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Martian Gullies Explained By ... Sand
eldavojohn writes "There's a lot of evidence that a very long time ago some fluid once flowed on Mars, but the primary evidence of water today — gullies inside craters — is explainable by a much less exotic reason: flowing dust and sand. It would now seem that the news from 2006 that NASA had found definitive evidence of flowing water on today's Mars needs to be comprehensively reexamined. The Bad Astronomer lays claim that flowing sand and dust doesn't explain all recent hi-res imagery from the red planet, but it certainly does seem more plausible, considering what we know about Mars."
Have they found the soundstage on mars where they faked the moon landing?
Mass is not the issue; the lack of a magnetosphere is. Without a magnetosphere, the solar wind will strip the atmosphere, leaving you in the same state. We would need to provide some means of creating a field which shields the atmosphere from solar winds.
Did a quick google to find an article - this one was published in 2010: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast31jan_1/
Forget water. If you want to create a space stampede to Mars, announce the discovery of oil there.
Take those photos that the various missions have taken of Mars, and use the photo analysis software that CSI uses. You should be able to look at things down to a molecular level then. Even a photo taken with a disposable camera that happened to be pointing in the direction of Mars during a stormy night should be sufficient to determint the location of all water on Mars. They could look at the back side of Mars based on a reflection from one of the stars behind it, so you should easily have 360 degrees of visibility..
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Nutrition Facts: Mars Bar
Calories: 220
Sodium: 70 mg
Total Fat: 9 g
Potassium: 0 mg
Saturated: 6 g
Total Carbs: 36 g
Polyunsaturated: 0 g
Dietary Fiber: 1 g
Monounsaturated: 0 g
Sugars: 30 g
Trans: 0 g
Protein: 2 g
Cholesterol: 5 mg
Vitamin A: 0%
Calcium: 6%
Vitamin C: 0%
Iron: 4%
Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.
If the entire Belt were diverted to Mars, it would increase Mars' mass by about 1%.
In other words, "your idea is silly"....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
From the original blog post : "over this timescale, the Martian atmosphere has been too cold and thin for liquid water."
I read something like this frequently, and yet it is simply wrong and I wish people would stop repeating it.
Liquid water is not magic, but governed by physics. For there to be liquid water on Mars, all that is needed is that water be present, that the surface pressure be above the triple point of water, and that the temperature be above the freezing point. (Actually, this can be relaxed somewhat for brines and the like, but let's put that aside for the moment.) We know that Mars has water. What about the other two conditions ?
Much of the surface of Mars is above the triple point of water (i.e., at a low enough elevation that the surface pressure is higher than 611.7 pascals). Any low lying region is. The Viking 2 landing site is (some of the time) and the Phoenix landing site is (all of the time). The entire Hellas basin is, and it is highly likely to have liquid water at times (as the surface temperature there is warm enough during the day). Remember, peak surface soil temperatures on Mars can reach 27 C, even under current climate conditions.
Further, the atmospheric pressure on Mars varies greatly during its obliquity cycle, and it is highly likely that the entire planet (except for the high volcanoes of Tharsis) can support liquid water at times during each obliquity cycle. During those phases of the cycle, the atmospheric temperatures will be generally warmer, as well.
Now, this does not prove or disprove that these gullies are formed by water rather than sand, but you don't need unusually strong brines or geothermal vents to have liquid water on Mars (even though both of those probably exist as well), and it is quite reasonable to expect its presence in places, even under current atmospheric conditions.
This actually hits on one of my personal bugaboos - scientists that claim to know something "definitively" while the research or hypothesis is still warm from the metaphorical oven.
And one of my personal bugaboos is people getting their panties in a twist over scientists claiming something that they're not and never have actually claimed.
The word "definitive" appears nowhere except in this slashdot summary. It does not appear in the previous slashdot summary that the offending word links to, nor does it appear in the article that slashdot summary links to either, and certainly does not appear in the original statement by the scientists. In fact, the article says that more work needs to be done to determine if what they discovered was definitely water.
So basically your whole rant about "science by press release" is baseless slander because you assumed a word in a /. summary twice removed from the original source was the actual word used by scientists, rather than click a couple links and learn that you were wrong.
Good job.
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