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Ancient Mars Ocean Found?
astroengine writes "With the help of rover Curiosity, we now know that ancient Mars had large quantities of liquid water flowing across its surface. However, evidence for large bodies of water — i.e. seas/oceans — has been hard to come by. But using high-resolution orbital data, Caltech scientists now think they've found a long-dry river delta that once flowed into a very large body of water. Welcome to the Aeolis Riviera — the strongest evidence yet for a Martian coastline. "This is probably one of the most convincing pieces of evidence of a delta in an unconfined region — and a delta points to the existence of a large body of water in the northern hemisphere of Mars," said Roman DiBiase, Caltech postdoctoral scholar and lead author of the paper that was published (abstract) in the Journal of Geophysical Research."
Not all that flows is H2O. Not sure how they could determine the chemical composition of what formed these.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
This is great news, not surprising, but great none the less. It's just that more evidence that Mars was a living, breathing planet, and might still be that way in some limited forms. Or perhaps not even all that limited if life on Mars never went beyond the microscopic form. But I'll get really excited and piss in my pants with giddiness if we learn that the transpermia theory has been confirmed and that life on Earth started on Mars. But that's a long, long way away.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
Actually there's plenty of evidence of water on Mars... get your facts straight.
Actually Venus is a better picture of where we are headed.
Global warming is going to destroy the Earth's magnetic field or geodynamo? Is there anything global warming *can't* do?
One would expect a large body of water there. How the Universe Works "Extreme Planets" mentions a theory of Mars
being hit by an object moving the Northern hemisphere crust to the Sorthern hemisphere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2t2VkDYOfYM#t=12m33 (12:33 in, link starts there)
I would assume leaving the Northern side lower as a result.
make ice cream.
No, I'm not kidding. It's really nice. It's the umpteemth conformation that Mars once had water. WE GET IT. MARS ONCE HAD WATER. Boots. Mars. Do it, NASA. This isn't rocket science.
Thanks Mars. Its back past gives a fair picture of the future Earth, thanks to global warming.
So you'll be riding a bicycle from now on?
Global warming is a lot like Jesus. True believers see them everywhere including things like toast, whereas normal people cannot.
Ahem, I hope your toast Jesus reference is frivolous. We all know the only true representations of Jesus are on tortillas.
http://www.google.com/search?q=jesus+tortilla&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=1CjmUby8FYm9iwLCmYGADA&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1586&bih=1008
Here's the obligatory XKCD reference.
Indeed. Just off the top of my head:
Gypsum sand and gypsum inclusions in rock strata.
Calcium and sodium perchlorate salts
Hydrated silica clay
All three of those require not just water, but often standing pools of water. The perchlorates especially, which at least on earth, form when salt water is slowly evaporated under exposure from strong UV radiation. Gypsum is a hydrated calcium sulphate salt, and requires liquid water to crystallize.
The hydrated silica clay can from just from ambient soil moisture working its magic on feldspar minerals, but usually requies active weathering. Like, rain.
As the parent said, there is ample evidence of water having been on mars. Lots of water.
... ocean finds YOU!!!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
So first I read this and then I look at my Slashdot feed and it says "... Mars Ocean Found?".
NASA Phoenix Mars Lander Confirms Frozen Water
... whatever
Maybe a subsurface probe that drills down where we expect to find liquid water, then to tests there? Maybe just dig a deep hole and test. Hell, set off a bomb if you have to. Our best bets are under the dirt now.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Mars is a noun, martian is the adjective. TFS even had one the eds could copy.
The problem is not the TSA or the NSA. The problem is the USA.
I'd be interested in what other fluid could have carved the canyons and washouts that litter the surface of mars. Water is simple and very common. I'm not sure that there is enough liquid hydrocarbon out there to create these flow structures.
No volcanos here
Its global CLIMATE CHANGE. And it leads to cooler winters. YOUR ICE CREAM HAS BEEN MADE. SIR
This is all caused by XKCD.
Support a Europe-related section on Slashdot!
Sad, but it has really gotten to the 'well, duh' stage.
We get it NASA. Mars once had lots of surface water. Said water is now probably sub surface, having sunk in as the core cooled. Now go and drill some wells for oil, gas and water.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
That's the nice thing about a sample return mission like the one that's been proposed. It'll confirm your above opinion of the evidence. Something that looks like gypsum sand to a rover, may well be. But if it looks like gypsum sand in a lab on Earth, then that's a vastly more definitive piece of evidence.
No, because that CO2 is locked up in rock and if we manage to partly boil the oceans, we'll create a very efficient process for transferring heat to space while simultaneously getting rid of the cause.
Nothing like facts to destroy jokes...
So say we all
Doesn't it appear that the water would have been flowing upward, away from the lowest point on the lower part of the image. Assuming nothing changed that much since there was water, that seems really odd. It looks like the flowing sediment and stuff avoided the bottom part for no apparent reason. In every delta I've seen on Earth, it doesn't do that.
That's the nice thing about a sample return mission like the one that's been proposed. It'll confirm your above opinion of the evidence. Something that looks like gypsum sand to a rover, may well be. But if it looks like gypsum sand in a lab on Earth, then that's a vastly more definitive piece of evidence.
That's not really necessary as your situation isn't really possible.
Crystals/chemicals/etc don't really have many options to form 'differently'. When they form differently, they aren't the same. Sure you can get some isomers, but even then those don't necessarily have the same properties.
For your premise, that all of those minerals formed via some process other than one that involves water, would require a huge coincidence that the rover could somehow find all of these minerals which happened to form without water even though all of our experience tells us is unlikely.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Gee, with the combine "supposed" brain power of Slashdot contributors and Anonymous has to be the first to point out the famous works of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
This is a question born of ignorance on my part, but if there were once oceans and such on mars, wouldn't there be steep land masses where contentnets used to rise out of the ancient oceans?
Also do we know enough about the interior of mars to know how land forms, the crust shifts, etc?
Crystals/chemicals/etc don't really have many options to form 'differently'.
When you say 'differently', are you quoting someone? On Earth, we don't actually have this experience. There's a vast number of such chemicals and crystals formed under subtly different conditions and chemical composition. For gypsum, merely changing the quantity of water changes the mineral. We also can partly (not even fully) substitute other elements for calcium and sulfur to get new minerals.
For your premise, that all of those minerals formed via some process other than one that involves water, would require a huge coincidence that the rover could somehow find all of these minerals which happened to form without water even though all of our experience tells us is unlikely.
That's not my premise. We already know water exists on Mars. We see it directly in Mars's atmosphere. The polar caps show evidence of the presence of water ice. The previous poster asserted something stronger than merely the presence of water:
All three of those require not just water, but often standing pools of water.
and
As the parent said, there is ample evidence of water having been on mars. Lots of water.
Unlike Earth, there's been a very long time geologically to concentrate water in calcium sulfate, to create those perchlorates, and so on. We know the conditions are vastly different. I think it's a bit foolish to so confidently extrapolate from our limited experiences on Earth to that of Mars without acknowledging that we don't have supporting evidence for this sort of intuition.
Such undue certainty has been wrong in the past and it will be wrong in the future.
steep land masses where contentnets used to rise out of the ancient oceans?
Yes, but give them a few million years of wind erosion after things dry out and their slopes will come to resemble dry land features.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm tired of all the "water on Mars" reports. No jar of water, then NO WATER!
"Both the ancient environments on Mars and the planet's sedimentary archive of these environments are turning out to be surprisingly Earth-like."
No shit, Sherlock. Mars may be a quarter the size of the Earth, but given similar conditions, water will flow, move sediment, create deltas, blah, blah, blah.
Why are these scientists always so surprised to find thing like this? "Gee, the volcanoes are even pointy with a hole in the top, just like ours!"
"This is probably one of the most convincing pieces of evidence of a delta in an unconfined region — and a delta points to the existence of a large body of water in the northern hemisphere of Mars, this is MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY" said Roman DiBiase, The Million Dollar Researcher."
Where's Helium around that delta?
mark "and is Dejah Thoris lounging by the Aeolian Riviera?"
There are (Titan rains methane, and has large lakes of ethane), just not on Mars.
Martian atmosphere resembles a colder version of what happened to venus's atmosphere. Venus likewise lacks a strong geomagneric dynamo. Some planetary scientists speculate that this is not because venus isn't heavy enough, but because the atmosphere is so hot, that mantle convection is not viggorous enough to create the dynamo. Mars just wasn't heavy enough, or cooled too signifigantly. Not enough data is available at this time. Regardless, both planets lost much of the lighter elements of their atmospheres to space from abrasive solar particle showers, due to both planets lacking a strong magnetic dynamo.
A significant portion of a hydrocarbon's mass is hydrogen, a light element that was blasted away from said atmosphere. Mars lacks the hydrogen needed to have large quantities of molecular hydrocarbons in its atmosphere. It has carbon dioxide instead.
Titan, being one of saturn's moons, is protected by the very powerful magnetic field produced by its parent, and has such retained all the hydrogen it sucked in during its formation in the early solar system. Its atmosphere does undergo reactions with highly energetic particles caught in saturn's ring system and magnetic field, but this only causes recombinations of molecules in its upper atmosphere, and causes it to appear more hazy, rather than it being blasted off into space.
Because of this, titan retains one of the thickest atmospheres for a body of its mass in our solar system, and does have liquid phase hydrocarbons of sufficient quantity to cause liquid erosion patterns on its "land masses". Mars simply does not.