Curiosity Confirms Origins of Martian Meteorites 35
littlesparkvt writes "Earth's most eminent emissary to Mars has just proven that those rare Martian visitors that sometimes drop in on Earth — a.k.a. Martian meteorites — really are from the Red Planet. A key new measurement of Mars' atmosphere by NASA's Curiosity rover provides the most definitive evidence yet of the origins of Mars meteorites while at the same time providing a way to rule out Martian origins of other meteorites."
The Key Word is "Confirms" (Score:5, Informative)
Curiosity is just confirming the results of the Viking entry science neutral atmospheric composition experiment (different from the mass spectrometer operated on the surface). It's very nice to have this nailed down, but I don't think it changes anything.
Re: (Score:2)
Well no... The thing about aliens visiting us is that it implies not only intelligence, but knowledge beyond ours. That's got major implications. Some random proteins a few billion miles away... not so interesting.
Re:The Key Word is "Confirms" (Score:4, Interesting)
Well no... The thing about aliens visiting us is that it implies not only intelligence, but knowledge beyond ours. That's got major implications. Some random proteins a few billion miles away... not so interesting.
Not as interesting as aliens visiting us, but still having potential major implications just the same. Why? If there is evidence strong enough for the medial to call "proof" of life on another planet, it'll "prove" to the uneducated masses that there's a lot more interesting stuff out there than we know about, and that there really could be intelligent life elsewhere, so it's worth putting more resources into scientific research and maybe even education. Then again I'm probably being optimistic, and nobody would really care about finding life on other planets until we have licensing agreements for their reality shows.
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Well no... The thing about aliens visiting us is that it implies not only intelligence, but knowledge beyond ours. That's got major implications.
It's raining rocks again... Damn alien microbes, THEY KNOW this shit pisses me off. Insurance rates will go through the roof by the hole they just made. Bastards are too small to see or I'd wring their little necks. Clever, very clever... Stingy too! Practically gotta dissect 'em in a lab to get anything out of 'em -- Won't even share any of their advanced space traveling technology with us. Enjoy your petri dish acid bath, suckers! Stuck up, know-it-alls... Serves 'em right.
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So a sample of gasses violently encapsulated in molten rock after a impact of a rather large body upon a planet with enough force to eject significant amounts of rock has the exact same components as the atmosphere it was blasted through?
That's amazing. More amazing that a random rock from Mars landing on earth.
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Oh no it has not the exact same composition. But certain elemental and isotopic ratios are characteristic enough. Look at this abstract for example http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0012821X84901833
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Not that amazing when you're dealing with *isotopes* of a noble gas. There's not much opportunity for isotopic fractionation in an impact event and the subsequent rapid freezing of the melt to form glass. I'm sure the elemental composition of the gases has been skewed during the impact event, but the isotopic ratios of the argon? Not likely.
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"Curiosity is just confirming ..."
Curiosity has led to all the discoveries in the last couple of thousand years.
Just the cat got killed by it.
Unfortunate accident (Score:5, Funny)
Yep. One Mars (Score:1)
While scientists state that there has to be a countless number of earth like planets out there... there can only be ONE Mars like planet. Dam these guys are good!
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Let's see on the one hand we have a confirmed Mars like planet nearby, at least orbiting the same star, on the other hand there may be faint evidence of Mars like planets so far away that we need huge resources to barely deduce a trace of their existence with no plausible mechanism of transporting that material to Earth. I'd say the chances are above 50/50 that Mars is the culprit.
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The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one*, but the chances of anything coming from another solar system are mind-crushingly miniscule.
*see Wayne et al
With a heading like that (Score:2)
Curiosity Confirms Origins of Martian Meteorites
I'm not surprised nobody is paying attention to the post
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Oh, only us usual suspects stick around and create comments when writers' alliterative affinities yield yet another absolutely heinous headline.
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Of course we "confirm" things in science, we just don't use the word to mean that something is unambiguously stated to be true. When we use that word (and it's used ubiquitously [google.co.uk]) we mean that we're providing new evidence for a previously-accepted hypothesis.
Everybody sing! (Score:1)
Argon, *clap* *clap*, Argoff
Was mars once like earth? (Score:1)
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It's a popular idea in SF. The "Earth-like Mars" part, at least, not sure about the bureaucracy part. I'm playing through a lovely iPhone game called Waking Mars right now which has its own take.
No such things as Xenomorphic Climate Change (Score:2)
There was no Xenomorphic Climate Change on Mars. It is all natural process and if you observe last 15 years of data, you can see sharp increase in Mars average temperature, which clearly shows that previous billion years cool period is just cyclical and natural and very soon we will again have green Mars. Nobody has shown conclusive proof that PB and Llehs geometermal extractors have any influence on Martian atmosphere. Let's remember that climatology is not a strict science and you cannot generalize observ
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It's all in the name (Score:2)
Martian meteorites come from mars
No they didn't (Score:2)
.
Argon is a heavy gas, and yes it is more likely to settle on a planet that has lost atmosphere, but Mars is not the only place that it can happen, its just that they want to b
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What do supernovae and any kind of isotopic differentiation in them have to do with anything? The stuff that made up the solar system spun around and was pretty thoroughly isotopically mixed. Any isotopic differentiation would be long gone unless you're able to find intact pieces of material from the time before the protoplanetary disk that formed out solar system began. Otherwise it may as well have gone through a blender. It's pretty much a single batch, isotopically-speaking, and changes in Ar isotop
Really? (Score:1)
Curiosity Confirms Origins of Martian Meteorites
Funny, I thought it was only good for killing cats...badum-ching!
Thank you, thank you, remember to tip your waiters, I'm here all week! :P