Despite Clay Minerals, Early Mars Might Have Been Dry 105
astroengine writes "Early Mars may not have been as warm or wet as scientists suspect, a finding which could impact the likelihood that the Red Planet was capable of evolving life at the time when it was getting started on Earth. A new study presents an alternative explanation for the prevalence of Mars' ancient clay minerals, which on Earth most often result from water chemically reacting with rock over long periods of time. The process is believed to be a starting point for life."
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Publish or parish.
However even with the Mars Rover or even humans there... Science needs an Hypothesis and some plan of possibly testing for it. If we just assume Clay=Water. We see clay then we say there is water. We just test for clay. But if their is a Hypothesis that clay can form without water, There can be some differences you just may want to dig a little further and test out.
Hmmm... (Score:2, Interesting)
How does this explain away the alleged river channels, deltas, salts found by the rovers, etc... etc... and other evidence of large amount of water?
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Volcanic activity?
They keep changing the narrative.. (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't new news, but the scientific establishment that gets the budgets to conduct space exploration is selling us Mars because they know it is doable within the context of current budgets and technologies. Mars is pretty much way too dry and has been. It also lacks a magnetosphere and despite *one lame little plate* any hint of past large scale plate tectonics. Mars is interesting for sure, but it would be nice to also have a real base on luna with which to assemble a vehicle to take us on to Mars and with which to test technologies with the intent of sending humans on to Mars. Europa and even Venus deserve attention as well, but it seems Mars is in our comfort zone so we keep going back....
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I too would much rather see an investment in the moon. It is close enough that we can courier equipment, people, and supplies with the intent of setting up a foothold in space. I think it would take years to get to the point where we have a significant presence there, but having that reduced atmosphere and reduced gravity environment would most likely further our capabilities quite a bit more than speculating on the amount of water Mars had in the past.
Stage supplies in earth orbit while building a basic tr
Re:They keep changing the narrative.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not much on the moon of any use. Mining stuff anywhere off earth is a long way from being practical. If you want to build a transfer station, do it in orbit (like LEO, just what the ISS is doing).
Personally, I'd like us to spend more money and time on the Jovian satellites but then again, I'd like NASA to get to spend more money - lots more money. At the current piddly rate we're funding space exploration, you really can't expect to be able to pull off any major exploration goal. Right now we're just doing simple and cheap things (relatively speaking) and hoping that the funding situation gets better.
You can certainly argue all day about whether or not it's an appropriate goal for a country, but you're not going to get very far with the nickel and dime approach we're currently using. Not that JPL isn't doing neat science - and given the financial limitations that they work in, they've done a fantastic job, it's just to really answer a lot of the questions we are posing and to enable us to even think about pulling resources from space, we're not doing jack.
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I completely agree with the "nickel and dime" approach. I was not suggesting that we mine the moon for resources. My use of the moon is to give us a stable structure to build a base on.
The ISS is an awesome idea, but we limit our exposure to space by just sending supplies and equipment to the same spot without ever reaching further. The shuttle program was definitely a success if you are willing to limit your goals to just looking down on the earth in awe. Had we spent those 135 missions pushing toward the
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FWIW, a granparent or so complained that the space program was as underfunded as education. I.e., our priorities are such that the most important future leaning activities are underfunded (or so I understood it).
OTOH, I'm not convinced that orbit is such a great place to build things until AFTER we have captured an asteroid, or build a catapult on the moon. There's no materials there to build from, and lofting everything from Earth is rediculously expensive. I suppose a space elevator could solve this, b
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It's not just the 400KM. It's the 400KM + orbital speed. Once you've got that, you no longer need great big fuel guzzling engines to quickly get above the atmosphere. You can start using low thrust but high efficiency engines, like ion drives. Sure they may be slow, but if you aren't in a hurry they'll get you wherever you want.
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A big *amen* to both of you.
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The problem is - it costs an order of magnitude more to reach the moon, and you no more need a "stable base" than you a fish needs a bicycle.
You also make your [Mars bound[ space craft more expensive by requiring to boost from the surface of the moon, and by adding the need to endure the [harsher than LEO] lunar tempe
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Won't argue about temp issues, but it takes rather less deltaV to go from Luna surface to a Mars transition orbit than it does to go from LEO to a Mars transition orbit.
Never mind that we can get reaction mass and/or fuel from the Moon....
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True, but when you add in the deltaV to get to the Moon in the first place... plus all the costs associated with getting the base built and su
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This is only true if the only thing you're using the Moon for is a fuel depot. Actually building large parts of your Mars vehicle on the Moon.makes a certain amount of the problem of boosting those same
Re:They keep changing the narrative.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The advantage to the moon is assembly of parts can be done their under the effects of gravity. Assembling large projects from parts might sound easier in micro-gravity, but maneuvering becomes such a pain it's a lot easier for humans to work under gravitational effects (it's how we evolved to operate). It also has signs of ice for water, so you could potentially use it as a cheap source for that, and may well have other viable minerals usable in space exploration. We are a far way from mining the Moon for Earth use. Unless we find some extremely rare mineral there (like Platinum), most stuff we need is vastly easier to find on Earth. No, mining and manufacturing on the Moon would be as a staging ground for further exploration. Escape velocity there is ~1/3 Earth's, so it's about as easy to transfer from there to deep-space as it would be from LEO anyways.
Not to mention it would serve as a nice test of our ability to establish a base on another world without being out of (relatively easy) reach of Earth, and there is a ton of Lunar science to be done on the surface yet.
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Moon is harder to do than Mars. There's nothing in Moon which you can reuse easily, whereas in Mars there's plenty.
I'd suggest actually looking at proposed ISRU on the Moon. It has oxygen and various metals that can be obtained anywhere on the surface. That's in addition to the volatiles at its poles.
You could terraform Mars to have a thicker atmosphere. You cannot do this with the Moon.
So what? You have other things you can do with the Moon that are more productive than merely turning it into another Earth.
Mars has more gravity, too.
That's a drawback not a selling point. The primary value of the Moon will be what it can deliver to Earth orbit cheaper than can be delivered from Earth.
Check Zubrin's book, "The Case for Mars" which has plenty of arguments and points.
That's a good source, but keep in mind Zubrin was
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The main problem with Moon is 1. lack of water and 2. you need a lot of energy to do anything on the Moon.
1) There are other things you can do that don't require water. Such as shipping oxygen and manufactured parts to Earth orbit and the Lagrange points.
2) You have a lot of energy to use: 1,300 W per square meter. It's halved on Mars.
To grow your food on the Moon you need at least water and artificial lighting and heating. Where to get the energy for lighting? Solar panels won't work, unless you're on the pole, due to long shadow period.
Most which you have just from solar power. Storing power for two weeks is a bit of a challenge, but not a great one.
What about heating?
Geothermal. Drill a deep hole anywhere on the Moon and you'll tap into the warmth of the interior.
Also to get from the Moon to the asteroid belt is difficult. Mars is much closer.
The Moon's market is Earth and Earth orbit. That is the main dra
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Mining stuff anywhere off earth is a long way from being practical.
Yes.... but I think from the very lengthy debate that follows your post it's clear that everyone agrees we need to start launching less from earth and more from orbit.
The problem I see with this is that we still have to launch from earth to get there. I think eventually we will be able to mine and manufacture in space, limiting the need to launch from earth to only getting people or specific/complex devices up there. Ultimately allowing us to build much bigger and better space "stuff" . And IMO starting
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Re:They keep changing the narrative.. (Score:5, Informative)
2) It currently costs tens of thousands of dollars to put a single kilogram of mass into space. If you're going to get any kind of industry up there, it's going to cost trillions of dollars.
It's currently around $5,000 per kg for the Russian launch vehicles. SpaceX threatens to halve that cost.
moon a waste of energy (Score:2)
it is because of energy considerations a base on the moon is useless. you could make a huge spaceshp there, but where does the *fuel* for it come from? the only practical source of oxidizer there is water, and water is extrememly rare on the moon despite the recent hoopla about finding moisture at a level that makes the flour in your kitchen look wet.
as long as we use chemical rockiets, the moon is a foolish stopping point or base.
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There's tons of energy on the moon, if you're using solar and temperature differential sources.
As far as getting your spaceship off the moon, you throw it [wikipedia.org], although you'd probably throw individual modules and assemble them in orbit. Fueling the spacecraft would be more complicated, but hey, it's a lot cheaper to launch a few tanks of rocket fuel into space from Earth than a whole spaceship.
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moisture at a level that makes the flour in your kitchen look wet
Flour is 10%-15% water, BTW.
Besides, I'd assume we were going with nuclear engines/solar sails/ion drives once we "broke atmo".
It's only natural. (Score:1)
Men have a natural tendency to exaggerate how warm and wet things used to be.
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luna? You mean the moon, right?
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Mars is pretty much way too dry and has been.
It's true that Mars is chosen as a target for rover missions because it's "easy" enough as such things go. Before sending rovers to farther and/or vastly more hostile places, it makes sense to bone up on the tech on Mars, eh?
But the reason the "scientific establishment" maintains interest in Mars is because, rather than being happy with unsubstantiated declaratory statements like the above, they actually want to know.
Hmm (Score:1, Interesting)
Even though it's Sci-Fi, I almost like to believe that human beings move from planet to planet, using up local resources and destroying them.
The cycle would be constant, and self-fulfilling: We use technology to get off the old planet, and to settle onto a new one. Then a generation or so later, we blame the evils that destroyed the old planet on our technology, and swear it off so we can 'commune' with nature / our new home. This works for a few more generations until we realize that it wasn't technology t
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Kind of reminds me of Anno 2070 [steampowered.com].
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So where are the ancient Martian cities? The radioactive craters? The garbage?
If there was a civilization capable of destroying the ecosystem, I think you'd see it given the multiple, high resolution surveys we've done.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Not necessarily. We have plenty of civilizations on Earth that have barely left a trace, and the oldest of those is only a few thousand years old. If there were civilizations several hundred thousands or millions of years old, chances are pretty good we could miss them, even in our own back yard, let alone on another planet.
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Any civilization that old would have left nothing to show its existance. Even the pyramids won't last that long.
A biosphere, however, leaves its mark on a world. You'd be able to tell easily if Mars or Venus was habitable by humans duing the time homo sapiens has existed.
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Monuments are the wrong clue to look for.
True, but they're the most obvious. It might take quite a bit of study to identify signs of an ancient civilization based on land shaping and rock distribution. The pyramids are obviously artificial.
While an advanced macroscopic surface biosphere would indeed be easily detectable, these [sciencemag.org] types of organisms would not.
Those types of organisms wouldn't support a civilization, either. Mars has obviously never had a diverse biosphere that could support advanced forms of life (at least as we understand it), so there's little point to searching for Martian artifacts. I'm all for searching for the Martian equivalent of bacteria
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That's nonsense. In desert areas we can see city streets outlining ruins in satellite images where the ground indications are pretty subtle. Human activities at the scale we would call "civilization" leave behind plenty of evidence. They need building materials, agriculture, irrigation, transportation, etc. All of those leave evidence, particularly in arid, unvegetated areas. If there were civilizations that old, they would have to be very well hidden (like on the bottom of the Antarctic or Greenland i
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Even though it's Sci-Fi, I almost like to believe that human beings move from planet to planet, using up local resources and destroying them.
While some repliers have noted the lack of realism, I find the psychological aspect interesting. Why do you want such a story? Wouldn't a story where humanity was a constructive influence on the universe be better even if a tad boring?
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no, venus and mars will never become habitable, venus will not become cooler, nor mars wetter. most planetary bodies in the universe cannot support life. It is fine for humans to use the empty unihabitable things in any way they want, nothing of value will be lost.
What about this? (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you explain this without water?
http://i.space.com/images/i/20995/wS4/mount-sharp-1600.jpg?1346122345 [space.com]
Re:What about this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it could be sedimentary rock layers. But volcanos can also cause layering - consult the oracle about "welded tuff" (example image from Idaho [idahoptv.org])
Re:What about this? (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah. And what's with all the dried up [wikipedia.org] riverbeds? [space.com]
Re:What about this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not that I disagree that water was the cause; However, all fluid is made of matter and can briefly suspend particles of other more dense matter thus providing the capability to form deposits and layering if said fluid is in motion. The Martian atmosphere is known to have Dust Storms -- I put it to you that these Dust Storms are such suspensions of matter having varied densities, and that the dust is, in fact, relocated. I believe that Mars was not always a solid rock because it shows evidence of volcanism -- Magma is also a fluid / matter suspension and is thus capable of forming layers of material. Unless we observe the actual layers and their material compositions we will not know how the layers formed.
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A magical deity did it. He did it in 7 days. Took a break in the middle.
It was an early beta, that's why he didn't let animals run around in it.
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"How do you explain this without water? "
It used dehydrated water.
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No magnetosphere, no mass (Score:4, Informative)
Mars has no magnetosphere, it's has 89% less mass, it is half of the Earth's diameter. Mars could never really sustain a breathable atmosphere with oxygen and nitrogen just because of those characteristics, those gases would simply fly off into space, there cannot be enough density and pressure on the surface of Mars to hold a breathable atmosphere.
Of-course living organisms can survive in various other types of atmosphere, for example carbon dioxide, but even that gas cannot be held by Mars in enough density for anything to breath it.
Re:No magnetosphere, no mass (Score:5, Informative)
Titan [wikipedia.org] disagrees with you.
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Mercury too has an atmosphere, but it's also not breathable.
It's possible to have very heavy chemicals as an atmosphere on a smaller planet than ours, sure, at very different temperatures, very heavy compounds.
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Oh, and by the way, Titan is inside the magnetosphere envelope of Saturn.
So does it still disagree with me?
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Sure, eventually those gases will escape into space. But that "eventually" is measured in tens of thousands of years. For purposes of terraforming, that's a reasonable life span for an atmosphere. And it leaves you plenty of time to figure out what to do for an encore.
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"Breatheable" is a relative term. even on this planet lifeforms occupy some pretty tough niches.
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While there is no global magnetic field today, strong crustal magnetism [sciencemag.org] suggests that it must have had such a field in the past. Dynamo activity would have stopped once the core-mantle heat flow became unfavorable to core convection.
Dry? (Score:2)
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I know a couple of boys from Hazzard County that could solve it too.
That's what happens when you have a dry planet. They probably cut a few channels on the way too.
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That doesn't prove water. That establishes liquid. That liquid might have been something other than water. Mars is farther from the sun and colder, so it doesn't even have to be something that would be liquid at Earth temperatures.
This research doesn't actually prove anything. It just says that something we thought was proof wasn't. More exploration is needed to gather more data.
But what about K'breel and friends? (Score:2)
Without water they wouldn't have gelsacs!
Tunnel vision (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tunnel vision (Score:5, Interesting)
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"There is no proof that the water features were caused by water."
Yes there is. There is no known other way to make complete delta systems with meandering channels and point bars, such as the ones found in Eberswalde Crater [wikipedia.org]. It isn't the only example, but it is the clearest indication that at some times there was standing water on the surface of Mars. The only other possible explanation would be for some other liquid to be responsible, but it is very difficult to come up with an alternative that would mak
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Gee, thanks! (Score:2)
Thanks a lot for raining on our parade.
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Re:Good news (Score:4, Interesting)
we don't have the means to increase Mars' mass by almost ten times! we can move mass on that scale, and the result would be an extremely hot molten mass that would take hundreds millions of years to cool off (your are essentially proposing the same process that formed the planets in the first place
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haha, that's essentially how the earth formed and got its water. it'll take a long time alright, about 700 to 800 million years we already know
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Or a large one [wikipedia.org], that appears to have a lot of the desirable materials that Mars lacks.
Now we just need some genius to figure out how to get it to Mars.
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Why is is that /. doesn't post stories of the 3,000 other scientific articles that suggest that Mars really was quite wet??!!
The same reason the news doesn't announce that the sun comes up. Everyone knows about the evidence for water on Mars. This is interesting because someone came up with an alternate source for the clay formation that doesn't require water.
Clearly there was once liquid water on Mars.... and a lot of it.
Well, yes, there's a lot of evidence to support that, but this paper says the presence of clay soil doesn't necessarily count as evidence of water. No one's saying that there wasn't water on Mars - they're just saying you can't count the clay as evidence for a wet Mars.
I always figured that the starting point..... (Score:2)
Dig up the Fossils Already! (Score:2)
One of these days, when people finally get to Mars, they're going to wander over to one of those dried-up lake beds, dig with spades and find fossils by the thousand.
You mark my words. I was right about Linux, I was right about NT4, I was right about itanic and I'll be right about this too. Just you wait and see.