New Mars Forums

Yeah!!
    If they roasted me at 130 deg.C for a few hours, I can tell you what it would do to my enzymes!!! ...
                                     

Hi Phobos!
    "The Fountains of Paradise" is the Arthur C. Clarke novel which deals with the space elevator subject - in case you didn't know that already. I'm an elevator enthusiast too so I certainly recommend that one!

    I don't know how much in-depth knowledge of the literature is required for a master's degree in Enlightenment Era philosophy (being appallingly ignorant of philosophy in general, myself! ), but I think you must be right that Cindy would be a shoo-in at most universities!
    Anyone who loves a subject as much as Cindy obviously loves hers, couldn't help but do well at it. But then, would turning it into a string of assignments take the shine off it a little bit?!
                                     ???

Thanks, Cindy!
    It's working OK now. Must be just me! I have this effect on computers ... they can smell fear!!
                                                 

    A good article, too.
    It's always encouraging to hear of further similarities between Earth and Mars - it makes the prospect of terraforming seem all the more feasible! (And that makes me happy.)
                                         

Hi Cyclohm!
    I think Noctis is right to have doubts about the composition of any presumed 'analog' of Mars soil. The exotic superoxides purported to exist in Martian surface regolith, are a hypothetical creation designed to explain conflicting data from two of the experiments aboard the Viking landers.
    As Noctis correctly points out, the overriding data from the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS), which were the kiss-of-death for the positive results of the Labeled Release life detector, have since been thrown into very serious doubt. As Noctis goes on to mention, the same GCMS device failed to detect small (but thriving and reproducing) colonies of bacteria in Antarctic soil samples!!
    Despite the passage of a quarter of a century, no plausible and widely accepted model for Martian 'superoxide soil chemistry' has been produced in laboratories. Indeed, no plausible mechanism for the production and persistence of hydrogen peroxide in the Martian environment (on which the whole menagerie of hypothetical superoxides depends) has been produced!

    In other words, the whole 'no-evidence-for-life-on-Mars-because-of-bizarre-and-inexplicable-soil-oxides' thing (! ), is a rickety house of cards resting on highly dubious results from an instrument which has since been totally discredited!
    Incredible, but true.

    NASA is quite happy to continue this charade and, according to my reading of the situation, seems disinterested in re-examining the Viking data or actively seeking any new data in the near future. Why, I don't know.

    But, as far as your senior project in electrical engineering is concerned, Cyclohm, as long as you toe the party line and work with a soil analog which satisfies the current paradigm as laid down by NASA, all should be well. I can't see NASA changing its tune before June 2004, when your project is due, unless the European Beagle 2 probe forces them to reconsider. ???

P.S. I should clarify something about the GCMS. It was designed to detect organic material - NOT life. The fact that it detected no organic material was taken to mean that no bacteria, alive or dead, were present in the regolith, although the Labeled Release experimental data were strongly indicative of actively metabolising microorganisms. The problem was simply that you would need at least 10,000,000 bacteria in the soil (alive or not) for the GCMS to detect organic material. The LR device is capable of detecting the metabolic products of as little as 50 organisms! Thus, in a harsh environment like Mars, where the population of microorganisms could well be small (as in Antarctic soils), the GCMS was too insensitive to detect the amounts of organic material involved.

I recently read a book about the Turin Shroud which was quite thought provoking. I'm sorry I can't remember the actual title ... something like 'The Shroud Conspiracy'.(? )

    Anyway, the point of the story involved the dating of the shroud, which turned out to be somewhere around the 14th century. This led to the assumption that the shroud must be an elaborate fake, though pollen grains were found on it which would normally be found in the Holy Land but not mainland Europe.
    The authors set out evidence that the material given to the various laboratories by the vatican for testing, was NOT from the shroud. Material from a known medieval cloth was deliberately substituted by the Vatican to refute the authenticity of the shroud as the cloth that Christ was wrapped in.
    But why would they do such a thing?

    Because the pattern of blood stains on the shroud, which has been examined by people with forensic skills, shows quite conclusively that the body wrapped in that shroud was still bleeding! ... i.e. It was still alive when removed from the cross.

    There has been a growing suspicion that the circumstances surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus were very unusual. For instance, he was brought down from the cross after only a few hours, he was given some sort of liquid on a sponge shortly beforehand, and his body was turned over to his family and friends and immediately whisked away.
    Many have concluded from this that Jesus survived the cross. Joseph of Aramathea, a very wealthy local identity with connections in high places within the Roman authority at the time (including a close relationship with Pilate), has been implicated in the plot.

    Any evidence from the blood pattern on the shroud that Jesus was definitely alive after the crucifixion would completely undermine the basis of christianity - which is that Jesus died for our sins but defeated death etc.
    Better, then, to discredit the shroud as a fake than to allow it to destroy the foundations of a major world religion.

    I found it to be a fascinating and very plausible read. Certainly more plausible to me than the notion of obscure middle eastern prophets rising from the dead!
    But then, I can be a little cynical at times.
                                            :;):

Dickbill, you're quite correct, of course, in saying that significant fluctuations in solar output could possibly occur in relatively short time frames.
    Those fluctuations could be disastrous for Earth and even more catastrophic for a terraforming endeavour on Venus.
    I suppose all we can do is look at the history of life on Earth for clues as to how stable the sun really is. Most of the mass extinctions we see evidence for in the fossil record appear to be traceable to volcanic and/or impact events. To the best of my knowledge (such as it is), no major extinction episodes have been attributed to large and sudden changes in insolation, though I suppose attitudes could alter with the advent of new data.

    In any event, we just have to go about our business on the assumption that things will remain much as they are now. If we were to base all our planning on the assumption that a major disaster could befall us any minute, I guess we'd just huddle together in the basement, hold hands, and wait for armageddon!
    In other words, I think we have to be optimistic and hope for the best.
                                         

I'm not panicking about the CO2 inventory on Mars just yet. This latest research certainly seems to put severe limits on the amount of CO2 in the visible south cap, but how far does the cap extend under dust and regolith beyond its visible boundary?
    There are very many unknowns which are difficult to study from orbit - while manned missions would quickly multiply our knowledge many times beyond its present level. Multiple test-drillings, to depths of hundreds of metres, at dozens of sites at high northern and southern latitudes, may well be the only way to assess the full extent of frozen volatiles.

    In any event, even when the visible south cap was assumed to be largely frozen CO2, its contribution to a proposed 'new atmosphere' for Mars was never going to be all that spectacular! I've read various estimates for the barometric effect of subliming the whole cap, from 30 millibars to about 100 millibars - with 50 millibars being considered a reasonable guesstimate.
    As others have mentioned in this thread, the lion's share of any future Martian atmosphere was always going to be derived from CO2 adsorbed onto the regolith or otherwise sequestered in the crustal material. Estimates for the amount stored in this way have been put at anywhere from 250 to 800 millibars (and occasionally higher).

    So this latest data, even if it proves to be accurate, is definitely no show-stopper for terraformation ... yet!

    Hi Tyr!  Just climbing back onto my trusty soap-box for a minute! In 1977, Dr. Gilbert Levin's Labeled Release (LR) experiments on the Viking landers produced results consistent with the discovery of micro-organisms in the Martian soil. The results were dismissed as the result of exotic soil chemistry because another experiment on Viking, the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS), repeatedly registered no organic material in the soil at all. 'How could you have bacteria in the soil if there's not a trace of organic material?'
    So, enormously inventive and imaginative exotic soil chemistries were conjured up to explain the results of the LR experiment - including the superoxides you mention in your post.
    Since Viking, Dr. Levin and his collaborators have shown conclusively that the GCMS sent to Mars was completely inadequate to detect the amount of organic material in soils containing only small populations of organisms. In fact, it has been shown that the GCMS used required organic material equivalent to that from 10,000,000 micro-organisms to get a response. Certain soil samples, taken from Antarctica's dry valleys here on Earth, were shown by the same type of GCMS as was sent to Mars on Viking, to be devoid of organic material - yet these soils were found to have living colonies of bacteria in them!!
    In contrast to the appalling lack of sensitivity of the GCMS, the LR experiment would detect as few as 50 bacteria in a soil sample!
    In addition, heat sterilised Martian soil failed to respond to the LR experiment - as expected if biology was involved, but NOT as expected if soil chemistry were the cause of the results!
    In fact, no model of exotic soil chemistry devised by scientists since Viking, has been able to explain the LR results. And all the superoxides conjured up depend, initially, on the natural production of large quantities of hydrogen peroxide in the Martian atmosphere. There is no evidence at all for large amounts of H2O2 remaining stable in the Martian environment - in fact, atmospheric models predict it would be destroyed faster than it is created!

    My opinion, based on what I have gleaned from considerable reading, is that the evidence for extant Martian life is extremely compelling. Exotic soil chemistry is neither possible nor required to explain the Viking results. Occam's razor dictates that we accept the simplest direct explanation for our experimental results. That explanation, based on what we have so far, is that Mars is alive today.

    If we accept that notion, then we're compelled to ask why NASA appears to have closed the book on living organisms on Mars. Dr. Levin, simply for stating his opinion at the end of one of his lectures, that his LR device had provided evidence for life in the Martian soil, was made a 'non person' by NASA. Thereafter, he had great difficulty in getting papers published and in getting funding for research - in other words, he was black-balled.
    Personally, I don't understand why NASA has behaved in this way. But it's as though somebody, or some group, within NASA prefers to depict Mars as a dead world for reasons of their own.
                                         ???

Hi Dicktice!
    You don't have to have nitrogen in your air. Up to 1 atmosphere of pressure (1000 millibars), you could breathe pure oxygen without ill effects - though, apparently, oxygen becomes toxic at a pressure or partial pressure of 2 atmospheres.
    The need for an atmosphere of 1000 millibars of pure oxygen is never going to arise, of course, and would create a tendency for things to catch fire easily anyway. If you're going to use pure O2, you can get away quite happily with only 300 millibars for physiological purposes - and your fire risk becomes manageable.
    Unfortunately, at 300 millibars ambient pressure in your hab, you're only ever going to get a lukewarm cup of coffee because water will boil at a lower temperature!

    As far as elastic pressure suits are concerned, I'm not sure anyone has produced a successful suit of that type yet.
    We had a discussion in another thread about suit design, and we were all in favour of a lightweight, clinging type which would least restrict movement. So far ... there isn't one! (I think.)
                                     

You beat me to it with the 'birth of the universe' article, Cindy! I was about to post it when I saw your post.
    It certainly is very interesting. I'm particularly impressed that the scientists concerned have been able to derive a much more accurate estimate for the age of the universe - 13.7 billion years, give or take 1%.
    And it seems the new data support the concept of 'inflation theory', where the whole fabric of the universe suddenly expanded at superluminal speed very soon after the big bang. This is a concept I've always had trouble digesting and I always wondered whether it might eventually be shown to be false - it just seemed too arbitrary and convenient to be true, somehow.
    But not so! I guess you just have to have a very much better understanding of mathematics than I do, that's all!! It just goes to show how conceited I can be, imagining that just because I couldn't see the logic in 'inflation', that they might eventually find it wasn't so!!! Ah well ... back to personal development school!   

    And thanks, Soph, for that great 'martian gullies' story. This is just the sort of result that's music to my ears - it's made my day!
    As some of you know only too well (! ), I've supported the cause of a watery Mars (ad nauseam) for a long time. One of the thorns in my side in this regard, has been a fellow Australian called Dr. Nick Hoffman, who has tried to explain all the channels and gullies on Mars as being produced by avalanches of liquid/gaseous CO2 mixed with rock and dust.
    He has been using his intellectual talents and careful study of the data to formulate his opinions, while I have had to rely largely on instinct and gut-feeling and stuff I've gathered from years of browsing books, mags, and the net!
    I've always nursed this fear that I've been fooling myself - believing what I want to believe - and that, eventually, Dr. Hoffman would win out.
    But this article specifically says that liquid water fits the data very well, while CO2 ranks as one of the least likely explanations.
    YESSSS !!!!   
    I'm more convinced than ever now that Mars is hiding a very large amount of water - certainly at the top end of the range of possibilities put forward so far, and maybe even more!

Many thanks, Cindy, for taking the time to respond to my questions in such detail!
                                     

    It's a horrible thought for me that 'American' is drifting in this direction, because Australia very often tends to go along with trends started in the US.

    They'll never get me to go along with it though!!! Not in a thousand years.
                                      :angry:
    I'm a linguistic traditionalist and will never yield to such barbaric mangling of my mother tongue!

    (There! I'm glad I FITTED that little outburst into this post!!)
                                         :;):

    Thanks again, Cindy, for humouring me in my pedantry, and well done for standing proud as one of the last remaining bastions of linguistic purity in America.
    Ma'am, you have risen even higher in my estimation!

Hi Cindy!
    I was almost relieved to see that you wrote "bitten" as in 'I was bitten by a dog'.

    I've noticed that in 'American' these days, the word 'fitted' has been dropped as the past tense and/or the past participle of 'to fit'. I'm not sure how new this is - maybe Americans have never used 'fitted' (?).

    In English, as used in Britain and Australia at least, you have sentences such as: 'I fitted new brakes to my car' or 'The naval recruit was fitted out with a new uniform'.
    I believe, from watching American TV programs, that 'fitted' would be replaced by 'fit' in both these cases in the US.
    Whenever I hear such sentences used by Americans, it really sounds bizarre! It sounds as though the past participle  and the past historic are being replaced by the a more simplistic present tense  - which is what you would expect of illiterates who don't know any better.

    I don't mean this in any derogatory way. I'm not by any means trying to insinuate that Americans are broadly illiterate - that would be patent nonsense. But this usage, obviously accepted as standard by Americans, does grate on me a little bit. I suppose it grates because it reminds me of a trend here in Australia, by disturbingly large numbers of people it seems, to use sentences like: 'She must have went out' instead of 'She must have gone out'. (Cringe!! ) And I think I heard this form used on an American show recently, too.

    Is it the case that the past participle of the verb 'to bite' i.e. 'bitten' is also gradually being replaced by the past historic, 'bit', in the US?
    In other words, are we to expect:
I bite, I bit, I have bit  -instead of-  I bite, I bit, I have bitten
    As well as:
I fit, I fit, I have fit  -instead of-  I fit, I fitted, I have fitted?

    I know languages evolve but shouldn't they evolve to enhance nuances of meaning and become more descriptive? I think the changes I've outlined above - and there are others I can think of - are detracting from the beauty and precision of the English language in an attempt to simplify it.

    Incidentally, my vote (for reasons of strong personal bias as well as my agreement with HariSeldon- welcome back Hari! ) is for English as the official Martian language.

I'm not all that happy about making the vernal equinox the beginning of the year. Especially if you have 12 months in the year (and make them longer), and especially if you call them by the same names as Earth months.
    I think it would be better to start the year just after the northern winter solstice - the equivalent of January 1st on Earth. At least this way northern spring will begin in April and autumn in October.
    Eventually, when Mars is terraformed and we're not all living in constantly artificial indoor environments, it will be important to have the familiarity of seasons falling in the appropriate months.
    I guess I'm biased and maybe too geocentric, but I still like the system I outlined on page three of this thread.