Posted on 09/28/2015 5:23:47 PM PDT by Kaslin
I was seeing tease lines in the news over the weekend and on the NASA twitter feed hinting at a major announcement which would come out today. That spurred the usual rounds of speculation with the most popular candidate being that they turned up some form of life or perhaps a fossil or something along those lines. (Personally I was pitching for a large black obelisk of some sort full of stars, but you can only ask for so much.) I honestly wasn’t getting my hopes up too far because they’ve played these games before. Rather than just announcing what they’ve got they schedule a briefing some days in advance to try to stoke up excitement and get as much press mileage as they can and then it turns out to be something that never lives up to the billing.
This one, while promising in some areas, didn’t prove to be much different. They think they’ve spotted signs of liquid water on the surface of the red planet.
Liquid water runs down canyons and crater walls over the summer months on Mars, according to researchers who say the discovery raises the chances of being home to some form of life.
The trickles leave long, dark stains on the Martian terrain that can reach hundreds of metres downhill in the warmer months, before they dry up in the autumn as surface temperatures drop.
Images taken from the Mars orbit show cliffs, and the steep walls of valleys and craters, streaked with summertime flows that in the most active spots combine to form intricate fan-like patterns.
It’s not that the presence of water on Mars isn’t a big deal in scientific terms… it definitely is. But they already knew there was water there. There are ice caps at the poles and there has been a general consensus for a while now that there was probably at least some water trapped under the surface. The fact that it manages to occasionally run in liquid form on the surface in the low temperatures and pressures is interesting from a physics geek perspective, but it’s really not all that huge in terms of news.
So what does it all mean? Our friend Andrew Malcolm has some thoughts and the background of the research at IBD.
Scientists, being scientists, are most intrigued by what they don’t know. Slowly, thanks to Mars rovers and more sophisticated instrumentation circling above that can penetrate the surface, they are seeking to piece together an ancient history that could presage Earth’s future.
Evidence indicates the past presence of at least one vast Atlantic-size ocean, possibly a billion or more years ago. But where did all that water go? And why? If water is flowing intermittently on Mars now, where does it come from? If it flows in that cold, it must be salt water. Soil salts absorbing moisture from the atmosphere? Soil salts drawing up subterranean water?
One concern this is raising for NASA is how to check out the areas with liquid water (presumably the best shot at finding life) without risking contaminating them with life from Earth. Personally I think that ship may have already sailed. We recently found plankton living on the outside of the space station so we’ve pretty much proven that extremophiles can live pretty much anywhere and can even survive for extended periods in the freezing vacuum and radiation of space. We do try to sterilize everything we launch, but are we that effective at the microbial level? I bet there’s already some Earth based microbes hanging out on Mars thanks to us.
What I’d really like to see is some bacteria that’s actually Martian and figure out a way to bring it back and study it. If it has the same basic type of DNA as all the sub-microscopic critters on the Earth that might really tell us something about the solar system and the universe. (And before you ask, yes… bacteria have DNA. It’s just really simple and located in the nucleoid in the bacterial chromosome.) More to the point, if it’s completely different than any life on Earth, then it arose independently. That might really change our outlook on the world, eh?
Who wrote,
"Such large return of investment, on such small investment in fact?"
He was claiming large amounts of water on the scale of oceans surrounding Mars.
Question is, without a real water cycle, how does water get back to higher elevations, especially in quantities sufficient to produce big flows?
Found it, article from 2000 talking about seepage on Mars.
http://www.enterprisemission.com/press-water.html
This is different from his Mars has oceans history. Boy it has been a long time since I went to his site. Enjoy.
Take a look at this. The word ocean(s) is mentioned at least 48 times in this paper.
A NEW MODEL OF MARS AS A FORMER CAPTURED SATELLITE:
BI-MODAL DISTRIBUTION OF KEY FEATURES DUE TO ANCIENT TIDAL STRESS?
Richard C. Hoagland (Principal Investigator, Enterprise Mission)
Michael Bara (Executive Director, Formal Action Committee on Extraterrestrial Studies).
http://www.enterprisemission.com/tides.htm
(excerpts)
A revaluation of Mars ancient history is therefore proposed, suggesting that Mars (well after solar system formation) was captured into synchronous orbital lock with a larger planetary companion (“Planet V”), accounting for the clustering of present day water bursts around the former beds of two bi-modally distributed “Mars ancient oceans” as a direct result.
Valles Marineris (as an eroded ancient tidal bore, formed immediately post-capture); the presence of the extremely flat terrain covering the northern hemisphere (via deposited sediments from the once tidally supported oceans, when released);
Recently published research showing unprecedented outflow channels from the Tharsis and Arabia bulges are shown to be consistent with the sudden relaxation of the two tidal oceans, as is the sculpting of huge amounts of material by fluvial processes north of the Arabia bulge.
Here’s another!
Once Again, NASA Confirms the Bara/Hoagland Mars Tidal Model
http://mikebara.blogspot.com/2013/03/once-again-nasa-confirms-barahoagland.html
A new paper published in the journal Science confirms once again the validity of the Mars Tidal Model first proposed by myself and Richard C. Hoagland in 2001. In our paper, we hypothesized a vast liquid water ocean on the surface of Mars which was held in place by a tidal lock arrangement between Mars, which was originally a moon, and its parent planet, known as “Planet V” or “Maldek” as I called it in my book The Choice.
That one with the straw looks pretty refreshing.
Kermit says it ain’t easy being green but Sir Hugh seems to be enjoying it.
Freak alert
Can we send these people to Mars? They look more like aliens than half of the aliens on “Star Trek”.
I read another article that might interest you.
The “water” in this story does not run freely, but moves slowly downward through the surface soil, which, presumably, is heated by solar radiation
The average daily temp is minus-10 F., and the atmospheric pressure is very low, so any significant extraction of liquid water on the surface will be really difficult.
And, the source of the water is still unknown.
Also, it is located only at high elevations, with very steep inclines, which would make human access quite difficult.
The discovery is interesting, but, as usual, NASA seems to have over hyped it.
And, the source of the water is still unknown.
If there is anything I learned about scientific inquiry in space (from watching Star Trek and Lost in Space) it is that we won't learn the source until after the commercial break.
Plus, check your shirt color before agreeing to go on an away mission.
PHHT!
You ‘next generation’ types and your “away teams”!
Red was the ‘command color’ on that show.
In my day, we had LANDING PARTIES! And command wore GOLD!
Unless it was Tuesday. Then, The Kirk wore his ‘muscley’ green wrap-around in order to impress the six-foot orange women in steel brassieres on Planet Playtex.
Uh...yuck...
NASA to Announce ‘Significant Findings’ of Water on Mars Tuesday! [3/1/2004]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1088571/posts
my first FR post:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1051021/posts?page=8#8
They had better be careful, the EPA will declare it a ‘Wetland’ and not allow any human actions to disturb it.......................
Would make a great golf course................the sand traps would be awesome...........................
Percival Lovell is vindicated!....................
So you had to be wrong in your very first post. LOL
In all seriousness the main reason we’ve lost so many of the mars probes is the fact that there was no one on board to make corrections in real time.
However there is still no really compelling reason to send men to mars yet. We need better robots doing far more in depth science and covering more ground first.
If we want to send men to space, lets get a continuously manned station on the moon first.
Hey, if a robot can’t be sent reliably, no one in their right mind would get in the thing. Plus, realtime corrections would rely on the computers available, and if a robotic probe doesn’t have a computer good enough, neither would a human. So, I’m right again. [horn flourish]
You GOT THAT one!!
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