Posted on 01/31/2007 8:55:30 AM PST by Moseley
Mars 'more active than suspected'
Gullies have appeared in new images taken this year New images of Mars suggest the Red Planet's surface is more active than previously thought, the US space agency (Nasa) reports. Photographs from Nasa's orbiting spacecraft Mars Global Surveyor show recently formed craters and gullies.
The agency's scientists also say that deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near the planet's south pole have shrunk for three summers in a row.
They say this is evidence to suggest climate change is in progress.
Mars rumble
The new gullies appear in an April 2005 image of a sand-dune slope. A previous shot from July 2002 had no trace of them.
The team operating the Mars Orbiter Camera on MGS has found many sites on the Red Planet with fresh-looking gullies, and checked back at more than 100 gullied sites for possible changes between imaging dates, but this is the first such find.
Such gullies might have formed when frozen carbon dioxide, trapped by windblown sand during winter, vaporised rapidly in spring, releasing gas that made the sand flow as a gully-carving fluid, the team speculate.
"To see new gullies and other changes in Mars' surface features on a time span of a few years presents us with a more active, dynamic planet than many suspected," said Nasa's Michael Meyer, Nasa's Mars Exploration Program chief scientist.
Bright future
The newly released images also show boulder tracks at another site, which were not there two years ago.
Michael Malin, the principal investigator on the Mars Orbiter Camera, said it was possible strong winds or even some kind of seismic activity had caused them to roll to their new positions.
But some changes may be happening slower than expected, the scientists report.
Studies suggested new impact craters might appear at only about one-fifth the pace assumed previously, Dr Malin said. This had important implications, he added, because crater counts were used to estimate the ages of Martian surfaces.
The Mars Global Surveyor has been orbiting the planet since 1997; Nasa expects it to carry on doing so for several years to come.
"Our prime mission ended in early 2001, but many of the most important findings have come since then, and even bigger ones might lie ahead," said Tom Thorpe, project manager for Mars Global Surveyor.
They say this is evidence to suggest climate change is in progress.
THE BBC -- one of the key cheerleaders for global warming hysteria -- has actual knowledge that global warming is occurring on MARS as well as Earth, and the most obvious explanation is THE SUN. We can now see how deeply dishonest and deceitful the BBC really is.
If they even care to accept it.
Bush's fault...
Does Algore know about this ?
From a GW moonbat: but mars doesn't have the same magnetic field as Earth!
He's writing the last chapter of Mars in the Balance
William of Ockham would say his model predicts what it was programmed to predict.
It's Bush's fault. Just like the Sun's increase in activity is Bush's fault. It all relates to his not signing the Kyoto accords and the Peak Oil theory.
Ouch !
Fill glass with water and place it outdoors for half an hour. Note: do not do this with the good glassware.
The Sun has nothing to do with it. /s
-PJ
Here in San Diego will not work, but if you fill it ¾ full (mark the spot with tape) and put it in the freezer (grin)
Actually it would not have worked here yesterday and maybe not today either. We got GW bad this week, might even break freezing for the first time since September. Kind of reminds one of a January back in the mid 1970s when it hit 60 one afternoon, very confusing.
Republicans Are From Mars, Democrats Are From Venus
Warming on Mars is because of pollution resulting from the operation of the 2 rovers.
They've been there for 3 years. /sarcasm
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