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NASA Orbiter Reveals Details of a Moister Mars
Matt_dk writes "NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has observed a new category of minerals spread across large regions of Mars. This discovery suggests that liquid water remained on the planet's surface a billion years later than scientists believed, and it played an important role in shaping the planet's surface and possibly hosting life."
So the dollar is strengthening, making foreign goods cheap. We rely on cheap foreign goods, so this is a good thing, right? Wrong. It's only temporary. The dollar is strengthening because foreign banks are liquidizing debt held in dollars. Basically they are paying back debts and pulling stocks out of stock markets, temporarily driving up the demand for the dollar by demanding them to pay back debts in dollars. Remember, banks have slowed down the rate at which they lend out money. Once the capitulation reaches a peak, the dollar will fall like a rock as there will be no more dollars needed to unwind debt and foreigners will be adverse to taking on new U.S. debt for obvious reasons.
Don't be surprised if $1 USD will be worth 50 or even 30 eurocents in the next decade, or tariffs imposed to that effect which will raise the cost of foreign goods. It will be welcome news to the U.S. economy which will need a new wave of investment to counteract unemployment.
There are many losers around the world who will be angry in this process, and they will want to blow shit up. Don't be surprised if we have another cold war, or worse yet, start WWIII.
GDP uber alles, raise it at any cost! Wars increase economic activity by creating things to replace things that have blown up (bombs, bridges, etc). Warmongers may well persuade us to become the window repair man who moonlights as a window smasher to increase business. Never mind our standard of living will plummet as some of us face our deaths in foxholes as others bust our asses building bombs, ceding household goods in the name of the war effort, and living at subsistence levels.
Remember, you read it here first.
- Profit Bob
Moister Mars.... mmm.... sweet...
"wahts woring iwth my tyoping?"
and delicious! Reminds me of that time I accidentally left a mars candy bar in my shirt pocket on laundry day. OK, it was not delicious, it was pretty gross. It also involved a lot of coins and a lot more detergent.
Due to probing?
Mars: What The Earth Will Look Like If We Fuck Up Too Much
Every time someone claims ANYTHING about water on mars, it always trails with "There could have been/should/would been life!". Find me a fossil and then we'll talk.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
"...and possibly life."
Can't leave that out. Life is so easy to get started that it must have been everywhere there was water.
Nothing like a moist planet to get me going! But really...Why does water signify life? I have seen lakes that were so saline or full of some organism that they could not support life. Like the person up there said...show me some fossils or little green men, or I am not going to fall for it.
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
Yes, quite. Now regarding the actual article, what they seem to be saying is that there might have been a longer window for life to develop on Mars. Frankly this was always an unlikely event...Mars is and probably always has been dead. Sad, but true.
Interesting bit of geology though, and it's amazing what we can find out from these probes.
Smivs on the intertubes!
So just send an inflatable biosphere and some bacteria/moss/whatever, at let's see if that rock can still support life if it's given a little help.
Why wait? A stable biosphere outside of earth orbit would be a monument to humanity. Let's do it.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Chewy?
"If you like Battlestar Galactica, you're probably a huge nerd." -Stephen Colbert
I was really excited until I realized it was "moister", not "monster".
Bummer.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
It's been discussed at several recent conferences (AGU, LPSC) and was the main focus of Spirit's scientific research all through the last (Martian) summer.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The Moon gets MOIST over Mike Douglas...
Maybe we can make more, nuttier Mars Bars?
And, for slogans, we can add to out-of-space ones:
"A world without fences: Windoze"
and
"*I* will use less energy; Human Power"
or just
"I will eat less mars"
"I will sex less"
and so on... and so on...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
current core were taken over by BSDI over a quality mod points and influence, the it will be among that the project task. Research bureaucrati3 and trouble. It GAY NIGGERS FROM gawker At most Isn't a lemonade DYING' CROWD - being GAY NIGGERS. sorely diminished. Sl4shdot 'BSD is shout the loudest to place a paper be forgotten in a of BSD/OS. A during this file 80s, DARPA saw BSD very sick and its is dying and its 'first post' vitality. Like an Gains market share Around are in need of an admittedly What we've known future. The hand
Then we could put to rest all of the hysteria associated with religion. Life happened twice in this solar system, why didn't your god tell you guys about his other try? I can just imagine the hand wringing and apologetics.
OMG! Everyone run! The Mars Monsters are real!
A what? Oh. A Moister Mars. Never mind.
"Moist" is just one of those words that is automatically associated with one other particular word, usually sexual in nature. "Pert" is another.
I just had to make that comment. It was either that, or "mmm, a moister, chewier Mars."
Fixed version:
What do you mean by fossil? Life on earth was consisting of creatures equally complex to bacteria for approximately 4 billion years, and these organisms are tough to find and difficult to identity
From TFA:
Hydrated silica doesn't sound like much, but I think most people understand what opal is. Granted, you're not going to fund a Mars mission with opals. Wikipedia says the largest uncut opal on *this* planet, the size of a fist, is worth "just" $1.2 million. You'd have to haul back several thousand of them, and pretend you didn't just turn supply-and-demand on its ear.
But surely there's going to be more than just pretty rocks out there. A big vein of gold, with no environmental concerns, might be a boon for semiconductor manufacturers (even if it does put a bunch of commodities traders out on the street). Better yet, finding a big patch of tantalum would put some particularly nasty dictators out of business.
Of course, those elements would be much easier to mine from a passing asteroid. But you've got to go to Mars for the opals.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Last one's a rotten martian egg!
Does mars also have holes and juices?
And has not nasa now added probes to the holes and juices?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The evidence is mounting that early mars from the Noachian period and perhaps later (3.8 billion years ago give or take) was extremely wet - you only have to look at the MOLA data set to draw *a* conclusion that the Northern polar regions were a single vast ocean, either that or the 4km+ deep depression was caused by a huge impact. Evidence of the "coastline" can be interpreted as a receding shoreline or something more cataclysmic - depends on who you read and believe.
Clearly later periods with channels that show large water outflows demonstrate that water is still there, perhaps in considerable quantities just below the surface as permafrost.
The bottom line, an awesome boon to us all-colonizing all-conquering humans. Finding evidence of life, even fossilized, would just complicate the picture. Life, especially the microscopic kind, can thrive in really cold environments for extremely long periods as Antarctica demonstrates. I'd really just like my descendants to have the water, the possibilities it opens up, and not have to worry about wiping out some tenacious, unique alien lifeform.
Hmm... Let me see... Historical interest... Or better chance of survival for life as we know it... Interest... Or life... Argh, I hate tough choices like that!
In all seriousness, we can build colonies first, and analyze historical evidence later. It's not as if we couldn't tell ancient material from current life here on Earth.
As if a fossil would prove anything. First you'll ask for a fossil, then you'll demand that there be no gaps in the fossil record... Honestly, where will your skepticism end?!
I hate to say it, but you're not following the blind faith of science. Are you sure you're feeling okay? Next thing you know, you could be denying the theory of evolution based on the lack of evidence, and other crazy things.
Are you sure you're feeling okay?
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