New Mars Forums

Hi all,
I am a kind of a new guy in Mars Forum, so long time, I forgot about the netiquette.
I hope there is no guys here that want to go to the moon to dig for helium3. They would better go to Mars and drink a good in situ producted beer than stay on the moon and drink their own reverse osmosed pipi and eat shushi  (the chineses have actually announced they want to dig the Moon for He3, good luck to them).

That said ( I needed to say something about Mars) , here is my first picture, made with the Meade DSI-pro, of the globular cluster M2 :
http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/me … %26.view=t

problem, is, I am not sure this is a public yahoo group. If not, sorry. I should  remake my web site to include astro pictures ...
Anyway, comments are welcome.

The way Deinococcus Radiodurans bacteria survives DNA fragmentation is by keeping copies of information.
You can imagine that after exposure to radiation or dessication one copy of chromosmal DNA is very fragmented, the other DNA copy is also fragmented but at other random sites. Radiodurans has 4 copies, thus increasing the chance of information redundancy.
This is well described here :
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.htm … ?pid=10359

Regarding the equation Water = Life, I beg to difer. This would be true only if you consider "Life" as nothing more than one long, very long, chemical reaction, with many intermediate products (like humans beings), and which final state we ignore.
If that was true, and it could be such, then as with any chemical reaction, it's just a matter to get the ingredients together and the cinetic, the thermodynamic,  dictates what you get statistically after one billion year of reaction, two billion years of reaction etc. In this case, if there is water on mars, then life is granted.

But "We" are the molecules of this long reaction, it's difficult for us to know from within the reaction in the flask if this is actually a reaction.
Granted, everything that is observable from within the flask indicates that life is indeed just about chemistry, but philosophy doesn't necesseraly agree with that and even suggest that it could exist a world outside the flask that would deny us the title of chemical reactives agitated by brownian movement.
I am puzzled, why a chemical reaction would create a reactif intermediate (the mind) that would basically question it's own unminded, chemical, nature ? It seems that our mind allow us, through philosophy for example, to voyage out of the flask, which science doesn't allow, never. Indeed, until man and consciousness appeared, when only plants and animals were roaming earth, nobody could discuss the chemical nature of life and life was consistent with itself, being a chemical reaction. But now our existence threatens this interpretation and thus the presence of life on Mars.

I am tired of Jupiter. This is Mars forum here right ? So I think I have posted the first picture of Mars of this year !
I was in Lake Ray Roberts state park, and I shot Mars with my C9.25.
But I payed for it : I was attacked all night long by ferocious mosquitos when, at last around 2 AM, Mars finelly rose from the eastern horizon !
Couldn't focuse that small planet easily though. So please, don't compare my picture with the Mars of 2003, I know it's fuzy.
http://www.buytelescopes.com/gallery/vi … ...c=29107
After shooting Mars with my digital camera like crazy. I used the GOTO of my CG5 mount (reviewed in the last Sky and Telescope) to spot Uranus.
I said "Dude, GOTO Uranus !" and the telescope obeyed like G. Bush when asked to GOTO war by God. "Bzzzzzzzzzzz, bbzzzz, bzzzz, zzzzzb,  Here is Uranus Master" said my scope.
"Dude, it's not exactly exactly at he center of the field ? I have to use my tired fingers to recenter 3 arc seconds !". "Sorry Master, but you are at 200X magnification, it's hard to be so precise". "well OK, that's not so bad" I said.

So, I believe I also pictured the first pic of Uranus of this year (still pretty low on the horizon and very very small).

http://www.buytelescopes.com/gallery/vi … ...c=29107

Happy that my computerized mount did a so good job, I finished my bottle of wine and went back to bed. (the mosquitos were probably all drunk). That was fun believe me.

PS : whoever is the guy's name at the bottom of the picture, it's not me, please ignore and don't mention. My name's DickBill as you all know.

Nice post. Are you drinking the hemlock again Clark  ? (la cigue de Socrate). You survive so well this breuvage that I believe you are now addicted. Anyway, in your nice post you forgot the religious side of the situation.

One thing I don't understand is all these references to the christian God in the US republican policy. And I pray there, And you prey here for me, And Jesus Christ here and there, and Jesus would do that. And God this and That.
Well, I have a hard time to believe JC, with all his known background as a perturbator of the public order, would support so easily JWB policy. And the opposite : despite all his background as a claim born again christian (whats that a "born again"  by the way), Dubya would not be St Peter, or even Mary Magdalen, I don't know, I see him more like the Great Priest of the Temple, or maybe Pilate ?

Hmmm, not sure about that.
For example, you know about the tractation between Iran and EU. Eu was certainly a moderator in the issue, otherwise I believe Iran would have been striken a long time ago by US or Israel, as announced by Dick Cheney himself. Remember he said somethiong like " well, Israel might strike first and let the international community clean the mess after". That didn't happened, probably because of the strong involvment of the EU who buffered the situation.
But now, the Iranian might ask, "what credibility has the EU now? we will be attacked anyway, and the french and the german alone won't do or can't do anything alone so we might as well..." and so on.
So, the No change the political situation worlwide.

I also followed the ITER (an international project to control thermonuclear fusion) story. Japan was a strong bider in this project  but they couldn't outweight the EU voices united to support the frecnh site at Cadarach.
I was curious to read the Japanese reaction. The first morning after the frrench No, I did a search on Yahoo and found that a Japanese minister had  already declared somthing like "well, the french have spoken to Chirac, they want him to invest in social reforms, not in scientific international projects, ITER should be better in Japan". You see the picture.

In short, I think this "NO" gonna cost a lot, in the short term, to the french and to the other people that depended of the EU credibility. What Europe needs now are charismatic leaders like De gaulle or Adenauer, able to redinamise an European ideal based on a model not like the anglosaxon model, as said Chirac (but this is not Chirac invention I precise). By the way, Chirac made another mistake : mix together Sarkozy and Villepin. He is really dumb.
I predict it's not gonna take long before you gonna see a fight between these two.
And Villepin is a clown if he thinks he can fix the unemployment rate as fast as he does say it, or maybe he knows that the unemployemnt will be fixed by itserf, via the demographic trend to aging, and that the only thing to do is wait and take credit for anything positive that happen.

PS :No, I have not been paid, like Challhbabi or Halwarwi, by the CIA or the pentagone to cheat on Chirac. It's my natural temper.

I just saw the movie today. Great, congratulations to Lucas.
Maybe the best of the serie ?
He is right to stop here, anything more would be surperfluous, when everything has been done and said.
And as the movie said : there are some good people on both side of the fight but Evil is everywhere.

Hi all,
Long time no post.
I would be personnaly interested to know WHO or what organisation created the fake " yellow pancake" documents, that GWB mentioned in his adress to the nation before the war (the document revealed that Hussein had acquired nuclear "yellow cakes" from Niger). That document scared so much the US that nothing could stop the march to the war after that.
It was soon dismissed as a hoax, actually the information that it was a fake document was already circulating on the internet at the time of W's speech. Indeed, a couple of weeks later, Colin Powell didn't mention it in his talk to the UN.

So, Who created this clever fake that made the President of the United State Himself, by mentioning it in His adress to the Nation, a victim of a terrible conspiracy ???
It would interesting to know since it was one of the strongest justification for the war.
I read in FOX NEWS that it was the french, that forged the document. They officially did everything they could to avoid the war, while secrelety plotting to force the US to go to war, while later they would know that the US who be ridiculised once the hoax would be known.
So the "Niger Yellow Cake" document was created by the french for the only purpose to ridiculize the US.
Is this really what americans think ? I think there are enough intelligent people in the US (like me, but I am not american) that deserve to know the truth. This, just in case the french plot, even if it was displayed in fox news, which is guaranty of veracity, is not true... just in case.
If it's the french, let it be known, if not then who else ?
after all thousands of people have died upon this infernal machination.

That's not what I mean. I don't think that Bush policy is aimed at supporting the right wings, or any other political parties, of europe. Bush doesn't care about that. I mean that there is a trend in Europe, towards conservatism and nationalism, that despite not growing, stays surprisingly stable. People would expect it to recess below 5%, instead it float around 15%. I believe this is in part a side effect, a reaction if you want, to the US conservatism.
I read in the Dallas Morning News that Karl Rove said that Conservatism is now the major political force in the US.  He's right, want it or not, Conservatism IS the political drive of the current US policy. And Conservatism didn't came a major player by chance, it is there to stay for a while too.

People in europe know that and think "so if it's OK to be conservative and nationalist in america, why not here ?"
In Europe, we have been teached that conservatism and nationalist are "bad" or at least retrograde values, just good for grand-grandpa.
One far-right political party of France understood that, it was part of the  french Front-national before it splited and re-named itself party "republicain" "something" (I am not sure of the real name since I am not a member of any of these political party, but I remember that they introduced the word "republicain"). Just a matter of cosmetic wording, I know, but it works.

One of the viking experiment also produced Oxygen : in The gas exchange experiment (GEX), a little bit of martian soil was introduced into a canister aboard the viking lander, a little bit of water was added and a rise in oxygen concentration was observed in the canister.
The GEX was initially designed to detect life, and the rise of oxygen could be a signature of microorganisms present in the soil, but instead, this was intepreted by the presence of peroxydes in the martian soil, like H2O2 which in presence of water decomposes into H2O and O2. The interpretation is still controversial, people talked about superoxydes or even that it was real proof of the presence of microorganisms.
Whatever, the raw martian soil could thus be another source of oxygen if necessary.

About the methane in Mars atmosphere, it has been said that it could have 2 origins, bio or volvano.
The latest eruptions or lava flow on Olympus Mons have been dated at about 10 million years (with the impact craters counting method, said Hartmann in his "Traveler's guide to Mars" ), so It's very well possible that Olympus Mons still holds some pockets of hot magma that leak some gas from time to time.
But since hot springs are also a hot spot for thermophilic lifeforms, maybe the bio and volcanic explanation could overlap here. Maybe the carbon isotopic ratio C12/C13 could help to differentiate between the two (on Earth the biogenic carbon is enriched 20 to 30% in carbon 12 verus C13). So if this CH4 is biogenic, the isotopic ratio of carbon and hydrogen might help to know. it's a bit too far for the rovers to go in these regions but they seem unfatiguable. Maybe in 3 or 4 years they will be still there and find a fossilized hot spring with tiny rod shaped mineral in chains !

Not enough to Mars...it depends.
In the "case for mars" one of Zubrin's idea is to make the manned mission to Mars step by step. Put the Habitat first with the In situ propellant reactor and accumulates enough fuel for a return. Note that in the "Case", zubrin included several tons of H2 to make the CH4/O2 mixture with the Sabatier reactor.
This is no longer necessary since we know there is plenty of ice easily accessible in the upper latitudes, meaning H2 and O2 through electrolysis. Robert Dyck said about 13 tons to mars insertion can be sent from a single Ariane V, roughly it means maybe 10 tons on the floor. And "maybe" 10 tons on the floor is now enough since theoritically, the fuel for the return can be completely synthetized in situ. These 10 tons would be entirely devoted to the HAB module and harware.

For the manned spaceship, maybe 2 or 3 modules like this would be necessary, included a nuclear reactor. So, im my opinion, even a Mars mission is feasible with ArianeV. It's just a matter of how many ArianeV you need.
Here on that link ESA even described an ArianeV ES ATV needed to resupply the ISS, with a maximum of 21 tons in low earth orbit :
http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Laun … ..._0.html

and in this site a description of a future reusable launcher that looks like a compact space shuttle :
http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Laun … GQD_0.html

Clearly, you go to Mars with the space fleet you have, not the space fleet you whish to have, to quote somebody famous.
I bet that if you ask Zubrin, he still stands to its 15 billions bill for the MArs mission. And I believe he is right.

Possibly Shaun, but who knows what would have happened if things had not been what they were.
But back to that article of Robets et al. in the lancet (Lancet 2004; 364: 1857–64) and the value of about a thousands death for war casualties in Iraq.
Quoting the paper :
"We estimated the death toll associated with the conflict
by subtracting preinvasion mortality from post-invasion
mortality, and multiplying that rate by the estimated
population of Iraq (assumed 24·4 million at the onset of
the conflict) and by 17·8 months, the average period
between the invasion and the survey.
interviewed."
So, how they evaluate the pre and post war mortalities ?
I quote the paper again :
"33 randomly selected locations were visited and
988 households were chosen between Sept 8 and 20,
2004. These households contained 7868 residents on the
date of interview. Of these residents, 237 (3%) were
younger than 1 year, 1004 (13%) were younger than 5
years, and 3084 (39%) were younger than 15 years. Of
the 4453 (57%) residents age 15–59 years, 2220 were
men. Of the 331 (4%) residents age 60 years or older, 152
were men."

So they interviewed themself 988 households. That gave them, as said earlier, an interval of "8000-194 000" with 95% of confidentiality. Then the "100 000" lays about in the middle. I pass on the details and numerous problems they faced. I cannot copy paste illegally here the full text but if you want the whole paper email me confidentially. I personnaly think they are serious, they made conservative assertions, this value of about 100 000 postwar extradeath, including many women and children, is the price paid officially until other studies prove otherwise.

How's that possible ? well, it's not because it's not on FOX News that it didn't happen. I quote again a comment of Bushra Ibrahim Al-Rubeyi....just his name casts doubts ? however, listen to what he said about this article , in the same Lancet numero:

"...the death toll from the invasion and occupation of Iraq is
about 98 000 civilians, and it might be considerably higher.
The deaths are mostly related to air strikes.
After this survey was reported, politicians reacted
promptly—casting doubt on the findings and questioning
the methodology used. They frequently referred to the Iraq
Body Count Database, implying that it more accurately
reflects the civilian casualties than other reports. The figures
on the Iraq Body Count Database include about
7350 deaths caused by the coalition’s major-combat phase,
which ended on May 1, 2003, and about 16 352 Iraqi...
...I was in Baghdad for 5 weeks in May, 2003. In my first
2 weeks there were daily battles between US soldiers and
Iraqi gunmen, particularly in the Adheymia district. When a
shot was fired at US troops, it almost always led to random
shooting by US troops at anyone at the site. In one of these
incidents, 60 Iraqi civilians, mainly women and children,
died in a shopping centre. The media did not mention this
incident.
In the UK, government ministers have insisted that they
do not have official figures for Iraqi civilian casualties. They
repeated Tommy Franks’ (US Central Command) statement
that they “do not do body counts”..."

Possible that everybody is lying in the Lancet, but until we see a full retraction of the paper, these value are going to stay.