Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2016 October 5 
Posted on 10/05/2016 6:02:30 AM PDT by ThomasMore
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2016 October 5
Explanation: What is this unusual mound on Mars? NASA's Curiosity rover rolling across Mars has come across a group of these mounds that NASA has labelled Murray Buttes. Pictured is a recently assembled mosaic image of one of the last of the buttes passed by Curiosity on its way up Mt. Sharp -- but also one of the most visually spectacular. Ancient water-deposited layers in relatively dense -- but now dried-out and crumbling -- windblown sandstone tops the 15-meter tall structure. The rim of Gale crater is visible in the distance. Curiosity continues to accumulate clues about how Mars changed from a planet with areas wet and hospitable to microbial life to the dry, barren, rusted landscape seen today.
(Excerpt) Read more at apod.nasa.gov ...
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Hillary has one of these, too.
That explains the big oven mitt jackets.
Billions and billions of billions and billions..................
Sort of a “what if” but still.
What if? As I understand it, Mars once had a molten, liquid core that cooled and solidified. Once that happened the Magnetosphere it had was lost. Once that was lost the atmosphere it protected was lost, boiled off to space. Once the atmosphere boiled off the water boiled off into space as well. How long would that take? Just a few years?
So, all that atmosphere goes into space. Physics being what it is these things would slowly accumulate into lower entropy regions it would seem to me. Is there a nearby gravity sink with a lower entropy, more hospitable home to these elements that had previously been on Mars? UH, yeah.
Could that explain why our sea levels rose 300 to 400 feet some 15,000 years or so ago? At least in part? Could it really have been a “Martian Rain” for 40 days and nights?
I am certain a whole lot of folks smarter than me will point out at least one hundred reasons it cannot be so. I want to hear every one of them. You see, Real Science is NEVER settled.
That sure looks sedimentary to me!
This would make a winning design for a monument to the Obama presidency.
Fish fossils? Oh wow! We gotta get there and find out.
Oh but isn’t that a crumbling building? Ant that what all the rock seers would say?
I thought the same thing.
That’s a LOT of water that went somewhere else.
Intriguing speculation. To me, anyway, not being an atmospheric physicist.
You’re saying oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, et al. — whatever was present in the Martian atmosphere — could no longer be held by the planet and leave Mars. The Sun’s gravitational force would naturally attract them towards the Sun, and, en route, the Earth would scoop them up yearly in its orbit.
I wonder if scientists have discussed this. They must have, right? I mean, the ones not fretting about global warming. I’ve heard about them hypothesizing about water being brought to Earth on asteroids, but not this. Maybe you’re line to have a theory with your name attached to it!
Very interesting! That would make for a pretty cool sci-fi story. I’m not being snarky or anything, I could just picture a very interesting plot line around that. Maybe there were some beings on Mars who earned themselves an even bigger smiting than we did!
Interesting theory. I wonder if the solar wind is stronger on water than gravity in the local solar system. If so than anything boiled off would have to head out into the solar system. Some of it might have ended up on Jupiter or Saturn.
Hummmm.....
Have a look at the “Bumpy” looking rocks in the center fore ground, they almost look like coral
LOL. The Freerepublic theory of planetary evolution!
I have been reading too much Sci Fi with the missus lately. We had not read much until a year or two ago and have really been making up for it. ERBurroughs John Carter was fun. Just finished Cixin Liu. Currently reading Clarke, 2001, 2010, etc.
Also recently discovered Ancient ALiens. I just love how they come up with some real deal thing (say stone blocks in Peru) and decide the intelligence came from “out there”. Let’s see, when faced with a seeming impossibility, that some one intelligent was able to produce stones that have been quarried, transported, and incorporated into structures none of which we could do today we need to think about finding a planet on which such intelligence might have existed. Hmmm. They conjecture there must be such a planet “out there”. Seems to me they need look no further than right between their feet.
Yup. Laid down, layer after layer from a since departed sea.
Unless we were in close proximity in similar orbits in relation to the sun (the largest gravity well locally) and if the suns gravity would capture escaping vaporized oxygen/hydrogen molecules and pull them towards earth.
If earths gravity were strong enough to do that on its own, I doubt our moon would still be where it is.
Mars still has an atmosphere, though it is much thinner than Earth’s and mostly consists of carbon dioxide.
http://www.space.com/16903-mars-atmosphere-climate-weather.html
Indeed, astronomers hypothesize that Mars had a magnetic field, but once the surface began to cool from decreased volcanic activity, the magnetic field disappeared and solar winds destroyed the atmosphere.
http://www.space.com/16912-how-was-mars-made.html
That is indeed the case on Mars. Ancient lava fields indicate a planet-wide magnetic field, while more recent ones do not. It is believed that, once its core cooled down and could no longer generate a global magnetic field, Mars lost its "shield" from incoming cosmic rays (charged particles from, mostly, outside the solar system) and its atmosphere was blown away.
The following NOVA doc covers this very well...
Nova - Magnetic Storm - Earth's Invisible Shield:
Do you see why I say to folks asking, “Where did it go?”- Look out your window.
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