Slashdot Mirror
Mars Soil Appears To Be Able To Sustain Life
beckerist writes "Scientists working on the Phoenix Mars Lander mission, which has already found ice on the planet, said preliminary analysis by the lander's instruments on a sample of soil scooped up by the spacecraft's robotic arm had shown it to be much more alkaline than expected. Sam Kounaves, the lead investigator for the wet chemistry laboratory on Phoenix, told journalists: 'It is the type of soil you would probably have in your back yard, you know, alkaline. You might be able to grow asparagus in it really well. ... It is very exciting for us.'"
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j1hvRUNc9W-3lupLU6TLQtR0gdRAD91I04D01
Some quotes...
Preliminary results showed the soil had a pH between 8 and 9, researchers said. A pH less than 7 means the solution is acidic, while a pH over 7 means it is salty. Phoenix also detected the presence of magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride in the mixture.
"It's typical of the soil here on Earth minus the organics," Kounaves said during a teleconference from Tucson, Ariz. ...
The heating experiment, which was designed to look for organics, did not yield conclusive evidence of carbon. Scientists planned to study another soil sample taken from further below the surface.
Who modded this informative? Whoever it is must've been smokin' some of that martian pot!
I found that to be rather large as well, but according to Wikipedia:
The lander has a mass of 350 kg, and measures 2.2 m tall by 5.5 m long with its solar panels deployed. The science deck is about 1.5 m in diameter.The Robotic Arm (RA) is designed to extend 2.35 m from its base on the lander, and have the ability to dig down to 0.5 m below the surface.
And from the Wiki picture and the article picture the bucket looks like it may be about 6 inches wide...However, I still doubt that they actually scooped up 1^3 meter of soil, but rather parts of an area that is 1^3 meter...
To generate a new atmosphere you would need volcanic activity (which Mars apparently has not had in a while) to start the greenhouse effect. Mars is too cold and geologically dead to develop a new Earth-like atmosphere. A collision probably wouldn't help.
In fact, it's possible that a collision was responsible for destroying a previous Earth-like atmosphere on Mars.
Well, the *soil* might be capable of supporting Asparagus, but the seeds might not like the temperature, atmosphere, or ambient radiation.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
How about potatoes?
Because potatoes require an oxygen-rich soil and also prefer a slightly acidic soil. =)It's called a "
," stoner.
GP may not be polite, but he's right. Lichen are the best adapted plants on Antarctica. And Antarctica is the closest Mars like environment you get on Earth, dry and cold. Some Lichens survive there with a few hours photosynthesis per year.
Nutrition wise asparagus kicks ass:
http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2312/2
(*) I know that's bollocks..
Perhaps enough Gravity to hold down said newfound oxygen?http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=1759493
http://www.philforhumanity.com/Terraforming_Mars.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars
The problem right now is not the temperature or the sun, we have some forms of life that could handle Mars right now, as far as I know (Asparagus, for example, as well as plenty of microbes). The problem is the plant just isn't heavy enough to keep gas close to it.
Yes, because scientists are totally saying that climate change is 100% caused by humans. *eyeroll*
Jeremy
OK! I was hoping someone with high speed internet access would do this for me, but I did it. NASA says that much of Mars' atmosphere was lost to pressure from the solar wind, but "[...] solar wind erosion was likely much more effective in the past than it is today." Some believe that Mars' atmosphere was lost mostly due to collisions from a variety of potential impactors. Apparently you can or once could take a class at uoregon which would teach you that there was insufficient temperature for [Martian] water to remain as a liquid, so it froze out leaving CO2 as the primary component in the atmosphere. Which is OK, that's an atmosphere! We want it for warming (CO2 is great) and for providing pressure so that we can survive with an air mask (for which purpose it would be fine.) I mean, an oxygen atmosphere would be dandy, but any atmosphere would be an upgrade. However, it might also have been 7.5 bar of CO2 when Mars was young, which would be a bit excessive for our purposes. Actually, .5 bar would probably do the job, although it would certainly limit the value of suction-based pumps in a non-pressurized environment...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You know, I see people say this kind of thing all the time, but I have never seen any kind of statement about how fast Mars will lose its atmosphere, except in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy where it is asserted that the rate of loss is actually quite slow. The only one of your links which actually addresses the rate is Wikipedia: "It is generally thought that Mars could once have had an environment relatively similar to today's Earth, during an early stage in its development. This similarity is predominantly associated with the thickness of the atmosphere and abundance of water, both considered to have been lost over the course of hundreds of millions of years. The exact mechanisms which resulted in this change are still unclear, though several mechanisms have been proposed." Uh, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement of your view. So, can you provide a reference for the speed at which Mars is supposed to lose a human-breathable atmosphere?
I got a better proof for you: assuming an insignificant or zero rate of dissipation, how long would it take to generate a livable, breathable atmosphere at ground level on Mars with any known, arguably feasible method? Assuming we've solved the problem of being able to make Martian air breathable, maybe the problem of atmospheric dissipation is smaller than you think?
Mars is a great deal less cold than Titan. The temperature that generally matters is the solar thermal temperature at the average orbital distance. There are equations that exist in many college astronomy books that you can use to compute the average "escape half-life" of a gas in the atmosphere given the mass of the planet and its solar thermal temperature in kelvin.
That's due to the massive difference in temperature. The colder a gas is, the denser it is. It's no good being able to hold an atmoshpere at >1 atm if that's only the case with temperatures slightly above liquid nitrogen.
I hate printers.
...The exact mechanisms which resulted in this change are still unclear, though several mechanisms have been proposed.
The common methods I've discussed are backward to me. The only method I could see that's workable is to reactivate the core. It seems to me that how the atmosphere is replenished and oceanic plant life filters it to make it breathable. And you would get your magnetosphere. Probably take a really long time though.
What?
Last thing i read about terraforming Mars would be nigh impossible was that the sun is blasting away the atmo. Earth's atmo is protected by the magnetosphere generated by the moving iron core (or some such). Mars is solid all the way through, and has no such protection.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!