New Mars Forums

Many thanks, Rik!   
    I did what you suggested and it worked fine. I certainly appreciate your patience and kindness.
    [I wonder why they chose 'control c' and 'control v'. The 'c' part presumably means 'copy' but the 'v' doesn't seem as intuitive, at least not to me.]

    That movie is very interesting but it would be better if they slowed it down a little! I always imagined the initial extent of the water on Mars to be somewhat greater than that depicted in this sequence but, of course, it's anybody's guess at this stage in our exploration of Mars.
    It was interesting also to see that the eastern section of Mariner Valley may have been one of the last places to dry up, with Argyre close behind, and Hellas Basin perhaps retaining water well after the rest of the seas were gone.
    Thanks again!
                                      :up:

Cindy:-

    So very true!
    You just shook me out of by blase torpor and made me appreciate again the incredible privilege we are enjoying in being able to see all this.
    Wouldn't it be fantastic to sit Galileo down at a computer terminal and show him colour pictures of Jupiter and its moons in close-up! And some of these magnificent shots of Saturn's ring system! I'd love to see the look on his face .. Wow!!
                                           

No, Cindy, I hadn't heard of them before I read that article. However, I'm quite sure they'll become the focus of a potent media circus involving a scare campaign; a kind of bio-hazard version of "The sky is falling, the sky is falling .. !!"

    My God!  Are there no depths to which these Luddites won't sink in their attempts to stifle humanity's future?!!  Some of these people are ostensibly scientists and yet it seems they're quite prepared to skew the facts in whatever way it takes to further their position on space exploration. (Shades of the environazi movement, which is actually far more interested in politics than demonstrable facts about the environment.)
    We all know how easily led the majority of people can be when it comes to space. The totally incorrect and baseless argument that we should spend money solving social problems here on Earth before we worry about exploring our solar system is already trotted out by the tut-tutting naysayers at every opportunity. Now these self-serving, politically motivated neanderthals will be able to throw the fantasmagorical concept of back contamination by lethal martian bacteria into the fray! It's a perfect angle for the anti-progress brigade - I can see the usual rent-a-crowd suspects now, placards held high, chanting in the streets that we're all going to die of 'Arean AIDS'!

    The reason I'm getting hot under the collar about all this stuff lately is that I think it's shaping up as a potentially serious threat to the aspirations of the Mars Society and other space advocacy groups. I can almost hear the wheels turning out there. I feel that we're just beginning to see the vague outline, the tip of the iceberg, of what will become a well orchestrated anti-space campaign.
    It's got me worried and I don't like it one little bit!   :bars2:

Well well ... ICAMSR (International Committee Against Mars Sample Return)!!
    The 'Genesis' mishap has 'em coming out of the woodwork, doesn't it?!  What a bunch of benighted primitives they must be, frustrated that burning witches is against the law these days. I wonder if their windows are decked with cloves of garlic to ward off vampires, too?   

    The words of Wendell Mendell, Manager of the Office for Human Exploration Science at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, were a welcome and invigorating breath of fresh air after the nauseating aroma of all the BS coming from ICAMSR!
    Dr. Mendell said he is open to being persuaded that there is a real danger to bringing back a "Martian something" that could disrupt the Earth. He went on to say:-

(My italics)

    Bravo, Dr. Mendell!   :up:

    I make this post, incidentally, not because I want an MSR mission. An MSR mission will take years and cost billions and might return some dirt from one place on Mars. Or, it might take decades and cost tens of billions if you want dirt from half a dozen places on Mars. All that time and all that money would be far better spent on Mars Direct (or a derivative thereof) so that astronauts can give us a comprehensive evaluation of the surface geology, drill into the crust for cores of rock strata and subsurface water, and examine any life-forms found.
    I agree with Dr. Mendell. There's no reason to believe Mars has anything biological that we don't have here on Earth. The danger to astronauts on Mars is infinitesimal, vanishingly small, ... effectively ZILCH!
    If that kind of risk is still too great for today's bureaucrats and spineless politicians, if you can't find astronauts prepared to take that minuscule risk, then the human race is already finished; a dead man walking!
                                             :bars:

Cindy:-

    You can say that again! The unimaginable brute power of these demonic-looking things is eerie when seen from the serenity of space.
                                       

The article about solar flares certainly gives us food for thought about the way in which Mars may have lost its atmosphere but no numbers are given to back the idea.
    There are many factors involved in the possible effects of solar flares over long periods of time. First of all, we don't know for sure whether current rates of flare production on the Sun are typical; in the past, they may have been more or less common than they are today. When the Sun was young, producing only 70% as much heat and light, was it much 'quieter' and 'better behaved'? Secondly, there is the question of how strong these flares are. Who knows whether those that have occurred in this present era of astronomical observation and measurement are unusually powerful? Thirdly, there is the question of directionality. What proportion of solar flares happen to direct the brunt of their force toward Mars?
    No doubt, there are other factors I haven't touched on.

    If we examine the article by Dr. McKay in The Planetary Report for July/August, we read that present rates of upper atmospheric 'sputtering' could only have removed about 2 metres of a global ocean from Mars over the last 4 billion years. There is, according to Dr McKay, no reason to believe the rate of water loss was any greater in the past, even if Mars had a thicker atmosphere then. And this assumes Mars has never had a significant global magnetic field, i.e. things have always been as they are now in that regard. Presumably, if one factors in a global field, at least for the first billion years or so of martian history, and if one assumes sputtering by solar charged particles was less intense when the Sun was younger and fainter, then Mars may actually have lost even less than 2 metres of water since its birth. In other words, the martian volatiles may well have been more 'durable' than we tend to think.
    Taking all this, together with a more conservative view of how often large powerful solar flares have impacted Mars directly over the eons, I think it becomes more difficult to say, with any degree of certainty, that flares may have been instrumental in helping to remove Mars' atmosphere over the eons.
    To my mind, it's still quite possible that a substantial proportion of the original CO2 atmosphere has been adsorbed onto the martian regolith or otherwise sequestered, rather than lost to space, and may be available for future terraforming efforts.
                                         

By the way, I hadn't heard the expression "hunt and peck" until now. It's a very evocative description of how my typing began, that's for sure!!
    It must be quite amusing for people like you, Cindy, who are so many levels of proficiency above such primitive techniques. So, you can be forgiven a small amount of quiet mirth at the ineptitude of people like me.   

    I guess I'm a little like you, CC, in as much as I seem to know instinctively where the keys are now, though I'm still 'pecking' with index fingers only. But I still have to watch the keyboard because I have no 'positional sense' without visual input, which sometimes leads me to typing out whole sentences in capital letters before I look up and see what I've done! At that point, especially if I'm tired, I tend to use colourful language ... you know, things like "drat" and "oh bother"!!
                      :laugh:

[Wipe that smile off your face, Cindy!   :;):  ]

I too, tend to agree with CC in this regard, and in others, though not when it comes to General Patton's idea of advancing on Moscow.
    The Soviet Uion had indeed "taken a beating" during WWII but, from mid 1943 onwards, they turned things around with a vengeance. Throughout 1944 and into 1945, their factories were producing upwards of 2000 T-34 tanks per month. (Think about it.) Armed with 76 mm guns and utilising sloped armour, these tanks were superior to every German tank except the Tiger and possibly the Panther, and at least the equal of the American Sherman. Their parts were largely interchangeable with those of Soviet agricultural tractors, so that spares could be found in most barns! By May 1945, the Soviets had at least 40,000 of them in battle-ready condition and crewed by an extraordinarily tough, battle-hardened breed of soldier. They also had tens of thousands of artillery pieces and millions of troops. Production facilities were way out, east of the Urals, beyond bombing range, and were quite capable of increasing production in the event of an American/German/British assault.
    However ill-prepared and inept the Soviet forces had been in 1941 (largely due to Stalin's 'decapitation' of the military command structure during the late thirties for fear of a coup), the Red Army in 1945 was a very different creature all together.
    Short of a nuclear attack, I believe any allied advance into the Soviet Union would have bogged down and become a particularly bloody and protracted war. I don't honestly think Patton knew just what he was facing in Berlin that summer of 1945.

    Mundaka's notion of having a military so "humungous, ferocious .." etc. that no one dares attack, is certainly nothing new. There's an old Roman dictum which goes: "Si vis pacem, para bellum" ... If you want peace, prepare for war.

    Some people here worry that aliens will come and kill us and take over the world. That possibility doesn't trouble me much at all because I have to say I'd feel sorry for any race attempting such a thing. It's difficult to imagine a more warlike and ferocious adversary than homo sapiens - I think we'd give the aliens a hell of a time!
    As I saw on a T-shirt once:-
    "Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil ... 'cos I'm the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the valley."
                                      :laugh:    :;):

Right.
    My left is only there for decoration!
    Wait ... correction!  I'm good at left-handed gear changes in cars. In fact, I can't imagine changing gears right-handed, as people have to do in all those countries where they drive on the wrong side of the road!      

Thanks, Karov, for a very interesting and informative post.   

    The naming system you've outlined seems quite logical and has a lot going for it. It might take some of us 'old dogs' a while to get used to the new definitions but something has to be done fairly soon. We can't go on with the present system much longer in the face of so many new discoveries that don't fit the old classifications.

I think the word you're looking for is "polydactyly".   

    Some animals, such as dogs and cats, have an extra claw called a "dewclaw". It is generally a useless appendage, separated from the normal claws - i.e. situated higher up the leg.
    As they are weak vestigial claws, they are prone to 'catching' on things and getting torn from the limb - very painful! For this reason, many vets suggest having them removed surgically to save any unnecessary suffering later.

Welcome back, Morris!
    Sorry to hear your parents haven't been well.

    Sorry to report, too, that I missed the Mars Society conference AGAIN!! this year ...  :bars2:  ... so I can't tell you anything about that!
    I've already started whingeing to my wife about needing to go to Colorado next year.