Mars Express Confirms Water Ice on Red Planet

MrBishop said:
Not if it was the size of Mars it didn't. Mars ain't that much smaller than Earth... that would've meant nearly doubling our size and seriously fucking up our orbit. A glancing blow, I can see...a direct impact of that size...nah. We're talking large enough to split our core, remove our atmosphere entirely, and send up (like a blue ball) flying into the sun.
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Um, Bish. Why do you think our Moon is one of the biggest in the entire solar system, and is way out of ratio for a planet/ moon pair?

Why do you think we have such a stron magnetic field? And the moon has none at all?
 
Professur said:
But that's the whole issue. They're not just looking for something. They're looking for life like us. Because if there's life like us, that means that Mars could one day support us.
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Nah...they don't need to find life like us to properly terraform Mars into something that could support us... it'd be worst for that idea if they did.

Can you imagine the uproar if we decided to destroy existing life or the history of life on Mars to implant ourselves!!??!
 
*shakes head*

Terraforming? Reality check, Bish. If we could affect Mars enough to make it habitable, we could more than easily fix what's wrong with Earth, and just stay here.
 
Professur said:
Um, Bish. Why do you think our Moon is one of the biggest in the entire solar system, and is way out of ratio for a planet/ moon pair?

Why do you think we have such a stron magnetic field? And the moon has none at all?
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Umh Prof...reread chcr's post. He said that it stayed here...on earth.

It (the planet) may very well be the moon. No proof either way yet.
 
Professur said:
*shakes head*

Terraforming? Reality check, Bish. If we could affect Mars enough to make it habitable, we could more than easily fix what's wrong with Earth, and just stay here.
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We've got population issues as is. Why live on one planet when you can live on two, or three or more?
Keep growing, keep exploring, keep moving.

Terraforming is far away from our grasp now...but that's now. How else are we going to make Mars able to 'support us' without terraforming it? Adding an atmosphere, liquid water, soil that can support plant life are necessary... it's not like we can support human life on Mars for extended persiods of time without being able to live there, which means not having to import everything...food, air, water etc...

For anything over 6months to a year, for anything over about a dozen or so people, we'd have to terraform :)
 
Professur said:
How do you propose to generate an atmosphere on a planet with no magnetic field?
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A new study of the Martian atmosphere has added strength to a popular theory of why there is so much carbon dioxide in the red planet's air. Researchers have detected hydrogen molecules in the atmosphere, which had been predicted but not found for decades.
Carbon dioxide makes up about 95 percent of Mars' very thin atmosphere, roughly nine times more overall than contained in Earth's much thicker atmosphere. Laboratory work showed that the Sun's energy should split this carbon dioxide into its components -- carbon monoxide and oxygen.
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There is one already...it's thin...you promote the creation of Greenhouse gasses, free up frozen gasses, start up a few volcanos for outgassing, etc...

sourceMars Has Crustal, Complex Magnetic Field

EOS, Volume 78, Number 40, p. 429
October 7, 1997
Scientists working on the Mars Global Surveyor project announced last week that new satellite evidence indicates that the magnetic field around Mars is most likely of crustal rather than dynamo origin. They also say that the field is much stronger than previously anticipated and that it could greatly vary in strength in different locations on the planet.
“Based on evidence collected over several orbits, we now have strong evidence that the field is of crustal origin,” says Mario Acuna, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who is the principal investigator on the magnetometer and electron reflectometer instruments on the satellite. The new findings follow the satellite’s dramatic detection on September 15 of the outer-most boundary of Mars’ magnetic field — or bow shock — shortly after the Surveyor began in elliptical orbit around the planet
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source

Existing magnetic field, existing atmosphere :)
 
Professur said:
And neither strong enough to be of any use.
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...yet.

Lots of carbon dioxide though...very nice start. More than here on earth... wow!

I can't help thinking about the potential of terraforming Mars and Venus...then reality sets in and I can't help thinking about the 70% failure rate for Mars probes and satellites. Then I have another beer and all is well again :):drink:
 
MrBishop said:
...yet.
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Planning on strengthing a planetary magnetic field, are ya?

*folds arms and settles back to watch.

Lots of carbon dioxide though...very nice start. More than here on earth... wow!
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Really?



Mars has a thin atmosphere. It contains just one hundredth the amount of gas found in the Earth's atmosphere. It is largely carbon dioxide (95.3%) with nitrogen (2.7%) and smaller amounts of other gases including argon and oxygen. The very low levels of oxygen mean there is no ozone layer around Mars to protect it from the Sun's ultraviolet rays. With no protective screen, life can not survive on the surface.
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Source

Or maybe

Climate History:Atmosphere: Current Martian Atmospheric Data

Surface atmospheric pressure: ~6.1 mb (about 1/150th that of Earth's)
Surface gas density: ~0.020 kg/m3
Atmospheric scale height: 11.1 km
Average temperature: ~210 K (-63 degrees Celsius)
Wind speeds: 2-7 m/s (summer), 5-10 m/s (fall), 17-30 m/s (dust storm)

Composition:

Major gases (percentage by moles): Carbon Dioxide (CO2) - 95.32%
Nitrogen (N2) - 2.7%
Argon (Ar) - 1.6%
Oxygen (O2) - 0.13%
Carbon Monoxide (CO) - 0.08%
Minor (parts per million): Water (H2O) - 210
Nitrogen Oxide (NO) - 100
Neon (Ne) - 2.5
Hydrogen-Deuterium-Oxygen (HDO) - 0.85
Krypton (Kr) - 0.3
Xenon (Xe) - 0.08
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Source




Hmmm. 1/150th of earth's atmosphere, on a planet half our size. Not quite fo impressive, is it?
 
Professur said:
Hmmm. 1/150th of earth's atmosphere, on a planet half our size. Not quite fo impressive, is it?
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Me said:
Carbon dioxide makes up about 95 percent of Mars' very thin atmosphere, roughly nine times more overall than contained in Earth's much thicker atmosphere. Laboratory work showed that the Sun's energy should split this carbon dioxide into its components -- carbon monoxide and oxygen
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More Carbon Dioxide on Mars than on Earth...relativly easy to split up too.
I think that I've mentioned outgassing too...and greenhouse gasses...

Frozen water...hydrogen and Oxygen
Gasses trapped in the soil

Time consuming, of course, but hardly impossible.
 
Splitting all the CO2 on Mars won't amount to a hill of beans. You'll still only have 6 mB of pressure. The standard atmospheric pressure at the Earth's surface is 1013.25 millibars.

Don't you get it? You'd have to vaporize half the planet just to get any pressure enough to not need pressure suits. And even then, you don't have a magnetic field to protect it, so you're gonna loose in all in a few 100 years.

The Mars books were great reading, Dude. But that's all they were. You'd have to crash every known comet into it, just for starters.
 
Professur said:
Splitting all the CO2 on Mars won't amount to a hill of beans. You'll still only have 6 mB of pressure. The standard atmospheric pressure at the Earth's surface is 1013.25 millibars.

Don't you get it? You'd have to vaporize half the planet just to get any pressure enough to not need pressure suits. And even then, you don't have a magnetic field to protect it, so you're gonna loose in all in a few 100 years.

The Mars books were great reading, Dude. But that's all they were. You'd have to crash every known comet into it, just for starters.
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Thanks Prof. Why do so many people not understand that you can't create elements from nothing?
 
chcr said:
Thanks Prof. Why do so many people not understand that you can't create elements from nothing?
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I guess it's mainly the way we understand the US money supply. It works that way.
 
Squiggy said:
Bish, are you crazy?! :eek5: If Asscroft reads that he'll have us ALL deported to Syria or something and revoke EVERYONE'S drivers licenses....:hmm:
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Not me ;)
 
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