NASA Rover Finds Surprising Evidence for Mars' Watery Past

[bananas]

Source: space.com



NASA Rover Finds Surprising Evidence for Mars' Watery Past
By SPACE.com Staff
posted: 21 May 2007
05:51 pm ET

The strongest evidence yet that ancient Mars was much wetter than it is now has been unearthed by NASA's Spirit rover.

A patch of Martian soil kicked up and analyzed by Spirit appears to be rich in silica, which suggests it would have required water to produce.

<snip>

"You could hear people gasp in astonishment," said Steve Squyres, principal investigator for NASA's twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "This is a remarkable discovery."

Draggin' the line

This discovery came about unexpectedly as the result of a mechanical failure.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070521_rover_wetterpast.html

[Botany]

1. SiO2

[4dsc]

2. The Rover just keeps going and going and going

Although I knew they had kept this Rover running well past its stated mission, I had no idea it was still running today.. It's alive!!

[bananas]

4. It's got a gimp, but it's still hobbling along. nt

[Judi Lynn]

3. Whoa! Here's the photo in its larger form. So interesting!

http://a52.g.akamaitech.net.nyud.net:8090/f/52/827/1d/

[MGKrebs]

5. Hmmm, I've been joking about this photo, but now I wonder...

[Barrett808]

7. Gil Levin said this photo clearly shows mud.

None of the mission scientists buys it, but still a real interesting observation.

[KansDem]

9. Can't be mud. My kids would have step in it and tracked it into the house by now...

If there's a mud puddle anywhere in close proximity to the house, they'll find it...;)

[Peace Patriot]

6. I wonder what it would take to terraform Mars. It may not be that difficult.

If you've ever noticed how easy it is--in gardening or in stream restoration--to create microclimates that foster life, with the smallest of actions: simply planting a tree (that creates shade and moisture for other plants), or piling up a few rocks in a stream (that creates fish habitat)--it makes you wonder how little it would take to get Mars to start regenerating an atmosphere. It's ironical that maybe it has taken our mistakes here--the CO2 crisis and global warming, deforestation and loss of biological diversity, as well as the holes in the ozone layer--to begin thinking globally and understanding global systems. But I don't mean this petulantly--that we've trashed one planet and then start looking for another one to replace it (although you have to laugh--this is so typically human). I mean it in a more positive sense: 1) that it may not be so hard to repair earth, as we tend to think (the biggest problem is probably political, not ecological); and 2) whatever happened to Mars (and there are a lot of theories about it, including my favorite, SF writer Ray Bradbury's theory, in "The Martian Chronicles," that the human race began on Mars), wouldn't it be lovely to "green" Mars, to see another "beautiful blue marble" in the sky, to see those arid deserts bloom?

There is a writer whose name and book title I can't recall at the moment, who lays out a whole theory (along with technical specifications) that it is the destiny of the human race to "green" the Milky Way (our galaxy--and I think he extrapolates to the whole Universe). He laments all the dead rocks floating around and orbiting suns out there, and wants to see them all terraformed, and believes that this is our unique duty--to spread life everywhere. He has a lot of interesting ideas about how to get this project going here (futuristic ideas for food and energy systems, that will solve all basic problems here and catapult us outward to the stars).

Sometimes it's useful to THINK BIG!

[MadJohnShaft]

10. You would die in your spaceship from cosmic ray bombardment

they haven't solved such a thing yet, as I understand it.

[FogerRox]

15. Ironically, some greenhouse gases would do the trick on Mars.

But you know how Al Gore Feels about Global warming

[Qutzupalotl]

17. You'd have to fix Mars' magnetosphere first

It's practically dead. We speculate its core is no longer circulating. The upshot is any atmosphere we try to build would be blown away by the unimpeded solar wind.

[TheWraith]

20. There have been some proposals in that direction.

They mostly start with ideas for bringing the atmospheric pressure and temperature up to an acceptable level by melting the trapped CO2 in the Martian polar regions. Nobody knows for certain how much CO2 is trapped in the dry ice down there, but it's speculated to be between 100 and 2000 millibars worth of pressure. To make Mars temperate at the equator would require 600 millibars worth of CO2, or somewhat less of more potent greenhouse gases like methane.

To melt the permafrost areas of the caps would take some doing, but there are some various ideas. One is to use small nuclear warheads, buried underground near the polar caps, to raise dust clouds that would then land on the caps. Like soil spread over ice on Earth, the dust would absorb sunlight, heating the dry ice and causing it to sublimate. You'd have to do this at the beginning of local spring, for four Martian years, which is about seven Earth years. Another is the use of a space-based mirror, or reflective mettalic particle clouds, to direct additional sunlight onto the relevant areas. Yet another would be to drop large amounts of ammonia on the planet, from frozen ammonia asteroids obtained in the outer solar system. The good news is that once you got a greenhouse effect going, it should be self-maintaining.

The second step would be rather more long-term--since the Martian soil is basically dead regolith (as far as we know, having never been there) we'd need to seed it with bacteria that would gradually build up nitrogen in the soil. That would probably take some time, unless we could shortcut it somehow. Cheap shipping from Earth would help, since we could basically take things which are considered waste here--dead wood, dead animals, sewage, etcetera--and use them for their chemicals on Mars.

Radiation would be another problem. 400 millibars or more of atmosphere would be adequate protection against solar radiation in non-storm conditions, but significantly more pressure would be neccessary for enduring protection.

There are some excellent articles on a site called RedColony.com. They also have a Wiki there called The Plan, which is basically the collaborative designs built by their members and visitors for how to colonize and terraform Mars.

I think you're right that planetary ecological engineering isn't nearly as hard as we may think--it's just about having the will to actually do it. People thought it was crazy to build an entire lunar program in eight years, but we went from a 15 minute sub-orbital rocket ride to playing golf a quarter million miles from home. With that in mind, I think that there are a lot of things that we don't realize are possible because we've never gone about making them so.

[eppur_se_muova]

21. There is a SF trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson ...

"Red Mars", "Blue Mars", "Green Mars" set against the backdrop of Mars under Terraforming. The technical details are pretty solid, and there is a lot of "social engineering" involved as well. Martian politics is very libertarian (small l) in KSR's universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy

I think the book you are referring to is "The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps" by Marshall T. Savage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millennial_Project:_Colonizing_the_Galaxy_in_Eight_Easy_Steps

[Peace Patriot]

22. Yes, "The Millennial Project"! I'd forgotten the title!

Wouldn't it be lovely if we were all engaged in a project to SPREAD LIFE EVERYWHERE--instead of this dismal Bush Death Project?

How can we flip this over--from greed for oil and coal and death--to joy in LIFE? To fun? To creativity? To Mars and beyond?

Good 'ol Disney: "When you wish upon a star...."

[eppur_se_muova]

23. How? Re-elect this man ... but you knew that.

[FVZA_Colonel]

24. While the book was written about a decade ago, Robert Zubrin's The Case For Mars

laid out a pretty comprehensive plan. Of course, he estimated it might take at least nine hundred years to develop it into a roughly "Earth like" world.

[Roland99]

8. Sweet! Thanks for the new science news!

This stuff often gets brushed aside in the wash of political news.

[quiet.american]

11. I hate to say it, but so what?

I guess you really have to be into this stuff to gasp in astonishment that there was once water on Mars.

[Psephos]

12. It's not the fact that water was there, but what it implies

"So what?" turns into "omigod" once you begin to realize the divide between what we think we know and what we don't.

Water on Mars is intimately related to the question of how life arose on Earth, and whether life is rare or common in other parts of the cosmos.

Either we are alone in the universe or we are not, and either is astonishing.

On edit: here's a book worth reading, full of delight and mystery.
http://www.amazon.com/Astronomical-Enigmas-Bethlehem-Other-Mysteries/dp/0801880262/ref=sr_1_5/002-2720660-8775239?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179855962&sr=1-5

[quiet.american]

13. I know why all the "science-ey" stuff causes excitement, but this still gives me a big yawn.

Spotting an actual Martian on Mars would be something I could sit up straight over! :)

[Psephos]

14. lol - don't worry, there's plenty else to catch your fancy

Some people are into "science-ey stuff," others are into the puzzles of the opposite sex, the enigma of learning how to want what you get instead of get what you want, or the simple miracle of finches on a telephone wire singing at sunrise. Speaking of simple miracles, I'm deep into the mystery of whether the Detroit Tigers can do again what they did last year.

Doesn't matter what excites you, but rather, that you find what excites you. :D

[quiet.american]

19. Very true. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

16. Psephos is right. It's a matter of odds. If there is, or once was, water on Mars,

then it is much more likely that there is water EVERYWHERE. And if there is water everywhere, the chances of abundant life in our galaxy and in the universe, go way up. To those who think in more parochial terms--its meaning in terms of experiences we all know about--think of the earthquake to European culture of the discovery that Earth is not the center of the universe, or the similar earthquake to that society of the discovery of the Americas, or think back even further to the initial discovery of the Greeks (and probably the Phoenicians) that the Earth is ROUND, later re-discovered by European explorers. Water on Mars is like the first inkling--the first tremor--of these kinds of profound, paradigm-shattering cultural changes.

Another indicator--as to the prospects for abundant life in the universe--are the recent discoveries of PLANETS outside our solar system, and, most recently, EARTH-LIKE planets. Only 15 to 20 years ago, I remember reading mainstream scientists pooh-poohing notions of life elsewhere, because water had not been discovered in our solar system (Earth seemed to be unique) and because planets had not been discovered elsewhere (our solar system seemed to be unique). But with improved technology both of these assumptions have been shattered. AND these considerations of mainstream scientists were limited to life as we know it. Water-based life, on a planet with perfect positioning vis a vis the sun. Since then, sulfur based life (no sunlight) has been discovered at the bottom of the sea. Given the immense time-frames and immense potential variety of conditions in the universe, it is now better understood that life can take many forms, and that both life and intelligent life is not only likely abundant in the universe, but it may have developed in forms that go way outside our notions of how to communicate with other intelligent beings. SETI hopes that radio frequencies are the ticket. But who knows? We are INFANTS at scientific understanding. I think we can extrapolate from where our ancestors were only a hundred years ago, to where we are now, to where we have yet to go, in understanding our position in the universe, and basic energy, biology and gravity principles. Little ant colonies, gazing out at the big world, and not being able to see over the next horizon, but beginning to get an idea of how big Bigness is, and what we may have to do with it all.

It's a very, very thrilling time to be alive--despite all our difficulties in our little ant colonies here on Earth. It's good to think of the bigger picture sometimes. We are able--as a whole, as a race of intelligent beings--to stretch our minds and our antennae out further than any who have come before us. Individual Buddhists, shamans, poets and dreamers may have gone there. But collectively we have been pretty much stuck in our dark little caves until now. It is the collectivity of these discoveries, and what they mean to all of us, that interests me. Global consciousness--that probably started back with the "beautiful blue marble" photo of earth from space, taken almost by accident, by the moonwalkers. Global consciousness, to solve global problems. Global consciousness, to reach out to other beings, and worlds.

You say, "Spotting an actual Martian on Mars would be something I could sit up straight over!" I don't know. By the time it happens--in whatever form--you might well yawn at it. You might demand of the TV, 'Show me another marvel! I'm bored with Martians already.' And maybe that will be good, and maybe not. As Carl Sagan worried, in his novel "Contact," it might be too much for us, too disturbing, at least temporarily. So if our couch potatoes treat it as blase--like you are treating the possible discovery of water on Mars--that might actually signal sufficient maturity in the human race to absorb the quake--a quake that will be like no other we have ever experienced. But I find your impatience somewhat irritating and worrisome, when I think of the tremendous human endeavor that it has taken to achieve this much perspective on the universe--the difficulty of it, the many courageous martyrs along the way, the collective miracle of modern, rational, objective science. We should not take it for granted. It has many enemies, and we could quite easily slip backward into our caves, and suffer a thousand years of darkness, as Europe did, from 500 to 1500 AD, or simply go extinct--do ourselves in--due to lack of global consciousness in solving global problems.

[quiet.american]

18. Wow, didn't expect anyone to take my half-facetious response that seriously, but thanks. :)

(I hate lectures, though).

[FVZA_Colonel]

25. If water did exist in a liquid form on Mars at some point, then in some form,

it might still be there. And if it is, then we should potentially be able to tap into it in order to terraform the planet. This, of course, says nothing about the potentiality that life may have formed in it's presence.

[quiet.american]

26. I know, but I still have to pay my rent at the end of the month.

Look, I know how exciting this is to those who are into this stuff and all the various reasons it is exciting, but here on Earth, I have a few more pressing concerns that even astroturfing Mars will do little to eliminate. ;)