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NASA's Gypsum Find Clear Evidence There Was Water On Mars
First time accepted submitter RCC42 writes "The Opportunity rover has found evidence that liquid water once flowed on Mars, through the discovery of gypsum — a mineral that can only be formed in the presence of water. Though other evidence in the past has suggested highly acidic water on Mars, this is the first evidence for water with a pH suitable for life as we know it."
We can no longer ignore the need now to send people to mars to establish a base and mine. With this discovery, Mars can now supply all of our drywall needs for the next several centuries!
This space available.
Although read in context it makes sense. Oh well, mod me down appropriately! o_O
Because they, contrary to the martians, shoot down unmanned probes.
Persians first calculated the volume of the earth, as a sphere. Invented spherical trigonometry, and all kinds of things.
Remember all that "Arab scientists and mathematicians" kind of talk? None of 'em were arabs. Mostly Persians, with roots in Khorasan - writing in Arabic.
It's similar to calling Sir Issac Newton a "Latin Physicist" because of the language used in the "Principia".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
If that's the water source, I'd hate to meet the bladder's owner.
Needless to say, Iranian civilization ain't what it used to be. This a major oil producing country with such inept leadership that they have to import refined fuels.
Persia's high point was a long time ago.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"It's similar to calling Sir Issac Newton a "Latin Physicist" because of the language used in the "Principia"."
Ofcourse not.... he was a Persian physicist.
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
Are we talking just a thin crust, or are we talking "gypsum quarry" size formations?
The reason I ask, is gypsum contains absurd quantities of chemically bound water. If mars has a higher calcium ion concentration than earth does, and had liquid oceans at one time, it is possible that with the carbon dioxide rich atmosphere and lack of techtonic plate movement that a sizable quantity of the ocean turned into "concrete" rather than drying up.
This would mean that much of the light elements (hydrogen, etc) might have escaped being blown off the atmosphere.
This is exciting news for science fiction writers that like to dream about terraforming. Creating techtonic activity would create the geomagnetic dynamo the planet needs, and as a consequence of the subduction and volcanism, huge quantities of water vapor would be expelled as a volcanic gas.
About all the planet would need would be ammonia, for the missing nitrogen. (Doesn't titan have an ammonia atmosphere? Wink, nudge.)
This does not mean the planet would go from lifeless desert to habitable overnight, as the gasses relased would be inhospitable to oxygen dependant life like us, but certain algae species like chlorella can survive in 100% C02 atmospheric concentrations as long as there is sunlight and water. Chlorella is well researched, fully genomically sequenced, and already has engineered varieties. A strain intended to rapidly convert the atmosphere to something a bit less toxic would actually be fairly plausible.
Now that it has finally done a good job, it can come home....
XKCD
runaway climate, oceans evaporate, a couple of million years later some beings from Europe may wonder, was there ever life on this desert planet? And a next round of silliness starts again.
Now I know who will be the first to industrialize Mars.
Actually, I think the drone malfunctioned, went into auto-mode and landed itself in the desert. Then an Iranian sheepherder stumbled across it and called authorities.
It's an open question why Iranians graze sheep in the desert though...
Actually, drones like the Predator, Heron, Reaper and Global Hawk need to be manually landed by a local pilot, not sure about the Beast of Kandahar.
If I built a drone like that, I'd have it track the jamming signal and "land" on it at full speed.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
"Greeks" themselves were often native inhabitants of Asia Minor, Levant and Lower Egypt.
They were also the recipients, refiners and extenders of numerical sciences with origin in Babylon and the Indus.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
From what I recall, goats will eat a lot of things but they -way- they eat the grass tends to leave it intact/alive to resprout, however sheep gnaw it down so far that it kills the grass.
It's interesting how fast some of us forget the facts.
First, in the release of Department of State memos a year ago, we read of several countries and the US government admitting to a belief in the existence of an Iranian nuclear program. While the Arab Spring protests have probably trumped it for a time, it's worth noting that several countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, viewed Iran's nuclear program as their most pressing foreign policy issue (over such things as Israel). They have since threatened to develop their own nuclear weapons.
' Second, Iran does indeed have sites that were built at great expense to resist known conventional weapons of the time. No civilian nuclear program justifies this expense.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has assembled evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Finally, we have acts of sabotage and murder against Iranian infrastructure and personnel associated with this program. Nobody does that for a hobby. An easy counter for Iran would be to throw open its entire nuclear infrastructure to show it wasn't developing nuclear weapons. Didn't happen.
I can't help but notice that the story you link to has a mind-numbing fallacy in it. Because the US had overflown Iranian space for four years and the author chooses to ignore the copious evidence in support of the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, then Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program. That makes no sense.
The US Dept of State is a reliable authority of unbiased information and analysis? Christ! You would have made a great Soviet.
Then there's the entirely discredited IAEA citing. This was shredded. Another sad, neocon fairytale, like Condoleeza's "Smoking Gun in the form of a Mushroom Cloud". Oh. She represents an example of State Dept. accuracy and lack of bias, herself.
Unbelievable, fabricated distortions about "nano-diamonds"
Why do you witchhunt Iran, when the US is the evil regime that kills children with airborne shrapnel, on an almost daily basis?
he IAEA Confirms My Nanodiamond Analysis
Dennis Ross Fired Over IAEA Dud
No International Action Following IAEA Report
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
"Mostly Persians, with roots in Khorasan - writing in Arabic."
"Needless to say, Iranian civilization ain't what it used to be."
I just have to clarify that Khorasan is modern day Afghanistan - It was part it was part of Persia, but it isn't Iran. Its a common misconception that people think Persia = Iran. In fact, Persia included (at a time) a lot, of not all of, the ---istan countries. "istan" is the the Persian suffix meaning land. Analogous to Scotland, Ireland.
My two cents of knowledge.. free for you!
To think that it goes from solid to gas instantly without any liquid form on a planet (Mars) where there are dry river beds, would be logical.
Pressure is below the triple point for water so yes, it is logical to not expect liquid water on the exposed surface of Mars under current conditions. Ice directly sublimates to vapor.
It's also worth noting that liquid water could be a temporary thing maybe occurring when ice is melted by volcanism. That could result in the river valleys without any long term water presence. Or the river valley could be caused by flowing carbon dioxide. The presence of gypsum supports the your explanation that flowing water was present on Mars at some point.
Wait, did someone say they found beer on Mars? Very interesting development...
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I kind think we should focus or efforts on more terrestrial matters
Uh... offsite backup IS a terrestrial matter.
It's not common that you'll hear a scientist say this, but that is absolutely impossible. It is not possible under any circumstances to form gypsum in the absence of water. Gypsum is a hydrous mineral - it contains molecules of water in it's structure. So even if you took Feynman's trip "all the way to the bottom", you'd have to assemble an atom of sulphur and four of oxygen (to form a sulphate ion ; you're in Feynman territory, so don't worry about the charges), then add a calcium atom (now you can balance the charges if you want. Then add two molecules of water (as atoms, or as molecules ; it doesn't matter) ... and that's your anhydrous synthesis contaminated with substantial quantities of water. And we haven't even got onto getting the ions and molecules into the right positions (also essential for it to be "gypsum" and not anything other mineral).
Where is my packet of dehydrated DHMO? Ah, under the tin of tartan paint.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
How do you provide evidence that you're not doing something?
How do you provide evidence that something someone claims exists in fact doesn't?
Logic fail.
Even if they COULD, you still wouldn't believe it because clearly this evidence of non-existence couldn't be trusted, coming from Iranians, who you KNOW are just hiding something. When they deny it, it confirms it!
Set the skin-seeking missiles to brown! (Leave them on default, IOW.)
This space available.
If Iran decides to accuse the US of stocking illegal weapons (chemical whatever) and cites the lack of proof that we don't as proof that suspicion is warranted, do they get to say that our denial is not enough, that we must allow in outside inspectors?
We in the US seem to demand an awful lot from others that we would rather kill than submit to ourselves.
Kill Japanese for the torture of waterboarding, then waterboard others ourselves and say it's not torture.
Overthrow democratically-elected leaders and install dictators instead because we want to? We've done that.
Oh yeah, like in Iran for example.
Gosh, I wonder why, after that, they don't feel like climbing in our laps like puppies and learning to respond to our commands?
We have nukes. Iraq didn't have nukes. Iran trying to get them might be the only way they can protect themselves from an unprovoked US attack.
I am anti-nuclear, but I don't think we, as the only power ever to nuke cities, and still with the largest arsenal, have much moral standing to act like the global good guys.
This space available.