Slashdot Mirror
NASA Says Mars Rocks Formed in a Salty Sea
NASA has made another announcement, live on NASA TV, regarding the discoveries of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. They believe that the rocks examined by Opportunity were actually formed in water; that those rocks were actually sediments laid down in a shallow salty sea. They've already had outside scientists examine their data and those scientists concur with the conclusions. NASA has a story with explanations and some photos.
I've been sayin there was water on mars forever. I hope they can finally prove this cuz it could lead to a lot of awesome discoveries on the red planet.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
GO VEGAN!! www.peta.com
This sucks.
Go NASA?
If this is true, and those rocks truly are sedimentary, they should be full of bacterial fossils. All we have to do is get one of them under a microscope to confirm life on Mars.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Wow...these rovers and the team that runs them have done an amazing job.
look at deez rocks. /me looks down
Well, I suppose that would explain the ruins of a Long John Silver's that Viking 2 found in the 70s.
------------
I bet they'll soon find some stuff that will look like biological processes. Cool stuff...
livin on teh prayer!!!
It's time to get our asses to Mars. There is far too much to learn for us to just sit around and do nothing.
Especially considering some of this may be applicable to what will happen to our own planet in the future. We currently have seas. Mars used to. It'd be a good idea to figure out why they don't have them anymore.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
Mars is just an alien pissing post ... and that is what they are seeing.
I've decidely stepped on my balls.
Who stepped on my balls?
The dirty French did!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHH
...after the discovery of a layer of surfboard wax in the sediments.
WOOOOOOO! PAAAAARTY! Show us your tits! Pass the tequila. Where's Shenor Frog'sh at? Adonde esta el bano? Can I get some more salt for my margarita glass?
You know it's only a matter of time. Really.
blog |
THIS close to getting the first comment, but NOOOO, it had to tell me that my username was wrong!
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Is the play-by-play really necessary?
The only reason I see for them to put so much effort into publicizing everything as they go is to justify their cost, which I think would be far more justified if they had something to say like, "We think that if we dropped a big tub of water and some bacteria on the planet, we could terraform it."
It seems to cheapen this whole expedition to have the daily "so what?" updates.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Sure, sure - next they'll try to make us swallow Martian seamen!
Dammit, I've got a four digit UID and in like six or seven years of reading Slashdot I've never had a chance to get a first post, and now I get whacked by the moderators.
Don't moderate us old codgers like that, we don't get the opportunities you young whippersnappers get.
Okay, so they've shown it to a few scientists who concur.
Whatever happened to *publishing* the results of your experiments (and the data) in peer-reviewed journals?
Now, granted, there's plenty of political bias in the journals -- anyone that thinks science is purely dealing with the facts these days is *beyond* an idiot, but still. Just because you've got the rovers and you've got a daily press conference doesn't mean that your statements should be treated as anything but sensational speculation this early on.
If NASA were claiming Cold Fusion or Perpetual Motion, they've be laughed out of the scientific community for broadcasting just a revolutionary claim without first publishing.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
I don't know anything about this area, really, but in seas on the earth isn't it thought that salt accumulation occurs from activities of living (and dying) organisms?
"Opportunity Rover on Strike: Demands Pina Coladas, Sunscreen, and 5 days off to enjoy time at beach."
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
Next NASA is going to report they found evidence of pirates and buried treasure on Mars.
It's looking more and more like Beagle 2 had a great opportunity to find life (or indications thereof). I really wish we had it down there working away...
Mars rover Sprit discovers a small puddle, drives into it, and dies a sad electronic death.
Later reports detail it was in fact George W. Bush who had requested that they let him "Take that moon buggy thing for a spin".
Bush's immidiate response was, "Dad's gonna be piiiised".
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
this. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Shhhh. You'll wake baby.
Sent from your iPad.
I was eagerly waiting to watch the stream on NasaTV, but the Windows Media version had no sound.... then I did the unthinkable. I clicked the real player stream link. The horror that came after... real player popped open after sucking up the rest of my free resources, popped up a spam window, made sure its little bit of spyware lauched on startup, then wanted me to "register" before I even got to watch... needless to say, I didnt.
What ever happened to MPEG1 as a low-band streaming format?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Stupid shitheel, you should have gotten your first post before the 5 and 6 digit hoards even showed up. Don't whine to us just because you procrastinated for, like, six years!
uhh, dupe`?
3 /0 2/1913211&mode=thread&tid=134&tid=160
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/0
it was just the martians putting salt on their icy driveways.
Yet you still missed first.
You're crazy, dude.
Now we know what killed off life on Mars: high blood pressure
I remember back in Kindergarten when all of my classmates and I wanted to be astronauts when we grew up. All of our dreams were dashed to bits the next year when the Challenger exploded. We all went back to wanting to be fire fighters or whatever.
I tell you, these Mars rovers have done more to get me excited about space exploration than anything which has happened since then. I'm currently applying to medical school, but a long-dormant part of the back of my mind whispers, "You should have been an astronaut after all!"
What an amazing day to live in, when we may be at the threshold of discovering LIFE on ANOTHER PLANET!
The impact of this is that it implies the existance of an extensive alien city that is teeming with life just beneath the martian surface. If we can somehow get inside this city then we might be able to subvert their culture. Once they're using Microsoft Visual Studio C++ .NET and eating at McDonald's, then the U.S. economy will really take off and George Bush can be king of the solar system.
is taking money away from the real work here in america: the war on terrorism. If we stopped spending so much money on silly RC cars that roam desolate planets we could get back to the basics and figure out just what has gone wrong with the good ol' US of A.
You can't blame the guy for being excited. Skeptics called everyone 'foolish' for believe that water could have existed in any significant quantities on mars, in any form.
He may be jumping the gun a bit, but those water seekers certainly scored big by hitting two targets that both were drenched in water at one time.
'Course, nothing drives people better than proving someone else wrong...
I mean come on, first it's "there was water", and that was a cool announcement. But now it's "it was salty"? What's next? "It was wet"?. "Rocks are hard"?
I fixed some PHP code last night where I'd used a & instead of a $ to start a variable name, but you don't see me holding a press conference.
$8.95/mo web hosting
According to The Sea Captain, "Fairly warned be thee, says I."
Arrr.
I can't believe they actually discovered they have rovers over there:
"NASA has made another announcement, live on NASA TV, regarding the discoveries of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. "
Mod +5 Drunk
Almost makes you wonder if buying that low UID on eBay was even worth it, huh?
Fossils and reminents aside. I've got mixed feelings about finding life on Mars? Yeah it would be amazing to know that there are others in the universe...but to subject them to human contact (and testing).
-"Food is disgusting, it's what they make shit from."-
You are probably thinking of limestone. Calcium carbonate.
If memory serves, limestone isn't necessarily laid down by critters, but finding stromatolites or chalky cliffs ala Dover would be a very good sign indeed.
As would finding a fossilized opabinia, or one of the cannons the Martians used to launch their cylinders to Earth back in 1898.
Stefan
"We did find life on Mars. Samples returned by astronauts to Mars contained bacteria exactly like that found in the human gut and lungs."
Seriously though, what is Mars going to teach us? What would happen if our planet had about 2/3 it's present mass and was a few million miles farther from the sun? Environmental threats on Earth are almost entirely manmade and the solutions are available right now (population control, etc) but the will is not.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
"Would there have been life there?" asked Jayson Blair, new cub reporter for Tool & Die Quarterly.
"Dude!" said Corona, "With wave action like that how could there not be life? Can't you just imagine the green-skinned Mars babes lounging around, sipping Martain pina colodas while rubbing tanning butter all over their Barsooms."
"So you think Mars mught have supported intelligent life?" asked Baba O'Reilly, a distant cousin of Bill O'Reilly working for Akron City College Daily Herald, Mid-Morning Edition.
"Yeah... yeah... those barsooms, man," said Corona. "Huh? What? Oh, well, you wouldn't want them to be too intelligent, you know what I mean, man?"
The press conference was brough to an early end when a catsuited Gloria Allred and Camille Paglia paraglided into the taffy booth and beat Corona into submission.
--- Ban humanity.
It (probably) got there in the first place during Mars' formation, and perhaps later due to cometary bombardment.
As to why it was lost, crudely put: evaporation into outer space.
Molecules of volatile gasses, including water vapor, that waft into a planet's upper atmosphere occasionally reach escape velocity and are lost.
Why some gasses and not others? There are a bunch of factors at work:
Heavier gasses -- CO2, for example -- require more energy to get up to escape velocity. They statistically hang around longer.
Larger planets have higher escape velocities.
Planets farther from the Sun recieve less insolation, so there's less of a chance that a molecule will get kicked up to escape velocity.
go here:
Final Builds
http://home.hccnet.nl/h.edskes/mirror.htm
and get the
K-Lite Mega Codec Pack
http://home.hccnet.nl/h.edskes/mirror.htm
in it includes Windows media player 'CLASSIC' realmedia ready, quicktime ready... without the crap!
-Oy Vey
Okay. Somebody did it.
If you're fast enough you can go view the briefing live, if not its archived on this web page: Briefing
This sounds vaguely familiar...
NASA Says Mars Rocks
Isn't all that salt going to be bad on the rovers? I know it was hell on cars in Utah when I lived there.
Read any good sonnets lately?
It is now apparent that they might not have any type of fossil experts in their employ as well. Consider the following from the tin foil hat crowd:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/oppo
With the fossils on the following URLs:s _globularis.htm
http://www.cretaceousfossils.com/plants/porocysti
http://www.iftx.com/oct03.jpg
http://wardsci.com/category.asp?c=834
http://www.iftx.com/oct03.jpg
Or compare the Opportunity outcrop structure to the following image showing the layering found in coral fossils on earth:s 4.html
http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/navassa/geology/fossil
So whats's going on a NASA ? Have the geologist overcome the astrobiologists ?
And things would not be complete with this interesting read from the tin foil hat king himself, with lots of pics. It would have been nice to have had a fossil expert on staff to help sort these things out in advance. But 20/20 hindsight, y'know ...
But also, it does suggest that they are being really really really overly careful about saying that there was or is life on Mars. Almost like they are scared of it.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
So, Mars had a Sea and now it's dry and desert-like...
How long until they find worm-sign?
Confirmed life, even multicelled life, existing or having existed elsewhere in the universe, would not create a quandry even for the Roman Catholic religion, in general. What *WOULD* create such a quandry, however, is confirmation of _sentient_ life elsewhere.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What amazes me isn't so much that they discovered evidence of water on Mars, it's that they've discovered so much of it so quickly!
This is really the first fully sucessful mission to Mars whose primary function is to search the geologic record for evidence of water -- and not only did they find it -- they found it twice and quickly at that!
First of all -- kudos to the mission planning team. They picked their landing spots beautifully (and then hit a moving target from a moving target -- this isn't Lawn Darts folks. That alone is impressive.)
Second -- how much like Earth is Mars??? If the entire planet was covered with Oceans at one point, then (obviously) finding water isn't that remarkable. If, however, Mars is geologically similar to Earth, then 3/4 of the "land" would have been covered with water at one point. But I don't see that.
Mars seems to have little/no active tectonics -- and therefore no sea floor spreading. Also, since we can't find magenetically charged banding on the ancient Mars "ocean" floor, it suggests to me that Mars simply does have the characteristics that created large oceans like Earth does.
What I want to know is if the rovers are cabale of taking a thin-section of some of these sedimentary rocks. So much of the ocean floor on our planet is actually microscopic bits of dead diatoms and other creatures -- that would certainly answer the life question!
Which brings me back to point 1 -- if there isn't that much water, those rocket scientists really did their homework.
Wow. This is some seriously cool sh*t.
on why and how Mars lost its mass, and therefore the gravity necessary to have salty seas, and the probable atmosphere and precipitations to create them?
suppose Mars was bigger once, and due to a huge impact, lost a good chunk of itself... would it take a long time to reform itself into a spherical planet? Would there be any proof that such an event ever happened?
What are you talking about? The president clearly explained this in his state of the union address a year ago. To paraphrase: 'We know that in 1994 Irag had the potential to produce 10K liters or anthrax. Now, where is that anthrax?' So, now we know that mars had the potential to produce microorganisms, at least as much as Iraq did. Where are those microorganisms now? If it takes a full scale invasion of mars to not find these microorganisms, well so be it.
It Seems that NASA has actually lost the edge in robotic space exploration to the ESA. Remember this little gem of a story submitted by someone from Switzerland and posted by Michael(who else).
What if there's still some form of archbacteria living on Mars? I mean the ones living on earth can survive basically anywhere. Or they could be hibernating as the bacteria on earth are able to do.
There seems to be a lot significant increase in the talk of humans being able to live on Mars someday, and then there's all the talk about asteroids hitting Earth. Does NASA know something the rest of us don't, and there's a mad rush to get some sort of habitat on Mars or the Moon so the human race isn't completely irradicated?
I can make a brief puddle of salty water!
Just imagine the excitement if one of the rovers found fossilized dung.
Then there would be a race on to bring back Martian turd to earth.
That would rock!
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
And suppose the sentient life on another planet says: "Yeah, Jesus Christ came to us, too ... check it out, we have videos! What? Your civilization wasn't advanced enough to have videos at the time? Well, we'll be happy to share our archives."
Face it, if you really believe in science (which I do), then you have to admit that the proposition "God does not exist" is falsifiable, too. Hey, if he would just start writing the Ten Commandments in the sky in flaming letters every day, I'd start believing!
Well there people here thinking on searching for microbial Life. Many may think they need a microscope for that. First I should note that if microbes exist then they should leave a trail... And that trail may be as big as to be visible from above:
g
Life on Mars: Giant Fossils
Second there's the chemistry of rocks. The more deep we study them, the better we get into their evolution. In some cases the "phases" or "cycles" of processes around certain minerals can be done only with the help of microorganisms.
Third there are fossils. Even if Mars would be only populated by minuscle bacteria, that would not forbid them of creating colonies or produce large-scale deformations on rocks.
However to have a clue, no one can be sure of it even if it gets right in his face a something following Knoll's criterium the harshest criteria to find fossils that NASA stands for (and maybe correctly). For example I saw something that nears that criterium:
http://cydonia.ksu.ru/parafossil/parafossilA.pn
Is that a fossil? Well that thing has many things that point to organics. It has a interachange of structures looking like sections or segments of our animals. The bent structure in the middle of the rock suggests some kind of elasticity of the strcture. those holes are cavities and suggest very thiny walls, what excludes a mineral origin, through crystallization. The structure seems to have a bifurcation. If you see well then that zone has something looking much like the structure of the muscles in animals venous systems...
Is that a fossil? Well maybe, so I call it a pseudo/para fossil or, as some name it fossiloid. But this could be a trick of nature. No it is not a trick of JPEG as that picture is a composite with perliminar blur, besides two originals already show those lines without enhancement. So it is SOMETHING (no it is not a stupid bunny or a Message of Mars to Earth in Maori). But the worst this something has is the fact that is laying there lonely and unique. It could be a vent of hot mineral waters. It could be a sequence of events that lead to such a unique structure. We had once Faces there, remember? Truly quite fussy. So until someone gets a better enhancement of that (there are six frames of that rock) or we find something similar, it will remain something.
In fact the only way to find life there is to accumulate evidence. Even if it is only with the help of a microscope. But using ONLY a microscope, that will be like finding a needle in the haystack. The planet is quite dead and you don't need microscopes to be sure of that. So where they were/are is also a pretty serious question
I, for one, welcome our briny Martian overlords.
See: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportu nity_m034.html
For some conspirisy theories see:
http://www.enterprisemission.com/articles/03-08-20 04/crinoid_cover-up.htm
The longer term goal is looking for water environments that are favorable to the formation and support life (based on our experiences on earth) so we can focus future explorations on finding evidence of life in the most likely places on Mars.
I know you likely know this and meant it in the above but others may read the wrong thing in your post.
Anyway I agree that the probes and the teams that designed and support them have done one hell of a great job!
Is it just me, or does it look like there are footprints in this image? Hmmm....
...investigators researching the fate of Beagle 2 confirmed that it was blown to pieces on impact when it accidentally landed on a discarded Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Yes, let us be brave and bold like Europe, and capitulate our way to the Heavens!
I agree with the majority of your point, but when illustrating truth, you'll be more influential by not being a punk.
In a number of areas on Mars at present. That is for pure water. Make it salty, as it is almost certainly to be, and the areas where liquid water is stable on the order of hours or more, increases dramatically.
What I'd like to know is, what is that clearly visible, dark, yet shiny object in the foreground in the Meridiani Planium image at 97 degs (the largest image download has azimuth degree marks)?
It can't be the Backshell & Parachute which are at 235 degs. It can't be heat shield either, which is much farther away. And from the image, it clearly is much darker and rises above the surface.
Also interesting is the fact that it lies on one of the bounce marks from the airbags, but none of the other bounce marks have this feature. Its' in line with the distant East Crater (probably by chance), but clearly in the foreground...
What we DO know now with reasonable certainty is that such water could not possibly have been any warmer than near-freezing. Noachian Mars may have been "cold and damp", but we can now rule out the view of some hopeful scientists that it must have been "warm and wet".
Well so much for reasonable certainty, eh?
AN interesting question those articles do pose, though, is - if Mars was so wet for so long (wet enough to make this sedimentary rock) why is there so much Olivine up there? Olivine breaks down when exposed to water - even frozen water.
It's a mystery - so I guess we'll just have to pack up the truck and go check it out.
Swimmin' pools, movie stars...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I bet they find the old Micheal Jackson (dark) and we finally expose the New (light).
Sig removed by order of FBI Patriot ACT
We've found martian asteroids at the poles.
Earth has been creamed by asteroids every ~100 million years.
Therefore, microbes have been spread around the universe hitching a ride on ejectile material since life began here.
So salt water on mars is interesting, but we should expect to at least find microbial life everywhere there's liquid water, not prance about like moronic school girls screaming about a rat turd from ET.
Obviously, this shats on the concerns of those who don't want to contaminate other planets. Coming from a species that live by consuming innocent plants and animals, it's bizzare.
There is no environment on Earth too extreme for life, as long as there is liquid water.
Nothing will grow in my apartment and it is on earth...
Wouldn't a geologist (I'm not but I did) conclude that earlier pictures showed clear signs of the rocks being sedimentary?
Look at the area below Zugspitze in the picture above and then try and tell me with a straightface that those striated rocks are igneous in origin.
The question is why did they wait so long to announce the fact that there were sedimentary rocks?
Maybe a geologist could tell me whether there are any igneous rock formations that might look sedimentary & they therefore had to do further analysis.
The Machine stops.
Big hullabalo a few weeks ago that scientists had shrunk an amino acid detector and analyser to the size of a computer chip. They'll try to get these on the 2009 landers.
Pop...a...poppler in your mouth
when you come to Fishy Joe's!
What they're made of is a mystery
where they come from no one knows.
You can pick 'em, you can lick 'em,
you can chew 'em, you can stick 'em.
If you promise not to sue us,
you can shove one up your nose.
Did you ever see the polar ice caps?
The orbitors detected hydrogen in the soil a long time ago.
The orbitors photographic sedimentary structures in the rocks a long time ago. It was not clear whether these were due to water, wind or volcanics.
What the rovers have established is there was standing water at some time in the past.
"...get your ass to Mars. ...get your ass to mars. ...get your ass to Mars..."
And, now he's the governator... Soon to be The Presinator if he has his way. Then, we get our ass to Mars! (hey, he's already been to Mars!)
I've read a lot of discussions lately about recent evidence for why there must, at one time, have been liquid water on Mars. But, much of that evidence relates to the deposition of sediment, presence of erosion patterns, aftereffects of evaporation, presence of salts, crystallization patterns, and so forth -- none of which (to my knowledge) requiring the liquid in question to be H2O. Some of the evidence, on the other hand, relates to the formation of minerals such as hematite, which presumably form only in or near liquid H2O, and not, say, liquid H2O2, liquid CO2, or liquid N2. The biggest question(s) I have that I've not seen well addressed are:
1. What evidence supports or rules out the presence of liquids other than H2O on the surface of Mars, at one time, in large quantities?
2. How much, if any, of the present evidence could be explained by flows of liquid CO2, nitrogen, methane, ammonia, or some other liquid?
3. Which evidence, if any, points most strongly to the presence of large amounts of H2O as the liquid in question? I know there are currently thought to be large, polar caps of solid H2O, but how much of the current evidence precludes the existence of large seas of some other liquid in the distant geological past?
I apologize if these questions are simple or completely baseless. I am not a geologist, and am legitimately curious.
Cheers,
F00FIf you can tear your eyes away from the JPL rovers for a second, Mars Express has answered that question last week.
Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard
Striations can be laid down by wind-blown dust, or by ashfalls from volcanos, to name just two mechanisms tha tdotn require wqter at all. Adn we know that there were volcanoes. If there was an atmosphere at some point, there would have been wind-blown dust. Even in the "wet" category, layers can be created by streams or freshwater lakes. So the 'wet salty' part is also not at all implied by the observation of striated rock alone.
And compared to how many people have flown in space, that's a lot. And your sov. figures are low. And it's easy for you to say, not your ass on the line.
could I just point out small point?
If you believe in God, Angels, all that; wouldn't you, in fact, be admitting that you believe in ET? (extra-terrestrial life)?
Maybe not carbon based like we are; but (if you believe in them) life at any rate; since they are supposedly intelligent beings?
Try not to let life get in the way of living.
The BIFs are believed to have formed in the pre-Cambrian about 1.5-2.5 billion years ago in the era during the transition to an oxygen atmosphere and are theorized to be the effects of some or other kind of bacteria rusting up all the iron with the available free oxygen. Most of our iron ore comes from BIFs.
If I'm not mistaken, all the European probes found was hydrogen. While that's very suggestive of water, finding mineral evidence is more convincing still. Hell, we knew Mars had water decades ago in the poles. This is signifigant since it points to larger and larger amounts that did exist or possibly still do.
Let's not get into a pissing contest of who has the better space agency. Every step towards Mars settlement is a good one.
Blaze a trail to the New World
According to an article I found in Pravda, there is a boy who claims to have been a Martian in a past life. He says the Martians are still there, just moved underground when they lost their atmosphere. It seems he would know all about the oceans.
Here's the link:
The Boriska-Boy From Mars
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
"But also, it does suggest that they are being really really really overly careful about saying that there was or is life on Mars. Almost like they are scared of it."
Of course they're scared of it. They do NOT want to be wrong in their assessment that Mars once had life should they make a public announcement. To make an all-important statement such as that, and find out later to be false would severely damage NASAs credibility. So in that regard, I agree with NASA as to not say anything about life untill undeniable proof is available for peer review among scientists around the world.
Life is not for the lazy.
Don't look under your sofa then...
I like my women like my coffee... pale and bitter.
"AN interesting question those articles do pose, though, is - if Mars was so wet for so long (wet enough to make this sedimentary rock) why is there so much Olivine up there? Olivine breaks down when exposed to water - even frozen water."
Olivine is abundant on certain beaches in Hawaii that have no shortage of water, which demonstrates at least one answer to this apparent paradox: perhaps it is evidence of continued volcanic activity, at least until the time when the conditions became drier. Olivine will preserve much longer in cold, dry conditions.
Like when they first showed the earth wasn't flat, and suddenly christianity collapsed because a flat world was one of its cornerstones? Don't kid yourself, there is a world of difference between dogma and religion. Dogma comes and goes like the tides, religion is eternal. The handy thing about holy scripture is that you need to interpret it, so what it actually says is left up to the interpreter.
... whichever comes first.
Religion certainly isn't "eternal." It may be an affliction humankind is cursed with until the end of humanity's days, perhaps, or we may in fact survive this ugly adolescence of our species and become enlightened enough to shed its yoke one day.
Even in the worst case scenerio, where religion continues to reinvent itself with every new scientific discovery that renders its tenants untenable and humankind (or a portion thereof) clings to it stubbornly regardless of how many revisions are made to its "Eternal Truths(tm)", every religion known to man today or in the future will most certainly die.
At the absolute, very latest, when the last thinking, breathing human being dies, or when the universe reaches its penultimate expression of entropy (and all life, of any kind, anywhere, becomes untenable)
But you are right - religion will reinvent itself (yet again) and claim to have "known all along" the moment alien biology is discovered. Indeed, most religious organizations have had decades in which to prepare their individual spins should such a discovery be made.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Yup, that's one of the major debates raging right now.
:) ... but it's certain that any manned mission will find riches beyond our wildest dreams...even if they are scientific riches. After all, look what the unmanned missions have accomplished.
:)
However, given that Mars' wet period seems to have been hundreds of millions (or billions) of years in the past, it's very possible the olivine was formed since, or migrated thru wind erosion or meteor impacts from water-free sites to the site where it was observed. We haven't seen enough of Mars to know.
It's a very interesting question - but I don't think it rules out large bodies of water on Mars at one time. It does definitely mean that we have to get a sample return mission there - do some dating on the apparent water formations and on the olivine (or figure out a way to do it remotely - that's difficult but not impossible.) I think it likely we'll find out that Martian geology is just as complex as Earth's is, but sometimes in different ways.
Swimmin' pools, movie stars...
Heh. Now if we found *oil* there....
Let's just not destroy the other good science we're doing for some vaguely shaped plan of a manned Mars mission. After all, it's entirely possible that if NASA had decided to follow the late 80s plans for a Mars mission, these unmanned missions would never have happened.
On that note manned exploration of the solar system should not be *solely* a NASA venue, or (especially) even a governmental venue...though I'd almost be willing to put some money on the Chinese getting there before we do
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
I know this is nitpicky, but... Early pictures (from the orbiters) of layered rocks were used as early evidence of the possiblity of water on Mars. So we sent rovers to go take a better look. As Intraloper said, not all layered rocks (striated means something different to geologists) are necessarily sedimentary. You can have layers of extrusive igneous formations (lava). And not all sedimenary rocks are created by water, though most are. Some can be created by blowing dust, which is common in Mars' thin atmosphere.
That (or this) should have a score of 5; I've been looking and asking for that link for weeks! The NASA and JPL sites didn't seem to help me find it.
/ ME R_Video_Archive.html
Actually, it lead me to this page which I'll be bookmarking:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem
Also, since we can't find magenetically charged banding on the ancient Mars "ocean" floor, it suggests to me that Mars simply does have the characteristics that created large oceans like Earth does.
Actually, weak magnetic polarity bands have been discovered, but they do not correspond with the areas on Mars thought to be ancient seabeds, and they are not global. They were found in some areas of the southern highlands if my memory serves me right.
Edith Keeler Must Die
OT: but I had to share it:
My current titles on my tabs in Mozilla say:
"NASA Finds Critical Ass...."
and
"NASA Says Mars Rocks..."
Kinda funny...
Burma?
Laws of Physics & Biochemistry = On Any Old Wet Rock
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Oooo, insightful! NOT!
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Don't worry, if American astronauts don't go, eventually some humans will. They just might be Russian, Chinese, or Indian instead.
"They just might be Russian, Chinese, or Indian instead."
not unless there's curry.
AN interesting question those articles do pose, though, is - if Mars was so wet for so long (wet enough to make this sedimentary rock) why is there so much Olivine up there? Olivine breaks down when exposed to water - even frozen water.
Yep on earth olivine breaks down in the pressence of water but on earth there is also oxygen (dissolved in the water).
Granted under metamorphic conditions (where there usually is reducing conditions) olivine does also break down to iron oxides and serpentine minerals, but in that case, high temperatures allows the minerals to change. On earth, fresh Olivine can be found at surface level as long as they have not been exposed to water with dissolved oxygen
(For instance olivine can be found in Norway in precambrian rocks which has been near sea level for the last 600 milion years but not exposed to water containing oxygen).
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
Don't look under your sofa then... ... or in your keyboard ;-)
the Pacific ocean or the Bering land bridge, those explorers were risking their lives routinely.
Even then, most people as a whole weren't willing to. Also, the risk was lessened relatively because the life expectancy wasn't high anyway.
Are we, today, so squeamish and pathetically cowardly that we can't emulate the feats of our forefathers (and foremothers)??
Who's this "we" shit? Again, until I see a rocket strapped to your ass, you're in the same boat as the rest of us non-space-going people. I respect the decisions of the crazy bastards that do it, but I think we as a society have a responsibility to make sure this is as safe as possible and not to perform a lot of pointless missions.
Moderators who have no sense of humor mod funny posts "troll" or "off-topic".
They're just jealous because the only thing "funny" that they can think of is something lame like "In Soviet Russia, us belong to all your base" or something equally stupid.
They take out their lack of talent on those of us who actually have talent.
In that way, they are kind of like movie critics.
Note that the above description applies only to moderators who mod funny posts as "troll" or "off-topic".
Those moderators who correctly moderate funny posts as "funny" are extremely intelligent and perceptive.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana