I win the First Annual Martian Bulwer-Lytton contest. |
Posted on 07/16/2008 11:16:14 AM PDT by Coffee200am
PARIS (AFP) - Water bathed the surface of southern Mars for millions of years, helping to create an environment theoretically capable of nurturing life, according to a new study into the planet's mysterious oceans.
Scientists at Brown University in Rhode Island used an instrument aboard a US spacecraft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, to hunt for traces of phyllosilicates, or clay-like minerals that preserve a record of water's interaction with rocks.
They found phyllosilicates in thousands of places, in valleys, dunes and craters in the ancient southern highlands, pointing to an active role by water in Mars's earliest geological era, the Noachian period, 4.6 to 3.8 billion years ago.
"These results point to a rich diversity of Noachian environments conducive to habitability," the authors conclude.
An intriguing find was of deposits in the pointed peaks at the centre of craters. These peaks are generally taken to be underground material thrown up by an impacting asteroid or comet.
For water to be present in such peaks, it must have been present as much as five kilometres (three miles) below the planet's surface, the paper suggests.
"Water must have been creating minerals at depth to get the signatures we see," head researcher John Mustard, a professor of planetary geology, said in a press release.
The subsurface phytosillicates were formed at relatively low temperatures, of between 100 and 200 degrees Celsius (212-392 degrees Fahrenheit), which implies that Mars was not only wet but also relatively temperate at the time.
"What does this mean for habitability? It's very strong," Mustard said. "It wasn't this hot, boiling cauldron. It was a benign, water-rich environment for a long period of time."
The paper, which appears on Thursday in the London-based science journal Nature, is the latest assessment to conclude that Mars was once awash with water, one of the ingredients for life.
Close-up investigations by US landers and imaging from orbiters have also suggested that frozen water may lie close to the surface in some areas today, and possibly in abundance.
Still unclear is what happened to the oceans. The leading theory is that the planet's once-thick atmosphere began to thin, causing the precious liquid to evaporate into space. Only a thin atmosphere, consisting overwhelmingly of carbon dioxide, remains today.
Before long they will say Mars was EXACTLY LIKE EARTH a few million years ago, with flowers, birds, trees, clean water, snow, polar bears, but the EVIL RICH, BIG SUV DRIVING MARTIANS DESTROYED THEIR PRISTINE PLANET. And this is what earth is going to look like. Just give em time. They will come up with it.
I win the First Annual Martian Bulwer-Lytton contest. |
SUVs everyone know they destroyed Mars. or was it smoking or BBQs or drilling for oil or McDonnals..............
More water on Mars news
http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Phoenix_Mars_Lander_Rasping_At_Frozen_Layer_999.html
Phoenix Mars Lander Rasping At Frozen Layer
by Staff Writers Tucson AZ (SPX) Jul 16, 2008
A powered rasp on the back of the robotic arm scoop of NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander is being tested for the first time on Mars in gathering sample shavings of ice. The lander has used its arm in recent days to clear away loose soil from a subsurface layer of hard-frozen material and create a large enough area to use the motorized rasp in a trench informally named “Snow White.” The Phoenix team prepared commands early Tuesday for beginning a series of tests with the rasp later in the day. Engineers and scientists designed the tests to lead up to, in coming days, delivering a sample of icy soil into one of the lander’s laboratory ovens.
“While Phoenix was in development, we added the rasp to the robotic arm design specifically to grind into very hard surface ice,” said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “This is the exactly the situation we find we are facing on Mars, so we believe we have the right tool for the job. Honeybee Robotics in New York City did a heroic job of designing and delivering the rasp on a very short schedule.”
The rasp bit extends at a shallow angle out of an opening on the back of the scoop at the end of the 2.35-meter-long (7.7-foot-long) robotic arm. To use it, the back surface of the scoop is placed on the ground, and a motor rotates the rasp. The angle of the rasp is increased from nearly horizontal to slightly steeper while it is rotating, so the tool kicks shavings sideways onto a collection surface just inside the opening. After the rasp stops, a series of moves by the scoop then shifts the collected shavings from the back of the scoop, past baffles, to the front of the scoop. The baffles serve to keep material from falling out of the rasp opening when the scoop is used as a front loader.
The commands prepared for Phoenix’s activities Tuesday called for rasping into the hard material at the bottom of the Snow White trench at two points about one centimeter (0.4 inch) apart. The lander’s Surface Stereo Imager and robotic arm camera will be used to check the process at several steps and to monitor any resulting sample in the scoop for several hours after it is collected. Collecting an icy sample for an oven of Phoenix’s Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) may involve gathering shavings collected at the rasp opening and scooping up additional shavings produced by the rasp. The Phoenix team has been testing this combination on simulated Martian ice with a near-replica model of Phoenix in a test facility at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
“Scientists”. There everywhere, even at Brown University. What ever happened to all the pimply faced kids wearing lab coats?
Or is media using the word “scientist” too liberally? After all, if pimply faced kids wearing lab coats makes a wild guess and states a theory, there’s good chance they are wrong, whereas if stated by “scientists” then it must be almost fact.
I heard this guy killed Mars' habitability in the library with a candlestick.
With all the probing on Mars over the last 30 years, has there ever been one inkling of a fossil?
Is there any evidence of a major meteor impact on mars?
The way the surface is uniformly covered with those little rocks and red dust makes me think it was whacked big time and all the dust and rocks absorbed all the water and atmoshpere and then settled into what we see now.
Even the current (this article) pictures look just like a new water flow over a relatively uniform dirt layer to me.
Maybe that is where we came from.
we need to dig
near the face on cydonia
that is just too creepy
It is interesting how the opening verses of Genesis describe how the Lord God created the Universe as we know it out of water:
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was [a] formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning — the first day.
6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
What’s the news? We’ve known this for awhile now.
Yep. Cave men flew over from mars on flying space terodactyl's. Kinda screws up the "we crawled out of the sea's and fell out of the tree's" stuff though.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
It was a wet and balmy night.