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The abstract for my paper is available to everyone now in the Mars Society library section that was recently implemented on their web site, and the paper itself is available there also, but for Mars Society members only.
I think I was party to the wiki discussion, but back to the dunes in Olympus Mons: 1. Sulphur, salts, or other volcanic emissions would be accompanied by concurrent emission of gasses perhaps including water vapor (steam) in a transient situation so that they might provide their own wind when they are released.
The steep temperature and/or pressure gradient which could exist within the cauldera walls up to its rim could even give the local atmosphere enough stability temporarily to suspend and move things about before dissipating.
An additional possibility is that the dunes are made up of particles similar to the hollow microspheres formed in the process of burning coal in electrical power plants. These are hollow aluminosilicate glass spheres typically containing some percentage of iron and which have an effective density less than water. They are, in fact, collected for use in various applications by skimming them from the surface of settling ponds.
One should also keep in mind that dust can be suspended and moved by electrostatic forces even without an atmosphere.
Shaun,
This is in reference to your recent comments on 'sand dunes' inside the cauldera of a high volcano on Mars.
While the dunes may have the classic dune shape, perhaps they are not the typical silica sand. Condensed sulphur vapor might, by some stretch of the imagination, deposit itself in the same form on being propelled from within the cauldera from a directional source. Sulfur is called brimstone for the reason that it has been found condensed in deposits at the cooler rim or brim of some volcanos here on earth. The thought of sodium nitrate or other salts as possibilities has also come to mind.
Its relatively easy to make sulphur into microsphere form providing a smooth flowing 'sand' that is less dense than silica sand. I've forgotten the density of sulphur, but Ill check on it as soon as I send this.
While it should be realized that while selfish motivations for doing something negative (even hindering something positive) do not necessarily mean that actions will be taken in those directions, I continually wonder what other reasons there could be for our lack of progress out of low earth orbit and on to Mars.
May I suggest that, whether political or not, a possible motivation for official silence on bits of knowlege pointing toward the need for extending manned space exploration is that those in the robotic camp know that they will loose a portion of the funding pie?
Surely, the olivine question depends on the meaning of the sentence: Olivine is unstable in the presence of water geologically speaking. I could point out that our lives may be unstable geologically speaking. Can someone out there be more quantative for olivine than geologically speaking?
I too did a brief search this morning and found out basically that olivine is one of the classical examples of transformation and decomposition of a mineral, eventually, into soil, but how long does it really take?
By the way, Shaun, I tend to side with you on the origin of the Valles Marinaris. If one had a lump of something like clay (without very great tensile strength or great plasticity) and hit it with a projectile the relative size of the object that caused Hellas Basin, where it added both energy and volume, I think you'd see a surface crack or two. Of course, this does not rule out things like surface/subsurface water running into such a crack later. We haven't found how to keep gravity from making it run down hill yet.
I've got to plead some ignorance of the decomposition rates of olivine in the presence of water. By it's presence in water (the Pacific Ocean has been shown to contain water) on the green sand beaches of Hawaii where it is weathered from the volcanic material there, I'd say it's not as soluble as sugar, or salt. Whether the salts in the water have any significant influence or not, I don't know.
The "we" I was using in my last post was not necessarily meant to be any less inclusive than the human race. It was just a figure of speach.
Those of you who have been on the tour of the island of Hawaii may remember that there are black sand beaches and green sand beaches, the green sand being olivine crystals weathered from the volcanic materials which make up the island itself.
Why are we putting such emphasis on the presence of olivine as the proof of no water, when, on Hawaii, it's the Pacific Ocean action which separates and concentrates the olivine crystals and makes them readily visually observable? Seems like a tenuous position, to me.
Josh,
You are truly a great critic. And I don't mean anything negative by that. It's only by defining the likely criticisms that I can hopefully identify potential problems, clarify my interpretations, and more closely approach the unequivical.
I say 'approach' for the reason that there are still people who believe that the earth is flat, etc.
There are some fairly quick and simple remedies to the factors you have identified. The two images were, in fact, captured by the Mars Orbital Camera high resolution subsystem at two different positions and times as documented by the MSSS.com data. One was taken at the nadir position and (is the word 'position' redundant when used next to the word 'nadir'?) the other from an offset angle.
The second image was taken along a slightly different orbital angle with repect to the first, hence the need for relative
rotations between the two images. As I recall, the second image also benefited from some slight contrast and brightness adjustments and some slight resizing for the reason that the two images' pixels were not the same sizes. As the second image was taken from an off-nadir vantage point, the corrections to make the images comparable also involved different magnifications in the vertical and horizontal image directions.
I don't remember at the moment whether or not Malin's site had a corrected image for the asymmetry, or not. If they do, use their corrected image as they have established routines for such operations.
Now for the simple part: Simply take their images, select the obviously common and pertinent portions of both images, do the best job at making them equivalent in size/contrast, and print them out separately at the highest resolution and largest size your printer can manage. Obviously the higher the better. The size is important in that one can focus on the two images in your field of view no matter what their size and distance, within reason, and the ink jet, or laser printer dots relative size can be made totally inconsequential to one's perception of the view. Do the image rotation and allignment by hand with the two separate printouts! It still works and gives the depth ordering as laid out in my paper.
The image I e-mailed to you was made the way it was because of a time crunch and in order to make it small enough to be e-mailable.
I assure you that I didn't take either or both images and subtly change either or both sets of pixels to achieve such ordering, but, though you might not be motivated to do what I just suggested, it will take my possible manipulations out of the picture, so to speak.
Note: When one tries to view the images as a stereo pair with a Holmes-Bates type stereo viewer, the magnification of the two lenses in the viewer makes the printer artifacts way too apparent at the size the images must be.
When I look at the number of words on this page, I'm sorry it took so much space, but someone other than myself needs to go to the effort to test these factors. With the directions just given, that should be possible.
Josh,
So far all of the Odyssey information I've seen has insufficient lateral resolution to definitively establish for or against elevated local temperatures at the site focused on by the paper. If anyone else can find high resolution data, please let me know.
Josh,
Thanks for reading the paper. At least you found it interesting.
Image selection was through use of the rules delineated in the paper and a lot of time on the internet on MSSS.com.
You made no mention of the concept outlined in the paper of indications that there is a vertical offset amoung key image features further corroborated by the stereo pair composed from parts of the two images taken over a year apart. I did find it interesting myself that the upper features had no apparent adequate means of support unless floating or resting on a transparent substance.
The second of the two images mentioned in the paper, when looked at in its entirety, does, I believe, contain evidence of evaporation and reprecipitation, and not coincidentally a large number of "dust devil" tracks. It's worth taking a look at, if you haven't yet. It is readily available on MSSS.com.
Cindy M., Shaun Barrett, and Josh Cryer have a copy of my last paper. If anyone else is interested, send me an e-mail to see what we're talking about. Make up your own mind.
Just a brief comment:
Experience in various organizations and various times in my career has shown me that there can be severe consequences if one doesn't overtly regard "Official Policy" as being equivalent to truth.
Just reviewed the information on chlorophyll at the link provided.
I must point out that, in the absorption spectra, absorption is not necesarily by photosynthesis. Be careful of jumping to that conclusion. Also, I'm very suspicious of plots, such as the one with the vertical axis labeled "relative rate of photosynthesis" with no further details of the measurement. It may be true in some respect, it may be completely true for the species on which the measurement was made, but it's certainly not definitive for the wider problem.
I haven't really looked at it for a couple of years, but NASA supported research on growing plants most efficiently with electrically powered illumination sources and again found that red light emitting diodes along with a small amount of blue light did a fairly efficient job.
Mirrored surfaces would probably be very difficult to take advantage of for the reason that to make any real gain, angular positioning of each surface with respect to incoming sunlight and the plant target positions must be taken into account. One could, of course, build your greenhouse at the output port of a nonimaging concentrator structure, but that's not quite as easy as simply painting already existing surfaces with fluorescent conversion paint which really is available to anyone now.
A very good white paint can reflect light diffusely to achieve a higher total reflectance than most common mirror surfaces, but why not do the fluorescent conversion step and really use some of the optical energy that a plant could otherwise not use even if it were to arrive at the photosynthesis surfaces?
I also will repeat that the effectiveness of the process was not just an idea, but was implemented and verified in a real world experiment. Tomatoes ripened significantly earlier in the year in the specially treated growing enclosure compared to the standard greenhouses near by, other factors were maintained as nearly equivalent as could be accomplished. Try it yourself. It should be both inexpensive and easy.
I've just done a quick review of these posts and more than once the comment has been made that there may not be enough available sunlight.
I could tell a long story giving the background of this information, but I'll refrain. The source of this idea is a physicist, a Mr. Graham Flint.
A great deal more optical energy is available than is used directly by chlorophyl. Chlorophyl uses mostly red light to perform photosynthesis and (NASA research also says it takes a little blue). The other parts of the spectrum are, in the simplest view, just absorbed as heat, or reflected, or, in the case of some of the ultraviolet, utilized in raising problems with important chemical bonds.
It turns out, that some of this other energy can be converted to red photons by certain flourescent materials. This can be done simply by painting the portions of your greenhouse enclosure not appropriate for use as window surface with fluorescent orange paint. Light striking these surfaces is partially converted to the absorption bands of chlorophyl, increasing the efficient use of the available light.
Mr. Flint did experiments on the island of Gurnsey and showed earlier ripening tomatoes with the available seasonal sunlight by this method.
Good to see this topic come up from a long nap.
My looking has turned up several craters showing features just like you are pointing out. I strongly suspect that the dark areas in such craters are liquid water, but haven't really emphasized them in that the "It sure looks like it" arguement is so easily dismissed, and I haven't really found an extremely compelling visual feature to add to it yet.
That being said, comments are in order regarding the appearance of the layers.
1. They are apparently in the lowest portions of their craters.
2. The apparent uniform spacing between layers appear as if they are very uniform depth contours. This suggests to me that the coutour edges may be seasonal (yearly?) evaporant boundaries, rather than sedimentary layers which were later eroded to the forms we are observing now. After all, where could the material that seems to have been removed have gone, since most of these regions seem to be in the lowest portions of their craters? Identification of the composition of this material as an appropriate evaporant residue would seem to secure this point.
Is anyone else troubled by the selection of instruments on the two rovers?
My point is that other than improved imaging capabilities with 14 wavelength selection filters on their stereo camera, there is little else than a selection of instruments designed to find ONLY evidence of PAST life and/or water. Seems geologist-centric.
I picture their rock surface abrader, designed to remove surface dust from the rocks to get at virgin interior material, merrily grinding off a layer of something like lichen to get to something which may or may not show evidence of life megayears or gigayears ago with nobody the wiser.
Thanks Folks,
Good information. I will look in that direction and try to bring back key details to this location.
Anyone else?
Next questions will involve surface temperature measurements and surface wind velocity, but lets solidify the atmospheric composition first. Josh, I'd say you were giving leads, not opinions. Thanks again.
First question to be answered, no opinions please, just data.
This is an effort to winnow out 'OLD SCIENTIST'S TALES' (ala 'Old Wife's Tales'). The operative word 'OLD' does not necessarily refer to the age of the propagator.
In what foundational data, space mission, or remote sensing, etc., did man accumulate enough evidence to determine that the red planet's atmosphere is nearly all CO2 at the planet's surface, and what are the references for it?
Although I can't remember the last time I was in one, a large shopping mall on earth can be a very artificial environment, and at least at one time, a lot of people seemed to enjoy going to them.
Would it really absolutely have to be different in an enclosed environment on Mars?
Rex G. Carnes
Greetings,
I'm waiting for the arrival of a couple of special network cards to make my previous papers available from the older computer. The're supposed to arrive today, if the delivery vehicle can make it up my snow covered driveway.
The work in the papers was intended to be repeatable by anyone with a home computer and a little motivation. They reference images directly from MSSS.com and the NASA PDS site, so anyone can access the original images for verification.
I haven't made any firm plans to attend the Oregon meeting yet, but would, of course, like to.
Please forgive me if my last post was too harsh. You people have been very gracious. It seems that I may have fired off an elephant gun response when it was't really appropriate.
[color=#000000:post_uid0]I was referenced in Shawn's initial post in this topic. Neither he nor anyone else not attending my presentation at the last Mars Society Convention, or the presentation I gave at the 2001 National Space Society Convention has seen any of my evidence.
1. The assumption that the image(s) linked from this forum is/are the one(s) I base my conclusions about water on Mars is not valid. [U]
2. To dismiss the evidence before you've been exposed to it seems a bit cavalier.
3. I appologize for not having the paper, resulting from my presentation last August at the Mars Society Convention, accessable on the web for your review. It's locked up in a computer in the midst of a move. I hope to have it available soon. It was submitted for publication in the proceedings from the Boulder conference, but that will be out "sometime before next August".
Thanks for your patience.
Rex G. Carnes[/color:post_uid0]
[color=#000000:post_uid0]The web documents referenced by Almir are, I believe, excellent selections.
In reviewing the previous comments on this topic, people seem to feel that they need to invoke the presence of salts, or soil protection, or substantial ice in order to explain the presence of observable water at, or near, the surface of Mars. Each one of these will, in my opinion, have its place on the red planet.
Indeed, the conventional position, repeated over and over in most of the papers I've seen, is that water would instantly boil away at the atmospheric pressure available on the surface of Mars without them.
I present two fundamental facts about real physical characteristics of gasses, and water including its other phases:
1. Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures--States, as well as I can remember, that the total pressure of a mixture of gasses at equilibrium is the sum of the individual partial pressures, and that each gas is independent of the other components of the mixture. This of course assumes that there are no chemical reactions taking place, hence the "at equilibrium" qualification.
2. The partial pressure of water at its triple point, the point where water vapor, ice, and liquid water can co-exist at equilibrium, is about 6.1 millibars, remarkably equivalent to the atmospheric pressure of Mars as measured by the Pathfinder lander.
If the atmospheric composition at the very surface of Mars is water vapor rather than a preponderance of carbon dioxide, then water would not boil away at all, it would be at equllibrium with it's own vapor!
There are some very valid reasons that early probes may have measured what seemed to be high levels of CO2. Common instrumental errors in mass spectrometers might be one of them. If anyone is interested, I'll explain when I have more time.
Rex G. Carnes
[U][/color:post_uid0]
Just returned from the Boulder Mars Society Conference.
Sat in on a presentation showing the C1 carbonacious chondrites are from Mars as shown by their isotope ratios. They resemble oil shale, with about 2% organics and their layered structure in some parts similar to shale--seemingly laid down by sedimentation under water. Age similar to ALH8001. Their survival in spite of ejection from Mars and their inherent fragility may be due to being lofted by steam during impact event, and then on entry through earth's atmosphere being part of a larger body which broke up. Only a few of these meteorites are available and have been found in museum collections. Name of presenter: J. E. Brandenburg of the Florida Space Institute, Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
Couldn't, of course, go to all I was interested in. The proceedings should come out some time more than 60 days after the conference.
My conclusions, after a lot of looking into it are very similar to yours, Mark and Shaun. In spite of his stated desires otherwise, Shaun may be more "on" in even his most extreme conclusions than most of us are comfortable with. When one considers that a primary guiding principle of an administrator is ample and continuous funding for his (her) area of responsibility, what other outcome would there be? Also, with the "peer review" process having such sway in modern science, there are those that find that some are more "peer" than others. That said, I believe there are fixes for these, and other system problems, but they must be developed with an open and above board understanding of the way the components of the system work work together (or not).
How about an all time best seller like the Bible? It would seem to fit the requirements of Phobos' second sentence, and, if you consider it carefully, the first verse or two of Revelations chapter 21 has enough latitude in the meanings of the words and phrases that it could pertain to the planet Mars. Further reading might also indicate that discussions of the type of government Mars will have may be merely academic. It might already have been determined and noted some time ago.
Unless you happen to have a perfect translator for ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Common Greek of the original writings, look at more than one English translation.
Please note the qualifiers I used, and maintain balance.
Rex G. Carnes