New Mars Forums

Yes, it is an interesting article. I'm not entirely clear on one or two points which were made and I think a few diagrams would have been helpful in this regard, but it is another new hypothesis and should be treated with respect until found wanting.
    While I think it's quite possible that the Wet Mars people (me included) are inclined to wax romantic about an ancient Mars with rivers and oceans, perhaps to the point of seeing what they want to see and disregarding the rest, I think it may be possible to do the opposite, too. I believe Peter Ravenscroft "doth protest too much" about water on Mars!
    He maintains that Wet Mars proponents see water everywhere, without justification. But I perceive in his work an almost evangelical zeal to exorcise water all together from the martian environment! My feeling is that he has built a house of cards, a bone-dry house, which tries to ignore evidence for water with just as much enthusiasm as Wet Marsers demonstrate in support of it.

    It seems to me that a compromise is in order here: I'm prepared to admit that aeolian erosion has played a significant role in the sculpting of the martian surface, as long as Peter Ravenscroft is prepared to entertain the increasingly mainstream (... ouch! ..) notion that water erosion has also been a major player.
    I could go on for hours about the extremely compelling evidence for water erosion on Mars, and Dr. Squyres' team at JPL would be bemused to find their definite identification of water-formed sediment at the Opportunity landing site is all just a mistake! And, when you combine this with the satellite data showing large quantities of water ice in the regolith and at the poles, it's difficult to understand Peter's dismissal of water in his brief geological history of Mars. To hear him tell it, there's hardly any water and there never has been! I find this to be a totally unsustainable viewpoint and the whole hypothesis smacks of dreaming up an exotic idea and then carefully constructing an unlikely argument to support it, ignoring any evidence along the way which undermines it.

    Most of us are prepared to include water and wind erosion in our picture of martian history - an eminently reasonable position in my opinion - but Peter Ravenscroft seems to be very pointedly overlooking the water for his own purposes.
    Could it be that both Ravenscroft and Hoffman have some reason to portray Mars as much more hostile than it actually is?
    Nahhh!! There goes my paranoia again.    :laugh:

Yes, it's a great picture all right! Thanks Stu and Atomoid.
    I notice that many of the rocks appear to have small white protuberances - almost like sections of harder material. Is this true or do you think it's just a trick of the light?
    I'm wondering about veins of quartz, or something similar, running through the rock and being exposed on the surface of the debris after an impact.
    Or maybe I'm just dreaming!
                                               

I'm not American, so I don't profess to have a very good understanding of U.S. politics. But from what I've picked up here on New Mars from Democrats (and one or two communists), the picture seems to be that Bush is a warmonger and those who find his war-like attitude distasteful should vote for Kerry.
    Well, I was happy enough to go along with that until I read an article in the Australian newspaper last Tuesday. The article was written by John Laughland, a trustee of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group, and was entitled: "If it's war you want, then go Democrats - John Kerry is more hawkish than that neo-con George W. Bush".

    The article commented on how Kerry is profiting from his perceived status as a critic of George W. Bush's foreign policy. It goes on to say:-

    The article continued:-

    Apparently, in February, Kerry criticised Bush's plan to hand back power to the Iraqis as being too quick - a 'cut and run' strategy, even though 110,000 American troops are to remain in Iraq indefinitely.
    Back to the article:-

[* Authors of the "latest neo-con manifesto, An End To Evil.]

    According to John Laughland, it makes little difference to the course of U.S. foreign policy whether you vote for Bush or Kerry. If this is a true reflection of the present political debate in America, how come so many people here declare their support for Kerry mainly on the basis that they think of Bush as a warmongering oil man with a poor grasp of international affairs?
    Could it be that a personal dislike of Bush is causing some to give a knee-jerk vote to Kerry without pausing to examine whether he, Kerry, may actually be worse than the object of their disdain?

    I have no opinion on that question because I really don't know enough about the workings of politics within the United States. But, if the article is correct, the upcoming election looks like being a non-event as far as foreign policy is concerned. Kerry will be at least as aggressive on the international stage as Bush has been, if not more so!

    Interesting stuff, no?    ???

Sorry to be so long in responding to Dicktice's question about kangaroos back in February but things have been hectic for me lately.
    The truth is I don't know much more about farming kangaroos than I do about farming cattle. 
    We get plagues of kangaroos in the outback of Australia from time to time and culling is necessary on a regular basis; though the greenies and animal rights activists aren't happy about the way it's done, citing inexperienced 'roo shooters causing undue suffering etc.

    I've just arrived home from a short trip to central Australia, where I spent several days in Alice Springs. For the first time, I sampled barbecued kangaroo meat and found it quite palatable, though strongly flavoured in a 'gamey' kind of way. ( I might describe it best by saying kangaroo is to steak as duck is to chicken - both nice, but in their own way.)
    If kangaroo were found to be easier to farm in a martian setting, I believe the meat would prove just as popular as steak once people became used to it.
    Sorry I can't offer any practical hints as to their suitability for enclosed farming on Mars.
                                         

Hi REB!
    I had a quick look at some of your Nilosyrtis Mensae pictures at the other thread and I found them very interesting. The whole area seems to cry "ICE!", I agree.
    As to underground rivers, I haven't the background in geology or hydrology to make a sensible comment but I wouldn't be surprised if there are such things on Mars. There's definitely a great deal of water ice and, in my opinion, there's likely to be considerable geothermal activity too. Putting the two together, underground rivers seem like a logical conclusion - at least to me!
    The only rider to that might be the speed at which those underground rivers would flow. Here on Earth, with all our precipitation, it's not uncommon for subterranean rivers to flow swiftly. The rate of flow on Mars would most likely be much slower, since the transport of water from one area to another is in the form of vapour - fog and mist - rather than liquid. You can't supply large amounts of water to the highlands in short time-frames by condensation of mist, so I visualise a much slower movement of water underground.
    I believe there must be a hydrological cycle of sorts, though, however slow it may be, because studies of outflow channels on the martian surface seem to indicate separate episodes of catastrophic outflows over very long periods of time. It appears that, somehow, the aquifers in the highlands are recharged with water over millions or hundreds of millions of years, to enable them to release that water when triggered by, perhaps, localised volcanism. An active, though slow, hydrological cycle is necessary to explain this, I think.
                                               

Hi Cindy!
    This is another of those experiments, like the Laser Interferometry Gravity Observatory (LIGO), which purports to prove that gravity warps space. This one tests the warping of space by a massive spinning object (I believe), while LIGO looks for the effect of gravity waves emanating from colossal gravitational events occurring out in the depths of space - such as the collision of two black holes.
    I have a lot of trouble visualising how these experiments are supposed to work because, if space/time is being warped by gravity, surely all the measuring instruments being used to measure the distortion will also be distorted in the same way. Those instruments occupy our 4-dimensional space-time continuum, just like the objects they're measuring. If an object distorts, say by shortening an inch, the ruler you use to measure the shrinkage will have shrunk in the same proportion. The net result is that you'll never know the object shrank!
    I expressed my concern about this in another thread, specifically aimed at LIGO, but nobody responded. And now I have another quandary to puzzle over with this Gravity Probe B thing!

    There must be a perfectly good reason why so many scientists think they'll be able to measure these space distortions but my view is that neither experiment, LIGO or Gravity Probe B, will work.
    I know I have to be wrong about this but I don't know why. Can anyone set me straight?
                                                 ???   

Thanks, SBird, for this very nicely worded account of quantum weirdness.
    I do have one small complaint, though. You mentioned that the "two BIG QUESTIONS" of science are the double slit experiment and the relativity/quantum physics incompatibility.
    You appear to have totally overlooked the more important and fundamental question involving socks, ballpoint pens and coat hangers!
                                           

[Sorry! Feeling a little frivolous today.     ]

Hi Cassioli!
    It's interesting you should mention animals moving around near the MERs; especially rock-shaped ones. I remember speculation by scientists, including the illustrious Dr. Carl Sagan, which included just such a scenario.
    The idea was that primitive animals may have gradually developed hard rock-like shells as the climate on Mars became inexorably worse over the eons. The shells would protect them from the harsh UV light by day and offer shelter from the intense cold by night.
    One can certainly visualise such creatures being effectively invisible to the MER cameras, unless two consecutive shots happened to pick up a 'rock' changing position.
    However, in view of the characteristics of the soil, visible in the pictures we've seen so far, there would surely be tell-tale tracks in the sand to alert us to the movement, wouldn't there?
    One more objection to the idea is that animals require food; herbivores need large amounts of vegetation and carnivores need proportionately larger numbers of herbivores to prey upon. Leaving aside the complexities of the carnivore/herbivore ratio, is there enough vegetation to sustain even quite small herds of browsing 'rocks'? So far, I haven't seen any incontrovertible signs of vegetation at all.

    While it would be interesting to see 'auto white balance' pictures of the sky on Mars (I'm one of the heretics who think the martian sky is probably blue-tinged quite often, when airborne dust levels are low enough) and panoramic movies in glorious colour, I don't think we'd actually see anything moving. There's just no food for animals to feed on.

Cindy:-

    Thanks for the comeback, Cindy, on this pet campaign of mine to have Dr. Levin's work given the credit it deserves.
    Yes indeed, the power of the 'In Crowd' is exactly what I mean! As I've mentioned, Dr. Levin began his career as a sanitary engineer. It was his detailed study of microbes in relation to his work which gave him the background expertise needed to devise the Labeled Release (LR) experiment.
    I think the fact that he came from such a background, more of a practical workaday background in a distinctly unglamorous field than that of his academic Viking peers, has resulted in his work being looked upon less favourably.

    Who among the Viking scientists would want the kudos for discovering life on Mars to go to a former sanitary engineer?!
    I know it sounds preposterous to suggest that such pettiness could possibly exist among objective professional scientists, but how else to explain Dr. levin's apparent snubbing by NASA over the past quarter century? It looks to me very much like a monumental case of sour grapes by mainstream NASA scientists and a stubborn unwillingness to back down and admit they were unduly hasty in their dismissal of the LR results.

    There have been too many cases in history of maverick scientists and researchers crying in the wilderness for decades to have their discoveries recognised, only to die before recognition arrived. I would really hate to see that happen to Gilbert Levin, a determined, practical and highly intelligent man who has been given short shrift by his so-called 'colleagues' for too long.
                                             

[Sorry ... looks like I've found my old soap-box again! Poor Phobos used to dread me dragging it out of the closet for another rant!!   :laugh:  ]

In response to your recent reference to Dr. Levin here, SBird, I'm glad someone else has taken his research on board and is prepared to at least doubt, if not discard, the official peroxide/superoxide hypothesis for Mars. 
    I've never been a fan of the official line and I tend to think the LR experiment did get a microbial reaction. I think the top few centimetres of martian soil, while not swarming with life, might still host small colonies of hardy bacteria. They may well spend most of their time in cold suspended animation, but there are probably times when liquid water and ambient temperatures allow metabolism to occur.
    My guess is that the deeper you go, the more bacteria you'll find ... and more varieties perhaps as well.
    I'm something of a Dr. Levin fan!
                                                     

A very interesting and thought-provoking post Sbird. I've always thought that the sudden explosion of multi-cellular life-forms about half a billion years ago was amazing. I know many scientists have attempted to find the trigger for it but I don't think there's been any real consensus so far. I think the availability of oxygen has been considered as one option.

    Atomoid and Lunarmark, I would just like to throw in a gentle reminder about impact transfer of dormant life between the rocky planets of the inner solar system. It seems many people have a mental-block which somehow prevents them using this very real factor in their reasoning.
    I don't think anyone knows for sure just how long clement conditions may have lasted on Mars; perhaps there were only brief sporadic episodes of balmy conditions or maybe there were much longer periods than we realise (I know studies of surface erosion tend to place tight upper limits on the duration of water-based erosion but the picture is complicated and not well understood as yet). But if life originated on Earth first, and there's reason to believe it didn't take long to do so, it was probably transferred to Mars over three billion years ago by impacts. Most people seem to agree that Mars was probably much more Earth-like at that time. Then, it just becomes a matter of how long Mars provided a suitable nursery for its development.
    And how do we know a meteorite impact during that crucial Pre-Cambrian period didn't send to Mars, intact, some of that critical genetic information which resulted in the multi-cellular explosion we've mentioned? And who's to say that material didn't happen to arrive on Mars during a clement watery period which lasted a few million years? Maybe such a fluke of fate saw weird animals evolving on Mars at much the same time as they did here. Admittedly, the chances mightn't be good but they're not zero either! And I know that most of the life-forms which may have developed would have died when Mars re-entered one of its long 'ice ages', but perhaps some dug in (literally) and hung on ... who knows?

    On the other hand, NASA's Dr Chris MacKay has put forward the hypothesis that Mars may have 'settled down' much earlier than Earth did. The surface would have cooled more quickly because it's a smaller planet and life may have appeared as much as 4 billion or even, say, 4.3 billion years ago. Here on Earth, cyano-bacteria were producing oxygen for well over a billion years (~3.5 gya to ~2.25 gya), only to see it chemically combine with new supplies of reduced material produced by vigorous volcanism. It wasn't until volcanism gradually subsided, that the excess oxygen began to accumulate in the atmosphere, eventually leading to conditions which allowed many kinds of multi-cellular, oxygen-burning, energetic organisms to evolve.
    Dr. MacKay postulates that, with a much more rapid reduction in volcanism on Mars, any resident cyano-bacteria (or similar photosynthesising organism) would have produced an oxygen-rich atmosphere much earlier than it happened here.
    As SBird points out, evolution depends as much on propitious circumstances as it does on anything else. Perhaps Chris MacKay's hypothetical Earth-like Mars, very early in the piece, was a veritable hotbed of evolution and saw primitive animal life develop 2 billion years before it occurred on Earth!

    O.K., O.K. ... there's more speculation here than at a day-traders convention!!   :laugh:  But I have to somehow justify my feint hopes that one of the MERs might still pick up a genuine honest-to-goodness macroscopic fossil!
                                                :;):   

All very interesting stuff - thanks, Cindy!