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Mounting Evidence for Water on Mars
Kent Simon writes "Space.com has an interesting article discussing new evidence from the mars rovers that shows there may really be Water on Mars."
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I don't see what's mysterious about these at all. You have to remember that Mars has much less gravity than Earth, ergo, the amount of force required to displace a pebble is so much less. So while the atmosphere is thinner there than it is over here, it is still sufficiently dense to allow for substantial winds to develop; winds that displace these pebbles and cause them to move over the ground, and over time--millions and millions of years--this repeated displacement causes the tiny stones to become spheroid in shape. The end.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Come on, somebody get that copywriter laid before he sublimates again.
Yep, just like that other NASA falsehood that the Spirit rover dug the first artificial hole in Mars recently, when we know that the European Beagle lander did that late last year.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
Now I'm thirsty and hungry!
There's a bit of a difference between an orbiter and a rover located on the actual planet.
I doubt you this kind of evidence from an orbiter:
Other images show the rover tracks clearly are being made in "mud", with water being pressed out of that material, Levin said. "That water promptly freezes and you can see reflecting ice. That's clearly ice. It could be nothing else," he said, "and the source is the water that came out of the mud."
I've seen the canals with my trusty telescope!
mars# mount /dev/evidence /mnt/water
OK we all know that water is needed to sustain life on earth, which is why its such a biggie when the possibility of water on extra-terrestial terrains arises.
But what is it exactly about water that makes it so important? Here is a page which shows some of the most important properties of water. It shows, for example, how capillary action works, a property that allows plants up to 20 feet (i think!) tall to absorb water without using any energy whatsoever!
Another interesting point is probably a possible power source so if some of the nice red rocks contains a substance that is able to generate engergy, that would be better.
"There are lots of geologists out there who are looking at these pictures and they are starting to drool," Haldeman said. "The American taxpayer that spent $800 million on this deserves a thorough analysis," Haldeman said.
Which taxpayer payed this much?
I have a life. I really do. I've just chosen to ignore it.
but it also has Hydrogen Peroxide in the atmosphere!
link
Antiseptic and life-killing, the chemical helps explain why the martian atmosphere and surface are void of life.
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*Idiomatic Irish variation on an Anglo Saxon word.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
Damn those lazy NASA engineers. The February 29th cut off date has come and gone and they have yet make an official declaration of an ocean on Mars. What the hell have they been doing over there? Moving the rover 10 ft at a time, spending days just to get the damn thing off the landing platform, pathetic. There must be some shady deal going on between them and Long John Silver's to move really slowly to not have to tell the world that they found an ocean so they can share all of the free giant shrimp between themselves. This article just confirms it. Obviously they have enough evidence to proclaim that Mars is a big ocean, yet they don't because it would cut into their giant shrimp profits. Scandal I say!
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
I mean, seriously. I'm not trolling, just scratching my head...
We are sitting on a planet that has everything we could possibly want. Water, food, sun, beaches, fresh mangos, carnival once a year, beer, ADSL for peanuts.
And now the hint of the memory of water on Mars is enough to give us sciencegasms of pleasure. "Oooh, water, bacterial lifeforms,"... I know, water = life, life = understanding, etc.
But it seems so perverse. There is such a huge waste of life and resources going on all around us. Nothing we ever find on Mars will be remotely as interesting as - say - a bucket of seawater from any corner of the world's oceans. We'll spend fortunes trying to extract a few nuggets of knowledge from the furthest corners of our domain while ignoring the mountains of knowledge that remain to be unpuzzled all around us.
Are we just a perverse species, or what?
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Has anyone else noticed the six segment radial spoke pattern on one of the spherules? Six-fold symmetry perhaps related to the same way that snowflakes form? Maybe the beads are snowflakes that gradually accrete into ice-droplets?
Either that, or the spherules are organic...
The Mars program's stated goal is the detection of water on Mars - therefore every possible shred of evidence for that conclusion is being reported, with no discussion at all of any alternative interpretations.
A couple of very interesting opinion pieces at spacedaily.com recently sum up some alternative theories.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love it to be true. But there's a distinct water-mania in the current NASA press machine...
Why should humans go to Mars?
Because humans need new destinations and ever-expanding horizons.
Because going to Mars will inspire the nation's youth.
I hope they didnt stay up all night answering their frequently asked questions.
Wouldn't it be better to find the real thing?
what a weird / poorly written article. maybe i'm misunderstanding some of their statements, but the author makes certain important conclusions that totally lack support. In particular, the possibiliy of liquid water (as evidenced by mud) is suggested. The article states "Levin points to Opportunity imagery that offers conclusive proof of standing liquid water and running water on a cold Mars." The argument is that freezing areas in the rover's tracks are filled with ice, which is supposedly identified through pictures. This may be valid, but to suggest that such an important conclusion can be made by theorizing on what could make a shiny surface in imagaes... seems excessive. This appears especially absurd to me because the rover has tools specifically designed to answer this question. I mean, why is this guy attempting to conjecture this based on images when we can use IR & GC to find out exactly what is there? I suppose the point in this article is that this data has been collected, and is to be announced soon, but the confidence with which the article makes these assertions and its lack of explication for the possible errors in these theories really frustrated me and seems totally inappropriate in a scientific publication, even one online :\
Mod me down, and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
If Mars really is a "Waterworld", we'll invest vast amounts of money in it but no people will ever go to see it. Oh wait...
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Yeah but it doesn't matter if there is water or not because if the supposed "Life Killing Chemical" is really present in the martian atmosphere like this article says it is...
3 82 7.asp
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Mar/03012004/utah/14
Keep the faith, share the code
I wonder on Mars if it can rain upwards
It only makes sense, considering the red sky and blue sunset.
On Mars, er-- In Soviet Russia, the umbrella wears YOU!
How about the viking landers in '76?
They had a little scoop so they could get some soil and perform tests for life.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Anyone know where the images of this 'pasta-like' object are? I'd sure like to see that!!!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Its not "not discovered here", its "news media organizations not heavily biased over there" ...
Slight difference, I know, but get it right. The Media is quite often the enemy of Science, and The People.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
wow what a stupid post & argument. i dont mean to sound argumentative, but you provide almost no support for your conclusion that "ESA's mission is superior to NASA's mission". First let me say the ESA mission is important and useful. Remote mapping of the surface will help researcers understand martian geography, helping to locate points of interest, understanding weather paterns, and learning more about the geographic changes the planet may have undergone over the past few thousand years.
. html for spirit's photos, http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportu nity.html for opportunity's.
_ surface_instru.html for details) are also very important. these tools will allow accurate analysis of collected samples. while an orbiter can determine chemical content to a degree, the detail pales in comparison to what the rovers are finding.
But the US mission is also very valuable. You ask "But what have they produced so far? A few snapshots and panorama pictures (which are nice, but well...), and some stone probes." which is really just silly. The photos the landers have taken are more than just panoramas of the scenary. While these do tell us more about the martian surface, the really imporant pictures are of the rock formations, close-ups of the surface sand and rock, and micrographs of all the material there at the surface. Seeing exactly what martian rock, pebbles, and sand looks like is very important for understanding the martian atmosphere & weather patterns, as well as geologic makeup and history.
to suggest that it's only taken a few is absurd... check out http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit
the other tools on the rovers (see http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft
with all your unfounded critisism and palpable distaste for another country, I almost mistook you for an American! try not to be so prejudiced in the future, mmK?
Mod me down, and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
> I wonder on Mars if it can rain upwards," he said.
:)
I wonder if they are smoking some pot in Maryland...
class he-man extends man!
The presence of water in Mars has nothing new in it. In fact, for quite long we have had several evidences of its presence. Unfortunately all this messed with a long-standing presumption that Mars is Dry-Dried-Drying-Dead. This presumption was born from the unfortunate fight between Lowell and other scientists on the presence of civilizations in Mars. Each one of us may qualify Lowell's extrapolations from several points of view. But the fact is that many scientists of his time and later decided that the best argument against Lowell was to extrapolate the counterarguments. The fact was that the "scientific" discussion of Lowell's ideas as more as putting counterweights rather than well-weighed scientific arguments. It seems that people were more scared by Lowell's radicalism rather than studying Mars. If Lowell said there was a civilization, his opponents tried to overshow everything to demonstrate that civilizations could not exist in Mars, down to denying the chances for Life in Mars. If Lowell argumented that Mars had channels to carry precious water, almost everyone tried to demonstrate that there is not even a molecule of water in the atmosphere...
The result was that at Viking's time, most circles were standing for the Dry-Dried-Drying-Dead argument, no matter the controversial data from spectroscopy, the first pictures from Mars and several theories about the formation of the Solar System. Most academical circles were not only willing to but forcing the view that Mars was just like the Moon but more colder.
Unfortunately things did not stop only in this. There were people that for some reason falsified Viking's results or manipulated other results. For some reason, these people needed the Dry-Dried-Drying-Dead Mars argument as a weapon for their silly, stupid and overreligious theories. Frankly it is another show on how Mars, since Kepler, has been ground not only for a scientific debate but also for political-religious fistfights... Anyway, the extremism of ideas and the fundamentalism of some slowed down the exploration of Mars.
If you hear a refutation of the new discoveries, be careful. Before coming into conclusions try to find if this is the product of a scientific discussion, how correctly people step up with their arguments, or if this is another mass-media show between Hoagland-alikes and Horowitz-clones.
...that on something as large as the PLANET Mars, there would be at least SOME water? I heard in school that water is made of common elements,
... pffffft.
'hydrogen' and 'oxygen'. Finding water on Mars is inevitable.
Let me know when they find some sort of bacteria or micro-organism. Water
ESA decided to send one orbiter and one lander to mars, NASA decided to play safe and sent out not one but two landers, Spirit and Opportunity. And of course, they have their own orbiter, too.
Orbiter? Try Orbiters -- there are two existing orbiters -- Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey. The MER missions did not orbit.
But when you look at the actual scientific data produced by both the ESA and the NASA mission, you will see that NASA definitely does the better PR work. But what have they produced so far? A few snapshots and panorama pictures (which are nice, but well...)
You don't really have a clue, do you? First, some of those "snapshots" are from the Pancam, which has a variety of narrow-band filters to allow detailed image analysis. Second, the rovers have been collecting a TON of data from the other main science instruments -- MiniTES, Mossbauer, APXS. While these don't produce pretty pictures (just boring spectragraphs), it's a wealth of scientific information.
and some stone probes. But due to their design, they can't drill down further than maybe a few meters (if even that deep).
"Stone probes"? WTF are you talking about? The rovers can essentially spin a wheel in place to carve out a trench in the soil. That can dig in the ballpark of 6 inches. There's also a RAT tool to grind rocks, which only goes a few milimeters -- that's all you need to get past any dust or weathering.
This isn't a sub-surface exploration mission, so complaining about that is like saying Slashdot sucks because there's not enough advice on cosmetics.
but IMHO, it's not really something special: we've seen pictures from mars before, and we've analyzed probes from mars before.
We've never seen pictures like the microscopic imager is taking. And it's naaive to say that just because a couple of previous missions have takes pictures that there's no value in doing anything similar again... For simple example, look at how radically different the Opportunity site is from the other missions (Spirit, Pathfinder, Viking I&II).
So, I'm a lot more impressed by the work done by ESA: although they lost their lander (what a pity...), they concentrated not so much on the PR (no "the best crew in the world!" cheering) but more on actual science
That's an insult to everyone in NASA working on the MERs. Have you ever done any real science? It's obvious you don't know anything about the NASA mission, but to make a blanket statement like that about the science just a couple of weeks into the mission is stupid. It can take months to years to develop all the final results.
Let's look at your other ESA claims:
produced detailled 3D maps of parts of mars which has never done before, and where the big geological structures can be analyzed better than ever before.
Uhm, no. NASA has been making maps since the Mariner and Viking missions in the 60's and 70's. More recently, the MGS and Odyssey orbiters have been producing higher-resolution imagery. MGS has even taken pictures of the rovers on the surface (see http://www.msss.com/mer_mission/index.html).
proved the existence of water on the south pole of mars. NASA asserted that they had detected that in 2001 already, but in fact, they didn't, because they didn't have the right equipment. All they were able to detect at that time was hydrogen, which is a possible indicator for water, but definitely not a prove.
It would be more accurate to say "confirmed," no "proved." ESA's PR is in hyper-overdrive here. Previous results from other missions (especially Odyssey's neutron spectrometer) have led to the forgone conclusion that water/ice is present. ESA's results are an "independant cconfirmation," but are hardly a novel or shocking result.
measured the actual temperature on the mars surface (up to +4 degrees Celsius), which is higher than estimated before.
Aga
The Mars Global Surveyer found traces of hydrogen first, and also returned the first images which seemed like water carving the martian surface.
And, to top it all off, there is a small but steady band of real scientists that believe that Viking did in fact find life on Mars.
This is my sig.
We all know that hydrogen is the most common element in the known universe, why is it such a big deal that some of that greatly abundant hydrogen exists in H2O on Mars?
With the countless gallons on earth, it shouldn't be a big deal that just a fraction of that much water ended up on Mars.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Is there anything in this world that people can work together without turning it into a pissing contest?
The Mother of all pissing contest, the Cold War, has already ended.
So take example and start aiming to the toilet. This place is already too smelly.
-For Cleaner Environment
I remember watching a documentary on UK television describing one of the theories as to how water came to be on Earth. It was proposed that much of the ocean's water came from comets that pelted the Earth before there was an atmosphere and with the Earth being the right distance from the sun, we got oceans (instead of steam on venus and ice(?) on Mars). It has also been suggested that the building blocks of life (amino acids etc.) may also have come from extraterrestrial debris.
Could it be that without an atmosphere on Mars, comets and the like could be falling on the planet and depositing their contents on the surface in the same way as has happened on earth? I mean, heck, we've even got our rover planted in the midst of a crater created by extra-martian debris and since there is little or no erosion on this planet we could be partly examining the contents of extra-planetary material. Personally, I think this would make the examination even more interesting than it already is!
A BB is a ball bearing.
Specifically, when someone says "a BB" in the US, it means a small ball bearing used in a "BB gun", which is an air powered gun that fires BBs.
These BBs are around 2 millimeters wide. So you have your answer.
Remember when Chekov was scanning Ceti Alpha 5 for life before testing the Genesis device there, and his captain said that even a microbe meant the test would be a no-go? Remember what happened to the invading Martians at Grover's Mill NJ: they're highly vulnerable to Terran bacteria.
But seriously, a dead, sterile Mars is one we could start sending people to, and eventually set up a permanent settlement (with waste products and all). But one with actual life would - for scientific, and arguably for moral reasons - have to be quarantined.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I was going to mod yet feel that I must post. Why can we not just take our nationlism, stow it and accept the fact that both NASA's mission and the ESA's mission are providing valueable contributions to mankind. Spirit and Opportunity provide a prespective that Mars Express cannot. Mars Express provides a prespective that Spirit and Opportunity cannnot. Both missions are good science!
Of course, if they find nothing, the scientific community will graciously bow to all things religious and happily confirm that there is no life beyond Earth. Yeah, fair play for all from the scientific community...
More likely, they'll concoct some weird story about dust on some solar panels, admit a setback, find some last minute "evidence", shut off the rovers, ask for some money, and try it again.
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
Sorry, but the ESA orbiter showed this more than a month ago. NASA is just too late
It is obvious that you didn't read the article. The editor's post of the story was a little misleading because we've known about water on Mars for some time.
Having said that, the article states that they think they are actually SEEING liquid water freeze as it's being pressed upward out of the soil by the rover's wheels. That's much different than detecting it with an orbitor. Also, if I'm not mistaken the ESA orbitor suggested that water vapor exists in the atmosphere, not the soil. The missions are complimentary (ESA and NASA have been assisting one another by relaying commands through both of their orbitors and NASA has been trying to actually find Beagle visually using their orbitor). No one is taking credit for anything they haven't done. No need to get defensive.
"...and I say that we should wipe them out before they cause any more trouble. Their incessant broadcasting in practically every frequency gives me headaches every time we pass that system. I tell you, they are galactic trailer trash."
"OK, tell you what. We'll let them develop without interference. We'll take that dead world nearest them, and sprinkle it around with some single-celled organisms. Once they start exploring, they'll find the organisms, and THEN - when confronted with an entirely defenseless foreign life form - we'll see their true moral character."
"Deal."
-Styopa
Hmmm, you should have paid attention in your freshman physics class. No such thing as "negative pressure." What you meant to say was "lower relative pressure" and even then you're still wrong. Even if the leaves managed to lower the air pressure above their surface to zero psi, which of course they can't, the highest you can lift water via air pressure differential is 10.3 meters. A water column 10.3 meters high weighs as much as a column of air reaching from sea level to the top of the atmosphere.
If you want to move water to the top of a sequoia, you've got to use some mechanism other than air pressure differentials. In fact, had you carefully read the page you linked to, you would have noticed that transpiration peters out at around 32 feet.
BB is actually a reference to the American system of measuring the size of lead/steel shot in shotgun shells. Here is a convenient table. BB shot is about 4.5 mm in diameter.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Might the subsurface "sparkling" spheres be a form of Martian brine shrimp eggs
similar to the Great Salt Lake brine shrimp eggs???
photo 1
photo 2
More on the Great Salt Lake Brine Shrimp ecology can be found here:
Link 1
Link 2
Soil Crust Analogs on Earth???
Likewise a USA Today article Imprint shows Mars craft landed in 'weird stuff' describes "The soil was stripped up and folded in an interesting way," said Jim Bell, who designed the panoramic camera that Spirit used to photograph the "mud-like" patch. "It has quite alien textures."
Might this soil crust on Mars be same/similar to the biological soil crust found at Arches National Park (Moab, Utah)?
Additional details regarding biological soil crusts maybe are to found here:
intermediate details
advanced details
I believe Juanita
That's funny - I was thinking bowling ball. Could you imagine walking off a lander onto the surface of Mars only to see 16 lb. balls hurling around through the air? :)
Ummm, I should think that quite a lot is known about dust devils.
Every cumulus cloud that you see is a dust devil (though usually without the dust). The rising air of the dust devil is itself responsible for the cloud. Oft times it happens that the rising air either runs into an inversion or is sufficiently dry that it doesn't reach the dew point to condense a cloud. In deserts and dryer climes those rising air columns often find plenty of dust to pick up, making them visible.
Further, these things are useful. Skilled pilots can use them to fly hundreds of miles in a day (1000km is not unheard of; I've personally flown > 300 km several times). As the poster mentions, they are often visible and rise up to two miles. (Actually more; in New South Wales (Australia) or Arizona (US) on a good summer day, they go regularly to 3-4,000m and more than 5,000m is not unheard of.) In mountainous areas where pilots are likely to carry supplemental oxygen, dust devils are scarcer, and orographic winds are more practical for achieving very high altitude (10,000m+) and long distance (500km+) flights. The orographic winds ("ridge lift", "wave") also tend to break up dust devils, strongly limiting their altitudes in mountainous regions.
Without thunderstorms (on earth) dust devils sometimes reach upward speeds of 30 knots (15m/s) or more. With thunderstorms (condensing and freezing water release heat), much more powerful winds are created (> 70 knots).
Further, in many areas of the world, you can get soaring forecasts. These provide some indication of the likelyhood of "thermals" (dust devils, w/ or w/o dust), what time of the morning they are likely to start (they are driven by sunlight), how strong they are likely to be, how high they are likely to be, and how many can be found per unit area. (Or you can use a T-phi chart or a Stuve chart (aka "skew chart") and a few measurements to figure these things yourself.)
After reading this paper and several others by Dr. Levin, I have to wonder why the general public has no idea about these findings. Don't they merit public discussion? Why don't *any* of NASA's planned Mars missions contain direct life-detection experiments? IANACT (Conspiracy Theorist), but something smells fishy to me.
Most planetary scientests have accepted for decades that water is a major force in Martian geology. The polar ice caps have long been known to have a substantial water component. The Viking missions detected chemical salts typical of evaporation deposits. Nothing other than water has been proposed for the major outflow channels found all over the Martian surface. See planetary scientist William K. Hartmann's excellent recent book, "A Traveler's Guide to Mars" for lots more information.
Evidence of *recent* water activity is interesting and important, but the loss of this nuance is typical of "news" journalism, which must justify every story as Brand! New! Exciting! Information!
And have the rovers confirmed the presence of peroxides? Remember the Viking biologic experiments came back positive. It seemed at the time, like some folks went into overdrive to explain the results on the basis of soil peroxides. That always seemed far-fetched, to me, on a planet covered with FERRIC oxide. The Martian soil crusts sure look like desert crusts on earth, and on earth the crusts are loaded with cyanobacteria. The predominance of CO2 would argue against that, but there is almost NO ATMOSPHERIC NITROGEN. Is there nitrogen (read: ammonia) in the Martian soil? Nitrogen is an essential component of amino acids and proteins.
"...while history is usually explicable it is often irrational" --Roger Spiller