Posts: 254
Threads: 51
Joined: Nov 2014
If you guys haven't seen this already:
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-...day-s-mars
Read it and weep.
The MRO has found signs of hydrated minerals and salts on seasonal downhill flows on several craters. Points to briny water flowing downhill.
Posts: 7,362
Threads: 297
Joined: Jan 2013
Fingers crossed in the near future we'll send a probe to that location to take a look at what's in this water. Double fingers crossed for evidence of a past martian biosphere.
OA Wish list:
- DNI
- Internal medical system
- A dormbot, because domestic chores suck!
Posts: 11,749
Threads: 454
Joined: Apr 2013
This old article by John M Dollan describes a water-flow on Mars.
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4a6f97fc61c1d
Atmospheric pressure is so low there that any liquid water would start to boil as soon as it formed.
Posts: 272
Threads: 28
Joined: Mar 2013
(09-30-2015, 12:06 AM)Rynn Wrote: Fingers crossed in the near future we'll send a probe to that location to take a look at what's in this water. Double fingers crossed for evidence of a past martian biosphere.
According to Nick Bostrom we should hope that there is no life and has never been any life on Mars:
http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf
"Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people." -- Edward Robert Harrison
Posts: 611
Threads: 41
Joined: Dec 2014
I may be naturally pessimistic, but when I did the fermi equation, including rather a bunch of things he didn't include and my own best guesses for some of the probabilities he assumed....
I got approximately 1 in 100 billion. Coincidentally 100 billion is our approximate estimate for the number of stars in this galaxy.
So I figure it's probably about even odds that we're the only ones.
Posts: 254
Threads: 51
Joined: Nov 2014
I remember reading a short story by Kim Stanley Robinson unrelated to the Mars trilogy (I think the title of the story was
Discovering Life or something like that) where, in a near-future Earth of the 20th/21st Century, NASA discovers signs of bacterial life on Mars. The main character despairs over the fact that terraforming Mars will surely not happen in the near future.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lak...ement.html
Reader-friendly article that details what hydrated minerals might be present in these surface features.
Quote: - The best mineral matches to the spectral data are magnesium perchlorate, magnesium chlorate, and sodium perchlorate.
- The presence of perchlorate salts could lower the melting temperature of water at Martian conditions by 40 kelvins, making it much easier for water to melt.
