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Research Suggests Mars Once Had a Thick Atmosphere
astroengine writes "At one time, Mars had a thick, protective atmosphere — possibly even cushier than Earth's — but the bubble of gases mostly dissipated about 4 billion years ago and has never been replenished, new research shows. The findings come from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, which has been moonlighting as an atmospheric probe as it scours planet's surface for habitats that could have supported ancient microbial life. 'On Earth, our magnetic field protects us, it shields us from the solar wind particles. Without Earth's magnetic field, we would have no atmosphere and there would be no life on this planet. Everything would be wiped out — especially when you go back 4 billion years. The solar wind was at least 100 times stronger then than it is today. It was a young sun with a very intense radiation,' Chris Webster, manager of the Planetary Sciences Instruments Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told Discovery News. Unfortunately for Mars, the last 4 billion years have not been kind."
Mars is trapped in its orbit and will remain there for the foreseeable future. It will still be there once we have developed the new energy solutions we need on this planet.
Please watch less science fiction.
Please learn to distinguish fiction from reality.
Please post less.
Am I the only one who is bored beyond tears with these Mars revelations?
My guess is that the vast majority of non-nerds are just as bored with extraplantery discoveries as you. The majority here though are probably keen to get as many of these science stories as they can.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I believe evolution will have the same effect on them, ie they won't be any better adapted to long-term survival in space than we are.
Our bodies are not adapted for speed like a cheetah. So we will never travel faster than a human can run. We don't have big teeth. So we can never be predator. Only prey. We don't have wings. So we will never fly. We don't have gills. So we will never swim underwater longer than we can hold our breath. And obviously we will never ever be able to walk on the moon because there is no air there and we need air to survive.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
You are correct that the solar wind would strip off hydrogen, but the reason it isn't stripping it isn't due to the magnetosphere alone.
Part of the reason Earth has hydrogen is because it also has oxygen. While the two elements (at least hydrogen) would be stripped by the solar wind if they remained separate, the Hydrogen is 'weighted down' by being bound in water molecules with Oxygen.
The solar wind has stripped most of the Helium from our planet's atmosphere because it is a noble gas and doesn't react with other elements. If the solar wind is already strong enough to strip off the He, it would certainly be strong enough to strip off the much lighter Hydrogen.
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