Posted on 10/25/2005 7:37:35 PM PDT by KevinDavis
A new high-resolution map of Mars's magnetic field indicates that the red planet's crust once moved like present-day Earth's.
The map was pieced together from observations of Mars's magnetic field taken by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). It reveals that the planet's surface was shaped in the same manner as Earth's – by giant crustal plates pulling apart or smashing together.
In 1999, MGS provided a glimpse of this type of activity over one region in the Southern Hemisphere. The new map is based on four years of data and covers the entire planet, yielding evidence that some of the main features on Mars, such as the Tharsis volcanoes and the Valles Marineris, were created in part by the same processes that created the Hawaiian Islands and Grand Canyon on Earth.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
They just need to crash a few asteroids and comets into it to increase it's gravity and its H2O content. I'd suggest starting with Phobos and Deimos.
this is so silly..
Imagine, a planet being like... another planet. How astounding. Next they'll be saying our sun is ... simliar to other stars.. What will come next, our moon is like others?
(Granted, the climates may differ vastly, but cmon, it's not news that planets are like planets...Kinda self evident).
It looks like more and more that Mars can support humans......
It will never happen. Mars is too small to hold a dense atmosphere, it's colder than Antartica, there is no food, no shelter, and no FreeRepublic.com, it's not for me.
Do they also have global warming that is caused by George Bush? If not, of course Mars is nothing like Earth.
Yet.
I say we build a big tube from EArth to Mars and dump all our pollution there...god forbid we hurt the frozen microorganism
(sarc)
We need a photo of looter guy carrying that away.
Doubtful as to any longterm human habitats because Mars has no magnetic field. It's believed by many that Mars lost it's magnetic field and that that quite obviously then brought about the destruction of any surface water (to speak of) along with most of the atmosphere and anything else that may have existed there.
Without a magnetic field, there's no ability to maintain a "captured" atmosphere complete with surface water and carbon-based life (us [animal life], plants, what we know on Earth as "life").
And, to my knowledge, once gone, there's no way to recreate a magnetic field for a/any planet. Gone is gone as to a magnetic field.
Mars has a very, very weak magnetic field and if it ever had life and surface water and therefore a more intense atmosphere similar to that here on Earth, then it had all that because of a once-existent magnetic field, now gone.
With any/all planets in any proximity to any star of our Sun's intensity, a magnetic field is necessary to buffer the effects of the/that sun/star upon a planet's surface. Without the "buffer" effect of a magnetic field, planet surfaces are fried by solar radiation and any atmosphere is, quite literally, "blown off/away" from a planet by solar radiation. And along with atmosphere, most if not all surface/atmospheric water.
A magnetic field (thank God that Earth has one or we would not exist here as we now know life to be, as we now are and as we know plant and animal life to be) is necessary to sustain life as we know it to be. IF there's, say, a silicon-based lifeform somewhere, then that's a different story. Or perhaps very minute carbon based lifeforms embedded within silicon that are then protected and encapsulated along with sustaining water and energy source, but once exposed to any external conditions, without an atmosphere, would perish. Which may be what Mars has had for a while, if there is carbon-based life there or has been in recent eons.
"Carbon-based life" is what Earth sustains, known to most as our Earth animal and plant life, "us" included.
Yeah, if the humans don't want to eat or breathe. In other words if they are lifeless in a box. I guess that would be called "support".
AND (last thing), without proximity to a star such as is our Sun (of that energy source, similar in proportion to planets as we know them in our solar system), then planets are mere frozen orbs in such deep freeze as to be nearly unimaginable to us as we understand temperatures, and thus, not able to sustain carbon-based life forms under any circumstances.
Earth really IS in a perfect, "heavenly" type situation: close enough to a large and intense enough star to be warm enough but not broiled and not deep frozen, and with a magnetic field in place that protects us from the damaging effects of solar radiation to such a degree that we receive just enough but not so much that we don't all carbonize instantaneously.
When I read about the surface conditions of gas giants and frozen planets that are only a few planets farther away than we are from out Sun, and then about Venus just a tad closer, it's truly a miracle that the Earth has been here all this time just as it is, adequate enough to sustain us all. Truly a miracle.
Think about it, once man gets there he'll no doubt contribute to a martian global warming and. . .er wait a minute, I think the global warming crowd is trying to tell us now that global warming will cause a new ice age. Never mind.
I think Hollywood hosts some silicon-based lifeforms, what with all the plastic surgery.
do you mean gravitational field?
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