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The Dirt On Mars, In Words And Pictures
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Jan 21, 2004 08:46 AM
from the on-the-qt-and-very-hush-hush dept.
from the on-the-qt-and-very-hush-hush dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Spirit rover's first soil analysis reveals some puzzling features about Gusev crater. The region seems to contain the greenish silicate mineral, olivine, which usually is considered water-reactive and thus volcanic in origin. For olivine to be found in the soil may point to rock formation during a drier period in martian history, even with strong evidence for sampling in an ancient lakebed. A second puzzle is why the soil seems so crusty. After the rover arm pressed soil down, the top layer of dust hardly moved, a finding that suggests something may be binding the dust like some type of salt or thin cement." For even more and better Mars pictures, read on below.
mlyle writes "I've spent a few hours hacking together some software to deal with the Mars Exploration Rover imagery at JPL. The software puts together a webpage and RDF feed of new raw imagery as it is posted to the JPL site, along with technical information decoded about how the picture was taken. It also produces stereo anaglyphs and color images that NASA has not seen fit to convert and make publically available. Be sure to also check out the ultra high resolution image of the lander as viewed from Spirit."
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Maestro update! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Maestro update! (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems the best the NASA guys are hoping for is evidence that there was once water on the planet. According to the news this would prove that life was once possible there. My questions is... what does that do for us?
Evidence that dinasaurs once roamed the earth isn't taking us towards bringing them back. From a casual observer this seems a pointless exercise, but I'm sure I'm just not informed enough, can someone help me out?
Re:Maestro update! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Maestro update! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not me, I don't know what there was before the big bang and don't mid admitting it. I guess you could say that believing in the big bang requires a certain amount of faith but at least there is evidence for it and it is a lot more credible than a 2000 year old book that has been translated so many times it can't be accurate.
Parent
Re:Maestro update! (Score:4, Interesting)
Duke University Medical Center undertook a study about the power of prayer. They had a randomized selected group of patients to be prayed for by christian, jewish, and muslim clerics -- and a control that was not prayed for.
Neither group was measurably better than the other.
Therefore, prayer didn't make a difference.
Parent
Re:Maestro update! (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying "I don't know" or even "That information is unknowable" has nothing to do with faith. Faith is, by definition, a belief in something where there is insufficient evidence for proof.
We don't know what happened before the Big Bang, and we will almost certainly never know. It's quite possible the question makes no sense, as time itself may be an artifact of the Big Bang. But confessing ignorance is not the same as professing belief in an unprovable postulate, particularly one as complex as a Creator.
Parent
causes, precursors (Score:5, Insightful)
Eggzactly.
One of the less ridiculous "proofs" for God's existence is that, "the world exists. Because there cannot be infinite causes, an ultimate originator must exist and that originator is God."
The "no infinite causes" ('nic') line is from Aristotle.
The problem is that NIC is only true if you take Aristotle's word for it. Now, he was assuredly a smart dude, but he was not infallible. His philosophy denies the existence of atomic particles (so if you agree with Aristotle 100%, you either have a fantastic take on all the science of the last 100 years, or you're provably wrong about something.)
The second problem is the assumption that, "if there is an ultimate originator, then it is God."
This is also simply an article of faith, which does not per se make it wrong, merely unjustified.
I can say with equal emphasis and personal faith that, "Since there cannot be an ultimate originator, there must be infinite causes." Further, I could say: "Therefore, those infinite causes are God", or equally, "Therefore, belief in God as an ultimate originator is fallacious."
No one can disprove that without assuming something on faith, either in a trusted authority (philosophical, religious, or otherwise) because no one actually has evidence either way.
Faith is a natural and healthy part of the human experience. Self righteousness and moral absolutism are comfy illusions. The difference between faith and zealotry is that zealots can't or won't change their beliefs under any cirumstances. Even when their own intelligence officers tell them that Iraq abandonded it's WMD programs in 1991.
Parent
Re:Are we really looking for an answer to a proble (Score:5, Insightful)
Finding traces of life on Mars would further the work of Galaleo[sp], Darwin, Einstein, and all the other great minds who pushed the boundries of knowledge, who led to BIGGER questions. Finding Osama would make George Bush look like he already did not waste BILLIONS (not just millions) of dollars, and MIGHT increase Americas sense of security by a minute modicum.
Finding life would challenge theology, and put some serious stress on the creationists, which in my opinion is a good thing. It also would expand the Earthly feilds of science, answering some time-old questions. Finding Osama and killing him would only answer the question "Where is Osama?", which is of little importance to the world-as-a-whole, and the greater reach of intellectual history streaching before us.
Finding life would be comforting to us, now and generations hence. We would for once know that we are not alone, and that the odds of alien life, albeit simple, are greater than some nay-sayers say. Finding Osama, well, would be comforting to the US, at least until the next "evil doer" comes along to rain on our parade.
You must look at the bigger picture. Killing Osama is a sign of hatred, dark emotions, revenge, war. Finding life, a sign of hope, progress (in a good way), knowledge, and a greater respect for life itself. What is wrong with embracing both goals, vengence and death, and hope and respect?
Parent
Re:Are we really looking for an answer to a proble (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, inasmuch as the desire to know is part of our (humans) nature, knowing is an end in itself. That is, knowledge doesn't have to be useful as a means to an end to be worth pursuing. That's just the way we are. Knowledge often *is* useful, of course, but it doesn't have to be.
While I'm fascinated by the rovers on Mars and finding out what's there, is that really the best way to spend $400 million (not just dollars but resources)?
It's important to remember that when NASA spends USD 400M to learn about Mars, it's not as if they're dumping that money into a big pit, and then expecting to be given the information in exchange. They're paying contractors, vendors, and hosts of other private individuals and businesses for their time and efforts. The money is injected directly into the economy, which is a Good Thing. People often talk (though the parent didn't) about how the money spent on projects like this could go toward feeding the hungry or some other (admittedly) noble thing. Well, you might argue that NASA is (indirectly) feeding the hungry by giving millions of dollars of contract work to companies.
Belloc
Parent
Re:Maestro update! (Score:5, Interesting)
Why search for ancient life in the first place? There's a chance that it would help explain the origin of life on earth. Future missions would be devoted to figuring out how life came to be. If both planets had life completely independently (no rocks with bacteria flying through space) it would tell us that it's very likely there is life elsewhere in the universe.
Parent
Re:Maestro update! (Score:3, Interesting)
Either this solar system is extraordinarily friendly i nterms of having life supporting environments, or, life friendly environments are common throughout the universe.
The latter will be a more popular choice, as it suggests we could be in store to come into extra terrestrail life, be it intellegent or not, at some point, should we become a fully
Re:Maestro update! (Score:4, Interesting)
The existence of life outside of Earth is as huge a revelation to religion as the debunking of the Earth-centric model of the solar system. The spiritual ramifications are enormous, but not often talked about.
If there is life on Mars, then suddenly Darwinism takes a huge leap and Biblical creationism, at least the most common interpretations, takes a step back. Then if there is/was life on Mars, then why not on other planets, which have been found to be far more common than we thought. And if there is life all over the universe, then it isn't too far a leap to say that some of it has evolved into sentient life forms. And now we have to ask if other intelligent, self-aware creatures have a soul. Do they have an afterlife?
This goes on and on. Needless to say, more than scientists and geeks are interested in the findings of these missions.
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Re:Maestro update! (Score:4, Informative)
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Why B&W? (Score:4, Interesting)
levine
Re:Why B&W? (Score:5, Informative)
essentially, they are tripling their resolution at the expense of having to take three monochrome pictures each through different color filters to get a single full color picture.
Parent
Re:Why B&W? (Score:5, Informative)
Surprisingly few spacecraft have taken conventional colour cameras with them. Some of the Voyager colour shots of Jupiter, for instance, are definitely made up of multiple exposures taken at slightly different times - if you look at the red, green and blue channels, you can see how the clouds have moved while the exposures were being taken.
I think the CCDs on modern telescopes are monochrome as well, with particular filters used for looking at interesting wavelengths and things like that. 'Colour' shots are again made by combining multiple exposures...
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Re:Why B&W? (Score:5, Informative)
What you want on a space probe is maximal CCD chip area-- not to take things up with filters. So they have a color wheel instead. Also, the filters of ranges that the eye is sensitive to in red, green, and blue is not very useful scientifically.
They have a choice of 8 filters on each of the pancams, and the left filters are in the visible range of light. However, there are caveats, as human visual perception is a complex thing. As a result, colors are going to be off even if a picture is shot with all 7 visual range filters.
The image processing software I've written makes a best guess with 2/4/7 and 2/5/6 filter sets. It is pretty close, but extreme colors are wrong (the red point is shifted by about 30nm) I hope to use the cases where they've shot additional pictures (e.g. magic carpet) to improve things further for selected images in the next couple of days.
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Re:Why B&W? (Score:3, Informative)
Why surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
One unexpected finding was the Moessbauer spectrometer's detection of a mineral called olivine, which does not survive weathering well
It doesn't survive weathering well in Earth like conditions. Mars, on the other hand, has extreme and totally different climate conditions and it should not be a surprise that minerals exhibit different properties.
of course it's crusty (Score:5, Funny)
What you can do in 3 years (Score:5, Funny)
In today's fast-paced modern world, a mere 3 years get you:
- to Pluto
- a copy of Duke Nukem Forever
or perhaps I should await my return from Pluto to get DNF
Mining (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Mining (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mining (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we only need to get that foundry over there at a million dollars/kg ...
Parent
Re:Mining (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Mining (Score:4, Interesting)
*Note: This does not take into account the disastrous devaluation of the metals markets, which would probably send the world economy into recession, so this might be a bad idea no matter what.
Parent
No mystery at all (Score:4, Interesting)
And for how long have these windstorms been occurring? Millions and millions of years?
So it seems reasonable to conclude that the dust/soil on the planet is going to be fairly homogenous by now.
They talk about the rock abrasion tool and the various spectrometers and what not, but the tool I'd like to hear about is the shovel. The dried lakebeds on Mars are no doubt little different than the dried lakebeds on Earth. To get to anything really interesting, you need to dig.
Re:No mystery at all (Score:5, Interesting)
Nine times out of ten when a stupid science story makes its way to print, its the fault of the reporter. She either didn't understand the subject matter, or (and this is true about all subjects) she isn't a very good reporter.
At wild guess I'd say the scientists are surprised because it is surprising, maybe not to you , but to the experts who have extensivley studied data from previous mars missions presumably.
We already knew olivine existed on the surface of Mars based on the results from the orbiter, so again, it really isn't surprising we'd find olivine on the surface of Mars.
Sigh! why is that geeks think that because they can write a few lines of code that they're experts one everything
Simple. Programmers are forced to think. If you can't think clearly, then your code doesn't work.
Engineers (the type who build *real* things) have the same burden, however it isn't tested nearly as often as it is for programmers. A programmer gets daily, if not hourly or minute-by-minute feedback on the quality of his thought process.
Scientists on the other hand generally receive their feedback very, very slowly.
The net effect is that it takes longer for bad scientists to be washed out of the system than it does for bad programmers.
Ergo, I've come to be very skeptical of taking the word of a scientist based solely on his being called a scientist. And when I say scientist, I don't mean the engineers at NASA who got the rover to the surface of Mars. I'm talking about the guys who are responsible for figuring out which rock to visit, what tests to perform, which theory to try to prove or disprove.
It's easy to tell a good programmer from a bad programmer. But a good planetary scientist from a bad planetary scientist? How do you do that?
Parent
Airbag-trails (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting, as the marks of the airbags are clearly visible on all pics. Or am I missing the point of a rover-arm having less force than a bouncing-lander-in-an-airbag?
Face on Mars? (Score:3, Funny)
Water-reactive and thus volcanic? (Score:4, Interesting)
If it's water-reactive why does it mean it's volcanic? I don't know anything about minerals but that doesn't sound logical to me.
Re:Water-reactive and thus volcanic? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Water-reactive and thus volcanic? (Score:5, Informative)
Olivine is not found in magmas that are forming at shallow depths which tend to be rich in silica. Moreover, olivine rich magma intruding into the Crust will react with aluminium, silica and alkali metals and change their composition.
So if you find olivine you know the originating magma is coming from deep down and hasn't hung around in the Crust for very long.
Olivine is not terribly stable under wet conditions. Olivine reacts with water to form clays and iron oxide. The results also imply that the olivine bearing rocks have not been heated in the presence of water (such as you would find in the formation of a mountain range), since olivine reacts at high temperatures in the presence of water to form serpentinite and magnetite.
Therefore in the time since rocks were crystallised they haven't been in the presence of water.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Parent
Great way to diverge into the explainable... (Score:5, Funny)
Yum! Olivine! (Score:5, Funny)
Just imagine all that Olivine on Mars! Certainly it'd be worthwhile to travel to Mars, given an unbounded supply of ready-made food already on the surface. This, my friends, could cure world hunger!
In fact, now that they've found that Mars has a lot of Olivine, I'd start speculating that the dust is being bound together by Tang.
Size of the rocks (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Size of the rocks (Score:5, Informative)
1) Be very wary of judging the apparent size of things in photos taken on another planet. The density of the atmosphere, the nature of the camera lenses used on space missions, and the scale of features your brain uses to guess at size may not all be what they seem.
2) the area around the landing site was deliberately selected to contain as few large rocks that could smash a lander to pieces as it came down as possible. Drop onto really rocky terrain, and you're looking at doing what I believe is technically known as 'a Beagle'.
Parent
Looking for an animation (Score:3, Interesting)
I've just seen a TV documentary about the rovers. One thing they had was an animation showing the differences between the first rover and the new ones. It was the old rover coming off the lander and then growing, parts being added etc., afterwards documenting how the thing has to fold to fit into the lander again, all on some blue grid surface. Does anyone know if this animation can be seen on the net somewhere?
NOVA: Mars Dead or Alive (Score:5, Informative)
Of course the show is 50 minutes or so, and the animation you want is in the middle. I taped it when it was broadcast, and I do like the scene you are describing.
Hope that helps.
Parent
More good Mars Info (Score:5, Informative)
It has all the latest Mars Rover info as well, and a direct link to JPL for the latest and greatest pictures and info. www.marsquestonline.org [marsquestonline.org]
Go hit it. It's worth a look around.
Mars expeditions are ultimately worthless (Score:4, Insightful)
" I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed that I would see the last. " --Dr. Jerry Pournelle
Re:Mars expeditions are ultimately worthless (Score:4, Insightful)
The ultimate and depressing reality, however, is that there's no profit in space. Wait, before you get angry, let me clarify- Yes, comms satellites and the like make gangbuster money, but the initial research and development- i.e. the rocket program of the USA- were horrendously, bleedingly expensive at the time, and profitable applications were hard to see or considered 'dreams.'
It's much the same today. Yes, there are profitable applications, but they're already being done (LEO satellites) or far-off (asteroid mining, et alia). No business that has to answer to stockholders is going to invest in a venture that sucks up capital like a vacuum and doesn't promise any kind of return for decades. That's what government is for.
Parent
Re:Mars expeditions are ultimately worthless (Score:4, Insightful)
sometime in the future the expenses will get smaller than the profits, be it due to new materials or huge amounts of cheap computing power that make it possible(or just pure lack of materials on earth which won't happen anytime near though, with all the oceanbeds and all).
however it might take a staggeringly long time before that happens..
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Meteorite? (Score:5, Interesting)
I do not know anything about minerals really, but if the lander is exploring a crater, couldn't this come from the meteorite that created the crater in the first place?
Re:Meteorite? (Score:4, Informative)
Probably not, the reason nasa think that the gustev crater was once an ancient lake is because there is what looks like a water channel leading into it (or maybe out of if the meteorite contained a lot of ice ?). The crater was almost certainly created by a meteorite and not by natural processes (volcanic, weather, etc.) which means that the crater must have been there before the water (if there was water). The fact that olivine reacts so easily with water seems to suggest that the their wasn't any water in the gustev crater.
Parent
Once again, it raises more questions... (Score:4, Interesting)
Olivine beach (Score:5, Interesting)
It is little known, and difficult to get to, but a long drive down
an unpaved road, and two or so mile hike will get you to it.
I once met an minerologist gathering samples there.
He told me the beach was green because of a large olivine vein
which was eroded over the years by the ocean waves.
pics: http://www.techfreakz.org/blacksand/
Re:Lucky NASA folks (Score:5, Funny)
"That's not Mars, it's Paris Hilton"
Parent
Re:Ok, I'm going to be the first to say it (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone that isn't a religious nut can come to the conclusion pretty easily that life in some form is out there in all probability.
Probability less than 1.00 is not proof. If proof was found that life exists or had existed on Mars in the past, then it changes the way we look at the Universe. If life could develop on two planets in the same solar system, what does that say for the possibility and commonality of life elsewhere?
Perhaps Mars is boring. It's the same argument people said about the lunar missions a generation ago. It only became boring because we let it.
Take a step back and stand in awe of the fact that we have the ability to even do what we are doing. It isn't boring. It wasn't in 1969 and it isn't now. It should be considered anything but boring. Maybe if we hadn't gotten "bored" in 1972, it wouldn't be a robot up there analyzing samples up there and sending back imagery used preprogrammed commands on a 20 minute delay. It would be a man or woman instead, with us hearing their voice, the excitement and thrill at walking on another world and making that thrill of discovery, curiousity and exploration infectious to entire planet and to another generation. But we didn't. We should have.
Have a sense of romance and excitement. I wish I could send commands to the rover along the lines of "Look that way! What's over there?!?" or "Drive over there and look behind that rock.".
There are some things that should transcend day-to-day living and the focus on our daily lives and exist simply for the sake of doing it, cost and politics aside. Space exploration should be one of those things.
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Re:Somewhat confused on olivine (Score:4, Informative)
You've answered your own question here... it's a matter of timing. Olivine rapidly degrades in the presence of water... on a geologic time scale. In human timescales, you don't notice this. That's why you can find green sand beaches on the Big Island - as you note, it's one big active volcano, and the olivine there was relatively recently produced. Gustev crater is thought to be a geologically old feature, and if water was present there, it should have been there a long time ago (based on current theories of the planet's climatological evolution). The fact that that olivine was laid down a long time ago and hasn't shown signs of water induced breakdown, means that water probably hasn't been there since olivine was formed.
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