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Researchers Solve One Of The Biggest Mysteries About How Water Flows On Mars (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Not only is water flowing on Mars, it's also boiling. This experiment published today in Nature Geoscience solves one of the major mysteries about the surface of the red planet. Gizmodo writes, "Researchers built a chamber simulating the conditions and atmosphere of Mars, then put ice in there to melt. The ice did melt and the water from it flowed -- but there was also a surprise. The surface of the water boiled as it flowed, and that boiling was strong enough to move not just the water but also dirt and debris surrounding the streams. Importantly, temperature was not the major factor in this boiling water, it was due to the pressure of the atmosphere." You may remember pictures of flowing water on Mars which surfaced last year. One would think the summer temperatures should be too cold for water to flow on Mars (as seen in the images), however, the water that flows on Mars is a salty-brine which lowers the freezing point of the water. So how does the water manage to carve out the landscape so quickly and visibly? Easy: the boiling water theory. Boiling water hits a boiling stage along its surface, where it kicks up dust and dirt and debris in the water's wake. The research team did see the boiling water move debris, but they also saw collapses along the sides of the flows. The boiling and disturbance it causes etches those lines on Mars clearly enough for satellites to notice them.
How does water flowing on Mars affect my life or anyone else's in a meaningful way? Can anyone give me an answer? I'm betting nobody can.
Well at least we can start working on apparatus for distilling fresh water from in situ martian brine...
Greed is the root of all evil.
It's not really a surprise that altering the composition of the solution affects when it vaporizes. A greater mystery, IMO, is just how much water Mars once had. If you evaporated all the water on the Earth, you might see topography not totally unlike Mars. The northern hemisphere of Mars is much lower, about 2 km, than the southern hemisphere. While not as clear cut on Earth, you'd find that the northern hemisphere is quite a bit higher than the southern hemisphere. The simple reason is that much of the southern hemisphere on Earth is an ocean. It makes me wonder if the northern hemisphere of Mars was once a massive ocean. There is evidence of rivers draining into it, which is fairly clear when looking at a topographical map. I hypothesize that Mars once had a large northern ocean.
g to the oatse
c to the izzex
fo shizzle my nizzle
Or not? Gravity is weaker on Mars...
temperature was not the major factor in this boiling water, it was due to the pressure of the atmosphere
Facepalm material.
This is not intuitively obvious to people who memorized PV = nRT in grade school *HOW*?!?
Who was this exactly a mystery *from*?
If salty brine is part of the boiling water effect on Mars, then after the water disappears, there should be white streaks in the satellite pictures that show where the salt was deposited. The sat sensors should be able to pick up this mineral to confirm that the boiling water consists of a salty brine. I didn't see any white streaks to indicate the path of the water in the picture with the residual being the salt.
. . . which direction does Martian water flow when you flush the toilet . . . clockwise, or counterclockwise . . . ?
How does water flowing on Mars affect my life or anyone else's in a meaningful way?
This could affect your life if you are flying to Jupiter, and stop to take a dump on Mars.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
... on the Curiosity lander...
http://northerntruthseeker.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/nasa-faked-mars-mission-why-i-am-not.html
I thought it was common knowledge for sometime that water on Mars would boil off.
I'm sure there is much more to this research than the summary and the story bring to light. At least I hope there is. I know that the real meat of most research can't be displayed in such a format and this certainly wasn't the really important findings. It's "science" writing like this that leads the public astray from the relevance of most research.
Great post! With the way you wrote that comment, I can't tell if you're posting that crap to make a humourous contribution or if you actually believe that conspiracy-theory nutter! Well played.
Unless, of course, you were serious about your post. In that case, I pity you.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
The term "conspiracy theory" was popularized by the CIA so that anyone who distrusts the government and its agencies is branded a psycho (it's a confirmed fact). Thanks for contributing to this propaganda and the continuation of this meme, I'm sure CIA is glad it worked so well on you. Turns out those who engage in conspiracies want you to think there is no such thing as a conspiracy. And thanks to their manipulation, you and others like you do their psy-ops for them.
If you ever come across negative gravity where things travel uphill do be sure to let us know won't you.
Keep taking the meds fella. I'm sure you next appointment with the doc is not far away.
Course, in the meantime you might want to figure out how NASA are bouncing signals off mars too fool all those non governmental orgs and other countries who are picking up the signals too. Oh, wait! They must be in on it too! I bet its the Bilderberg Group eh??
Half of the USA is on some kind of anti-psychotic medication due to heavy pollution and untested, carcinogenic petroleum-based products everywhere. The inmates are running the asylum buddy. Trusting the government over common sense is a sign of severe mental illness in itself.
I don't trust many governments. But I do trust in basic physics and the impossibility of virtually every country in the world with a science program being in on some conspiracy to fake a robotic mars mission that most of the public frankly don't give a shit about anyway. It would be harder to fake than actually go there.
a losing battle; a4re about 7000/5
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it's cold as hell.
Those pictures are really amazing. You can see the channels grow in the sand as the snow melts off the mountains.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I wouldn't there is too much international collaboration in the space program and nobody is going to be willing to admit they are the country that couldn't detect the rover. All said though, yes it is much less likely than a conspiracy within our government and between it and official bodies and corporations.
Anyone who doubts the possibility of a conspiracy in the US after the Snowden leaks is off their rocker not even so much because of what was leaked (although that was plenty bad) but because of the response after it was leaked. Including the bill passed that was supposed to put a stop to it but actually just legalized it.
Somewhere about 2003 people took attention on these gullies. To many then it became clear that water still FLOWS in Mars. Its origin is clearly linked to certain horizons where pockets or small underground lakes can survive. While it is not clear how they survive there, two things are pretty well known:
1. Regionally these pockets are frequently linked to a few horizons so they come mostly from one and the same levels above local ground.
2. Most of them have a clear feature of bursting, nearly "exploding". The way they formed also suggested that liquid water didn't stay for long. They form and dry up fast not even reaching the bottoms of valleys or ravines.
So there is no big discovery here. What is novel is that someone may have found in laboratory HOW these bursts happen and why they have the features we see. And probably he may be missing a few things. One is why landscape remains "wet" for quite long time. Second - why the dark streaks seem to become bright-grey in time. Third - why this happens seasonally.
Anyway these questions will probably be answered in a few years from now, with fireworks and claims of novelity. This is how Science works in Mars...
We know from experiments here on Earth that if you put water into a low pressure / near vacuum environment that it will boil off. No $hit temperature isn't a factor when the environment is so remarkably light on any sort of air pressure.
This sounds like a bunch of researchers made up some convincing grant to pay their bills for a few months already answering a question we could have easily extrapolated from observable phenomena here on this planet.
While I don't subscribe to his lunacy on Mars, he is right about the CIA trying to discredit government critics with the "conspiracy theory" label.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...
The salts in question are perchlorates, not NaCl, so they may not have the white colour expected of NaCl crystals. In addition to the colour of the crystals, other contaminants like fine dust, trace iron salts (of which there might be a great deal if not the actual perchlorate salt) and other chemicals might serve to discolour the new crystals even further.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
It's an improvement. For the longest time, they were running about claiming that the FBI had made up the term and were quoting a Wikipedia article about it. The article (and the cited sources) did not say any such thing. They said what the AC is now saying - that the FBI popularized the term and that it was for that specific reason.
That, I can attest to. That is factual and confirmed in many sources - there's even a few (non-crazy) documentaries about it. The FBI did, indeed, popularize the expression. They weren't the first to use it or anything. See? Always a little truth to those sorts of things. I had the debate with, what I presume was, the same person a couple of times before they stopped repeating it. It was ruining their credibility! :D
As for the rest of what they say... Well, that's up to you to decide what to believe. I'm pretty damned certain we've got rovers on Mars and we went to the Moon - when we said we went. I saw the broadcast live. Special effects were better than that. Sheesh. It wasn't the Stone Age or anything. Kubrick could have done better. I've read a few things about the folks who tend to believe in conspiracy theories. Life's too short for all that.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I don't think anyone doubts the existence of conspiracies. I think we doubt the existence of long-lasting, nefarious, complex conspiracies. There are people conspiring all the time and doing so for varied motivations. Snowden's leak confirms that someone will always tell someone else and will do so for any number of reasons. Secrets aren't kept for long.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You are conflating pressure with density.
Drag, and therefore parachute performance, is proportional to density, not pressure.