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Where in the World is Mars' Water? (axios.com)
An anonymous reader shares an Axios report: In the beginning, Mars was a water world. But at some point in Mars' distant past, much of that water disappeared, leaving behind polar ice caps and a complex geology. Figuring out just where it went has been a major priority for scientists -- life as we know it can't exist without water, and any future settlers would need a steady supply. A new study, published Wednesday in Nature, suggests that much of what remains might in inaccessible. Some went into space, but even more of it may have sunk into the ground like a sponge, only to become bound up in minerals deep within the planet. "Mars, by virtue of its chemistry, was doomed from the start," study author Jon Wade, of Oxford University, tells Axios.
So, this would imply that we could never terraform Mars because it cannot maintain surface water.
We couldn't with today's technology, nor tomorrow's. Long term? Who knows. There is lots of water out in space. Many comets and asteroids contain bunches of it. If you could harvest them and send them to Mars- you could probably create temporary surface water... over the millennia it will sink into the planet again- you'd need to keep "topping it off". Losing water to space is a big problem too... you'd need to try and keep an atmosphere- again, you could probably create one, but need to keep "topping it off" over the millennia by pumping more gas out.
You can terraform Mars but it will revert back to it's current dead-state if you don't keep maintaining it. A bit like a field. You can plough a field and harvest wheat one year... the next it might self seed and have some coming back that you can harvest, the next a little less, the next a little less... eventually you're going to need to replough the field, rotate the crops, replant, etc, if you want that field to feed you.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Do planetologists use the term "geology" when they're talking about another planet?
It's really for our own benefit that it's so inaccessible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
I thought it was pretty much settled? Thin atmosphere, solar radiation disassociated water into hydrogen and oxygen, the hydrogen left, the oxygen combined with various minerals. At least, that's what I had learned...
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That 3% fresh water is constantly cycled back to and from the ocean. If you only had the fresh water amount from Earth, and let it loose into the Mars environment, it would quickly disappear into the rocks. No plants would be able to grow, so no terraforming. Fresh water exists on Earth because the oceans exist.
The atmosphere that is a hundredth of Earth's, where surface gasses evaporate?
Anyone hoping to terraform a planet overnight would be disappointed. An atmosphere would have to be established before the water to prevent it all being stripped away in the first place. If you want water to stay put on the surface, you need an atmosphere first.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
earth. thats where.
but in my defense I was really, really thirsty. But at least I didn't blame it on Albino Nameks (too obscure?).
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I have long thought that much of the "evidence" for water on Mars, that is, the sculpted features of the Martian landscape, were due simply to the action of the thin wind there over thousands and millions of years. Living in Canada and having over the decades often observed the sculpting of snow by the wind here, it seems to me the parallels are obvious. The wind does surprising things to snow, both light and heavy snow, and I see many similarities in the thought-to-be-water-sculpted features on Mars.
It ain't the long-gone water, it's the thin but ever-present wind.
Did you check Uranus?
All the water was used to fill Waldo and Carmen San Diego's pool. Find them and you find the water.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The atmosphere that is a hundredth of Earth's, where surface gasses evaporate?
Anyone hoping to terraform a planet overnight would be disappointed. An atmosphere would have to be established before the water to prevent it all being stripped away in the first place. If you want water to stay put on the surface, you need an atmosphere first.
You'll also need a magnetic field to keep it there, which Mars currently does not have. Terraforming Mars is a fun idea, but I doubt it will be achievable for a very long time. We can barely get off our own planet, and are currently pretty bad at managing its resources. It will be scores of decades, if not centuries, before we can undertake something like terraforming another planet.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Do planetologists use the term "geology" when they're talking about another planet?
Technically, no, the proper term for the study of Mars planetary formation, mineral chemistry etc is areology.
It etymologically ought to be areology, but it turns out that having a different word for the geology of each planet was too cumbersome, so they are all lumped together as "Planetary geology."
https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/research/research-topics-list/planetary-sciences/planetary-geology-and-geophysics
http://planetary-science.org/planetary-science-3/planetary-geology/
and geologists routinely use the term "Martian geology" and "geology of Mars"
https://mars.nasa.gov/programmissions/science/goal3/
http://planetary-science.org/mars-research/surface-geology-of-mars/
https://www.exploratorium.edu/video/martian-geology-101
https://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/geol212/lectures/01.html
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
... into the ground.
The earth's water is kept on the surface by geothermal heat. Any water that trickles down through fissures is quickly heated and vented back into the atmosphere as steam. Mars' geothermal output has cooled to the point that there is little, if any active volcanism. And so the water stays underground.
Have gnu, will travel.
One of the concerning things about it as well due to the failure of mechanical systems, it would seem such colonies would be constantly dependant on imports from earth to maintain it. Earth already has its own resource problems without supporting colonies on other planets. unless a colony can be completely self sufficient, it would damage earth's resources.
At best, it might be able to host a small scientific colony but the idea of any large scale population is really, really far fetched.
The absurdity of mars colonization can be shown that how much easier it would be to colonize antartica.
Since without magnetic field to protect from solar radiation and such the water decomposes into hydrogen which then floats up and swept away, attempts to extract water from the Mars ground could permenantly destroy what little resource remains as such it is inevitable that extracted water will leak out into the environment and be swept away gradually and eventually completely.
This also illustrates a problem with all hydrogen fuel on earth, there is little free hydrogen on earth because gravity is too weak to hold it down, so it floats up to the upper atmosphere and is swept away by solar wind, even on earth, like Helium does. So, if hydrogen is used by fusion or rockets, there are questions that needs to be answered as to if thats sustainable in the long haul, we have to stop thinking short term and start thinking long term like how our usage patterns will work out millions of years into the future. Hydrogen for fusion or rockets is often proposed to be extracted from water, basically what you are doing is burning up water, hydrogen in H20 is weighed down with oxygen keeping it down on the surface, when hydrogen is freed, it can float up into space, so you lose water. With fusion, its inevitable some will escape into the atmosphere and of course also with rockets. Might be insignificant in the short run but we need to make things sustainable in the long run and especially regarding the tendancy for these things to want to scale. Its like with Tesla and electric battery, you create the battery technology and looks good when you are shipping a few thousand cars, but once the technology is introduced it snowballs and before you know it the worlds supply of the rare earth metals in the batteries are totally depleted.
Much of these concerns could be alleviated if we could find an easter egg or a loophole in the laws of physics that could allow for huge amounts of energy to be created without the need for fuel, violating the theory of thermodynamics. This way you could for instance, set up a colony on Europa underweater, provided you have an ample energy source, you can heat it and would have plenty of water around you for making oxygen atmophere, and so on. Or,
These are not laws, theories and theories which can be imperfect. Of course its a long shot but close mindedness and dogma is on full display with allegedly objective scientists who refuse to consider the possibility of this, and make basic logical blunders to support their dogma. These blunders are that all physical laws are based on assumptions when they are extrapolated to behave in the same manner under all contexts. Let me explain. People make limited observational data and electromagnetism or gravity is measured to behave a certain way, in a limited set of expirements that they perform. These expirements they perform are tested in limited number of arrangements magnets, fields, whatever. They then extrapolate that behaviour to apply to all other arrangments of fields, magnets and so on. This is an assumption and thats why the "laws of physics" that the current ones apply to all interactions in the same way is based on assumption. Thus, if there was an effect that only arose with a very specific arrangement of magnets, perhaps a specific type of temporal, kinetic or spatial arrangement or some combination of these, such as rotating magnetic fields with specific velocity and geometry, that is one of a billion, you would not find it, espec
Venus doesn't have a magnetic field, either. Various space probes have measured the magnetic fields of the planets in our solar system, and both Mars and Venus share an immeasurably low value, suggesting no molten core. The solar wind impacts directly upon Venus' thick atmosphere, creating a very weak ionosphere, but it's effectively as weak as Mars'.
It is as "non-existent" as Earth's atmosphere at 35 km, where some fixed wing aircraft have flown, and 40 km below where meteors typically burn-up.
To deposit comet material on Mars you would probably put the comet in a low circular orbit where drag becomes significant, and start breaking off small chunks to de-orbit and mostly vaporize in this "nonexistent" atmosphere. This should be an easily controllable process. If you blast material off the trailing side you could give the main body small boosts, while immediately de-orbiting the material ejected.
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