New Mars Forums

Yager

Banned

Registered: 2005-08-02

Posts: 1

Re: New to the boards

Hello everyone Im Chris, me and my dad have been doing some extensive research from history thoroughout myths and the bible and other old historic documents.  I am researching mars for basically any type of clues.  I have stumbled upon of course the large craters in the planet but the thing that really bothers me is that I understand that there isn't an atmosphere on mars capable of stopping most meteorites but some of the markings ont he planet are too big to be stopped by ours.  With little to 0 meteor activity ever striking mars for quite some time and seeing how there really aren't that many big meteors have come close unless im wrong here.  Im not exactly even sure what im looking for just doin some research and clues and digging up facts.  Could anyone explain to me why the romans worshipped mars and how the name "god of war" came to pass.  If anyone could shed some light on this I would truly appreciate it.

Rxke

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2003-11-03

Posts: 3,669

Re: New to the boards

Hi, Yager!

'bout the meteors: we have craters on earth that are huge too, but they are old and due to weathering (dense atmosphere, raing, water, biological etc etc, most of them are hard to make out. Mars has lost most of its atmosphere, so old craters look the same millions of years later... The big one that wioped out the dinosaurs on Earth, is now all but invisible (it's the Chicxulub , located at Yucatan, Mexico. It's approx 65mil years old. Now A crater like that, as old on Mars would still be visible like it was quite fresh... Weathering on Mars is verrrrry slow...

Romans initially didn't see Mars as a wargod, but as (if i'm not mistaken) the god for fertility, but why that changed exactly??? The red color, probably, and the more war-like mindset of the Roman Empire in its later years...

idiom

Member

From: New Zealand

Registered: 2004-04-21

Posts: 312

Re: New to the boards

Hey Yager.

Ever wonder why so many civilisations added 5 days to their calendar in ~701 BC?

Fascinating link

Listen to hour 6a & 6b. This is fairly mainstream stuff.

Also the moon was possibly formed from a collision. There are pretty much no craters on Venus but not because of the atmosphere, looks more like massive vulcanism.

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Shaun Barrett

Member

From: Cairns, Queensland, Australia

Registered: 2001-12-28

Posts: 2,843

Re: New to the boards

Yager:-

With little to 0 meteor activity ever striking mars for quite some time ..

Depends what you mean by "quite some time".
All planetary bodies in the Solar System are constantly receiving incoming material from space - only the size varies. As Rxke quite rightly points out, Earth has had some very large hits over the eons, including the impact which helped eliminate the dinosaurs 65 million years ago (about 75% of species perished). A bigger extinction event occurred at the end of the Permian period, 250 million years ago, in which some 90% of species disappeared. Some scientists are convinced an impact helped precipitate that extinction also. (It should be understood that the energy of the impacts alone was probably not the only destructive agent; consequent volcanic activity on a large scale, together with climatic changes, were almost certainly very significant contributing factors.)

-- So, even Earth's atmosphere, which is currently more than 100 times as dense as that of Mars, and has most likely been comparably denser for most of the Solar System's history, is not impermeable to meteoritic and asteroidal impact. Again, as Rxke points out, the great majority of Earth's impact craters have been erased by tectonic activity and effective weathering.
-- The ocean floor is nowhere older than about 200 million years, due to plate tectonics, and it makes up some 70% of Earth's surface. Since the vast majority of  celestial body bombardment ended long before 200 million years ago, only a few hundred heavily eroded craters have been identified on the continental plates, which are very much older (up to approximately 3.5 billion years old) than the oceanic abyssal plains.

What, exactly, are you and your father looking for in your research? Perhaps some of us Mars enthusiasts here at New Mars can be more helpful if we know what it is you're trying to find.  :?:   

[P.S. Welcome to new Mars, by the way!]

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The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down.   - Rita Rudner

Dook

Banned

From: USA

Registered: 2004-01-09

Posts: 1,409

Re: New to the boards

I'm wondering what the bible has to do with mars?

idiom

Member

From: New Zealand

Registered: 2004-04-21

Posts: 312

Re: New to the boards

It is mentioned a few times. And, I guess its creation and destruction are mentioned in there, and to some our responsibility ot colonize and terraform it comes from the Bible too.

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