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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.'"
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.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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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The point of the story is more about the fact this discovery might lead to much easier access to sub-martian exploration. Caves are a natural occurance everywhere, that's not debated. The fact we found some on Mars that have the potential to open up new discoveries for us mere "humans" is why this story is relevant.
> 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?
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.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Don't confuse a propaganda campaign by NASA with what scientists actually think. Nobody working in the field is the least surprised by caves on Mars. But NASA need to make press releases and hype them up a bit. And anyway, caves on Mars are cool.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I think the scale of it all is lost on us. We're very very limited in our perceptions of reality, as we are confined to our 5 senses, and making appropriations and rough abstractions so that we can understand this reality as it relates to us. Just because we haven't seen evidence of extra-terrestrials, is not proof that they aren't there. Also, just because something is mathematically possible is a very far stretch from being a mathematical improbability (which this most certainly isn't.) You make valid points as to the psychology behind why people believe we are alone. I'm just saying that logically, if you look past the hubris and near-sightedness of our race we are most likely not alone.
> I suspect that if we do, we'll be very surprised... If you suspect that you're going to be surprised, then it can't be a surprise after all. This is a consequence of a theorem from probability theory: your expectation of what you think your future expectation of something should be must match your current expectation of it.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
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.
No problem. You shoot a nuke down a bug hole, you got a lot of dead bugs.