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Large Caves Found on the Surface of Mars
David DelMonte writes "Space.com is reporting on the discovery of seven dark spots near the Equator on Mars. The thinking is that these are cave openings. The openings are the size of football fields, and one of them is thought to extend approximately 400 feet below the surface.'The researchers hope the discovery will lead to more focused spelunking on Mars. "Caves on Mars could become habitats for future explorers or could be the only structures that preserve evidence of past or present microbial life ," said Glenn Cushing of Northern Arizona University, who first spotted the black areas in the photographs.'"
The fact planets orbit other stars, the fact there's water elsewhere in the solar system, the fact there are caves on other planets...Why do we as humans believe we are unique in a universe as big as what we live in? This should be common sense by now.
Why does the article keep switching back and forth between "we think they might be caves" and "we're certain they really are caves"? Let me know when they've made up their minds about whether or not they've made up their minds, and I'll start caring about these (possible) caves.
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We know Venus has mountains and valleys. We know Mars has mountains and valleys.
Should be at all surprised to find caves on Mars?
I thought we already believed that all solid planets had plate activity like Earth, that formed the mountains and valleys. Aren't caves a natural extension of that thought process?
I thought this was a given.
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spelunking
spe-lunk-ing
noun
the hobby or practice of exploring caves
+1 for obscurity
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The same kind of thing as the "face". I think they're jumping way ahead by calling these cave entrances.
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Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
It sounds like the next rover needs to be powered with an RTG and have a spool of fiber to link with a base antenna.
... they're where the Martians store all their canal-boats till next thaw.
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> Caves on Mars could become habitats for future explorers...
Does anyone else find it slightly amusing that as humans move out into space we may yet again end up living in caves?
What if the entire Universe were a chrooted environment with everything symlinked from the host?
...it's not a cave, at all...
Mars has no global magnetic field to deflect solar radiation which means that when humans go there they will be exposed to alot of deadly radiation- if we want to stay on mars we need a place that is safe- caves are one such place. they shield agaisnt radiation and make it easier to build habitats. this discovery could allow humans to colonize mars.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
They would also offer a modest amount of protection to future human explorers. The thin atmosphere of Mars offers no protection against solar radiation, so lots of solid rock would be our best bet (though it will be pretty cold in there).
...said Glenn Cushing of Northern Arizona University, who first spotted the black areas in the photographs. "Uh oh, looks like someone smudged the photo."*rubs finger on photo*
"Hmm. Guess they're caves, then."
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http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/1 7/1345208&from=rss
inhabited by anthropomorphic billionaire bats?
Am I the only one who thought about this? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/
People have known about, and even explored, these caverns of Mars for over two decades.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Part of the symbolism of the space baby at the end of the movie is that people are masters of the Earth, but we're infants in space. We're vulnerable, and have to learn and practice even simple things like moving from one end of the spacecraft to the other in a spacesuit. We wear diapers up there.
If we're going to be on Mars, it is therefore fitting that we should be cavemen. That's where we started, and that's where we will start again.
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Holes? In the ground?
crap.
March 7, 2007 Nat. Geo. Mars Has Cave Networks, New Photos Suggest
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
"or could be the only structures that preserve evidence of past or present microbial life
And the best way to find out if they are there and like to eat people is to have some move in.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
We've found the Arachnids!
I for one welcome news of our new Martian overlords.
Been there, Done that, Sold the t-shirt to the next idiot in line
I for one welcome our new Subarean Overlords....
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Umm, the last time I checked a cave was underground. How is it that there are caves on the surface? Wow, Mars has some very interesting physical properties.
I'm pretty sure that most of the caves on our planet were formed by underground rivers, and rivers that had dried up long time ago after the iceage / flooding / dinosaurs or whatnot....
So does this mean that there is water on mars for sure?
Maybe all of the water activity is just below the surface, because all the rest evaporated off, and the rivers continue to flow, forming new caves!
Princess Leia: The cave is collapsing!
Han Solo: This is no cave...
Princess Leia: What?!
Mind you, things could be a lot worse. It's not like NASA has told us that contrary to all expectations, the thing orbiting the Earth is not a moon, it's a space station...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
and Commander Draper anxiously await their rescue.
Look here!
--Residential Interior Design
...that we haven't yet planned on sending any kind of excavation equipment to do archaeological digs on Mars. I suspect that if we do, we'll be very surprised to find evidence of previous intelligent life and whole civilizations that existed quadrillions of years ago. At the least we could do an entire deep sonar survey of the planet to find potential digging sites. I should run NASA. I always come up with the good ideas.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
gigantic red murderous Martian cave bears....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Actually Mars and Venus don't have any major plate activity and haven't for Millions of years(see wikipedia). It's also why they have weak magnetic fields as the internal dynamo is what sustains a magnetic field. Internal dynamo drives plate tectonics which are sustained by the cooling action of surface and core exchanges.
Mars is dead geologically, meaning that it has no volcanic activity and we think that the core has (probably) hardened.
Incidentally, Venus is a much better candidate for colonization, but currently it's a little too hot due to the runaway greenhouse effect (it's surface is 450C). Probes sent there melt and get crushed do to surface pressure soon after they land. It's also a good example for those people who say there is no global warming. Look no further than our bastard twin planet.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
Couldn't they be drains or chimneys or even potholes? Or the Navals of Mars? Wouldn't that make a good Science Fiction novel?
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
Sorry, forgot to enclose that in tags.
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FYI, here's the original science presentation that the news reports are based on. It's an abstract from the recent Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. This means that the work hasn't yet been peer reviewed but it's still interesting. http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2007/pdf/1371 .pdf
Come on...They are not caves but are, in effect, drains. Where do you think all the Martian water went? The canals lead to the drains of course.
...just very deep, unremarkable holes.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Batman was his copilot.
There are solutional caves - caves formed by water - and there are lava-tube caves - caves (lava tubes, actually) formed by molten rock. When molten lava cools around other hotter lava, the hotter lava travels around the cooler, more solid, lava and sometimes drains out enough to create a pocket of, well, emptiness. Often times, lava tubes are not discovered until the ground gives way and opens into a pit to access the tube. Hawaii has lots of Lava tubes as do many areas near volcanoes.
On Earth, the ground breaks up due to water-action and other biological means (animals, bacteria, humans, etc...). I'm sure on Mars there's another method to break open a lava tube...sandblasting due to a large storm on Mars' surface and the occasional meteorite.
It's no surprise that Mars has caves - it makes sense. Whether or not those caves are solutional is what is important here.
Humans have been scrutinizing Mars to the best of their ability given available technology for centuries. We have sent probes to map the surface multiple times and robots to probe in various ways. And all this time we missed seven caves whose openings were larger than football fields (and in some cases larger than two football fields) which just happen to be near one of the most prominent features we know about. Whether these features are caves or not, the facts of their size and location should be a wakeup call to us as far as the limitations of our efforts thus far. Who knows what else we are missing; one must also wonder at the difficulty of finding microbes on a planet where we were unable to detect features of this size.
I hope one day we can place colonies on Mars, as inhospitable as it is. Once we have done that we will be in a better position to explore the planet as we have ours. Every time we think we have found everything worth finding on Mars and further exploration will not yield any results that change our impression that it is a dull, lifeless planet whose only saving grace is that it is nearby we find something that surprises us. We can only hope this trend continues.
Scary...I remember that game, pretty fondly actually. I had it for my Atari 400 as a kid. I remember putting quite a lot of time into it, though I don't think you could ever "win". It just kept getting harder.
Your point b flies in the presence of thousands of credible sightings of UFOs over the years, all over the planet. Sure, a lot can be explained away, but there are *numerous* sightings that defy any explanation other than outsiders and intelligently steered craft. Have you even watched the disclosure project video, or kept up with the news of many foreign governments now have opened their files, including sightings by verified trained pilots? Heck, I know of an entire neighborhood that had a landing sighting back in the 60s, including a few cars of the local cops who came in to see it. It landed and hung out for ten minutes or so, then took off again, in a clearing off a city park. I talked to several folks in the neighborhood who all saw it.
Now, given our success with stealth technology, doesn't it stand to reason why we don't have more sightings, given some civilization even one thousand years more advanced than we are? When they are seen, they either don't care about being seen, or perhaps are having equipment malfunctions. It could be they are holding off mass "hello, we are here!" until humanity evolves past our medieval stage (we are still in it, just with better tech, socially we are little different from the middle ages still). Perhaps there is some sort of prime directive, it is certainly logical enough. We are getting there (slow but sure) with what remains of our wilderness areas.
Now, go outside at night, look up, ponder...the odds are NOT in favor of us being alone in the universe. Just WAY too many galaxies and other star systems out there. And life is surprisingly robust, every year they find evidence of life in eXtreme conditions, lava vents underwater and so forth.
So easy even a caveman can do it.
(I have just made a formidable enemy.)
NASA is a space agency, so it could be a hole in space. ;)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You got modded down, but I remembered reading that article on Slashdot a few weeks ago. Sure enough, there it was! We really need a dupe-checker around here - or maybe the system could take away karma for submitting dupes (i.e. not checking if the story was posted earlier.)
Wow, interesting news indeed! This, combined with the theories we may have fluid water not too far below the surface, is very interesting.
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Now we know Sadam hid those WMDs somewhere...
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
It's too big to be a space station.
Now this guy Art Bell, on the other hand...
To reign is to serve.
There are NOT caves on the SURFACE - the whole point of caves is they are inside something you know ;)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The football-field sized holes were observed by Mars Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) and have been dubbed the seven sisters --Dena, Chloe, Wendy, Annie, Abbey, Nikki and Jeanne--after loved ones of the researchers who found them.
Naming a bunch of massive holes after their girlfriends...that should probably read 'ex-loved ones'.
Great we are one step closer to finding the blue string soup.
So THAT'S where Osama has been hiding!!
worm sign !
Nothing new here, move along. Obviously the NASA has only stumbled across a couple of nive round moholes dug by the first hundred.
Say out loud: I'm an Aspie and I'm somewhat proud, I guess. Uh. Can I write an email in all caps instead? Hm...
Damn, I made that joke the first time this story was reported on Slashdot. Yep, it's another dupe...
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