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Science

Mars May Be Dry After All 105

Posted by Hemos from the who-knows-anymore dept.
BillC writes "Boston Globe reports that all the Martian features which looked like water just under the surface might merely be the land features left behind when glaciers retreated thousands or millions of years ago."
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Mars May Be Dry After All More

Mars May Be Dry After All

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  • Re:Where might it have gone, then... (Score:3)

    by fremen ( 33537 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2000 @02:21PM (#659488)
    Actually, most scientists believe that the majority of Mars's atmosphere and water vanished into space. Mars has less mass than Earth, which also implies a lower gravitational pull. It turns out that the solar wind (as well as convection) is enough to sheer away critical molecules from the atmosphere.

    So water would evaporate, and maybe 0.005% of it was blasted away by the solar wind. Give it a few million years and you're left with a very thin atmosphere and no water. Consquently, this is also why the moon cannot support an atmosphere. It's also why if anyone tells you they can totally teraform Mars into another Earth, they're lying.
  • There is no water on Mars

    Wrong. Mars has an abundance of water, in frozen form, in very large polar ice caps. There is also a suspected layer of permafrost, frozen water just beneath the surface. Most planets do have some amount of water in some form, although not usually liquid. Water/ice is floating everywhere in space. It is very, very common.

    There are no lifeforms on Mars

    We don't know this. There is no reason to think it, considering Mars is relatively Earth-like and life happens very easily.

    There never were lifeforms on Mars

    This is very, very unlikely. Where there is liquid water, there is usually life. Life is made up of the most common elements in the universe, and for life to exist all you really need is water and some basic primordial soup. The chances of Mars never having had even the lowest form of bacteria are incredibly slim.

    Repeat 2-3 for each planet, save Earth

    Yeah, and the universe orbits around the Earth, and out of a huge and infinite universe Earth is the only planet to have developed pond scum.

    I don't think so.

  • I was under the impression that for water vapour to get into the air, liquid water must evaporate (solid water certainly does not transform directly into vapour!).

    Solid water most certainly does transform directly into vapor. It does so more slowly than liquid water, but you can sublime (i.e. transform from solid directly to gas) any substance, including water. This is, in fact, how freeze drying works; the thing to be dried is frozen and subjected to very low pressure, which causes the water to sublime away. If you have ever lived in a cold, dry climate, you would know that snow will gradually dissappear even if the temperature never gets anywhere close to freezing.

  • From the article:
    Instead, they are just the remnants of patches of snow that have sat in place for years before eventually melting in the sun.

    Ok. So instead of water, they are just artifacts from snow. And the snow eveporated? So that means that Mars must have some water vapor floating around?

    I suppose that this "water vapor" could have drifted off into the cosmos, but wouldn't it stay in the atmosphere, like it does on earth? The water has to go somewhere, and mars should have sufficient mass to at least attract some atmosophere thanks to gravity.

    Any other thoughts? Am I off base here, or is something not adding up?

    Captain_Frisk

  • How about: Why does Earth have so much water? (Score:3)

    by nufsaid ( 230318 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2000 @02:41PM (#659492)
    Another poster has answered your question about how Mars loses water. No magnetic field -> dissociation of water into hydrogen -> lose hydrogen to space.

    Perhaps the question should really be: How is it that Earth came to have so much water? Last I heard, scientists were still arguing about this, but cometary impacts are one likely source. In addition, it would seem that the Earth's magnetic field helps protect what water we have (in contrast with Mars).

    We live on one lucky planet :)

  • It did have water, and does have water now. In fact, it has polar ice caps, I believe. The issue is whether it has liquid water, as wherever we have found liquid water, we have found life.

    Scientists have found lots of lifeforms in our extreme environments (they're called extremophiles). We've found life in the coldest of the cold, and in volcanic activities (both land-based and ocean-based). However, there's no rule that says that water == life, or that water can't exist without life.

    Although, I don't know what spending billions of dollars to find a few space microbes will accomplish.

  • There must have been something attacking those glaciers for them to retreat! Was there really life on Mars after all?
  • So you're saying Mars is a big ball of rust?
  • Bummer, dude (seriously). Why not pick up where he left off? With enough documentation, you could do it. There's a ton of revelations being brought to light by amateurs all the time (comet discoveries, for instance). Make your mark, attribute it to your dad.

    Go for it! (Again, in all seriousness)

    Signed, an amateur astronomer


  • Re:So where did all the water go? (Score:3)

    by Xenu ( 21845 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2000 @03:35PM (#659498)
    According to my astronomy teacher, the core of Mars cooled off and solidified, eliminating the magnetic field. You need circulating currents of material in the core to produce a magnetic field. Another problem associated with a low mass planet.
  • It doesn't matter. For snow, you need water vapor in the air. The original poster was asking how that's possible.
  • How come these questions never get asked at presidential debates?

    Because the answer is obvious; give a man a fish, and he eats for a day...TEACH him to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.

    The hypocracy of bleeding-heart geeks never ceases to amuse me. The box connected to your keyboard would running at about TRS-80 levels if it wasn't for "Pure Research" brought about by such quests for knowledge like what we're discussing now.


  • this [ucla.edu] document contains more information on the subject.
  • Say WHAT?

    Liiiithosphere, rusted!

    Mars, baby, that's where it's at.

    --
    Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
  • Thought they were here for our women. I was going to send them Janet Reno...
  • We'll need to figure something [conhugeco.org] before the human race goes extinct, but these guys [vhemt.org] would probably like that!
  • AFAIK none of the Earth's water leaves the planet. It is a closed system and water vapour even at the highest altitudes cannot escape the Earth's gravity well.

    Unless, of course, you count the blobs of astro-urine that are now floating around somewhere in space thanks to dozens of space missions...

  • The major reason we're interested in Mars over Venus is that it's a lot easier to get there from here, figuratively speaking. Mars is very cold. Mars has no real atmosphere. Space suits work on Mars. Venus is very hot. Lead melts on Venus. People do, too, even in space suits. We haven't AFAIK even been able to land a vehicle on Venus because they tend to dissolve in the atmosphere due to the extreme temperature. Therefore, terraforming Mars may be impossible, but colonizing Mars is bunches easier than doing anything to Venus.
  • Sure looks like a flow of something. I'm surprised I haven't heard that it may actually be oil or some other liquid with a high boiling point. Does it have to be water? Another point that contradicts the contradiction that it was actually made by snow or a glacier a long time ago is the fact that one of the sequnces in the JPL archive shows a picture of a crater a year or two ago and one from recently with a significant geological change. If you look at the trail a boulder left on the side of the crater after it fell down it sure gives you the impression that what you see is what you get. I mean, the trail it left looks like a boulder rolled down the side of a sandy crater wall! So that suggests to me that if I see what looks like a flow, it's probably a flow. And it's probably recent. All the other boulder trails have already been filled in with sand or else we'd see them everywhere. Question is, how long does it take for the sand to cover the boulder trail? Guess we'll just have to wait and see. We know where to look now at least.
  • Seriously, under low pressure, atmospheres tend to disperse and escape from the gravitational well. The water goes as well. As the atmosphere of the planet is depleted, surface water locked in ice and water slowly sublimates and escapes as well.

  • When water evaporates, it just becomes water vapour, which will eventually become liquid again, etc. It doesn't generally have a chance of escaping a planet's gravity well.

    Most likely: the water went through a chemical transformation due to changes in conditions (I am not a chemist) and became something else. Also a great deal of water is obviously frozen at the poles, which could have happened as a result of a slight movement away from the Sun. Remember also permafrost--there may have been a time when the permafrost was groundwater, fog, etc.

  • ...I don't think that Guiness could really do anything about it.

    However, I would be worried that God might send them cease and desist letters for attempting to reverse engineer his Universe.
  • We have MUCH more experience heating our planet up and pumping nasty gasses into the atmosphere than we do removing them and cooling it. :-P
    ---
    Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
  • First off, the article is based on unpublished information. It sounded like the Boston Globe was basing its information on a talk given at a seminar that consisted of one persons opinion based on anecdotal evidence. Definately not something strong enough at this point to refute the theories currently being bandied about.

    The text you are quoting came from the article's description of how similar features formed on Devon Island in Canada. The explaination for Mars is that a very long time ago, it was warm enough and the atmosphere was thick enough for liquid water and that was when the snow fell to them help form the features in question.

    It would seem that they have overlooked a key fact. Scientists that study the geology of other planets and moons have developed models that allow them to determine how old a surface feature is based on how many impact craters the feature has. The more craters in evidence, the older the feature. This model has been used on all the objects in the solar system, Mercury, Luna, Io, Europa, Venus, Ganymede, asteroids, etc. What Mr. Malin found was that the drainage features were relatively undisturbed which indicates relative youth, say anywhere between 100 and 10,000 years old. If the formation of snow in the amounts the article mentioned could not have extisted in the last 100,000 years, it would seem to contradict his theory.

    The article also mentioned glaciers and I can not resist mentioning that as far as I know, nobody has ever claimed that glaciers have formed for any length of time on Mars. Glaciers form by the collection of snow over long periods of time which requires an atmosphere thick enough to support precipitation. The evidence so far seems to support a relatively short period of flooding billions of years ago and relative dryness since then. Once a glacier formed, it would have existed for a very long time in the cold air of Mars. On one hand, if it sublimated like CO2 (which H2O doesn't do, of course) and that was why they don't exist anymore, they would have shielded the landscape from impacts and that alone would have already shown up in the images Surveyor has sent back. On the other hand, if the glacier melted, it would have melted relatively slowly and again, there would be evidence of this of which none exists.

    Last but not least is one small matter. The features in question have formed on the inside wall of an impact crator. It would seem very unlikely that this would be where a glacier could form. As to areas of snow, because of the age of the features, any snow would have had to have fallen since the crator formed, which isn't supported by the impact record.

    SUMMARY:
    The Boston Globe needs a better Science editor.

    Anyone care to comment on my reasoning or facts?
  • But you said they were here for women!
  • Smaller planets, such as Mars, have less mass and a weaker gravitational field, reducing the escape velocity. This allows gases to escape the planet's atmosphere into outer space. There is a statistical description of the velocity of gas molecules, I've forgotten the name, that allows you to predict the velocities of gas molecules at a given temperature and pressure. If a gas molecule in the upper atmosphere is going fast enough, and in the right direction, it will escape from the planet.
  • ooops the first line should read...

    Water (and other compounds) can indeed go directly from the solid state to the vapor state.

    Also, low atmospheric pressure really helps the process along.
  • damn thats a sad story so why the hell do you post AC?
  • Also, we would have a much greater chance of terraforming Venus than Mars.

    I don't understand why Mars is such a draw of attention when there is Venus, our "sister planet".
  • Actually, if I remember my chemistry correctly, the process converting a solid to vapour (skipping liquid) is called sublimation, and occurs at low pressures.
  • This is very, very unlikely. Where there is liquid water, there is usually life. Life is made up of the most common elements in the universe, and for life to exist all you really need is water and some basic primordial soup. The chances of Mars never having had even the lowest form of bacteria are incredibly slim.
    I thought the earth was the only place we have found liquid water so far? I don't think there is a large enough base of evidence to say that whever there is liquid water then there is usually life
  • Sorry...brainfart. I was thinking gravitational field. What you say is plausible. Must...do...more...research...


  • Ummm...didn't NASA just write something a month ago saything that it was actually most likely liquid nitrogen doing what they initially thought water jets where doing.
  • The equation is:

    Crms=sqrt((3kT)/m)

    Or, in words: The root mean square speed of molecules of a gas is given by the square root of all of (the temperature (T, in Kelvin) multiplied by 3k (k being the Boltzmann constant - 1.38 times 10 to the power of -23 joules per Kelvin),all divided by the mass of a molecule (in Kg) )

    Sorry - I've just been doing my Physics revision. Actually, technically this only works for an ideal gas...

  • Unfortunately I think that many scientists have been so optimistic about Mars that they have started reading things into the terrain that aren't there. The see a rill and they cry "water must have done that!" and they see some wiggly things and conclude that has something to do with the former presence of water.

    I think that so many of the theories that have been put forth about the formations of structures on Mars have been unfounded, overly-hopeful conjectures at best, but since Mars is the hot thing in both the media and solar system research, everyone seems to jump on the ideas that have the most interesting possibilities, regardless of their scientific soundness.

    Everyone was so ready to conclude that there still is a tremendous supply of water on Mars just because of a weak conjecture by a few people, who were perhaps only framing a best case scenario. No one stopped to ask the questions which numerous posters have already posed: Where is the water now? How does a planet just dry up?

    I think scientists should spend less time getting caught up in wild speculations and spend more time doing research.
  • If they want to send astronauts to Mars with lots of water, they could just send de-hydrated water and that would save on lots of room. :)
  • The article said that there is no water below the surface on Mars. They were hoping to be able to drill for water on manned missions, but now it seems that this is an impossibility. The water in the glaciers retreated to the ice caps on Mars, which is the only place on the planet (so it seems) that you can get water now.
  • I thought that they had said that the canyons were just caused by superfast currents of wind blowing across the dry landscape. I could be wrong, but I thought that I had seen this somewhere else before.
    -

  • Mission to Mars (Score:4)

    by edibleplastic ( 98111 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2000 @02:04PM (#659527)
    Funny, this also just in about the movie Mission to Mars.

    "Millions of disgusted viewers report that all the narrative features which looked like talent or good plot just under the surface might merely be the crap left behind when hollywood writing talent retreated thousands or millions of years ago."

  • Ahh, on slashdot of course...
    Right here [slashdot.org]

  • heh.. mission to mars...

    "That looks like human DNA!!"

    In the amazing future, people can sequence DNA in their heads. =)
  • "Mars is essentially in the same orbit...
    Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important.
    We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water.
    If there is water, that means there is oxygen.
    If oxygen, that means we can breathe."

    ...Governor George W. Bush, Jr., 8/11/94
  • ...let's load up a rocket and get a Mars Mission underway!
    Averye0
  • It's wet...

    It's dry...

    Can't we just agree on "moist" or "Damp"?

    Slashdot is so controversial these days...
  • There actually is a decent chance that these "water" tracks on Mars are actually a result of carbon dioxide escaping from below the surface. While the desire to try to find water on another planet is tempting, the evidence seems to equally support the idea that it's CO2 as opposed to water. Who knows, really? I guess that's why it's useful to send some more missions up. :-)
  • The Soviet Union sent several probes to Venus, and in 1975 they even got photographs [solarviews.com] from the surface.
  • Y'know, I think I'm gonna nominate "make that molecule it's bitch" for the Most Creative Scientific Explaination of the Year award.
  • Mars the thermite planet. Lets ignite it and have a mini sun for a day or so!

  • glaciers? (Score:3)

    by molo ( 94384 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2000 @02:02PM (#659537) Journal
    um, hello? Unless we're talking about frozen methane or some other weirdness, glaciers = water.

  • I can PROVE Mars has water (Score:5)

    by empesey ( 207806 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2000 @02:07PM (#659538) Homepage
    My local Wal-Mart is selling a product called Martian Mud. Since one half of the recipe calls for water (I'm assuming Martian water), there is no doubt that Mars has an ample supply. After all, Sam Walton wouldn't get involved in a venture of limited cash making capacity. And we all know that Sam was an honorable man, and that he wouldn't be trying to pull the wool over our collective eyes.

  • And from a few dozen base-pairs, too. Oh well, what can you expect from writers who posit an intelligent race who seed neighboring worlds with life, and then set up an alarm system that will kill their new neigbors, if they happen to knock instead of searching for the door bell...
  • Martians don't drink water and they sound like they are breathing helium when they talk.
  • Frozen methane could mean we have a trace of the martians that once lived there, in the form of frozen martian farts.
  • I've lived in southern Utah, and it's dry too.. and it's just like living on mars. (hotter of course.)

  • Not to be nit-picking, but that's not losing water, that's redistribution of water.

    There IS a difference between losing it to outer space and having it move into the crust (which situation is more easily reversed?) Having not seen any of the evidence, I cannot comment on it, but I guess that some form of balance has been achieved in this respect - you can not continue to fill the crust with water without some of it spilling out again, so just like some chemical reaction an equilibrium should be reached.

    Anyway, it's an interesting (and sort of scary) thought that water goes into the crust and stays there. Maybe that explains the excessive moisture in my basement :-)

  • Re:Where might it have gone, then... (Score:4)

    by Kiss the Blade ( 238661 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2000 @02:30PM (#659544) Journal
    It did have water, and does have water now. In fact, it has polar ice caps, I believe. The issue is whether it has liquid water, as wherever we have found liquid water, we have found life.

    As to Earths water leaving the planet, I would say yes, it does, but only in very small amounts.There are water molecules present in the air all around us. The average velocity of any given molecule of air is ~330 metres/sec, the speed of sound. However, this is only the average. The velocities follow a standard distribution or Bell curve. Therefore an incredibly small number of molecules will attain escape velocity, and some of these molecules will be water molecules. If the altitude is high enough, the water molecule will be able to escape from the Earths gravity well entirely. This is why the moon cannot sustain an atmosphere - a small (but larger than Earths) proportion of the moons atmosphere would escape, and after a few million years it would be left with nothing.

    The only other mechanism I can think of is through meteorite impact. Fragments of rock which contain embedded water could be hurled into space from such an impact. I doubt that water or Ice could do it by itself, due to boiling and mixing with the rest of the atmosphere.

    Overall, then, bugger all water gets off Earth (or Mars), but a small teeny tiny bit does.

    The water Mars once had is, for the most part, underneath the surface, much like permafrost. Frozen ice isn't much different from rock in a sense, it just gets churned up with all the other solids. However, because it is less dense, it does tend to stay towards the surface.

  • Guess what (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1. There is no water on Mars
    2. There are no lifeforms on Mars
    3. There never were lifeforms on Mars
    4. Repeat 2-3 for each planet, save Earth

  • Re:So where did all the water go? (Score:5)

    by jafac ( 1449 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2000 @02:30PM (#659546) Homepage
    Mars has no magnetic field, therefore no protection in the atmosphere from solar radiation that will take a water vapor molecule, make that molecule it's bitch, and split it wide open into oxygen and hydrogen, the hydrogen floats into space, and the oxygen combines with iron in the soil to make iron oxide, giving the planet it's rich amber hue.
  • And that analysis has to be wrong, since the smaller Mercury has a magnetic field.

    In fact, we don't have any really good ideas as to what is going on inside most of large bodies of the solar system. Mercury's magnetic field is a mystery, the presence or absence of tectonic activity on terrestrial planets and moons seems to follow no reliable pattern, etc.

    But we do know that all the simple theories are wrong, since there are exceptions to every simple theory.

  • The velocities follow a standard distribution or Bell curve.

    Nope. It is a Boltzmann distribution. Much different, and its shape and extent depend on temperature.

  • If Mars was so dry, then how come glacier were there, then ? The formation of ice needs water, as well as a decent atm. pressure.

    So telling at the same time "mars is dry" and "Mars had glaciers" is somewhat strange.

  • Re:So where did all the water go? (Score:3)

    by Smitty825 ( 114634 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2000 @02:33PM (#659550) Homepage Journal
    I am simply asking for a logical explanation of where the water went.

    Duh, A giant Spaceship that turned into a giant vaccum cleaner (IIRC, Lord Dark-helmet lead the mission) and sucked up all of the oxygen (for their Perri-Air plants), and all of the water accidentally went with it.

    They weren't as successful on their next mission:
    Druidia
    :-)
  • Evidence suggests (this article notwithstanding) that Mars was once much warmer than it is presently. That solves the solid/liquid water problem. Infact, given the magnetic orientation of the inside of a recently recovered Martian meteorite, it's quite possible that life on Earth spawned from prior life on Mars (this meteorite didn't contain organics; the magnetic stuff just proves that they could have survived ejecta from Mars and atmospheric entry to Earth).


  • One thing that confuses me: The article states that the researchers claim the climate of Mars was never hot enough for running water; the researchers contend that fallen snow left deep gorges in the surface. However, in order for snow to fall in the first place, water vapour must be present in the air. I was under the impression that for water vapour to get into the air, liquid water must evaporate (solid water certainly does not transform directly into vapour!). So there must have been liquid water somewhere to form snow in the first place, right? Besides this, in order for the snow to melt, the planet had to be hot enough for this to happen. And what happened to the water that resulted from the melting snow?

    Can anyone explain this? Am I missing something?

  • You wouldn't happen to be fundamentalist, would you?


  • Many moons ago, the water on Mars held a closed session. All the hydrogen and oxygen got together to discuss the current state of affairs. Apparently, they had to spend a fortune in winter apparel and were pretty upset about the fact that the bikinis the Vogons sold them turned out to be wasted money. They decided that they were going to pack up and move to warmer climes.

    Mars pleaded with them not to go, but they had made up their minds. Still, they felt somewhat sentimental, so they decided to leave behind a present. They did some molecular magic, and left behind a face, depicting the future Elvis (they can do this, becuase of a loophole in some Einsteinian formula dealing with temporal mechanics). Once this was completed, they hitched a ride, and spent the next few millions years on the sandy beaches of earth.

    The rest is history.
  • Although, I don't know what spending billions of dollars to find a few space microbes will accomplish.

    Billions JUST for microbes is a bit of an exageration...but discovering micro-organisms off-planet is the holy grail of extra-planetary biology. Haven't you ever researched something just for the pure joy of learning?


  • I know we want to find out what is out there and take educated guesses but we will never really know untill we get our butts on the surface of mars. Hopefully in a few years we can do it. I would like to see the pictures of the first man on MARS.
  • I'm pretty sure we don't have to worry about legal action from Him. He's fairly estranged from all the good lawyers (If you know what I'm saying).
  • Mars has no magnetic field

    Say WHAT?


  • /. sure has been (-1 Redundant) lately. I think the posters should really communicate more often... or maybe they just need to read their own website more often. Who knows. Just my two cents.
  • So I can't buy martian beer on Sundays? Dammit.
  • When water evaporates, it just becomes water vapour, which will eventually become liquid again, etc. It doesn't generally have a chance of escaping a planet's gravity well.

    Sure it does. Gas molecules collide with each other all the the time. Sometimes these collisions are energetic enough that the molecules are accelerated past escape velocity and they manage to escape the atmosphere.

  • Wrong (Score:3)

    by jonnythan ( 79727 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2000 @02:08PM (#659562)
    Wrong.

    The first article dealt with the origins of large channels on the surface of Mars. This deals with the presence of actual water presently on the planet.

    Read before you flame the posters.
  • Of course it's dry, they never repealed Prohibition!

    That's why on Earth we see so many Martian ships, they come here for the booze!

  • Most of the meteors and other small celestial bodies that constantly shower (pun intended :-) the Earth, contain a sizeable quantity of water. I have no idea if it balances out with the loss or not, but since we're neither drying out nor drowning I guess we're pretty much breaking even.

  • Because mars has a much weaker gravitational field at the planet surface compared to Earth, Mars can only hold a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide. This means that the atmospheric pressure is low. The lower the air pressure, the lower the evaperation tempurature of water. Water at 0^C will quickly evaporate in a vacuum.

    I am guessing that combination of mars's tempurature and atmospheric pressure predict that whatever native and "aquired" water quickly evaporated.
  • Assuming Mars may have had water, I wonder where it all went. But that brings me to another question; How much of the Earth's water leaves the planet? Does any at all?
  • So without a magnetic field, terraforming Mars would be quite pointless.

    Is there any other planet available? :)

  • I know that planets are not closed systems. I know that debris often interferes with a planet's atmosphere. But I can't figure out how an ocean's worth of water could leave a planet. It wouldn't evaporate away; it wasn't sucked up and carried away. What explanation is there for a planet drying up? Could a giant asteroid slam into a planet and shake all the water off and into space? It doesn't seem likely that it would be bone-dry after that happened. What about the water vapour that went into the atmosphere? Can that be shaken off too? I'm not arguing that there is still water (or ice) on Mars, I am simply asking for a logical explanation of where the water went.


    -------
  • I suppose that for any serious work on Mars that would require these tons of water, we will anyway need a lot of energy. And since they will prolly have to build nuclear powerplant there, the issue of water is kind of irrelevant with so much ice...

    BTW It would be anyway kinda problematic to get the water to surface without letting it freeze to ice again... considering the temperature on Mars's surface.

  • Of course it's dry, they never repealed Prohibition!

    You mean to tell me, after travelling all the way from Earth to Mars, and all they have is Light Air?

    No wonder the Mars probe crashed - it was looking for a bar and couldn't find any!

    We'll just have to cooperate with the Canadians or the Russians - we build the spacecraft, they supply the booze.

  • man, i really, really hope this post was a troll and not a real attempt to be funny. god damn, man, what are you, in kindergarten?

  • Re:So where did all the water go? (Score:3)

    by Maestrogenic ( 157429 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2000 @02:35PM (#659572)
    The widely accepted theories put varying emphasis on the following:

    1) Frozen in the ice caps
    2) Frozen into the regolith (permafrost layer)
    3) Underground, in large geothermically heated pools.

    Most of it would likely be found in the northern hemisphere, as this is where we see the most signs of ancient ocean/water erosion. Also, it's important to keep in mind that the northern polar ice cap is estimated to contain about two million cubic kilometres of water.

    To answer your question, planets follow "lifecycles" of cooling, warming, cooling, etc. It's all mostly theory, but it's been proposed that while a planet the size of Earth can get locked into a cycle of freezing/thawing (the ice ages), a smaller planet such as Mars may not be able to have such a continuous cycle, or the cycle may be much longer. Hence the lack of liquid water...

  • I sure as hell hope that there is water on Mars, I would love to be able to have some hooch brewed on the Red Planet! Think how kick ass that would be. Drink some alcohol, that was produced by Martian canal water. I bet that would kick up the proof a bit eh? Or even better, how about some Ganja grown pyroponimetricaly(sp) with Mars dew... holy shit! On a side note...We will never know unless the great peoples of the world can get along, long enough to plan a good and proper mission to Mars. If you can think it, It can be done.... tollieman
  • well we very well couild be.... according to http://www.doitnow.com/~smd/methane.htm and a bit of extrapilation for mars they could have had methane ice glacers and methane raid (titan supposively has that) millions of years ago the poles themselfs are most probably methane but we will see for sure some time in the near geologic future.
  • Water (and other compounds) can indeed go directly from the solid state to the liquid state. Pick up any Chemistry 101 book and look up the word ``sublimation'' in the index.

    Sublimation occurs (using water as an example) in cold weather where the humidity is low.
  • then where did the glaciers come from?
  • Maybe there never was any "ocean" or "glacier" on mars...

  • Re: Science as a religion (Score:3)

    by b0z ( 191086 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2000 @04:34PM (#659578) Homepage Journal
    Please read this book by Carl Sagan [amazon.com]. I see that both sides are arguing life on Mars, etc and neither are from a very scientific perspective in my opinion. There has not been enough research done one way or another to believe some of the things stated.

    There is no reason to think it, considering Mars is relatively Earth-like and life happens very easily.

    Life has not happened easily anywhere but Earth that we know of. Unless you have proof of life that has originated somewhere other than Earth, you can't make this statement. We have no reason to think that life occurs because of water, it just happened to be like that on our speck of dust. That is not to say I agree with the person who you replied to, because it very well is possible that there is life, but I won't believe it until there is proof.

    : There never were lifeforms on Mars

    This is very, very unlikely. Where there is liquid water, there is usually life. Life is made up of the most common elements in the universe, and for life to exist all you really need is water and some basic primordial soup. The chances of Mars never having had even the lowest form of bacteria are incredibly slim.

    Again, you are taking science that you learned from watching Star Trek and applying it to real life. We have not found any life outside of Earth at this point in time. We may never find any, as the universe is really big, and, well, we aren't. So, the way a real scientist looks at the situation would be that, yes, it is possible for life to exist outside of Earth. We can not make any assumptions about that life, because we have a very limited amount of data to compare it against. When people base their knowledge on huge assumptions and make giant leaps of logic to support their beliefs, it invalidates the real science. You have to be skeptical, but open to new ideas. Try to understand, that by debunking someone's opinion with your opinion, rather than facts, you can't win. I know that there is no way humans can know anything 100% for certain, but, at least have some proof to back things up before you go around spreading your ideas to be facts. This is addressed to both people above me in this thread. Don't make science into a religion. There is a place for religion in people's lives, and there is a seperate place for science. When you base your "beliefs" on what you want to be true, rather than facts, that is a religion. I am not saying there is not any deities either. There may be, but I have no proof so I can't say.

    So I won't be completely off-topic in this thread, let me just say that the only real way to know what's over on Mars is to send some people there. C'mon Nasa...it'd be fun! :o)

  • Actually, this article is neither about carbon dioxide flows NOR recent water flows. Rather, it discusses research on a meteor crater here on earth which exhibits similar channels to those photographed on Mars. These were apparently caused by water flowing beneath glaciers, which Mars might have had millions of years ago.

    The point is, maybe the recently photographed channels WERE caused by water, but not recently.

    --
  • I thought , in a previous report, that they were thinking about it being some other form other than water that would have formed them like water flows would have. I forget the stuff they called it or the formula...but isn't this like the 3rd time they have changed their mind? Why don't they stop trying to prove that life exists before even understanding what the composition of the stuff is? Concentrate on the science first guys, come on! -Corey
  • Frozen CO2, that is. What do you think the Martian ice caps are made of? (Well, mostly made of, anyway; there may be water ice at the poles too).
  • Unless we're talking about frozen methane or some other weirdness, glaciers = water.

    Yes, but the point of this article is that the presence of water wasn't RECENT as they had been hoping after the photographs came out.
    --
  • Nope, not just water on earth. In fact, Galileo found evidence for liquid water in the most unlikely of places, namely on three of Jupiters moons. Of those Ganymede and Europa are fair certainties. Callisto probably also has liquid water, but maybe only ice.

    Check out some of these:
    Europa, wet and wild [sciam.com]
    Titan, Mars, and other E.T.-nurseries [sciam.com]
    Overview: The Galileo Mission to Jupiter and Its Moons [sciam.com]



    xchg .,@
  • Smaller planets, such as Mars, have less mass and a weaker gravitational field, reducing the escape velocity. This allows gases to escape the planet's atmosphere into outer space.

    Especially when given a switch kick in the Keister by a high energy particle, something our ozone layer would normally block. Would normally.
    --

  • so where did the water go? even if its not just under the surface... it has to be somewhere

    conservation of mass is a pretty important concept.

    john
  • I don't know if it's water but it sure looks like flowing liquid to me [maj.com].
    Also, Here's a close-up [maj.com]

    (MOC frame SP233806)

  • Mars dry? (Score:4)

    by msnomer ( 226842 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2000 @02:21PM (#659592)

    Does Guinness [slashdot.org] know about this?

    Looks around nervously...am I allowed to say that? Please don't sue me!


    --meredith

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