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Martian Sea Discovered
mpesce writes "New Scientist is reporting that a large sea of frozen ice (between 800 and 900 km in size and 45 m deep) has been discovered by the ESA's Mars Express Probe. Here's the kicker: the sea of block ice is only five degrees away from the Martian equator. New Scientist also links to a PDF of a paper to be presented next month about the finding." Update: 02/21 15:30 GMT by T : Note: that's 45 meters deep, not 45 kilometers deep.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
As long as there are hookers and blackjack, people will vacation there in droves.
I think we should use the moon as our garbage dump. Save Mars as a possible 2nd home when that big asteroid finally smashes into Earth and makes it uninhabitable for a few decades/centuries/eons.
Funny how greenhouse gases are supposed to 'save' Mars and make it hospitable though, but are destroying our own planet. I guess that means I get to use my old aerosol hairspray and put leaded gasoline in my car, and use the old RJ-12 Freon when I eventually migrate to Mars.
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Good point. I love how the slightest hint of water - which could mean something else - is taken as iron clad proof that there is water on Mars. Remember when sediment was found at the bottom of basins on Mars, and they thought that was their proof? Frankly, I'm waiting for them to bring back a pitcher (of water).
Not even the excuse of metric/imperial conversion. Innumeracy is a problem these days. A few weeks ago there was a story in the Toronto Star that said the new European plane was 20,000 tons heavier than the 747. Didn't anyone stop to think about the big hole that would make in the runway, never mind the takeoff problems?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Let me get this straight...
You're memermised by a spacecraft that has allowed "scientists" to speculate with little or no facts?
I may be an older guy, but back in my day, we would call what these "scientists" are doing as "talking out of your ass".
Time to get a reality check. Not only does the original poster of the article exaggerate what scientists are guessing about by a factor of 100, but they don't have any proof, and the surrounding facts suggest that the guesses are unrealistic.
And based on that, you want us to marvel at the ESA?
I mean, just checking.
Ya mean, like those derricks that the Indians had built all over Texas, before the white man stole them?
If we could terraform Mars, do you really think it would be hospitable? There's more to Earth than water and oxygen that makes it possible for life to live here. The moon, for instance, is just in the right position to affect our tides so they aren't out of control. And the magnetic field that helps move that nasty radiation around us... I wonder what it would mean for Earth if we terraformed Mars, changed it's magnetic field. It might even effect life here. I say we leave Mars alone before we kill ourselves.
- Tylo
If US citizens can't drink the water in Mexico, I seriously doubt we'll be able to drink the water on Mars. Hopefully for the same reasons...
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I guess it implies that it will be relatively easy to melt if we plan to warm the place up.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
To say nothing of the mass hysteria that occurs when the words "life" and "mars" are randomly strung together in the same sentence, then repeated secondhand to an over-eager journalist.
It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
"Imagine living on a planet where you get tax breaks for driving big inefficient vehicles that produce greenhouse gases."
Um, we ALREADY DO.
SUV, truck owners get a big tax break
CONs of the SUV Tax Break
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Water is life. With us not having to ship water, fuel, and food with future missions, the weight requirements drop precipitously. We can grow food, make air and fuel, as well as have all the water we need. No need for expensive and far-off recycling systems; we can go RIGHT NOW.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
On one hand we're talking about mars express, a probe, and on the other hand we're talking about throwing two remote-controlled cars at a planet, airbraking them using big balloons, bouncing them around Mars, and opening them up, then driving around the planet's surface collecting high-resolution images of anything we care to look at... so long as it's not very high off the ground. I'd say that puts them in a league of their own.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
1st it is warmer near the equator, so... so that would be a nicer place to live.
2nd if it can exist near the equator, it might also be found in the colder areas.
Not only would it be a much needed resource for manned exploration, but it also would greatly increase the chances of life existing there.
Regrettably, the two are mutually exclusive.. isn't it interesting - the more Earth-like the conditions, less likely it is that we will explore the place anytime soon, not to 'spoil' it?
We are basically doomed to not go to places we'd REALLY like to go, and to dig in the Moon dirt at best.
Isn't the much more important mistake that they don't actually know that it's water?
A new perspective.
I spent several years working in and around the small northern communities in Canada's Arctic.
The Inuit population there refer to water as "molten ice", because ice is the most common state.
Were as we southerners (south of the arctic circle) consider ice as frozen water.
Oh well, I thought it was funny.
It takes less than a day to completely disassemble it!
Haven't all of you terraforming advocates out there ever considered the fact that to efficiently get to Mars (I don't mean a several person space capsule -- I mean quantities of people that would be required for a "real" colony...) as well as to perform rapid terraforming (within a several hundred year lifetime) you are going to require robust molecular nanotechnology? And if you have robust molecular nanotechnology you might as well convert the entire planet into more useful forms that aren't at the bottom of a gravity well.
The world seems to be full of people who have read too much anthropocentric science fiction and don't realize that technology development is going to turn many decades old concepts that people feel all warm and fuzzy about into really silly ideas.
Everyone knows that nature is static, and how things were 50, 100, or 1000 years ago are the way that they should be today, tomorrow, and forever!
The reason why large scale or long-term changes to the environment are so risky is not, as you mistakenly state, that nature is static. Rather, it is that nature is highly dynamic on time scales spanning millennia and we don't understand the dynamics yet. A significant change that we think produces benefits may, in the long term, have devastating consequences.
Once we understand natural systems sufficiently well to be able to predict the consequences of our actions in the long term, then we can engage in deliberate planet-wide engineering efforts, here on earth on on Mars. Until then, anything that alters our atmosphere, oceans, or ecology significantly is Russian roulette.
Surely our effect on Mars would be natural we are just natures children like any other creature. Natural Selection has given us self awareness to do what we do and just as a beaver builds a damn to give itself a pool we build ourselves a city or even terraform a planet. I guess its just perspective but we're still very natural creations and therefore our actions are.
:/
What a rant
the Electoral College prevents people from just appealing to the States with the most votes. Remember, the Federal Government did not create the States, the States created the Federal Government. This is not a unitary country like Ireland or something. it's a federation of the several states. The Electoral College is an insitution which preserves this and is a founding principle. Further, the States dont even have to allow people to vote for anything but the House of Representatives. State Legislatures could just throw up whatever votes for the College they wanted to and it would be perfectly constitutional. Democracy is stupid and dangerous. Look at the French Revolution.
...since there's nothing there to get put out by any mistake, except dust, rocks, and wind.
Actually, if we really did evolve from amoebas, then we are very much part of nature and everything we do is therefore quite natural.
On the other hand, if we were made by God, then we can argue that the things we are doing are not natural, because we are separate and above nature.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Would you please review your "Blue Collar Comedy" tape for the proper use of "Here's your sign"? You're supposed to have a sarcastic remark in counter to a stupid question. I'll bet your programs take FOREVER to correct for syntax... if you code, that is.