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A Third of Mars Could Have Been Underwater
Matt_dk writes "An international team of scientists who analyzed data from the Gamma Ray Spectrometer onboard NASA's Mars Odyssey reports new evidence for the controversial idea that oceans once covered about a third of ancient Mars.
'We compared Gamma Ray Spectrometer data on potassium, thorium and iron above and below a shoreline believed to mark an ancient ocean that covered a third of Mars' surface, and an inner shoreline believed to mark a younger, smaller ocean.'"
Wait until we find signs of human civilization there and discover they made a last ditch effort to escape their destructive lifestyle by migrating to a new planet they called Earth.
The question is why Mars would have oceans then and not now. Put water on the surface today and that which doesn't freeze will evaporate due to the low atmospheric pressure. The atmospheric pressure is low because Mars doesn't have that strong a gravitational field to sustain an atmosphere. So the question becomes, how did Mars ever manage to have an ocean in the first place? It's not likely that it was more massive earlier on so it's not likely to have ever had an earth-like atmosphere that recycles the water back to the oceans. Sans gravity, you don't get a steady-state atmosphere. Sans atmosphere, you don't get to keep your water. Bottom line - it's a problem full of paradoxes. Weird.
How much terraforming would you have to do to remove all evidence of an advanced civilization and a world war?
If a nuclear bomb went off in New York City, and we wanted to pretend there was nothing there, we would have to knock down every building, melt down the metal, and place it back in the ground, find some way to convert plastics back into petroleum, plant a forest over the entire city, remove all the pollution and radiation from the air, dig up every corpse and remove items such as cell-phones, watches, and anything that is not biodegradable. Now, imagine doing this, with every city in the world...
Couldn't they come up with a simpler cover story that allowed for an advanced civilization to wipe themselves out? Honestly, my point is that, for most notions, such as this, you have to ask yourself, how much effort, control, and sheer genius would be needed to hide a secret this big, and then ask, what are the odds of someone pulling it off?
How does he account for the gravity?