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Mars Had Big Rivers For Billions of Years, Study Suggests (space.com)
A new study suggests that Mars once had giant rivers larger than anything on Earth after the planet lost most of its atmosphere to space. "That great thinning, which was driven by air-stripping solar particles, was mostly complete by 3.7 billion years ago, leaving Mars with an atmosphere far wispier than Earth's," reports Space.com. "But Martian rivers likely didn't totally dry out until less than 1 billion years ago, the new study found." From the report: "We can start to see that Mars didn't just have one wet period early in its history and then dried out," study lead author Edwin Kite, an assistant professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, told Space.com. "It's more complicated than that; there were multiple wet periods." The team's work suggests that Martian rivers flowed intermittently but intensely over much of the planet's 4.5-billion-year history, driven by precipitation-fed runoff. The rivers' impressive width -- in many cases, more than twice that of comparable Earth catchments -- is a testament to that intensity.
It's unclear how much water Martian rivers carried, because their depth is hard to estimate. Determining depth generally requires up-close analysis of riverbed rocks and pebbles, Kite said, and such work has only been done in a few locations on Mars, such as Gale Crater, which NASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring since 2012. The ancient Mars rivers didn't flow in just a few favored spots; rather, they were distributed widely around the planet, Kite and his colleagues found.
It's unclear how much water Martian rivers carried, because their depth is hard to estimate. Determining depth generally requires up-close analysis of riverbed rocks and pebbles, Kite said, and such work has only been done in a few locations on Mars, such as Gale Crater, which NASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring since 2012. The ancient Mars rivers didn't flow in just a few favored spots; rather, they were distributed widely around the planet, Kite and his colleagues found.
right
and expect an awful shock when they discover the broken remains of the Statue of Liberty.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Without atmosphere, there's no rain.
And without rain, how can rivers be fuill of water for billions of years?!?
for dozens of years
Bill got caught lying 12-25 times repeatedly stating "Blood plasma is sterile" and then later that "The Chinese Govt does not directly censor Chinese citizens" and other absolute bullshit head-in-ass retard-level lies. You're not trustworthy.
You are not a source of information that anyone should or even could trust, knowing your dishonest history. Sorry. That's what accountability means when you get caught lying repeatedly, over and over, even after directly corrected.
You're a liar, Bill.
Years after the rivers dried up followed by countless millennia of wind erosion we can still see them as if it was relatively recent. Not filled with sands, not eroded away, perhaps even enhanced with the edges smoothed a bit. What does that tell us? It would be neat to have a computer simulation to reverse the erosion to see what it may have looked like before.
OK, cool. So what?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
This article includes several references on giving Mars an artificial magnetosphere with machine(s) that are within existing human capability to build. With a functional BFR class rocket, we would have the capability to actually deploy such a system.
Once such a machine were turned on the atmospheric pressure and temperature on Mars would rise sufficiently within a handful of years to remove the need to wear a space suit. Liquid water could (and would) exist in lakes, rivers, and rain. The people who deploy such a machine may be able to personally experience the result and take a stroll on Mars wearing nothing but a jacket and an oxygen mask. Doing without oxygen for a few minutes is no big deal for a human, thus greatly simplifying human habitation. If exposed to the vacuum of the current Martian atmosphere you could watch the water boil out of your eyes for the remaining 15 seconds of your consciousness. (goofy Total Recall eyes popping out scene)
Transforming the composition of the Martian atmosphere to something humans can breathe directly will take a bit longer, but we won't have to spend much money or effort on that, we've got some great organisms that can do the hard work for us.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
Not a credible source. Basically a bunch of self-proclaimed "science journalists" with no real qualifications other than they were journalism majors.
The very first telescopes trained on Mars detected the "canals".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
If Mars is as wet as theorized that suggests a good possibility of ancient life (now extinct) and it makes me curious about the prospect of fossil fuels on Mars.
All you need to know is that NASA allows no microscopes on Mars. Since the chemical tests from the 70s probe proved the existence of life on mars with massive confidence many decades back, NASA's only agenda has been to slow down (on behalf of the insanely powerful major organised religions of our earth) the widespread public awareness of extra terrestrial life (assumed simple) at many locations across our solar system.
In place we get yearly 'discoveries' of 'ancient' water on Mars- with pseudo science headlines always pushing this timeline as BILLIONS of years ago. Actually there is ZERO scientific certainty as to when major surface water vanished from Mars' surface. But the headlines are designed to give the impression to the sheeple of a long dead planet- as the Vatican and others still demand.
Know your history. When the Vatican officially told the sheeple that the Sun revolved around the Earth, alpha scientists, including leaders of the Vatican, had known the truth for more than one thousand years. The sheeple are given CONTROL messages- not scientific truths.
In the 50s til the late 60s, it was accepted in the scientific community that there was proof enough that simple life could survive the journey between significant objects in our solar system, and that powerful collisions were sending surface material from one major body to the others on an ongoing basis. Even if life began on Earth - that life had had billions of years to spread across the solar system.
Then the major religions of Earth considered this science, and came to a settled conclusion that this knowledge would be DISRUPTIVE to their control (what did the 'islamic' nation of Brunei, under Saudi control, and supported by the EU and USA, announce yesterday?). So NASA (and the Russian space agency- see the power of the Russian orthodox church) was ordered to take the position that life outside the Earth was vanishingly unlikely, and anyway billions of years extinct. Slashdot is just another mouthpiece of NASA.
I read that as "Mars Had Big Rovers For Billions of Years".
"Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
just admit it.
Wow, this information is COMPLETELY USELESS.
This is what it does to a planet!
So, unless John Carter really did get back, the White Martians wound up controlling all the others, the green, the red....
Wet period