Caves on Mars?

RockDoctor writes "The BBC is reporting that the photo-surveying of Mars has revealed seven suspected cave entrances in the Arsia Mons volcanic area. This has been hinted at before — long sinuous channels in the same region have been interpreted as collapsed 'lava tube' caves — but the scale of the suggested entrances (sheer drops of 80 to 130m from the surrounding surface) makes my troglodytic hands twitch for my abseiling gear."

Comments

Bin Laden?

[Gothmolly]

Maybe THATS where he's been hiding!

Ob. Futurama

[Anonymous Coward]

Zapp: Behold...the Great Stone Face of Mars. The only known entrance to the Martian reservation.
Leela: What about the Great Stone Ass of Mars?
Zapp: Well, yeah, but it's way over the other side of the planet.

news?

[wileyAU]

Is this really news? To be completely honest, it had never occurred to me that there wouldn't be caves on Mars.

Re:news?

[onion2k]

It depends on the caves really. Fracture caves or lava tubes would certainly be expected because they're formed by volcanic and tectonic movements. If Mars didn't have that then something very odd would be going on. Solutional cave formations are less of a certainty though. These are the sorts of caves formed by water absorbing CO2 during rainfall, turning to carbonic acid, and dissolving certain sorts of rock. For them to exist you need both water and CO2 obviously, and specific mineral deposits to desolve. Their existence could tell us more about the chemical makeup of the martian surface.

Plus, caves would be a likely place for microbes to continue to thrive. Caves on Earth of full of life.

Re:news?

[rmadmin]

To some of us, it is news. To be completely honest, it had never occurred to me that there would be caves on Mars.

Re:news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's no big deal... I've been there and there not all that great... I only saw a couple of paintings and they that aren't all that good...

Re:news?

[phrostie]

although water formed caves would be exciting from a geological standpoint, i like the lava tubes theory.
a lava tube would have the possibility of being sealed and an atificial atmosphere created for habitation.
It's be safer than an inflatable structure on the surface.

Re:news?

[Diamonddavej]

Caves can form in rocks other then limestone, such as gypsum - CaSO4.6H2O. In this case water simply dissolves the gypsum, which is slightly soluble in water irrespective of CO2 content. Gypsum is common evaporite mineral on Mars and can form pure deposits e.g. Pollack Crater has gypsum on its floor, it looks like Karst to me.

Re:news?

[ozbird]

a lava tube would have the possibility of being sealed and an atificial atmosphere created for habitation.

Given that lava tubes appear to be prime habitat for any potential life on Mars, pumping one full of toxic oxygen raises a few ethical issues.

News for Nerds. Prussiks matter.

[lightversusdark]

Who here knew rock-climbers were nerds?

Here's What They'll Find Inside...

[cybrpnk2]

OF COURSE there's caves on the Red Planet. Doesn't anybody read Chapter 8 of The Warlord of Mars anymore?.

The actual article's URL

[simonbp]

Here's the actual article's URL; the also had some supporting papers at LPSC that show up at ADS...

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bi bcode=2007LPI....38.1371C&db_key=AST&data_type=HTM L&format=&high=44e3b245f913347

Simon ;)

Re:The actual article's URL

[ColdWetDog]

Thank you. I wondered why an article on "caves" would not have anything resembling a graphic, especially since they were discovered by photographic mapping. But looking at the article explains it. They look like nondescript bubbles and the theory that they represent a cave like structure comes from the thermal spectrum of the objects. Not much to see here...

And why are these "caves" all named after women? No, let's not go there....

Spacemen become Cavemen

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA:
The authors say that the possible discovery of caves on the Red Planet is significant.

The caves may be the only natural structures capable of protecting primitive life forms from micrometeoroids, UV radiation, solar flares and high energy particles that bombard the planet's surface.

Like maybe Earthlings?

Caverns of Mars, 1981

[Dogtanian]

To some of us, it is news. To be completely honest, it had never occurred to me that there would be caves on Mars. Greg Christensen was more insightful than you then. :-)

Re:Question for the Space Anthropologists

[Walt Dismal]

Ask Aunt Anthro

Dear Aunt Anthro, are there cave-martians?

Sincerely, Timmy in Ohio (age 8)

Dear Timmy;

I want to encourage your interest in science! Yes, there are cave-martians. They have huge fangs and many clawed tentacles. They drool stinky green ichor and crawl like nothing you've ever seen before. They are known for hiding in dark closets and under beds. Also, they have flying saucers and know where Ohio is.

Alien base

[ms1234]

Well, the sectoids have to live somewhere don't they?

Re:Creationism

[SharpFang]

Oh well, I'd say it's quite obvious. If they took a rock of martian soil and put it under a microscope they'd read: //reserved for future use

Re:I keep my...

[cypherz]

Might have been funny if you had spelled "they're" correctly.

their != they're

Re:I keep my...

[Anonymous Coward]

"If their so smart they can find they are own way out."

Yeah, your way makes SO much more sense. Good job flaming someone when you can't do it right yourself.

Re:Be very carfull...

[Tablizer]

Caves can be dangerous [link].

I almost clicked, and then realized this topic may be a perfect setup phrase for a goatse trick. I don't volunteer to check it.

Here is the original article

[mbone]

An extended abstract from the Lunar Planetary Science Conference :

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2007/pdf/1371 .pdf