly that life did not exist on Mars.
Just an observation.
Whatever it is, Michael Jackson wants to try some on his face (snicker snicker).
Hey, finally a commercial use for space: Mars Mud Baths! There are enough rich weirdo's around to make a profit I bet.
Table-ized A.I.
...they squished a Martian farmer upon landing.
Sure you can go. But I hear the landing's a bit rough. Might wanna take a pillow or something to protect you from hitting all the sharp objects those mad scientists hide in their blackmail-evidence-expelling missions.
True story.
Maybe this time they swapped metric for English in the other direction and landed on Arrakis?
... but I bet there isn't enough foliage around for Bush Tucker Man to collect enough water to have a drink!
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
An eskimo, an african, and a pastry chef walk into a bar...
[insert next line of joke, here]
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
You're an idiot.
Please do not be an ignorant idiot.
look it the fuck up, first.
Just because you aren't a conservative christian doesn't mean that conservative christians dont post anywhere on the internet.
They can, in fact, be found on google. They can, in fact, accept certain ideas which are entirely unrelated to Christianity. (for example: Microbes could have existed on mars! Actually, microbes not mentioned at all in the Bible could have existed in Ecuedor!)
Life on mars has nothing to do with christianity. There is no reason to cast a blanket over all christians who don't like the idea of men fucking men and group them with people who think the moon landing never took place.
Just to sumarize: You're an idiot (ignore the rest of this post)
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
High resolution image of "mud" 1Mb jpg
In this image it looks more like fine dust than mud. I remember a nature programme that was about landslides. It showed that rock (and dust) could have similar properties with water. When fine dust and the landslide ontop, flowed downhill, it mixed with air and started flowing like water. Can martian (fine) dust behave like water when moved?
Knut
This quote was attributed to him:
"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 there is oxygen, that means we can breathe."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, 8/11/89
NASA please also use bittorrent to transfer the files to us out here, the full res ones you don't want to swamp the servers with! PLEASE!
Bittorrent works great for this!
Frankly I don't care whether it's a millibar or ten. The basic physics of gases doesn't change significantly until you get to much lower pressures than that.
As far as UV goes there is no difference between that striking the Earth and that striking Mars, besides rate of photons. The individual photons are exactly the same (remember you only get one individual photon taking part in a given reaction, it either has sufficient energy or not, so that even at a low rate of UV photons you will get the same reaction occurring). As I'm sure you're aware the ozone layer isn't perfect. It has holes and even where the holes aren't UV still gets through. Like I said, plenty of UV reaches the surface to cause a noticeable reaction if one were going to occur.)
Sorry, this just isn't worth my time continuing. I wasn't trying to start an intellectual pissing contest and I haven't tried to quote out of context. Equally I'm not going to spend the rest of the night explaining chemistry.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
"Aren't there certain bacteria that can survive the long, harsh trip through space? What if they were attached since liftoff, survived the trip through space, survived the burn in the thin atmosphere, and wound up being deposited in a somewhat moist area?"
how do you think there came to be life on this planet? random chance? sure sure.
we populate mars it populates us. its just a little bit of history repeating.
i for one welcome our new martian-flu-creature overloards.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
What if the "Magic Carpet" already existed, albeit buried under a relatively thin layer of dust? Clays and other sediments have a tendacy to retain their shapes after several thousand to millions of years of their formation (such as in the forms of terrestrial slate), especially if in a freeze drying environment such as Mars.
The stones which appeared to have been dragged through the "mud" actually may have done so hundreds of thousands (to millions) of years ago, due to water flow within the crater, were trapped by the eventual drying and solidifying process, and briefly unearthed from their dust covering by the airbag.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Life on Mars!
See?
Fahrenheit is well suited to the human condition on earth.
That's why when talking about robots on mars its utterly absurd.
0 F is roughly the coldest temperature people most people experience in
I'm Canadian you short-sleeved wuss!
I bet you've never walked out to find that all the humidity in you nose froze up all at once when you inhaled...some people never lived.
And I think that most of humanity actually lives in tropical climes, where 0F pretty much never happens.
and 100 F the hottest (obviously there are greater extremes, but we're talking about the bulk of the population).
We have this newfangled thing called "fire" nowadays, gets quite a bit hotter than 38 degrees (what you'd call 100)...
Ovens also happen to work very well on the fahrenheit scale (200 F - 500 F).
Yeah, I tried to set an oven to 200 celcius once and the fabric of space time caved in! It was the darndest thing!
Seriously, devices work well with the unit they were designed to work with? Wow! What an insight!
Basing temperature on a random molecule's states at a specific atmospheric pressure is fairly arbitrary and has little to do with the human condition.
Yeah, random.
I mean, its what we are mostly made of! And if you don't drink any of it for 3 days you die. 70% of our planet is covered in it. Yeah, it has SO little to do with the human condition! Hell, most people have never even seen water! Totally random, totally unrellated to the human condition.
You can't take the sky from me...
Our customers bring lots of it in our office on their shoes to show us that they have been walking around in it.
Looks like mud but it can't be mud? It would be a beautiful thing if the Spirit Rover detected water by getting bogged down in mud as soon as it drove off the lander!!! The Lander is probably only floating because of that airbag that won't deflate... Conspiracy as NASA refuse to tell us that the reason they won't retract the airbag is because it is the only thing keeping the lander afloat! I can see the headlines : Spirit Rover detects water by sinking in Mud!
Oh, PUHLEEEZE. Not more lame conspiracy theories. Heck, maybe the lander is just out in AZ somewhere, eh?
Well, I just checked arizona weather, and its clear skies all around...
So that's how they know it can't be mud: It hasn't been raining all week!
You can't take the sky from me...
Maybe NASA should send 2 rovers per lander. One like Spirit and another, hopefully smaller and less complicated, that would have something like a swiss army knife and winch to help its expensive friend if it got stuck. Do things like clip the umbilical cable (something Spirit is going to have to do for itself), clear ballons, tip Spirit back upright or tow it out of a bog.
Could possibly be clay. The Mini-TES website at Arizona State University has some slides of Mini-TES data. In this particular slide they're showing an unidentified mineral that definitely looks like it has bound water.
Bandwidth is quite a bit better this time around, but I would still agree a dumb remote microscope would be a poor investment. But the computer advances that make the rovers autonomous could make the microscope autonomous. Platelet and white blood cell counts are now automated in hospitals, as are some cancer cell type scans. We may not know exactly what we are looking for, but we can probably program what we think are likely features marking possible biological origin. It would be adaptive also, sending back only one example each of what it considers images of interest if it sees a lot of recurring patterns. Of course it wouldn't be completely autonomous, if we see a picture with a particularly intriguing feature type, we would give a "look for more of these" command. It's hard to say how many images could be scanned and evaluated without feedback from Earth, but I'll bet with current PC grade hardware it could scan over 10 gigabytes of image data an hour, and with specialized support hardware 100 gigabytes to a terabyte an hour. It wouldn't have to save all that data (nor could it), but it only need save 2 types of images. Priority for transmission (but compressed and cropped), and full detail for requested transmission. If something looks real intriguing you give a "Send Full Detail" command.
Now I'm sure just such schemes are on the blackboards at NASA, but I suspect that NASA culture is more populated by Planetary Geologists than Planetary Biologists. This because the former always gives returns and success (plus they help you get your probe landed safely). If you poll members of Congress you will find many think Earth is God's only abode of life in the universe (or a least a sizeable portion of their constituency do). As a result many frown on too many big money expenditures on directly looking for evidence life outside of Earth (SETI fund axing as an example). Either because they know by faith these efforts are doomed to fail, or because they fear an upset-the-applecart result. As a Rocket Scientist you would be in a better possition to judge whether any of what I just speculated is true.
I totally agree about a return sample mission, but with a smart microscope it might be cheaper to return a few grams of really high priority samples, than several pounds of randomly chosen rocks -- OK not totally random chosen ;-)
BTW I am a Computer Scientist and work in the Field of Image Processing.
Letter To Iran
> It would definately help out those who accuse
>NASA of a liberal bias (and if no such bias >exists then they should have nothing to hide, >right?)
Um... What?
1) Who has ever accused NASA of a liberal bias?
2) How is it possible for NASA to have a liberal bias?
3) I guess that the Institute for Creation Science is a right-wing group of wackos, no?
Do you suppose the Red Plannet is full of litigious bastards like earth is? Man, that'd be real disappointing.
are there any Minnesotans planned for the manned Mars mission?
Why not send all of them?
"If its brown, drink it down. If its black, send it back."
hate titty pee colon slash slash
And they shall find no life.
First, I grew up in what I consider a conservative Christian home and I have spent a lifetime trying to overcome the misconceptions, prejudices and outright falsehoods feed to me as a child. That does not mean that ALL Christianity treats knowledge, science and scientific inquiry with the same disdain, but I certainly experienced the depths of ignorance that is possible in Christianty.
& oe =UTF-8&safe=off&q=christian+denominations
The Institute for Creation Research, ICR, a conservative Christian group, would have you believe otherwise. In fact, they would hold that you are not a true Christian unless you believe the Bible to be absolute and inerrant.
See their comments on life on other planets here:
www.icr.org/bible/bhta31.html
Also, note that I said conservative Christians, considered to be a small but influencial part of Christianity. There are many denominations to Christianity -- Baptists, Evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Methodists, Church of Christ, etc., so perhaps you need to look it up yourself:
www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8
Despite what you say, many Christian groups, conservative or otherwise, view exploration for life on other planets anywhere from skepticism to outright heresy and have used their influence in the current administration to steer policy that is in many ways hostile to science and independant investigation.
My comment was that I am surprised that more attention has not been drawn by religious groups on science that has the potential to bring some of their most treasured tenets into disrepute. There are implications to life on other planets beyond their scientific discovery, you can't call me ignorant for pointing that out.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The previous attempts have simply pulverized all the rocks with falling lander parts.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, I'm also surprised that an organization which attempts to prevent erosion of the constitution by limiting a child's exposure to unproven scientific theories presented as fact (Just as you can't teach christianity in schools as fact, because it can't be proven as fact), does not wildly give attention to people who are actually doing research to see whether or not something might be true, after forming a hypothesis.
Hypothesis: Bacteria may have formed on Mars, a thing undisputed by the Bible unless you consider Bacteria to be an Animal.
What we're going to do about it: Look for possible evidence of life on Mars, while we're busy doing other things there anyway.
Now, once they start proclaiming mineral formations to be bacteria trails, there's something to dispute. But Why discourage someone from doing research which is going to (if they do it correctly, rather than try to make a name for themselves by throwing out wild "findings") do nothing more than show that there was no life on this particular patch of barren rock.
Perhaps "ignorant" is the wrong term. Is there another word for someone who simply has no idea what God or Faith is, yet assumes he is able to speak for all who may fall into the blanket catagory of "Conservative Christian"?
Given two equally fantastic and outrageous claims, I'll side with the one whose supporters don't automatically dismiss the other without even bothering to look at the evidence.
There's a huge difference between "Well, you're wrong, but let's look at how you came to that conclusion" and "Well, you're wrong, so I'd better not waste my time looking at any argument you make against my evidence"
Those with Faith know that their answers are correct, and so they look meticulously at all evidence without fear of ever being contradicted.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
"Those with Faith know that their answers are correct, and so they look meticulously at all evidence without fear of ever being contradicted."
Those with correct answers need not rely on faith, since they have looked meticulously at all evidence without fear of contradiction.
I wish they would simply take and air sample and light it in a plasma tube to get a spectrum to see what elements are present. Is there much H2? O2? From there one could see if water components are in the atmosphere. Just what is the dew point on Mars anyway? It should be one of the experiments on board. Pretty pictures don't answer all the science questions that could be easly tested.
Is there really enough moisture to cause the polar winter frost from condensation and sublimation of water?
The truth shall set you free!
There's a small problem... Insufficient air pressure to keep your fluids from boiling off.
you cant really call them aliens in their own planet, or can you?
It would not boil or freeze. The word you are looking for is sublimate.
Could it be dew? How much did the temperature of those airbags change?
Why did GEAR crush RDP?
Darl McBride today issued a statement that this mud was clearly lifted from the SCO source code and, as such, Mars will be receiving letters outlining the need for them to pay licensing fees or face litigation. He then went on to deride NASA for its failure to indemnify the red planet against litigation.
- I am made of meat.
Actually it would probably boil while freezing and then sublimate.
By the definition you just pointed out, it can't sublimate unless it freezes first. If it goes from liquid to gas instead of freezing it's not sublimating.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Well, it looks like Project: Dump Water Near Spirit is working nicely.
For all we know in the distance Spirit travelled, it might have become autonomous and just felt like, y'know. . . marking his "territory"
i (and the previous poster, i believe) was referring to a raw data stream, along with specs, to be decoded and verified independently.
That might be true if they werent out to make a name for themselves. They'd much rather get published as finding evidence of life on Mars than not get published because they didnt find squat.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I think the post was an oblique reference to the movie Total Recall, where there was a 3-breasted mutant.
I don't think it's mud, the Pathfinder photos have the same kind of markings on the ground - and it's clearly not mud.
I'm a 2000 man.
And windy as hell.. Yeah, the boogers froze alright.
Eat at Joe's.
It is more likely that the conspiracy theorists are government agents trained to deliberately make us dismiss the conspiracy theories. So, when we hear about the real conspiracies we will disregard them as coming from conspiracy theorists. Being sure you are paranoid does not prove they are not really out to get you.
You are correct. My point is it doesn't exist in the liquid form so it would go directly from solid to liquid.
Need Caffine