04-22-2015, 01:57 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-22-2015, 01:57 PM by JohnnyYesterday.)
If Mars had significant oceans, it would be blue (where it wasn't white from cloud-cover), not iron-oxide red.
If Mars was home to any technological civilization at that level of development, the society would use large swaths of the land as farms--besides of course the natural vegetative cover. Now Martian plants wouldn't necessarily be green (they might be black, red, yellow, purple . . . depending on their version(s) of "chlorophyll"), but obviously not soil-colored.
If Mars was home to significant amounts of life, its soil wouldn't be rust-red. Organics would make it look like dirt on Earth.
Also, they should have been able to detect the high concentrations of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere of this Mars using spectroscopy.
If Mars was home to any technological civilization at that level of development, the society would use large swaths of the land as farms--besides of course the natural vegetative cover. Now Martian plants wouldn't necessarily be green (they might be black, red, yellow, purple . . . depending on their version(s) of "chlorophyll"), but obviously not soil-colored.
If Mars was home to significant amounts of life, its soil wouldn't be rust-red. Organics would make it look like dirt on Earth.
Also, they should have been able to detect the high concentrations of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere of this Mars using spectroscopy.