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Mars Orbiter Finds Evidence For Ancient Rivers, Lakes
Cowards Anonymous points out news that studies based on data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have found that vast regions of Mars contained rivers and lakes when the planet was young. The studies also suggest that the water existed for quite some time, often in standing pools, which are conducive to the formation of basic organic matter. NASA provides a color-enhanced photo of a delta within a crater. Quoting:
"The clay-like minerals, called phyllosilicates, preserve a record of the interaction of water with rocks dating back to what is called the Noachian period of Mars' history, approximately 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago. This period corresponds to the earliest years of the solar system, when Earth, the moon and Mars sustained a cosmic bombardment by comets and asteroids. Rocks of this age have largely been destroyed on Earth by plate tectonics. They are preserved on the moon, but were never exposed to liquid water. The phyllosilicate-containing rocks on Mars preserve a unique record of liquid water environments possibly suitable for life in the early solar system."
Their obviously an underground civilization. Will make excellent troglodytes. Get their corbamite!
They had plenty of greenhouse gases. The problem was that after the geomagnetic field of Mars was lost, the solar wind was able to strip away the atmosphere, leaving it today at about 5 to 10 millibars (in contrast with the Earth which is about 1000 millibars).
This proves that men really are from Mars.
What is that? Boy that sounds like a Cliff Claven quote if I've ever heard one. "Y'see Noam - it was back in the Noahchian period of Mahs when the mahtians would take baths in the wahtah and lakes. This has been proved with the phyllosilicahtes found up thah.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
All kidding aside, beautifull images, it's amazing to me that from searching for microscopic traces of water a few years ago we're now "finding data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealing that the Red Planet once hosted vast lakes, flowing rivers and a variety of other wet environments that had the potential to support life."
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
"Quaid.......start the reaaacctoorrr..."
Mars' magnetic field has not always been as weak as it is now. One theory is that as it's core cooled, the magnetic field vanished, allowing the solar wind to penetrate and blow away the atmosphere. If this turns out to be accurate it might be possible to teraform mars ( or rather, repair it ) by creating a magnetic field through artificial means.
Thar she blows!
Men of the Moon, quick! To the space whalers!
Does every single thing you do help address the many serious problems facing us here on Earth, or do you occasionally do frivolous things that you enjoy? Yeah, that's what I thought.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
"'scuse me, 'scuse me, officer JPLNazi coming though... "
...vast regions of Mars contained rivers and lakes...
This has been OLD NEWS since the Viking orbiters, more than thirty years ago, though thanks to the demands of the mass media, the goldfish-like attention spans of the general public and the rigours of academic tenure, publishing, and funding rounds (not to mention PR teams at academic institutions, who often seem to know jack shit about the subject they're writing a press release on) it gets recycled every time there's a water-related Mars discovery. I'm sure I've seen three or four water-related stories based on MER (rover) research, then there's the Mars Express data, Mars Odyssey's spectrometer data (hint: why do you think Phoenix happened to land somewhere where there's water ice 5cm below the surface - luck?). Oh yeah and of course Phoenix is just about to drop ice scrapings into the TEGA oven and cook out any water, carbonates, in fact everything else that vaporises at less than 1000 degrees C.
The significant aspects of the two new papers (one in Nature, on in Nature Geoscience) are indeed the phyllosilicates, more commonly known as clay minerals. (if you're thinking of the clay in your back garden, imagine it after lying in an Antarctic dry valley for a three plus billion years, in a near vacuum, and hammered with UV. To the layperson this is what Arthur Dent would have identified thusly: "well, it's rock, isn't it?" It adds to the evidence for medium-term (up to 10^6 years) periods of free-standing or flowing water on the surface at essentially every scale, from regional morphology such as flash flood outflow channels, river deltas, coastlines and the like down to rock formations that are clearly indurated, contain silica minerals (google 'Spirit Tyrone') or haematite (blueberries, which are concretions formed in water-saturated rocks) and vugs (voids left by water-soluble crystals.) When you wet particular kinds of rocks that Mars is known to have a lot of, you get clays (phyllosilicates) as a result.
By the way the NASA image isn't
"colour enhanced"
-- that's CRISM data overlaid on a visible-wavelengths image. (CRISM is a spectrometer and is the instrument that ID'd these minerals.)
...standing pools, which are conducive to the formation of basic organic matter.
This statement is, uh, mistaken. What it's getting at is the notion that long periods of exposure to water is generally considered to be probably very very important if not essential to early life. ("organic matter" would be anything with a carbon atom in it, e.g. coal, plastic, methane, oil... it's one of those words that means something totally different in particular scientific context. Like "metals" (tho' that means at leat three different things to different sciences...)
Much much more at a popular search engine near you.
NASA needs to say they have found evidence of OIL on Mars.
Cheney and his neocon buddies will start to drool. Dick Cheney will order Bush to fund a mission to Mars. Bush will say that God told him that they need to liberate the Martians.
NASA gets unlimited budget - will come out of the DOD's budget.
WIN/WIN situation!
our inevitable colonisation of Mars
Look, we are never, never, ever going to "colonise" Mars. There's no reason to do it except SF fantasy wish fulfillment or too much time spent watching scientifically nonsensical films and books. IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. James van Allen was right. There's no reason to go there when we can do anything humans can do with robots for a thousandth of the cost and risk. Yes, it's "slower" than spending a couple of hundred billion dollars over 20 years, but so what? Mars has been there for 4000,000,000 years; it's not going anywhere.
If you're very very lucky, your children or grandchilden may live long enough to see a manned landing; personally, I very much doubt it. Hmmm, I must get round to setting up that thingy on longbets.org ...
The gist is that as the atmosphere was stripped away and the grew too cold and low pressure for surface liquid water to persist for long enough to cause obvious landforms, it was going into underground aquifers and ice deposits. Every now and then a big transient source of heat (volcanic eruptions or magma plumes in the mantle, and impacts, basically) deliver a big pulse of thermal energy that melts a large quantity of water. Result, landforms like canyons, areas with very large boulders that were carried from "upstream" by the floods, etc. There are other causitive agents, eg collapse of crater-rim walls releasing lake water, ice damn collapse, Milankovic cycles warming areas, polar wander... (and if the new idea about the lowlands results from a gargantuan impact are correct, it seems likely that the upper crust migrated significantly over the planet to reach an equilibrium position with the lowlands at one pole or the other, the Tharsis bulge (Olympus Mons et al) near the equator, etc.
This is somewhat appropriate for this discussion:
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
--Arthur C. Clarke
These cheap landers with specialized probes show just how much more powerful our science can be when we interact with its subjects through matter-on-matter operations, rather than just interacting with energy as we do in telescopes, or interacting with information as we do in simulations.
When we actually send a human to Mars, a "generalized probe" with sensory and mechanical amplification equipment, we'll really be getting to work, down to brass tacks.
--
make install -not war
Mars is teeming with vampires in underground caverns. They've covered the surface with a layer of blood dust to protect themselves from the Sun's rays. It's time to start arming our probes and orbital satellite bases with SOLASERS, to focus the Sun's power through cracks we dig in their defenses.
Otherwise, the biters will just ride back to Earth our probes, and raise their earthling cousins into an army to destroy us while the Sun's back is turned.
--
make install -not war
Short answer: all eggs in one basket.
Earth wasn't always the almost paradise for human-like life that is still a bit today, almost all life was wiped several times in earth history. And that, without our "intelligent" intervention (why wait for a huge asteroid or a snowball earth period if we can destroy it all faster?). Don't waste money in this and humans will become a rich, but unfortunately extinct, race.
One of the ways of having a backup is to be also somewhere else, preferably self-sustained. Exploration could give answers to this, can our life be sustained on Mars? Of all other planets in the solar system, mars is the best bet so far. And if not, could end being a good place to get mass resources (for i.e. building massive enough self-sustained space stations) without worrying about ecology here.
Even without watching it as a future colony, exploration could lead us to new discoveries, new knowledge that could prove to be useful, or even essential, for our future.
Yes, this can be done later, but at some point later will be too late.
Mars' magnetic field has not always been as weak as it is now.
One hypothesis I have brought forward is that Mars might have a reasonably strong dipole and is in a magnet field reversal right now, making the field at this epoch very non-dipolar. That is improbable, but not outlandishly so, and I believe is consistent with the data.
You seem to have the wrong conception of why people set out to colonize *anywhere.* It has nothing to do with science, but the desire of one group of people to live apart from another group, or make another group live apart from them. Or do you think the Puritans were that interested in studying the natural history and native society of the New World? Or the inmates that were shipped to Australia? The only thing holding back space colonization right now is the lack of technology. Once that technology becomes commonplace (if ever, I have to admit), it *will* be used.
The experts said, "mechanised rail travel was impossible because people would suffocate from the change in air pressure", then they said heavier-than-air flight was impossible", then they said "supersonic flight was impossible because the aircraft would shake itself apart". Up until 60 years ago, traveling between the USA and Europe was on the order of months of time, rather than hours.
But developing the technology to allow for high speed travel for long distances is an evolutionary process. Good examples are the evolution of sea-going craft from simple coracles, currachs, log rafts, then wooden ships, paddle-steamers, iron-hull craft up to ocean liners and nuclear powered air-craft carriers.
Any kind of interplanetary travel would be the same - protecting the crew from the elements (radiation) is the first obstacle, then there is the problem of propulsion over a long period of time. And then there is the actual process of manufacture if the vessel cannot travel from the surface of a planet.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Mars as a backup for Earth is a pipe dream, a crack-pipe dream.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
but the fact that Venus has no signs of life proofs that women do not really exist and are just the results of a fevered imagination. This handily explains why slashdot, a bastion of clear thinking, has no women.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
No--it goes without saying that humankind will eventually need to control its number in order not to overpopulate Earth. That's all.
Space migration? You will not migrate the billions that Earth can't sustain to Mars, at least not without completely exhausting our resources ...
Possibly mankind will move to space/Mars. But that means a few hundred or some thousands--not billions--of people will establish a new human habitat, kind of a backup. But this will not reduce or even shrink the net number of people on Earth.
Some people use those same arguments to illustrate that we will one day figure out how to surpass the speed of light. While perhaps we may someday, the difference is that while there was never any evidence or rigorous empirical work done on the impossibility of rail and air travel, quite the opposite is true for the speed of light. Our entire technological world in its current form would not be able to exist without a finite speed of light at exactly 3x10^8. There was even a slashdot story about the consistency of mayonnaise being impossible without the current speed of light being what it is.
Unfortunately the parent post is right - space colonization in the foreseeable future is unlikely for many reasons that somehow seem glossed over by the "true believers".
Lets face the cold hard reality of space - it is both cold and hard. There's nothing out there but rocks. Nobody wants to live on cold hard rocks. Some people might go there for science, or out of the curiosity of a tourist, but nobody will ever want to make a life there.
I'm sure of this because people already have the opportunity to go live on cold hard rocks that are far from civilization, right now, but don't. There are huge, unclaimed tracts of rocks right here on Earth. Most of Canada, Russia, and Antarctica is an uninhabited wasteland, despite massive overpopulation in other parts of the world. Heck, most of the continent of Australia is an uninhabited desert, so there's also a choice of warm hard rocks, if that's your preference.
Compared to any other place in space, these places aren't even that uninhabitable. There's usually some water, a breathable atmosphere, soil, gravity, real time telecommunications, and resources and equipment can be brought in a cost of mere thousands of dollars instead of billions. Yet despite these manifold advantages over space colonization, there's no popular demand for massive government spending to colonize these places. Why not?
Sure, it's not glamorous, but we can do it right now! We could, if we wanted to, colonize Antarctica. It wouldn't even be that hard, all the technology is available right now. We could move a billion people there if we had to. Does anybody want to though? Do you? Would you, right now, give up where ever you are, with your job, friends, family, and go live in a place like that? Or if you don't like the cold, you're welcome here in Australia! The desert has some really cheap land. You can buy a place the size of a small American state if you want to. Oddly enough, most of tens of thousands of immigrants that come to this country every year go to live in the larger cities. Not a huge demand for desert living for some strange reason.
Now let me put it this way - Mars is just like Antarctica, but much colder, much more remote, much harder to reach, much harder to come back from and there's no atmosphere. Not to mention that the return ticket for a family sightseeing tour these days is $1 Trillion*.
Living on Mars is totally irrational wishful thinking. Unless some miracle occurs like the sudden invention of cheap wormhole generators or anti-gravity or some similarly quick and easy way to get about becomes available, I just don't see it, and we can't make plans where step #1 depends on a miracle. Even given some cheap magic space transport device, every destination is still "Not Earth". Step #2 will be that anywhere we might want to go is instant-death-to-the-unprotected. Every little detail is lethal. Did you know that due to the lack of weathering, the dust on the Moon is microscopically jagged and razor sharp? It'll cut your lungs up if you breathe it in for any length of time. Just look up "silicosis" to find out all about the joys of that particular ailment. In comparison, the Australian Outback is so inviting that even the dust comes in a lung-friendly rounded format, but there's still places you can go where the next nearest person is 100km away. I don't see that changing any time soon, so why would anyone expect space to be colonized first?
* An estimate only, one that NASA keeps revising upwards. Before betting on cheap space travel, wait for the prices to actually start dropping first.
... Up until 60 years ago, traveling between the USA and Europe was on the order of months of time, rather than hours.
Excuse me? Believe it or not, we had something better than sailboats, even before 1948. The great trans-atlantic passenger lingers (e.g. the Titanic) would go between the USA and Europe in under a week. In 1938 (70 years ago), the Queen Mary did it in 3 days.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
These articles rarely mention that there are two camps in the scientific community, one of which is largely American, and rejects any evidence for recent liquid water on Mars, and the other of which is more European, and accepts it.
The Mars cratering model indicates that a billion year old surface on Mars should have multiple 100 meter craters per square kilometer, and maybe ten 50 meter craters per square km . Basically, if you see a picture of the Martian surface, and there aren't lots of little craters on it, then that is not a billion year old surface, regard of what the press release says. It isn't hard to find such images. Here is another, and another.
You're talking total tripe, because we don't need free energy nor wormholes nor warp drives nor any other nonexistent inventions nor any new physics to make travelling to Mars cheap and widely available. All we need is *time* (a lot of it) for our engineering systems to mature.
Travel is a matter of harnessing energy, and energy is plentiful. The earth's surface receives a bit less than 150,000 TW of solar irradiation, of which we harness and use no more than 18-20 TW (that's just 20, not 20,000), so there's no energy shortage at ground level. Add solar energy collection beyond the atmosphere to our capabilities and the available energy becomes effectively infinite. That also means that travel within the solar system will be effectively unlimited in an easily forseeable future. It's a sure bet. The sun isn't going to dim any time soon.
What we do need of course is many centuries of good solid engineering to develop such a capability, because creating an infrastructure for widespread space travel is not something that can be done in just a few decades. But it's coming for sure, because there are no reasons why it shouldn't come and ample reasons why people will want it ... no doubt it will be fueled by the lure of profits like everything else.
We certainly do not need a change in the laws of physics nor any magic transports. Stop talking crap.
(New physics will undoubtedly appear over the centuries, but current physics is more than enough as a foundation for universal space travel. Energy is the only hard constraint on space travel given by the laws of physics, which effectively means that we are not constrained at all, at least within the inner solar system.)
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
No we are not doomed in the case of a field reversal. There has been literally hundreds of field reversals during since the Jurasic and life survived without problems. We cvould survive as well with only minor ajustments (for instance magnetic compasses would not work and magnetic storms temporarily taking out power distribution systems more often etc.)
The difference is that the magnetic field on Mars did not come back allowing billions of years without a field thus stripping the atmosphere.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer
Don't confuse interstellar and interplanetary travel. They are two completely different issues, and I will admit that interstellar travel is something that is so far out there that the method of travel is something certainly of Science Fiction. It is also something I don't think will happen in the next couple of millenia other than some robotic missions to only the very closest of stars. Manned exploration of nearby stars is akin to suggesting a 17th Century sailor is going to make it to Mars somehow. The very technology to accomplish that task is seemingly impossible, and effectively will need a deeper understand of basic physics if we are to make it there in a reasonable period of time.
Interplanetary travel, on the other hand, doesn't require any new physics or understanding of our universe. All it requires is a refinement of existing technologies and the will (as well as cash) necessary to get there, and how much luxury you will enjoy enroute or once you arrive at your destination.
In theory, you can travel from the Earth to Mars in about 2-4 weeks. Current technology is available to travel for months at a time in relative comfort, and there have been "spacecraft" (if you count MIR and the ISS) which have been operating for decades. I'd even be bold enough to suggest that the technology has even been proven now, so it is mainly a matter of applying current knowledge to the issue, not even necessarily coming up with new propulsion systems or manufacturing facilities in order to accomplish this task.
All that is needed is cash and desire, and a few politicans to get out of the way.