Posted on 08/23/2007 9:20:12 AM PDT by LibWhacker
The soil on Mars may contain microbial life!
Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, will declare on Friday the Viking spacecraft may have found signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface.
His analysis of one of the experiments carried out by the Viking spacecraft suggests that 0.1 percent of the Martian soil could be of biological origin.
That is roughly comparable to biomass levels found in some Antarctic permafrost, home to a range of hardy bacteria and lichen.
Developing....
Oh, my, I didn’t mean to post that. Wrong screen. Please ignore everyone.
Is that a Viking Kitty?
It is the mars rover bunny.
Oh good pun! BTW.
More info on it here.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1071395/posts?q=1&;page=1#1
Or just how big space is...
Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
Mark
And your source of information is????
His own thoughts, since he has his head so far in the sand.
Mars has a larger surface to volume ratio due to its smaller radius which allowed it to cool down faster after accretion. It is estimated that the magnetic field of Mars lasted about half a billion years. Then the solar wind was able to strip the atmosphere and oceans (it was deflected before).
A good question is what caused the planetary magnetic field on Venus to fail. Venus is comparable to the Earth in surface to volume ratio so it is surprising that it doesn't have a similar magnetic field. The lack of a magnetic field (which in our case is produced by a dynamo in the Earth's core) implies that the core of Venus is all liquid with no convection or even perhaps that the core is all solid.
I note the Venus problem because while the standard explanations for the magnetic fields of Earth and Mars discuss surface to volume ratios, there are more variables that must be discussed. The Earth has a strong convection cycle in which it transports heat to the surface (which is observed by plate tectonics). Some would argue that Mars has some evidence of early plate motion which indicates some convection occurred. No plate motion is visible on Venus which may indicate that no convection is occurring or has occurred. Perhaps the high surface temperature makes the temperature gradient too shallow to support a strong convection cycle.
No, you can look for space aliens in Kansas for all I care. Regarding “Outer Space”, or the Universe, there are no space aliens out there either but its not a “waste” since we can explore, colonize and do other things that honor our Creator.
SETI, common sense (and “The Privileged Planet” if you care to read it).
So if you could increase the mass of the planet, you could increase the atmosphere.
1) We could steer comets into Mars, that would increase the mass, provide more water, and heat up the planet some from the impacts.
2) It’s either that or we feed Mars candy, since everyone knows 1 lb of candy causes a 5lb weight gain.
3) Or we use the Massmaximizer 5000 on the planet.
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