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NASA Finds Evidence of Recent Flowing Water on Mars
SonicSpike writes to mention that Scientists are claiming that they have evidence of water flowing on Mars within the last five years. From the article: "Subsurface aquifers or melting ground ice were floated as possible sources of the water. One of the springs even appears at a fault line, according to Malin, just as they often do on Earth. The shortness of the gulleys, which seem to flow for but a few hundred yards, might be accounted for by a process similar to a volcano's eruption on Earth, with water instead of magma building up underground, and ice, instead of fire, characterizing the resulting flow."
they are going to be looking at a lot of before / after pictures now. I'm looking forward to as well. Very interesting.
There is simply too much glass..
Keep your pants on:
"Nothing in the images, no matter how cool they are, proves that the flows were wet, or that they were anything more exciting than avalanches of sand and dust," Allan Treiman, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston said in an e-mail.
nuff said.
Get your ass to Mars
Um, that wasn't water. I had had a lot of juice earlier, and there wasn't a gas station or anything to be found... sorry about that.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Not just scientists, but Scientists with a capital S!
This looks like the real deal. It appears that it's being reported everywhere; CNN, etc. When I saw the original article I was slightly skeptical, but NASA ain't screwing around, it appears.
+++ATH0
Finally, conclusive proof of the existence of SPACE DINOSAURS living under the Martian surface in a network of vast subterranian caves, probably plotting to invade Earth any day now. Why else would there be water on Mars? Think about it.
It would be cool if NASA could keep a few micro-probes in reserve in Mars orbit that could be de-orbited as needed to investigate these kinds of phenomenon as they are discovered. Nothing large and complicated like a rover, just a very hi-resolution camera and some very basic devices to measure the local environment. The real trick would be getting pinpoint accuracy on the landing. To save weight and increase simplicity they need not even be designed to survive landing, just to deliver a high speed data squirt to an orbiter as they collect the most relevant and valuable data on their way down by parachute. If they do survive the landing they only need enough power to last long enough to send a few more surface condition measurements -- again the emphasis on cheap and expendable.
At the other end of the scale we need to develop landers that can investigate hard to get to locations like the very bottom of Valles Marineris. I assume this is where what little atmosphere there is would be the most dense, warm, and possibly moist. This would also be the most sheltered location on Mars from all forms of ionizing radiation.
Letter To Iran
In related news, Starbucks announced it is booking passage on the next flight to the Red Planet. "This enables us to continue our mission of providing coffee to the races of the solar system," said its CEO. "I look forward to asking our first Martian customer, 'Would you like a double mocha latte, Mr. Xzart'FooKniznak?'
Dinosaurs = Fossils = Fossil Fuels = INVASIO^H^H^HLIBERATION!
Richard Hoagland (sp?) was talking about this last night on coast 2 coast... the radio show normally infested with funny alien abductees and anal probe recipients.
He apparently had seen this stuff in mars rover pictures and predicted it.... guess nasa has finally came to the same conclusion.
I bet they were just more thorough or cautious in their analysis before declaring anything.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
For water to flow, it has to have gotten to the source of the flow first. So, there has to be a mechanism for transport back to the source of the flow. Like rain moves water on Earth back to higher ground. The article offers no speculation on this transport mechanism. I would, of course, suspect evaporation and then dew/frost. But, that would be picked up easily from our probes and even from Earth-based observation.
What am I missing here?
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Move over, Dasani, Poland Spring, and Evian... Here comes Lunar Liquid!
There's been pictures indicating recent water flowing for years. Guess the evidence got overwhelming. There's been also strong evidence of seasonal darkening as if the ground was damp during summer months. I found a camera shot years ago that showed the ground next to the rover that seemed to show a patch of water maybe the size of your palm. The ground around that was dark. NASA definately suffers from dogma. The current dogma had been for a dry Mars. Just glad they are surrendering finally and accepting the evidence. Given the resistence to change I think it'll take samples brought back from Mars to prove life. There was evidence as far back as Viking but still no missions looking for direct signs of life. I'd love to see that resolved during my lifetime but I have my doubts. It may have to wait for the manned mission and even then there'll be debate for years if something is found if NASA brought it there themselves.
Not all scientists are convinced that it was actually water.
"Many scientists believe the gullies were carved by liquid water, although others have argued they are due to avalanches of carbon dioxide gas or rivers of dust," from The New Scientist.
Also, here is the NASA release from their site.
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
If you look at the high res images (from NASA here)
You can see the flow emerges from the side of an impact crater.
The water was most likely locked underground (as expected by the briney moist soil effect the rovers noticed just under the surface)
Its like diggign a hole in the sand at the beach, eventually water will start to seep in.
liqbase
Yesterday on Technocrat there was an announcement about the upcoming NASA press conference. NASA has kept nerds in suspense for utterly minor announcements before, so I wasn't expecting much from the announcement. Indeed, anything as important as the discovery of life (or, rather, the discovery of fossils of life) would probably have leaked out before and be all over the news.
But this announcement is cool because it means that Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy beginning with Red Mars , undoubtedly the most inspiring work of space colonization science fiction for many of us here, may still be timely. Much of Robinson's plot depends on the existence of subsurface aquifers. Even if there's no life, we can still dream of such an awesome concept as terraformation made possible through water still present underground.
You, in fact, did spell his name incorrectly. The correct spelling of his name is as follows:
W-h-a-c-k J-o-b
I find it interesting that NASA also mentioned this week that they want to build a forward base on the moon in order to allow for further exploration of the Solar System, specifically Mars. Are they trying to drum up some support for their project ? Or just coincidence ?
of martian global warming too?
and if so did we on earth cause it?
I think I would get hot too getting probed that much.
(not that kind of hot get your mind out of the gutter)
I'd Tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past
If they have found water on Mars this could send the price of water down.
No matter where you go, there you are.
What's that white stuff around the crater's rim? Is that just a trick of the light? If it's not could whatever it is be the same material as the 'flow?' It has a similar intensity to the light-colored 'flow.'
"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 oxygen that means we can breathe." -- Dan Quayle, 8/11/89
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
This is interesting because it's been stated time and time again: Where there's water there's almost surely life.
Here is my home page.
I bet they were just more thorough or cautious in their analysis before declaring anything.
NASA is more cautious than anal-probe radio-show guy?
What a bunch of pansies! That's no way to do science.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You probably can't get closer to the reality. BBC is reporting it too and there they say:
"Other scientists think it possible that gullies like this were caused not by water but by liquid carbon dioxide.
One of the reasons for favouring CO2 was that computer models of the Martian crust indicated water could exist only at depths of several kilometres. Liquid carbon dioxide, on the other hand, could persist much nearer the surface where temperatures can drop as low as -107C."
But for funding it just has to be water, that's science and that's sad.
(I don't blame them, I know game too, different league, same rules.)
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Golly! You're right! As the electron shells of the copper molecules in the impacter neared the electron shells in the molecules of Tempel 1, their mutual repulsion forced the crater to form.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Would you buy water from mars at $10,000 a litre? If the rich and famous spend thousands on a diamond encrusted mobile phone, would they spend that sort of figure on a bottle of space pop?
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
I am the original poster and the summary or even the link is NOTHING like I submitted. I guess the /. editors take 'editorial liberty' to the extreme! No resemblence to the orignal at all.
;-)
Oh well, at least I got credit for it and good karma
Libertas in infinitum
A photo that Nasa published over a year ago already unquestionably demonstrated the existence of water on Mars, see http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050401.html
(And if you're still not convinced you can even try this at home...)
anyone you use 'squirt' to say transfer.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As I understand it, it's already common slang in some fields for sending data via satellite ("squirt the bird").
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
This sounds like every party, ever.
"Aw man, I can't believe you left our chess club bash last night. FIVE MINUTES after you left, the entire cheerleader squad stumbled in and started making some unconventional moves with the bishops!"
"Dude, you JUST missed it. The keg floated FIVE MINUTES ago, and the stores are all closed now."
"Man, I'm telling you, the water was just here FIVE YEARS ago. What took your ass so long to get here?!?"
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
This has also been picked up by the major media.
On a side note, the HiRISE team is now posting new large images on the HiRISE Website every week on Wednesday. (A file size and format warning is needed. The full super high resolution photo of the Opportunity landing site is 677 MBytes in JP2 format)
Of course, there are some pics that I wouldn't mind a little more investigation on. I happen to be interested in something I call Gulliver's Golf Ball, something that looks like a perfect sphere, roughly 200 meters across.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Nah, that's just a little ice cream.
I'm sorry. The Devil made me do it.
Actually on closer inspection its sewage run-off. Definetly clear evidence of little green men living underground. ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
No kidding!!! If i hear him say "hyper-dimensional" one more time, I'm going to kick HIS ass to Mars.
He's a nut... But on a more serious note, he's just some public has-been seeking to recapture the lime-light he once had in the past. In any case, it's sad to see someone's reputation degraded to that of nut. He has no one to blame but himself.
Life is not for the lazy.
Great, who's couch is Tom Cruise going to ruin this time over this finding? Maybe Scientology was right after all.
Full Tilt
So? "Squirt" in the lewd sense is *still* a rapid data transfer. Works better for the intended purpose, however, when one end is a responder - rather than both ends being initiators.
Lemme grab my "gizmo" and squirt one off.
Ok yeah given the sloven stereotype of geeks, I guess it could be pretty bad.
No sig for you!!
Looking to the near future, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Mars Reconnaissances Orbiter (MRO) delivers a more clear picture of whats going on up there...
I'm not fat, just big boned...
You could probably ask for volunteers for a one-way mission to Mars and get enough responses from slashdot alone to fill the roster.
Finding volunteers for spaceflight is a non-issue. Finding qualified ones...well, that's probably still a non-issue. It's the nerd equivalent of offering Joe Sixpack tickets to the Super Bowl if he'll just smear hot grits all over Natalie Portman.
Fill in your four or five-letter word of wisdom here _ _ _ _ _.
Don't you mean "frickin' lasers"?
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
I'd say they're just being overly cautious. Announcing the discovery of water on Mars is big news. Having to retract that and say, "Oh, nope, it's just...really odd dust." would really suck from a PR perspective. Better to say, "Well, we might have water, but we're not positive." right up until a probe goes and picks some up in a sippy-cup and sends it back home.
Fill in your four or five-letter word of wisdom here _ _ _ _ _.
"Even if you didn't something something"
No, I didn't didn't anything.
Now all we have to do is locate and turn on the alien machine, to melt the glacier, that will make Mars habitable.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
To find out more about this crackpot, check out Bad Astronomy
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
For what it's worth, I should point out that this is perfectly consistent with the story that's been gradually developing over the years. We know that there are substantial amounts of hydrogen in the first few meters of most of the Martian crust (cf. the MO Gamma-ray spectrometer) and hence there is likely water ice there. We know that in the distance past large quantities of liquid water flowed on the surface to carve the fluvial geomorphological features we see (cf. MGS MOC images). We know that liquid water sloshed in at least some areas to form certain minerals (cf. MER results). We've seen gullies on the sides of craters that looked recent (cf. MGS MOC images). And now this study which shows gullies being created over the timeframe of a few Earth years. Basically, this is just one more little increment in our understanding of the distribution of water on Mars. This is how science usually works but sometimes press releases unduly hype things.
Forget not the special plumbing you'll need to handle the resulting "space wiz."
"Remember folks, when you drink Olympus Ale, the special Martian molecules must be processed by our extra special Deimosian Commode, yours for only $85,000. Also try our Baldet Bidet, made from 75% Baldet Crater clay, pumping fresh streams of Martian Melt for your refreshment."
Actually I thought about your objection and decided it isn't necessarily so. It might be possible to make the delivery of such micro-probes one of the mission objectives of a suitably designed orbiter.
To elaborate the micro-probes would be ideally wedded in data communication to such an orbiter already. Thus why not house them in the orbiter until needed? Orbiters periodically need orbital adjustments, low altitude orbiters need periodic orbital boosts. I don't know how efficient this would be for re-boosting, but the launch of the micro-probes/micro-landers could boost the orbiter -- they could be launched/jettisoned gun-fashion.
For best short term reception the micro-probe could be shot slightly forward of the orbiter (OK I'm simplifying some tricky orbital mechanics here that may actually involve shooting aft) such that the orbiter trailed the probe before the probe entered the atmosphere then the orbiter could pass close overhead as the probe entered the atmosphere, then most crucially maintaining line of sight long enough for the probe to land ala Cassini-Huygens. Orbiters typically involve orbits that maximize terrain covered, so eventually they would come around to a micro-probe launching opportunity, and since they would have very similar orbits (having started from the same orbital point) very little fuel would be needed for the described flyby telemetry receiving scenario.
Being housed interim on the orbiter, the micro-probes need not be engineered to survive the rigors of space on their own, nor independently receive ground control, nor remain powered up continuously.
Letter To Iran
There is absolutely no proof that there's actually water in that glass. It could be liquid carbon dioxide. Enough of this junk science.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Doh! We ran the rover into a river! Too bad the rover wasn't transformers inspired as it could have morphed into a boat to save itself...maybe next time
when I read "recent" i thought it might be 1000-2000 years old but five years is, like, fresssh.
but it was a washout.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Actually, that's probably the exact phrase that your grandchild will use one day to describe you when you tell him that you used to believe in black holes.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
In Soviet Russia, ground flows on water.
Hell is the impossibility of reason...
Which for all intents and purposes means a dedicated orbiter - thus sending "cheap and expendable" right back out the window.
Which means considerable weight and complexity on the orbiter. And "cheap and expendable" goes out the window, *again*.
"Orbiting around Mars in reserve for an indefinite period of time" and "cheap and expendable" are mutually exclusive. Period.
What I really don't understand is why they announced this now. They found this information out many months ago and waiting until now to reveal it. WHen asked they said evidence leads them to "believe" it is water. They aren't positively sure, although they've made a strong case it is in fact water (or atleast a liquid of some sort). They could send the Orbiter (and they are going) to the sites and do analysis of the area to help determine if the substance is water or not. Why did they not do this prior to making this announcement is beyond me. I guess they can make two announcements now. Hopefully the second is that they've verified that it is water.
Well the cheapest thing is never to send any landers/orbiters to Mars ever again, but I'm fairly certain we will be sending more of both. Micro-Probes need not be a budget busting accesory to add if you are already committed to going to Mars, again the Huygens analogy.
Letter To Iran
The difference here is the definition of "recent". There is evidence of tens of thousands of gullys that have evidence of flowing water, for the *geological* definition of recent. In the sense that "It is obvious what happened here, this is what it looks like after water flows across the surface". "Recent" to a geologist means "within the last million years".
6 -145
In this instance, we actually have photographic evidence, with one picture in 2001 and another in 2005 showing an actual change over the course of years, not millenia.
Water is flowing on the surface of Mars *now*. Granted, it is a rare event on a human timescale, with only two instances detected across on third of the planet's surface over a period of 5-6 years. But from a geologists perspective, we've moved from the realm of "recent" activity to "active" activity.
JPL has an awesome site up right now explaining the MGS team findings:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=200
I'm going to throw a bunch of links at you here, but this should answer your question.
...
...
...
... "Lava tubes on Earth are only a few meters wide. The width of channels on Ascraeus Mons are measured in thousands of meters. Even with Mars' lesser gravity, solidified lava is not strong enough to span such distances: None of the channels should be covered.":
...
... well, let's just say that I rest my case with this article ...
First, look at the electric dust devils of Mars etching the ground black as it moves across:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0509 16dustdevil.htm
Now look at the scalloped curled trenches that would result from a pair of Birkeland Currents twisting around one another (as happens in plasma globes). The scalloping and flat bottoms are exactly the same thing you notice on asteroid and cometary craters too
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0508 29curly.htm
More Martian electric rilles. You've seen the electric dust devils now, so this should not be any great mystery
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0503 18europamars.htm
Domed craters on Mars look precisely like things that have been generated in the lab with electricity
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0511 16domes.htm
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0503 25blueberries.htm
And next, the "collapsed lava tubes"
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0511 11ascraeus.htm
Rilles exist on the Moon, Earth, Mars and Venus (among other planets), and yet we ascribe different geological mechanisms for nearly all of these. Shouldn't we also consider that one single phenomenon is possibly causing many of them? We know, for instance, that the Grand Canyon was not carved out by the Colorado River because it would have had to plough straight through a gigantic plateau called the Kaibab Upwarp. Interestingly, scientists to this day cannot agree on what caused the Grand Canyon and the fact that entire geological records are missing for that canyon doesn't help either
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0504 08marineris.htm
Remember this? When the rover was mysteriously cleaned? What's so mysterious about electrostatic cleaning?
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0505 31roverclean.htm
But my favorite of all time is the mysterious Martian geysers popularized in the news media like here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/21/mars_geyse rs/
The fact that somebody can look at these images (pictured below) and conclude that they are geysers rather than the remnants of electrical strikes
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0607 24spiders.htm
Water on Mars? I'll believe it when astronauts are drinking it.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
a divine jokester, no?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Is there oil there?
Water on Mars...wow. That's just neat. I've been thinking that before human life occurred on Earth, Mars had human life, then something happened(meteor strike? I dunno), and all life on Mars was exterminated.
:P
Although that's just my uneducated guess. There's probably lots of evidence against my guess.
Actually, craters have been created in the lab that precisely match the morphology of craters on planets, comets and asteroids ...
2 craters.htm
... If you weren't looking for large-scale electrical transfers in the universe, you'd see an existence of a strong force (10^39 stronger than gravity, actually) and the absence of matter to impart it.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/04070
Plasma scientists have found that if these discharges last long enough, in fact, the walls of the craters will scallop as the Birkeland Currents twist around one another. This morphology is observed especially on comets and asteroids, but does not make so much sense in terms of physical impacts on the asteroids and comets. The thought that so many asteroids and comets would have so many craters -- large, *flat* craters -- tends to violate believability to an open-minded person that these are actually impacts.
The *only* reason that we don't blame electrical machining is because astrophysics tends to assume that bodies in space do not acquire and trade charge with surrounding space and other bodies. This is a pretty absurd assumption considering that interstellar space is filled with charged particles. But it is most likely why we end up with silly concepts like dark matter and dark energy
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
There is no scale mentioned in your link other than "in a laboratory". The picture may be (and probably is) a shot from a microscope. More to the point, there is no way that the craters are near the scale that we see on the Moon, Mars, or any of the other cratered rocks floating around the Solar System. Furthermore, this seems to be ignoring the work of the many talented geologists who have studied craters, in person, both on this planet and the Moon, and remotely on Mars.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Well I for one welcome our Martian Ice Claw Bear overloads...
Mars was once much warmer (probably had large liquid oceans), and has since cooled considerably, though during the Martian summer it can reach temps of 70 degrees (F) near the equator.
Is this Artesian water? Or perhaps, Martesian water..
Thanks, I'll be here all week!
Who is controlling NASA PR these days, and who decides to put these stories out? A few years ago there was the 'bacteria in meteorites' tale and they've been desperate to imply running water on Mars, with a pile of puff pieces over the last couple of years.
;-) and sometimes they don't even have the same conclusions that the PR pieces have...
Now I have the highest respect for the NASA scientists and I don't doubt their work, but both in the 'bacteria' case and in this one there are far more likely scenarios, which are supported by plenty of good scientists. They publish in the media anyway and in the long run it makes them look foolish, when the guys doing the work certainly are not. I've read a few of the published articles from the Mars research in scientific journals, well 'Science' anyway
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
I know god killed a puppy last night because I masturbated. Does doing that make the face on Mars cry, too?
Sorry everybody.
Sweet informative mod.
Actually, many talented geologists have generated data that support the notion that meteors exchange charge with planets prior to any subsequent impacts. Meteor Crater in Arizona is an excellent example and I direct you to a summary of the evidence at http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0601 31crater.htm. The discoveries include:
- George P Merrill concluded that quartz glass found in the crater could only be produced by intense heat, "similar to the heat generated by a lightning strike on sand".
- Merrill also pointed to the *undisturbed rock beds* below the crater. We are told that most craters are round because the kinetic energy of their impact creates a ginormous explosion which isn't affected by the angle at which bodies strike the Earth, but the rock beds at least in this case are undisturbed. So, which is it? The theory appears to contradict itself.
- Daniel Moreau Barringer, a mining engineer who first declared the crater to be from a meteor, noticed that the debris field was laid down roughly in layers that reversed the strata of the surrounding terrain. This is actually what happens when a rotating, crater-producing electric arc works its way down through the surface layers of soil.
- Furthermore, the presence of nearby rilles (or sinuous channels) and fulgarites both suggest electrical origins. Fulgurites are only known to result from lightning strikes.
- A more recent analysis from 2005 by Jay Melosh of the University of Arizona indicates the likelihood of substantial fragmentation of the body prior to striking the ground.
So, it's not that this concept is ignoring the work of talented geologists. It's that many geologists are ignoring this theory because although all of this evidence exists, very few people are suggesting that meteors tend to trade charge with the bodies they strike prior to collision. The reason that they do not suggest this is because we've all been taught that bodies in space do not acquire, possess or trade charge under any circumstances -- an assumption that has no basis whatsoever and that is causing a great number of problems for archaeology, geology and astronomy at the moment. It can similarly be shown that NASA is ignoring the electrical nature of Mars' features in the same way. This is not a small issue either because so long as all of these scientists continue to be allowed to insist that electricity plays no part in our solar system, then they will continue to insist that it plays no part in the larger universe too -- and so long as this is the case, we will continue to not fully understand our surroundings. And since we can only defend ourselves from those things which we understand, we continue on a potentially self-destructive path.
So, yes, it is *very* important that geologists get this right. It sounds silly, but the long-term survival of our planet to some extent depends on a small handful of astrophysicists and geologists at NASA swallowing their pride and admitting that perhaps there is a chance that they have been wrong. I don't know how many astrophysicists you've met, but the chances aren't so good of that. I have yet to meet one so far that is actually humble.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
Ignore for a second all of the arguments about electricity. Think for a second what it must feel like to be an astrophysicist working at NASA or frequently publishing in journals. Think about the prestige and the respect that comes along with that. Now imagine that these people are also in a sense stewards of our planet. We may one day owe our existences to these people. We would expect, or at least hope as our protectors, that they would be able to toss aside things like bias, arrogance or any other character flaws they may have -- like Captain Kirk or Spock would have. We would hope that they would have strong, pure character and our expectations of that come through in shows like Star Trek.
But if you actually talk to astrophysicists, you quickly realize that they don't match up character-wise to our idols. They are completely unable to accept the notion that they may be wrong. This comes through crystal-clear in conversations that I've had and observed with them. They are unable to accept that the widespread indoctrination of Big Bang Theory in our schools biases them against other theories. They are far too fast to find faults in alternative cosmologies and they lack enough curiosity of anomalies to even maintain the appearance of objectivity. Most see no reason to waste their time even debating EU Theory. It has all the components of a Greek tragedy and it is real.
This is a major problem. Even if I am wrong about the electrical shit, this must stop because everybody agrees that we will one day need to call upon these people for help. And in the middle of a crisis is the last point in time when we should be working on character flaws or theories of the universe. The stewards of our planet should be both intelligent *and* humble if we are to survive in the long-term as a human race. And you don't have to be an astrophysicist to understand *that*.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
yeah - with our weapons of mars destruction
In some fantasy world where 'micro' probes can what you think they can do, yeah. Here in the real world - the probes aren't going to be 'micro' and with minimal impact on the orbiter. The will (most likely) weigh in excess of 100kg, which is over half the total science payload of your average Mars bound probe. That's a budget buster. Even in the unlikely event you can get down to 50kg - it's still heavy, it's still a massive (and expensive) impact on the orbiter carrying it.
I'll repeat this a third time since you cannot seem to grasp it: "Orbiting around Mars in reserve for an indefinite period of time" and "cheap and expendable" are mutually exclusive. Period.
Heineken was first
A charged body in space is going to repel like charges, and attract opposite charges. Say a meteor has a negative charge. As it travels through space, it will be pushing electrons out of the way, and it will be attracting positrons and protons. Thus, the longer it is in space, the more neutral it will become. Furthermore, the electrical charge required to blow a 200 metre wide crater in the surface of a planet is going to completely ionize the meteor. It would vanish in a puff of plasma. Assuming it didn't snuff itself out of existence, the descent through the Earth's atmosphere would drain off any major charge imbalance long before the rock hit the surface. In short, the electrical effects in crater formation on Earth are minimal.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I don't understand this particular stand which most of the professional/amateur scientists seem to have about the conditions necessary for 'Life' to exist anywhere. Surely we can say that life, as we know it on earth (or the type we have seen so far on earth), needs water to exist but why the generalization ? Why is it necessary that all types of life everywhere in the universe has to be carbon based ? Why should even the lowest level consciousness need water to exist ? We frequently talk about the future when AI will be indistinguishable from human intelligence and still put water as one of the indispensable ingredients when we go looking for life in other planets.
Its a huge flight of fantasy but why can't there theoretically be Sulphur/Silicon based life in say Mars or Venus (or even Mercury) The life we know as it exists on Earth will not be able to survive in those condition but then that is probably the reason we are not living there. If there is actually life in those places then I am sure it is well suited to survive in those "extreme" conditions.
Yeah I know the primary purpose of searching for signs of water is to decide if we can someday colonize that particular planet or its satellites but when someone proclaims something like "No evidence of water therefore no life possible on that Planet", I really wonder about the possible pockets of Life we may be ignoring.
Politicians and Pedophiles: Two groups of exploitive bastards who are most dangerous when they're thinking of children.
You are purposefully taking an overly pessimistic stance. Sheesh, we'd have never landed on the moon if it was left up to thinking like this.
Are you really trying to tell us that it would be impossible to build a probe for under 50kg that could take a few pictures, sample a very limited and simple amount of inputs, and do so cheaply?
I guarantee you it can be done in under 1kg. Quite possibly a lot less than 1 kg. Don't know where you're getting your numbers from...the Rover is 175kg, most of that required for batteries, motors, wheels, suspension...things a vehicle needs to Move and Stay Alive for a long time.
This thing wouldn't need to move, or last more than a few hours at most when turned on.
By the way, indefinite != forever, as you appear to believe.
No Comment.
Yes, the layer below the troposphere, the lithosphere, can sustain pressures adequate for liquifying carbon dioxide at those temperatures.
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/163756main_PIA0 9027_a_full.jpg
This pair tries to prove changes that occur on a given spot in 5 years. Right figure is lighter in general and there are additional clevices that are lighted up in the right figure. Seems to be that it is a combined effect of different position of the sun and different exposure (contrast, brightness).
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Start a high-intensity survey of likely areas NEAR Spirit and Opportunity - when another is discovered, immediately begin driving one of the rovers there. Let's see this stuff up close, take some samples, use the RAT, etc. If there's water, if there's a chance of microbial life, I think either Spirit or Opportunity could find the evidence. These rovers gots wheels, let's use them.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Furthermore, the electrical charge required to blow a 200 metre wide crater in the surface of a planet is going to completely ionize the meteor.
That is not necessarily what we observe when we see comets break apart. They fragment and pieces oftentimes make it to the ground.
Assuming it didn't snuff itself out of existence, the descent through the Earth's atmosphere would drain off any major charge imbalance long before the rock hit the surface.
That would actually depend in part on how much charge is present to begin with. We're really just speculating here though. We can do better than that.
You may have heard about the the Great Chicago Fire. That fire actually ignited simultaneously all over North America and it appears to have coincided with Earth passing through the debris trail of Comet Biela, which observations suggest broke apart just prior. It's a completely fascinating story that you can access at:
P1: http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0602 06chicagofire.htm
P2: http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0602 07biela.htm
P3: http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0602 09chicagofire.htm
This is a completely unique situation because if it is true that this was cometary debris, then this would be the only time that modern man has ever actually up-close witnessed an "impact" (comets are really no different from asteroids, except that their electrical charge would be more intense if their plasma tail is illuminated in space). What is most striking about the firsthand accounts is the *electrical* nature of these impacts. Not only did the debris rain down in the form of "ball lightning", which you may be aware of, but many houses became electrified to the extent that discharges between metallic objects within the houses appeared to cause house fires. One man was electrocuted by the change he had in both pockets!
So, you have theory in terms of plasma physics, electrodynamics and Electric Universe Theory. You have geological evidence in the ground here on Earth and in a more limited sense on other planets like Mars. You have numerous potential firsthand accounts from a single incident. You can argue the case for *more* evidence, but we're running out of potential evidentiary sour
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
If you wagered that, I'd take you on.
Keep in mind that Mars is significantly smaller than earth - around 6.4x10^23 kilograms, (easy to remember since it's very close to 1 mol) and as a result the effects of gravity are significantly lessened.
the "still heavy" 50 kg item you're describing could be lifted with a single finger on Mars.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
No, I'm being realistic.
Yes - I am. Because to start with, space rated components are not cheap. The launch alone is very expensive.
1kg? You haven't the foggiest clue what you are talking about. The battery alone required to power the probe from seperation, through re-entry, and descent will weight at least that much (and probably considerably more) all by itself.
The rover on the surface weighs that much - the rover in cruise phase weighed considerably more.
There is a lot more to a probe hanging on an orbiter than you seem to think. You fail to consider the weight of the heatshield and backshell, the retrorocket package (they can't simply be 'fired' like the OP thought), the parachutes, etc... etc... Huygens had a similiar mission as these microprobes - and weighed nearly 300kg.
'Indefinite' means, in this context and according to the OP's specification, anywhere from months to years in orbit around Mars - not to mention a cruise phase of up to a year.
All I can do is respond by stating, again, that if it was left up to people like you we'd never accomplish anything at all.
No Comment.
Here's a free clue for you: What something weighs on Mars is utterly meaningless. What matters is how much it weighs on Earth because the payload capacities of a probe are based on the launcher and what it can loft on Earth.
Forgot to mention - Earth is about 10 times the mass of Mars. That should make those numbers a bit easier to swallow.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
The asteroid/meteor doesn't need to be ionized itself. It's going to ionize quite a bit of the atmosphere on the way in, and if it comes in during bad weather when conditions are right for lightning, there'll be a very nice ionized discharge path all the way from the ground to the upper atmosphere.
In other words - your mind is made up, and you cannot be bothered with facts. It's so much easier to make ad hominem attacks than to even take the trivial effort to look up the weights of Huygens or Beagle 2.
Contrary to your (unfounded) belief, I think probes like this are a good idea. But the difference between the OP, you, and me... Is that I have actually studied the issues and thought about them. But you and the OP merely toss out handwaving nonsense without making the most trivial of efforts to attempt to understand what is involved.
The idea is not something even remotely like Huygens or Beagle 2, but you don't seem to be able to get past that.
It's fine if you want to declare this impossible and have nothing to do with it. But must you shit on someone else's parade in the process?
No Comment.
I understand *completely* what the probe is intended to do. I also, unlike you and the OP, understand the engineering realities involved.
I didn't declare it impossible, I declared it impossible within the weight/cost constraints you and OP have placed on the probe. (Which is a very different thing.) Such a probe is quite possible and fairly easily doable, but it won't be as cheap or light as you and the OP seem to think.
I haven't 'shit on' anyones parade, I have discussed cold hard engineering reality. That you cannot discern the differnce is not my problem.
You have just proven exactly why the XPrize exists, and all the other grass roots space related initiatives going on. Engineers have a notoriously hard time thinking outside of their box sometimes.
You're the one that applied the arbitrary lower limit to the possible weight of this thing...I'll even go with your lower one, which was 1/3rd of the weight of Mars Rover. Mars Rover being 150kg. So you state this is impossible at anything less than 50kg...but this probe needs almost NONE of what adds up to the weight of the rover. Think Simple. Never mind backup this, redundant that, gotta make sure it'll run as long as possible...It requires an extremely small lifespan upon activation. Keep thinking simple, and small. Small enough that multiples make the system redundant in and of itself.
Damned, look at what they fit in a Cell Phone these days...wireless, camera, a million other things not required by this....50kg...come on now.
I'm sorry, but you most certainly are shitting on this idea out of hand. I'm starting to suspect that you're just a troll with absolutely zero knowledge on the subject...At least, I hope so.
No Comment.
Yeah, I agree. But I don't think you can conclude that this might account for all of the electrical evidence we're seeing because at least some of the craters we're seeing involve plasma flows at right angles from the ground to the object (or its plasma trail). And contrary to atmospheric scientists, astrophysicists, NASA *and* meteorologists, this can happen in the upper atmosphere too if the conditions are right. According to EU Theory, electrical storm activity is not a *function* of weather. It drives weather and is itself a function of Earth's electrical interaction with outer space. Intense storm clouds are nothing more than a conductive pathway for a leaky capacitor. This is why we cannot always accurately predict the weather -- because there is a galactic input to the weather system. This would also explain why planets far away from the Sun can still have very active weather systems.
2 4y) and the actual image is available here: http://www.weatherwars.info/index.php?news_id=30&s tart=0&category_id=&parent_id=0&arcyear=&arcmonth=
The existence of upper atmosphere lightning is a very important point because few people realize that when the Space Shuttle Columbia was brought down, an amateur photographer was lucky enough to snap a picture of the shuttle's plasma trail at the very moment that the malfunction occurred. In this picture, you can clearly make out a bolt of lightning that connects up with the trail and then follows the trail in the direction of the Shuttle. This subject is covered at the holoscience site ( http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=cc6y4
Pilots see upper atmosphere lightning all the time, but if the weather system is some sort of self-contained system that ignores all electrical input from outer space, then this stuff should not really exist. It rocks the foundations of the notion that bodies in space are neutrally charged.
NASA disputed the image on the basis that upper-atmosphere should not exist, but also because they did not pick up any sonic recordings of lightning from their ground sensors. Well, this is kind of silly because if they refuse to believe that it even exists, then how would they even know what sonic footprint to look for on the tapes? It might not even be in the audio range for those recorders. Certainly, the air is a different density up there.
When I think of astronauts landing on Mars to locate the "water", I have a similar image in my mind of them traveling all that way only to be zapped by electricity instead. It may very well turn out that Mars is far too electrical to safely sustain a base. At least, if we're going to send anybody there, I highly recommend that they all be both electrical engineers and doctors.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
Sometimes outside the box is a rich and verdant pasture - sometimes an empty and blasted wasteland. Merely going outside the box is no sure guarantee of sucess.
And need I point the lack of sucess from the alt.space community? Not to mention the rocky ground of economic viability they work very hard to divert attention away from? (Don't get me wrong - I'm a strong supporter of alt.space, but supporting does not include deluding myself to reality. There are many hurdles yet ahead.)
I've said this once before, but you failed to understand it. So I'll repeat myself;
You cannot compare the weight of the rover on the ground with the weight of the probe on the orbiter. This is apples and oranges as the weight of the rover on the ground does not include the weight of the descent systems.
That's why I keep pointing at Beagle 2 and Huygens - because they, not the rovers are the closest thing to this notional probe. Look at the Deep Space 2 probes that were carried with the Mars Polar Lander - they weighed in at 2.4kg, and were *far* less ambitious than the probe under discussion. (And you need to work on your reading comprehension - as I did not state it was impossible, I stated it was unlikely.)
Now look at all the things a probe requires that a cell phone does not. A heatshield, a parachute, retrorockets, a (high precision) guidance and control system, thermal insulation, some form of some from of RCS and descent aerodynamic control, structure to withstand the shock and vibration of launch, a higher power higher and bandwith communications system, a *much* bigger battery, a *much* higher resolution camera... Not to mention a lifespan in an extreme enviroment of from two years to as many as eight years.
I *am* doing just that. But there are hard limits on how small and how light you can make it and still have it perform a useful mission with the parameters specified by the OP. (And it's still going to be expensive to attain a reasonable survival and performance ratio.)
I'm not 'shitting on this idea out of hand', I'm reporting cold hard engineering reality. You cannot seem to discern between the assumption that the probe is possible within your parameters - and actual examination of the probe from an engineering point of view.
For example - the requirement for accurate targeting *alone* (pinpoint according to the OP) increases the weight of the probe by at least 4-20kg (in the form of a reaction control system for the ballistic phase). The need to slow it down enough, or the need to survive landing (the latter is much more doable), long enough to transmit those high resolution pictures *also* adds another 10-20kg. Thus, our (estimated and optimistic) minimum weight is already at 14kg and we haven't even put the instruments on yet
... because it does not make their jobs any easier, since EU theory neither simplifies the standard theories without losing accuracy, nor does it extend current understanding by making accurate predictions that the standard theories do not.
This is completely false. EU Theory eliminates the need for dark matter and dark energy, explains numerous mysteries associated with a nuclear-only model for the Sun, explains why stars do not always follow their stellar evolutions, explains how spiral galaxies can rotate at the speeds that they do without invoking any strange matter or forces, explains how gravity is related to electricity, explains why we cannot predict the weather very well, explains how it is possible that stars can be forming in nebulae even though many nebulae's spectra have been observed to mimic that of electrical phenomenon here on Earth, proposes a far superior explanation for why large-scale structures in the universe are filamentary, proposes an explanation for why so many neutron stars are actually binary star pairs, proposes a far simpler explanation for how neutron stars can flicker so fast and why this flickering has been observed to glitch, explains why Meteor Crater in Arizona is like other craters round and yet has undisturbed rock layers beneath it, explains why we are observing upper-atmosphere lightning that reaches up to 40 miles above the surface of the planet, explains why asteroids and comets look so similar to one another, explains why the Stardust mission captured cometary materials that can *only* have been formed under high temperatures, explains (and predicted) all of the Deep Impact results (which remain unexplained by NASA to this day), offers an explanation for why we observe non-gravitational acceleration for comets and an absence of "jets" to push the comets around, offers a good explanation for why the Sun goes through 11-year cycles, explains why quasars have been observed to be ejected from the centers of spiral galaxies and offers some math to explain how quasar redshifts vary as they move away from those spiral galaxies, and as a bonus, explains why the dinosaurs went extinct and how it's possible that birds could have existed in the past with 40-60 foot wingspans, explains why dust devils on Mars are electrified, explains how those dust devils can exist in the first place given that Mars' atmosphere is only 1% of the Earth's, explains how it is possible for Mars' global dust storms to raise dust particles 40 miles off of the surface of that planet without the benefit of wind (which cannot exist with only 1% of our atmosphere), proposes a pretty good explanation for the Great Chicago Fire, explains why some comets have been observed to flare up in the presence of the gas giant planets, and finally, it explains why the dust storms on Mars started when they did and why they ever actually stop.
That's a pretty impressive list. And I'm sure I missed some items too.
Until then, nobody is stopping EU people from working out their theories in hopes of demonstrating greater accuracy or easier application (without loss of accuracy) than the standard ones.
The problem is that they've had a lot of time to theorize now. They have lots of theories. There are at least ten recent books on the subject. Although there are obviously alternative more popular theories for all of this stuff, nobody's really poked *any* holes in the stuff they've been saying so far. To the contrary, observations of huge magnetic fields in space have only confirmed that huge currents are flowing out there. Comets appear to in fact be no different than asteroids, and the results of the Deep Impact mission were precisely predicted by Wallace Thornhill. You eventually reach a wall though with theory, especially when your theory proposes that things are interconnected. If you can't observe the interconnections in detail, then you can never really draw up the detailed math that would complete the theory.
If you really talked to astrophysicists and cosmologists,
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
http://tim-thompson.com/electric-sun.html
...
This is an actual scientist response to the electric sun junk arguments.
Here's what a *actual* protoscience looks like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory
Here's what psuedoscience looks like: "The current scientific establishment has been brainwashed into believing the standard model because of (*) and our model is much better but being unfairly discrimintated against by (whatever)"
* conspriracy, conformity, stupidity, etc.
The main practitioners of electric universe are themselves unversed in actual science, and the main proponents are completely scientifically illiterate laymen.
---
How does the scientific community treat ideas that are true but challenge basic assumptions? See Einstein. He was an outsider whose idea actually worked. So he was accepted when his predictions turned out to be right. He got friction, but in the face of evidence, everyone came around.
How to current unaccepted ideas that may or may not be valid look? String theory. When people call it unscientific, their response is not calling the rest of the science community a conspiracy and stupid, or getting laymen support to troll message boards, but working more on thier theory. It might be crap. It might not be. In either case it's a scientific idea, and if usefull it'll become part of the standard model, if not it'll be thrown away.
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
By the way, Tim Thompson is notorious for passing off the existence of Big Bang theories as sufficient reason for not looking at alternative cosmologies. The point that EU theorists make is that oftentimes, the later theories do not follow from the earlier theories, but are only derived because of observations that violated the prior theories. If this happens repeatedly, and you begin to accept this as normal, then you become accustomed to developing theory that has little predictive capabilities. It's a valid point that has nothing to do with the topic of pseudosciences.
Thompson will, for instance, vehemently assert that the existence of a magnetic reconnection theory is sufficient to explain the Sun's corona when in fact magnetic reconnections do not match observations and are not supported by plasma physics. Magnetic reconnections are in fact redundant of the plasma physics concepts of double layers and electric discharge. Plasma physics is being cherry-picked when it is useful in order to explain the corona's temperature, which wasn't predicted by a nuclear fusion model for the Sun. This works in science because all of the math can be put into place and made to be pretty, but it's not really very good methodology.
EU Theorists are merely proposing that there should be an alternative line of questioning that investigates the possibility of unifying principles of the universe as opposed to breaking the universe down into little supposedly isolated parts and trying to explain them independently. A theory of everything would of course involve unifying principles, so this isn't pseudoscience. It's logical.
I think the world certainly needs people like Tim Thompson and I respect his authority in his field. I do believe that he should take a humble pill though because there are many things we still do not understand about the universe. I also strongly believe that there is not enough debate happening in cosmology today. The Big Bang Theory has a monopoly on instrumentation time and much of the journal publication space. Physics would be healthier if NASA press releases were more regularly challenged instead of just accepted as word of God. These people are in fact fallible and we should set up a system that is meant to challenge them so that we can be more sure of their results. The risk is that we could end up going down a wrong path and start building additional assumptions upon older false assumptions. The fact that we now have a universe that supposedly consists of only 4 or 5% normal matter should alarm people. How are we really explaining the universe if we're really only talking about 4 or 5% of it most of the time?
And as for string theory, it's just math. Pretty math, I hear, but just math nonetheless. Many times, these theories gain in popularity because nobody can disprove them. And few people can disprove them because few people can understand them.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
New theories which model already known phenomena -- even if they do so precisely -- are of no value if they cannot predict in advance not yet known phenomena that are amenable to study in such a way that multiple observers can readily distinguish between the predictions made by the new theory and those made by the old theory.
This appears to have been accomplished with the Deep Impact mission. Nobody on Slashdot appears to be willing to read about it though. I'll post the link again, but it seems kind of useless unless people actually read it:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pdf
Your complaint that the standard theories are fine-tuned is exactly backwards. The proposed fine-tunings are new theories which make very different predictions about what observational cosmologists will see with particular instruments that are already under construction. It just so happens that the initial starting conditions of the inflationary epoch are extremely critical because so much of standard physics falls out of those conditions; moreover, these conditions drove the development of all the large scale structure of the visible universe, and there is so much of that there is ample evidence for and against extremely subtle differences among the various inflationary theories.
The problem is that many of these changes cannot be said to be "fine-tuning". The fact that we now have a universe that is only 4 or 5% normal matter is not fine-tuning. That's a system overhaul.
That is to say, the competing theories that seek to extend the standard model make very specific predictions which are readily amenable to testing by existing and being-built observational platforms. Other theories are simply uninteresting because they do not make useful predictions at this time, as those predictions are not going to be widely testable for some time.
I've thought about this. Meteor impact sites are supposedly all round because the kinetic energy of the physical impact generates an explosion that is similar for all trajectories. The EU Theory proposes that these craters are nearly all round because the charge transfer as something approaches the Earth would typically occur before impact and always occur at right angles. The difference between the two is that the rock layers would be left undisturbed in the latter case. This has been observed with Meteor Crater in Arizona. A comprehensive study of all craters would tell us if it is common, but that would require a geologist who is not hostile to EU Theory (which is perhaps rare).
We could also shoot projectiles of various typical compositions at Mars and watch what happens with x-rays. EU Theory would predict that the objects would experience charge transfer as they approach the planet and many of them would be broken up. Thing is, we already did this for Comet Tempel 1 and the results supported the *EU Model*.
Fine-tuning is not retrofitting new observations into an old model. That is the hallmark of pseudoscience. Fine-tuning is an exercise of forming hypotheses in advance of observations that make discrete predictions that different tunings do not. Those that do not match the observations are discarded.
Let's get to the meat of it then. I'm curious: if it is shown that the CMBR fails more shadow tests, will you agree that the Big Bang never happened? Or will you continue to fine-tune?
The problem with EU is that it does not make readily testable predictions in advance which are readily and widely measurable by third parties. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of EU is that a great deal of work has been done in ex post facto fitting of EU theory to extant observational data. That is part of what makes EU pseudoscience.
This isn't really the case and I can only assume that you believe so because you haven't fully investigated it. There are some falsifiable claims about the poles of Venus and Satur
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.