Mounting Evidence for Water on Mars 342
Kent Simon writes "Space.com has an interesting article discussing new evidence from the mars rovers that shows there may really be Water on Mars."
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Mounting Evidence for Water on Mars
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The spherules (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The spherules (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The spherules (Score:5, Informative)
There have been at least two expeditions to the Arizona desert by NASA people to study dust devils, both run out of the University of Arizona. I had the opportunity to spend a month in the Arizona desert gathering data on the second trip.
I wouldn't say that NASA is particularly concerned about dust devils -- due to the lower gravity, dust devils on mars would be much weaker than those on earth, even if they are larger. Even on earth, dust devils post little threat. Some of the ones we studied were over 2 miles tall, and you could walk right through them with absolutely no danger. While the original trip was sponsored by the HEDS (Human Exploration and Developement of Space) funded Matador experiment to see if the dust devils posed any danger to human exploration, the primary concerns were over static electricity and dust getting into space suits.
What NASA is really interested in is how dust affect the geology of the planet. In the absense of water or strong winds, dust devils may in fact be the primary erosive force on Mars. During the first half of the 20th century, astronomers noticed that Mars changed color depending on the season, and this led them to beleive that there was rich vegetation on Mars. When the first orbiters and lander arrived, we learned that this wasn't quite true, but we still had no other solution. Now, scientists believe that is was dust devils, which are a seasonal occurance, that were actually reconfiguring the landscape of the planet. We have actually seen pictures of light colored planes that are crisscrossed by dark dust devil trails.
The problem is that very little is known about dust devils on Earth. I only know of one scientific paper published on the subject. While some of the work we did was trying to find out the proerties of dust devils, especially the electrostatic properties, to help create an accurate model for their formation on Mars, this was not really why we were there. The primary goal of the NASA researchers was to study the dust devils on earth in order to learn how to study them on Mars. We were mainly out there to test a set of instruments planned for Matador (including some far out stuff, like using a special UV camera to detect sparks caused by static electricity).
If anyone is interested, there is an article on the first trip at:a .html [spacedaily.com] 0 5/29_dust.html [berkeley.edu]
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-atmosphere-01
and the second trip at:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/
Re:The spherules [talk to pilots] (Score:4, Interesting)
Every cumulus cloud that you see is a dust devil (though usually without the dust). The rising air of the dust devil is itself responsible for the cloud. Oft times it happens that the rising air either runs into an inversion or is sufficiently dry that it doesn't reach the dew point to condense a cloud. In deserts and dryer climes those rising air columns often find plenty of dust to pick up, making them visible.
Further, these things are useful. Skilled pilots can use them to fly hundreds of miles in a day (1000km is not unheard of; I've personally flown > 300 km several times). As the poster mentions, they are often visible and rise up to two miles. (Actually more; in New South Wales (Australia) or Arizona (US) on a good summer day, they go regularly to 3-4,000m and more than 5,000m is not unheard of.) In mountainous areas where pilots are likely to carry supplemental oxygen, dust devils are scarcer, and orographic winds are more practical for achieving very high altitude (10,000m+) and long distance (500km+) flights. The orographic winds ("ridge lift", "wave") also tend to break up dust devils, strongly limiting their altitudes in mountainous regions.
Without thunderstorms (on earth) dust devils sometimes reach upward speeds of 30 knots (15m/s) or more. With thunderstorms (condensing and freezing water release heat), much more powerful winds are created (> 70 knots).
Further, in many areas of the world, you can get soaring forecasts. These provide some indication of the likelyhood of "thermals" (dust devils, w/ or w/o dust), what time of the morning they are likely to start (they are driven by sunlight), how strong they are likely to be, how high they are likely to be, and how many can be found per unit area. (Or you can use a T-phi chart or a Stuve chart (aka "skew chart") and a few measurements to figure these things yourself.)
Re:The spherules (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The spherules (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What is BB ? (Score:3, Informative)
Specifically, when someone says "a BB" in the US, it means a small ball bearing used in a "BB gun", which is an air powered gun that fires BBs.
These BBs are around 2 millimeters wide. So you have your answer.
Re:What is BB ? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What is BB ? (Score:4, Funny)
The spherules are cool (Score:3, Insightful)
That is true if the globules spherical shape is the result of mechanical weathering. The spheres may also be concretions, formed in place through precipitation in an aqueous environment, or the may be melt glass from a volcanic eruption or meteor impact. The microlayered st
Re:The spherules (Score:5, Informative)
Except the spherules don't look like the sand grains you find in Earth deserts. Those would be rounded (because as you say there is lots of abrasion), but rarely spherical, and they tend to show signs of impact and scratching from their fellow grains. So far the spherules appear to lack these features.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Re:The spherules (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides : have you looked at the pictures? These spherules are not round because of abrasion or erosion, they are clearly round because they formed that way (either as molten droplets solidifying, or through some sort of deposition process). Rounded pebbles are "rounded", not "perfectly spherical" like these spherules.
Until we get info on their chemical composition, we don't know what caused them, but erosion into "spherules" is one of the least likely explanations.
Most likely, in order of decreasing likelyhood:
- Solidified droplets of molten rock (from impact or volcano)
- Chemical concretions in standing water (above or below ground)
- Chemical concretions of biological origin
- Eggs of a Martian Rock-frog
- wind/water erosion of angular stones
Re:The spherules (Score:5, Informative)
Answer : it wouldn't
Shouting "but this is Mars, you can't just compare it to Earth" isn't going to help, we're talking physics here, not some kind of mysticism...
It's not because the planet is a little different from Earth (and let's face it : the differences are relatively minor, with gravity, air pressure, temperature and chemical composition actually being very very close to Earth's):
Gravity: 1/3 of Earth
Air Pressure : 1-10% of air pressure in the high mountains (where pebbles form in streams)
Temperature : 150-290K on Mars, 250-300K on Earth (again, high up in the mountains)
Chemical composition : mainly basaltic rocks, lots of those on Earth too...
Mars is actually the planet which is most like Earth in the whole solar system (not Venus, which is only alike in size, but not in environmental properties).
Re:The spherules (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly, it isn't random physical phenomena we're talking about here.
Third, why do you assume the rock fragments were of variable size and shape? All that is required for my hypothesis to be correct is that the original material was light enough to be displaced by the wind. Those materials of a given size and composition were therefore subject to this effect, those differing in size and composition were not. As we can plainly see, there is an abundance of mate
Re:The spherules (Score:4, Interesting)
No, but they are way way more spherical than any pebbles on earth.
Yes it is, rocky object colliding with each other in the wind is about as random as it gets...
Because it is the most logical starting point, I mean, why wouldn't they be variable (By this, I mean "considerably more variable than we see in the spherules", not "rocks smaller than an atom to larger than mount Everest".
Indeed there are, but these spherules are inside the layered material and are eroding out of it (presumably because they are made out of tougher material than the surrounding stuff), so the other stuff lying around is less relevant (and probably mostly rocks thrown out by the many meteroite impacts in the neighbourhood, or meteorites themselves).
I agree, but this only explains (more or less) why they would all be similar in size, it doesn't explain the spherical nature (they may not be perfectly spherical, but they are very close)
I'm sorry, this was just a reaction to your short and pretty "handwavy" answer [slashdot.org] to my previous post. The frog was a kind of CowboyNealish and feeble attempt at humor.
Here we disagree, while I agree that they are not the same, they are not off by a huge amount, meaning that the physics will act more or less the same, which to me means that if you propose a mechanism that acts fundamentally different then it does on earth, you should be prepared to give some rasoning beyond "well, it ain't exactly the same there".
Again, I disagree with the "are not remotely comparable".
I'm sorry, are you saying no pebbles are formed in mountain rivers? Or are we again diagreeing on what constitute "comparable surroundings"? I will concede that we cannot rule out that these objects were formed in a way similar to what you describe, I would argue that, excluding the frog joke, my other possible explanations are considerably more likely...
Anyway, the spectrometric data from the rovers should provide good evidence of the actual formation process, so this will all likely be resolved in a couple of months
Re:The spherules (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The spherules (Score:3, Interesting)
If they were solidified droplets of molten rock, the surface should be a great deal smoother. The surface on the spheroids in contrast have considerable detail, and these details appear to be consistent with a long lifetime of tiny impacts with other spheroids/rocks, gradually creating the spherical shape we are observing today.
Title a bit sexual? (Score:5, Funny)
Come on, somebody get that copywriter laid before he sublimates again.
Great... (Score:5, Funny)
Now I'm thirsty and hungry!
Re:Great... (Score:5, Interesting)
Could it be a fossil?
Re:Great... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm asking a perfectly legitimate question. An odd-shaped object embedded in a rock on mars may be a chemical deposit, or it may be an organic product - or it may just be an anomalous rock.
I fail to see what is trollish about my question.
Re:Great... (Score:3, Interesting)
Here is something else to consider: Mars may be recovering from a mass extinction event. Had we sent a probe to Earth just after the Permian extinction wiped out 90% of all life, the place would be a devastated mess, with what little life remaining hiding out and clinging by a thread. Life takes decades to recover in the vicinity of a major volcanic eruption
Re:Great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not?
Serious question here - I've heard this f
Re:Great... (Score:5, Funny)
So the moon is made of cheese, and mars is made of pasta. I suppose that's why the earth is populated by carbonara based life forms..
*bom-chi*
Of course there is water! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Of course there is water! (Score:3, Funny)
It's easy (Score:3, Funny)
What's so great about water!? (Score:5, Informative)
OK we all know that water is needed to sustain life on earth, which is why its such a biggie when the possibility of water on extra-terrestial terrains arises.
But what is it exactly about water that makes it so important? Here [uni.edu] is a page which shows some of the most important properties of water. It shows, for example, how capillary action works, a property that allows plants up to 20 feet (i think!) tall to absorb water without using any energy whatsoever!
Re:What's so great about water!? (Score:5, Informative)
btw, capillary action is not a unique property of water, it will occur with any liquid that an affinity for the substrate
Re:What's so great about water!? (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact that for millions of years on Earth, nothing happened, and then all of a sudden BOOM life arose in the gap of about 10,000 (which is a small gap), might be suggestive that life really might not be able to happen many other way!
If you look at life on Earth, it is based on long chains of carbon and some nitrogen, mixed with various other molecules. Not many other elements have the combining properties of carbon and nitrogen, so nothing too complex could be formed with anything else.
If you take the example of a DNA molecule, this ia an extremely complex and precise little thing. It's double-helix structure is only possible because of the way it has been formed, and its replication has been masterfully engineered by millions of years of evolution.
There are many, many other things about life on Earth that are so complex and specific, that I - and many biologists agree with this - think that life probably could not have happened any other way.
Btw, the reason capillary action happens is because water molecules are polar, with the hydrogen side being slightly positive and the oxygen side being slightly negative. This is not true with most other liquids. And besides mercury, or ethanol wouldnt be very useful to plants, even if they could absorb it by capillary action.
Re:What's so great about water!? (Score:5, Informative)
Where did you get this from?
Geologically speaking, life appeared on Earth almost the instant the Earth became hospitable enough for life, about 3.8 billion years ago (or when the Earth was 700-800 million years old. That was only single-celled life, but life nonetheless. The move to multi-celled life took far longer and didn't occur until about 700 million years ago. That's the giant-leap there. If single-celled life appears so quickly and it took so much longer for multi-celled life, then it gives the impression that single-celled life is very opportunistic while multi-celled life isn't necessarily the next step.
Re:What's so great about water!? (Score:5, Informative)
The most important action that allows water to go up in those big trees is negative pressure at the leaves, created by the evaporation of water. Take a look here [rcn.com].
Do the numbers? Indeed! (Score:5, Informative)
Hmmm, you should have paid attention in your freshman physics class. No such thing as "negative pressure." What you meant to say was "lower relative pressure" and even then you're still wrong. Even if the leaves managed to lower the air pressure above their surface to zero psi, which of course they can't, the highest you can lift water via air pressure differential is 10.3 meters. A water column 10.3 meters high weighs as much as a column of air reaching from sea level to the top of the atmosphere.
If you want to move water to the top of a sequoia, you've got to use some mechanism other than air pressure differentials. In fact, had you carefully read the page you linked to, you would have noticed that transpiration peters out at around 32 feet.
Re:huh? (Score:3, Informative)
There IS. The evidence is in the fucking link I provided! Here's another part of the text (highlighting by me):
The rattan vine may climb as high as 150 ft on the trees of the tropical rain forest in northeastern Australia to get its foliage into the sun. When the base of a vine is severed while immersed in a basin of water, water continues to be taken up. A vine less than 1 inch in diameter will "drink" water indefinitely at a rate of up to 12 ml/minute.
If forced
Re:What's so great about water!? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, that web site you linked to shows a lot of properties that are generic to all liquids - the unique one being that water expands when it contracts.
However, the question should be "why only water?" and the basic answer to that is pretty simple.
Life, simply put, could be described as nature selecting out certain configurations from a system that contains an almost infinite amount of states. Therefore, you need something that allows for many states and many configurations to form - that is, you want a dipole - subatomic "glue", basically - something that can take ions and join them together in weird ways to get bizarre states. Dipoles also act simultaneously as solvents - that is, they break down objects into dissolved ions.
Well, if you want a dipole for life, then you're probably going to get life based on the simplest dipole available. So you start with hydrogen, the most common element. And the simplest dipole you can form with hydrogen is water.
This, of course, doesn't preclude other elements from being the basic dipole for life if the region isn't compatible with water - though, unlike what the article says, Earth is not at the triple point of water - the blackbody temperature of Earth is ~255K, which is far underneath the freezing point of water (granted, triple points require knowledge of pressure, which eliminates a simple blackbody approach, but...). Earth's atmosphere, however, is at the triple point of water, but that's because it's been tuned to get to that point by the various thermal cycles and biological cycles which keep Earth's temperature near that point. What you really needed was liquid water, because as a solid or as a gas, the dipole properties are really being wasted. So, one can imagine a world where something just slightly more complicated than water (say... ammonia) is liquid, and maybe, just maybe, you'd get a complex chemistry out of that, too.
Re:What's so great about water!? (Score:5, Funny)
Life, Water & Power (Score:3, Interesting)
Another interesting point is probably a possible power source so if some of the nice red rocks contains a substance that is able to generate engergy, that would be better.
Artificial life? (Score:5, Funny)
Which taxpayer payed this much? (Score:5, Funny)
Which taxpayer payed this much?
Re:Which taxpayer payed this much? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Which taxpayer payed this much? (Score:5, Funny)
It may have water (Score:5, Informative)
link [sltrib.com]
Antiseptic and life-killing, the chemical helps explain why the martian atmosphere and surface are void of life.
Re:It may have water (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It may have water (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is a likely place for life (if any) to be, considering that there's:
- Possibly liquid water / brine there.
- Possibly adequate sheilding from the crap atmosphere above ground / radiation from space.
Re:It may have water (Score:4, Informative)
There was a Wired article (this month's I think) where they detailed a series of scientific missions to the Atacama desert down in S. America. The conditions closely mimic Mars in the extremely low water levels and high UV exposure. The result was that they were unable to find ANY bacterial life in the soil, even when digging several feet down. (although I have some issues with the subsurface results they got) Even an attempt to seed the soil with extremophiles from another desert failed.
It's possible that there might be something buried under the dirt in the Martian soil but even that's pretty chancy. Without a source for energy generation, those bacteria won't be able to repair damage from natural radioactivity in the soil. In our soil there's plenty of organics that bacteria can use for a power source but that carbon ultimately came from solar-driven photosynthesis which the surface conditions rule out.
These are the only possibilities I can think of for Martian life:
1: underground life that is able to sustain at least some basal metabolic rate from a chemical energy source. That energy source would be either organic deposists from an aearlier period of Martian life where photosynthesis was possible or some sort of geological organic chemical formation pathway or hydrogen gas generated from natural radioactivity.
2: Life in geothermally driven water sources or locked into ice. There is a significant amount of life even in the dry plains of Antarctica which indicates that even solid ice is capable of supporting life.
3: some sort of non-standard biological chemistry which is far beyond my ability to speculate about.
If they have oil, then the Martians are fecked* (Score:4, Funny)
Wheres my Giant Shrimp! (Score:5, Funny)
What is this all about? (Score:4, Interesting)
We are sitting on a planet that has everything we could possibly want. Water, food, sun, beaches, fresh mangos, carnival once a year, beer, ADSL for peanuts.
And now the hint of the memory of water on Mars is enough to give us sciencegasms of pleasure. "Oooh, water, bacterial lifeforms,"... I know, water = life, life = understanding, etc.
But it seems so perverse. There is such a huge waste of life and resources going on all around us. Nothing we ever find on Mars will be remotely as interesting as - say - a bucket of seawater from any corner of the world's oceans. We'll spend fortunes trying to extract a few nuggets of knowledge from the furthest corners of our domain while ignoring the mountains of knowledge that remain to be unpuzzled all around us.
Are we just a perverse species, or what?
Re:What is this all about? (Score:5, Interesting)
It gives us hope that somewhere else in the universe there would be life as well. After all if two planets in our own system have life it must develop quite easily, Or at least show that interplanet panspermia is possible.
And most important to our motivations, it addresses two very basic interests inherant to our physque. Loneliness and the divine.
Re:What is this all about? (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember, Earth is supposed to be a Garden of Eden. Like it or not, but a lot of human policy is driven by Christians who would rather not have to deal with the reality of the universe...
Answering this question will transform culture in big, big ways.
Re:What is this all about? (Score:4, Interesting)
Which doesn't specifically say anything about what they are or are not, or whether there is or is not life on those bodies. It wasn't specifically mentioned in the Bible whether God created life there or not, or whether that life has souls, or whatever. Spiritually, it's pretty much a non-issue whether life exists there or not.
Even if the life were intelligent life, it wouldn't make any difference. However, given the paranoid nature of the Christian Fundamentalist mind (everything is an evil leftist conspiracy by the devil to persecute and destroy them) - there is a contingent of Christians who are worried that SUPERIOR alien life will someday be discovered, and they will come and impose THEIR religion on us - and since there's no guidance on that at all in scripture, they'll be interpreted as demons bringing false religion from the devil.
One point that is made in scripture, is that the Earth was specifically given to man, to do with as we please. The heavenly bodies were not. So if we were go colonise other planets, and exploit them, we don't specifically have God's permission. I'm sure that's probably not going to be an important point for Fundamentalists heavily invested in mining consortia.
Re:What is this all about? (Score:3, Funny)
My guess would be Mars [pantheon.org].
Re:What is this all about? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What is this all about? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever there's anything about space exploration on
Yes, there are 2.3 billion people without fresh water, but it's not the fault of the space programs. NASA's budget for 2004 is about $16 billion. The Pentagon's budget is $450 billion!!!! This is more than all other military spending by all other nations combined We could cut it in half and still be spending three times as much as our next highest potential enemy (Russia, who spends $70 billion per year, and they're an ally.) The "Axis of Evil" spends only $7.5 billion, so we could easily defend our nation from "evildoers", feed all the hungry children, house the homeless, and provide quality education to anyone who wants it and still have money left over to send humans to Mars and the Moon, and push ourselves into space.
Don't blame NASA for taking money from important programs. Blame the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex who would rather build things that blow up than feed starving children.
Re:What is this all about? (Score:3, Informative)
Well, actually it means that you're spending more than the next 25 highest spending nations combined - not quite all nations. I've done some debating on the space programs recently and you have to have you statistics right unless you want to get shot down badly.
All told, spending more on defense than your next 25 competitors combined does still seem a little silly - especially considering that the top few of those are britain, fr
Re:What is this all about? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe, maybe not. An actual living organism from Mars would be tremendously interesting, simply because it did evolve somewhere else. We'd get to see an evolutionary 'what-if' question answered.
Looking at the differences--and similarities--between terrestrial and Martian organisms could be incredibly illuminating. Looking only at Earth life, and Earth fossils, and Earth biochemistry is like examining in detail one grandmaster chess match. Interesting, challenging, surprising, and complex...but it doesn't explore all the aspects of the game.
Life on other worlds would be an opportunity to examine another game. The rules (physics) are the same for everyone, but the game is different each time you play.
Mind you, I agree that we're not doing a great job of managing the diversity of life we have here on Earth. I am utterly gobsmacked at all the useful compounds extracted so far from extremophilic organisms. Then again, Martian life would be the utimate extremophiles--near vacuum, hard radiation...very impressive.
Re:What is this all about? (Score:3, Interesting)
We are already at the point that we are waging wars for control of oil (i.e Iraq and Venezuela), control which will determine th
Re:What is this all about? (Score:3, Interesting)
Spherical snowflakes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Either that, or the spherules are organic...
Re:Spherical snowflakes? (Score:5, Interesting)
These can be illusions, of course.
Beware... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Mars program's stated goal is the detection of water on Mars - therefore every possible shred of evidence for that conclusion is being reported, with no discussion at all of any alternative interpretations.
A couple of very interesting opinion [spacedaily.com] pieces [spacedaily.com] at spacedaily.com recently sum up some alternative theories.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love it to be true. But there's a distinct water-mania in the current NASA press machine...
Re:Beware... (Score:5, Insightful)
Frequently unanswered questions (Score:3, Funny)
Because humans need new destinations and ever-expanding horizons.
Because going to Mars will inspire the nation's youth.
I hope they didnt stay up all night answering their frequently asked questions.
data and speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:data and speculation (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, Levin is a bit nutty here. "Crackpot" may or may not be too strong. He has a history with mentioned Viking experiment. Nearly everyone else has concluded that the results can be explained through normal (but unexpected at the time) chemical properties of the martian soil. Google around for more info, it's also come up on Usenet recently.
All this talk of "mud" and "liquid water" leaves me scratching my head... I can only assume that these people are desperately looking for something to support their preconcieved ideas.
Let's take the "mud" first.
Everyone knows Mars is a very dusty place. It's exceedingly obvious from the pictures. The behavour of the rover tracks (and airbags) is about what you'd expect from a very fine grained material. Go play with some flour in your kitchen if it helps. Also, the "pro-mud" people (shall we call them Elbonians?) also seem to forget that the rovers carry a microscopic imager... The pictures from it seem to clearly indicate that we're looking at sand and dust, not mud.
As for the "shiny" pictures implying brine/ice...
This also seems uninformed to me. There are plenty of things that are shiny that are not ice. I think most of this is a result of not being able to correctly intrepret what the rover sees. The Pancam takes images though a variety of narrow-pass filters, and this can sometimes make things look funky. In fact, you can see that rocks sometimes look "shiny" in one wavelenth, but dull and normal in another.
It's easy to find examples of rocks like this in NASA's "raw image archive" -- eg some of the Sol 14 Pancam pics at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit. html
Long John Silvers better be ready to pay up! (Score:3, Informative)
I am now sure that NASA has found fairly conslusive evidence of water on Mars. Not becuase of the article sited in this story, but because NASA is having a press conference to announce "significant findings" [space.com] tomorrow at 2:00 PM EST.
I think it's a pretty safe bet that there is water on Mars. Long John Silvers better be ready to pay up. I want my free shrimp and I want it tomorrow!
Costneresque title of article (Score:5, Funny)
Moot Point (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Mar/03012004/utah/14
"I wonder on Mars if it can rain upwards" (Score:4, Funny)
It only makes sense, considering the red sky and blue sunset [slashdot.org].
On Mars, er-- In Soviet Russia, the umbrella wears YOU!
Where's the Pasta? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Where's the Pasta? (Score:5, Interesting)
They seem to be keeping the most interesting shots and other data to themselves - and no surprise, the only benefit the scientists get out of their participation in the project is publication rights. I'm quite sure that we'll see the most interesting stuff before too terribly long.
Of course there's always the mysterious "horned" Opportunity object, which simply up and disappeared from one day to the next. I still suspect that it may have been a torn bit of material from the airbags that got blown away, but all the same it's an odd thing.
Re:Where's the Pasta? (Score:3, Informative)
You can see it here [nasa.gov]. It's a little above and to the left of the center of the picture.
Other pictures from that day (sol 30 for Opportunity) are here [nasa.gov]. They drilled the area in the following days and there's a picture of the 'pasta' post-drilling, but finding that image is left as an exercise for the reader.
singing in the rain (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder if they are smoking some pot in Maryland...
Waterous questions (Score:5, Insightful)
The result was that at Viking's time, most circles were standing for the Dry-Dried-Drying-Dead argument, no matter the controversial data from spectroscopy, the first pictures from Mars and several theories about the formation of the Solar System. Most academical circles were not only willing to but forcing the view that Mars was just like the Moon but more colder.
Unfortunately things did not stop only in this. There were people that for some reason falsified Viking's results or manipulated other results. For some reason, these people needed the Dry-Dried-Drying-Dead Mars argument as a weapon for their silly, stupid and overreligious theories. Frankly it is another show on how Mars, since Kepler, has been ground not only for a scientific debate but also for political-religious fistfights... Anyway, the extremism of ideas and the fundamentalism of some slowed down the exploration of Mars.
If you hear a refutation of the new discoveries, be careful. Before coming into conclusions try to find if this is the product of a scientific discussion, how correctly people step up with their arguments, or if this is another mass-media show between Hoagland-alikes and Horowitz-clones.
falsified viking's results...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't it safe to assume,,, (Score:4, Insightful)
'hydrogen' and 'oxygen'. Finding water on Mars is inevitable.
Let me know when they find some sort of bacteria or micro-organism. Water
What I don't get... (Score:5, Interesting)
With the countless gallons on earth, it shouldn't be a big deal that just a fraction of that much water ended up on Mars.
LK
Water coming from comets (Score:5, Insightful)
Could it be that without an atmosphere on Mars, comets and the like could be falling on the planet and depositing their contents on the surface in the same way as has happened on earth? I mean, heck, we've even got our rover planted in the midst of a crater created by extra-martian debris and since there is little or no erosion on this planet we could be partly examining the contents of extra-planetary material. Personally, I think this would make the examination even more interesting than it already is!
Be careful what you wish for (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember when Chekov was scanning Ceti Alpha 5 for life before testing the Genesis device there, and his captain said that even a microbe meant the test would be a no-go? Remember what happened to the invading Martians at Grover's Mill NJ: they're highly vulnerable to Terran bacteria.
But seriously, a dead, sterile Mars is one we could start sending people to, and eventually set up a permanent settlement (with waste products and all). But one with actual life would - for scientific, and arguably for moral reasons - have to be quarantined.
a conversation somewhere near Alpha Centauri... (Score:5, Funny)
"OK, tell you what. We'll let them develop without interference. We'll take that dead world nearest them, and sprinkle it around with some single-celled organisms. Once they start exploring, they'll find the organisms, and THEN - when confronted with an entirely defenseless foreign life form - we'll see their true moral character."
"Deal."
Examples on Earth - Brine Shrimp & Soil Crust (Score:4, Informative)
Might the subsurface "sparkling" spheres [nasa.gov] be a form of Martian brine shrimp eggs
similar to the Great Salt Lake brine shrimp eggs???
photo 1 [brineshrimpusa.com]
photo 2 [utah.edu]
More on the Great Salt Lake Brine Shrimp ecology can be found here:
Link 1 [brineshrimpusa.com]
Link 2 [brineshrimpusa.com]
Soil Crust Analogs on Earth???
Likewise a USA Today article Imprint shows Mars craft landed in 'weird stuff' [usatoday.com] describes "The soil was stripped up and folded in an interesting way," said Jim Bell, who designed the panoramic camera that Spirit used to photograph the "mud-like" patch [nasa.gov]. "It has quite alien textures."
Might this soil crust on Mars be same/similar to the biological soil crust found at Arches National Park [nps.gov] (Moab, Utah)?
Additional details regarding biological soil crusts maybe are to found here:
intermediate details [soilcrust.org]
advanced details [soilcrust.org]
Using the ends to justify the means? (Score:3, Interesting)
A troll? You bet!
Just call me the drole troll!
forget water -they discovered LIFE on Mars in 1976 (Score:4, Interesting)
After reading this paper and several others [spherix.com] by Dr. Levin, I have to wonder why the general public has no idea about these findings. Don't they merit public discussion? Why don't *any* of NASA's planned Mars missions contain direct life-detection experiments? IANACT (Conspiracy Theorist), but something smells fishy to me.
Not sure why this is such a big surprise (Score:4, Informative)
Evidence of *recent* water activity is interesting and important, but the loss of this nuance is typical of "news" journalism, which must justify every story as Brand! New! Exciting! Information!
Water is only one factor (Score:4, Informative)
The Certainty of Water (Score:3, Insightful)
Some physics guess's (Score:3, Informative)
Ok, Gravity 1/3 rd. (roughly, everything here is roughly and ballpark)
Atmospheric pressure 1/10 th.
So for a given volume the amount of wind speed to push is going to be:
If I remember correctly it's double the wind speed and you quadruple the force. So it's 1/10 the pressure but it can only do 1/40 th the work for a given speed. So if you have a wind on earth that pushes against something with a force of 4 Kg at a speed of 10 Kph then on mars the same 10 Kph wind would only have a force of 62.5 grams, if you double the wind speed to 20 Kph you get 250 grams. Double it again to 40 kph and you get a force of 1.0 Kg and double a last time gets you to 4 kg with a wind speed of 80 Kph. So to get the same force you need 8 times the wind speed.
Of course it's not quite that simple. The 1/3 rd gravity means the same force seems to do more. What it really means is that it takes less force to do anything where gravity is a component. Friction for instance or any operation involving an up or down component.
I would guess that the best ways to simulate it here on earth would be to modify the other parameters to match our gravity. For instance, if your interested in how water might have worked on rock in that gravity then use something that is 3 times the density of water and see how it behaves on rock. Something as simple as a rock tumbling kit filled with an appropriate liquid mixture and compare the results with those produced by water.
To reflect the difference in air you might try to use a fluid to make the rocks have a similar weight as they would on mars then modify the size to match the density of the liquid vs. the Martian atmosphere which has the added benefit of letting you lower the flow speeds to match as well.
Basically it seems that things would happen slower for the most part whenever anything with a gravity component is involved. Flows would be slower, on the other hand inertia is the same so when 2 particles collide you get the same bang for the buck.
I suspect that weathering based on moving water would be similar. I'm not sure if possible changes in elevation would make up for the lesser gravity, I suspect not though.
Atmospheric weathering should be more noticeable. Because of the density you should be able to sort out those rocks that can and can't be moved as opposed to rocks that could have been moved by water but not by air. The differences in weathering on the various sides of these rocks should answer some questions.
Ok enough of this, time to return to my thorazine and play with the pretty bits...
Re:Tell news (Score:3, Funny)
Jolyon
Re:Tell news (Score:5, Informative)
They had a little scoop so they could get some soil and perform tests for life.
Re:Tell news (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt you this kind of evidence from an orbiter:
Other images show the rover tracks clearly are being made in "mud", with water being pressed out of that material, Levin said. "That water promptly freezes and you can see reflecting ice. That's clearly ice. It could be nothing else," he said, "and the source is the water that came out of the mud."
Re:Tell news (Score:5, Insightful)
Mars Global Surveyer first (Score:4, Interesting)
And, to top it all off, there is a small but steady band of real scientists that believe that Viking did in fact find life on Mars.
Re:Tell news (Score:3, Insightful)
The Mother of all pissing contest, the Cold War, has already ended.
So take example and start aiming to the toilet. This place is already too smelly.
-For Cleaner Environment
Re:Tell news (Score:5, Informative)
It is obvious that you didn't read the article. The editor's post of the story was a little misleading because we've known about water on Mars for some time.
Having said that, the article states that they think they are actually SEEING liquid water freeze as it's being pressed upward out of the soil by the rover's wheels. That's much different than detecting it with an orbitor. Also, if I'm not mistaken the ESA orbitor suggested that water vapor exists in the atmosphere, not the soil. The missions are complimentary (ESA and NASA have been assisting one another by relaying commands through both of their orbitors and NASA has been trying to actually find Beagle visually using their orbitor). No one is taking credit for anything they haven't done. No need to get defensive.
Re:Tell news (Score:3, Insightful)
The ESA "discovery" announcement last month was accompanied by a cartoonish image of the Valles Marineris area. I have yet the see the source data for this grandiose conclusion. Visual evidence for an abundance of water on Mars dates from the Mariner 9 mission in the early seventies. No one has yet trumped the awesome observations of recently active gullies [msss.com] in Mars southern hemisphere.
Re:Tell news (Score:4, Insightful)
Slight difference, I know, but get it right. The Media is quite often the enemy of Science, and The People.
Re:Tell news (Score:5, Insightful)
But the US mission is also very valuable. You ask "But what have they produced so far? A few snapshots and panorama pictures (which are nice, but well...), and some stone probes." which is really just silly. The photos the landers have taken are more than just panoramas of the scenary. While these do tell us more about the martian surface, the really imporant pictures are of the rock formations, close-ups of the surface sand and rock, and micrographs of all the material there at the surface. Seeing exactly what martian rock, pebbles, and sand looks like is very important for understanding the martian atmosphere & weather patterns, as well as geologic makeup and history.
to suggest that it's only taken a few is absurd... check out http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit
the other tools on the rovers (see http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft
with all your unfounded critisism and palpable distaste for another country, I almost mistook you for an American! try not to be so prejudiced in the future, mmK?
Re:Tell news (Score:5, Informative)
ESA decided to send one orbiter and one lander to mars, NASA decided to play safe and sent out not one but two landers, Spirit and Opportunity. And of course, they have their own orbiter, too.
Orbiter? Try Orbiters -- there are two existing orbiters -- Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey. The MER missions did not orbit.
But when you look at the actual scientific data produced by both the ESA and the NASA mission, you will see that NASA definitely does the better PR work. But what have they produced so far? A few snapshots and panorama pictures (which are nice, but well...)
You don't really have a clue, do you? First, some of those "snapshots" are from the Pancam, which has a variety of narrow-band filters to allow detailed image analysis. Second, the rovers have been collecting a TON of data from the other main science instruments -- MiniTES, Mossbauer, APXS. While these don't produce pretty pictures (just boring spectragraphs), it's a wealth of scientific information.
and some stone probes. But due to their design, they can't drill down further than maybe a few meters (if even that deep).
"Stone probes"? WTF are you talking about? The rovers can essentially spin a wheel in place to carve out a trench in the soil. That can dig in the ballpark of 6 inches. There's also a RAT tool to grind rocks, which only goes a few milimeters -- that's all you need to get past any dust or weathering.
This isn't a sub-surface exploration mission, so complaining about that is like saying Slashdot sucks because there's not enough advice on cosmetics.
but IMHO, it's not really something special: we've seen pictures from mars before, and we've analyzed probes from mars before.
We've never seen pictures like the microscopic imager is taking. And it's naaive to say that just because a couple of previous missions have takes pictures that there's no value in doing anything similar again... For simple example, look at how radically different the Opportunity site is from the other missions (Spirit, Pathfinder, Viking I&II).
So, I'm a lot more impressed by the work done by ESA: although they lost their lander (what a pity...), they concentrated not so much on the PR (no "the best crew in the world!" cheering) but more on actual science
That's an insult to everyone in NASA working on the MERs. Have you ever done any real science? It's obvious you don't know anything about the NASA mission, but to make a blanket statement like that about the science just a couple of weeks into the mission is stupid. It can take months to years to develop all the final results.
Let's look at your other ESA claims:
produced detailled 3D maps of parts of mars which has never done before, and where the big geological structures can be analyzed better than ever before.
Uhm, no. NASA has been making maps since the Mariner and Viking missions in the 60's and 70's. More recently, the MGS and Odyssey orbiters have been producing higher-resolution imagery. MGS has even taken pictures of the rovers on the surface (see http://www.msss.com/mer_mission/index.html).
proved the existence of water on the south pole of mars. NASA asserted that they had detected that in 2001 already, but in fact, they didn't, because they didn't have the right equipment. All they were able to detect at that time was hydrogen, which is a possible indicator for water, but definitely not a prove.
It would be more accurate to say "confirmed," no "proved." ESA's PR is in hyper-overdrive here. Previous results from other missions (especially Odyssey's neutron spectrometer) have led to the forgone conclusion that water/ice is present. ESA's results are an "independant cconfirmation," but are hardly a novel or shocking result.
measured the actual temperature on the mars surface (up to +4 degrees Celsius), which is higher than estimated before.
Aga
Re:Tell news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wouldn't it be funny... (Score:3, Insightful)
More likely, they'll concoct some weird story about dust on some solar panels, admit a setback, find some last minute "evidence", shut off the rovers, ask for some money, and try it again.