New Mars Forums

Josh writes:-

    Gosh! ... I may be personally responsible for much of the world's climate change!!
    It's comforting to know that Josh is leaving no stone unturned in his search for environmentally damaging CO2 emissions!
                                           

Hi Echus_Chasma!
    Yes, there was an article in New Scientist magazine (25th January 2003) about nanotubes and electricity.
    According to Ajay Sood, a physicist at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, and his student, Shankar Ghosh, and colleagues at a nearby institute, just running water past nanotubes causes them to generate a current!

    The point is that water is a 'polar molecule'. In other words, the cloud of electrons shared by the two hydrogen atoms and the one oxygen atom, is asymmetric - the electrons tend to hang out at the oxygen end of the molecule more than the hydrogen end! So each water molecule is a tiny little electric dipole - a little more positive at one end and a little more negative at the other.
    Passing a current of water along the nanotubes causes loosely associated electrons in the carbon lattice of the tube to follow the movement of the positive end of the dipole of each water molecule as it passes by.

    Sood's results have been disputed by other groups who've failed to get a similar result in independent tests. But Sood is still taking out a patent!
    Imagine towns and villages, situated on streams and rivers all over the world, being able to toss a big bundle of carbon nanotubes into the water and get free electricity! No significant disruption of the river's flow, no big expensive turbines to build, no pollution, and no CO2 to worry the life out of Josh Cryer!! ( Just kidding, Josh! ..  :laugh:  )
    And how about putting really massive assemblies of nanotubes into the oceans where strong continuous currents are known to flow? Who knows how much electricity we might harvest with no perceptible environmental impact!

    By the way, I know a neat little party trick for kids' birthdays and such. It involves the polar nature of water molecules and usually causes the little ones' eyes to light up in wonder. (Mine too, by the way! But I never actually grew up anyhow!!    )
    Turn on the tap in the kitchen sink so that you have a thin smooth (laminar) flow of water. Take a nylon comb and rub it vigorously on your sleeve - I think sleeves with at least some manmade material in them work better.
    Then hold the comb near the water ... and watch the stream bend as the polar water molecules are attracted to the electrostatic charge on the comb! ... Magic!!
                                     :;):

Call me a coward and a fence-sitter, but I think there are too many unknowns in the equation and I go for option #2!
    The world community's response to the deliberate detonation of a nuclear device in a first-world city would  probably be harsh beyond belief. Maybe even the 'loonies' have some vague grasp of how terrible the retribution would be, and might think twice before embarking on such a scheme(?)
    We can only hope.
                                   

Yeah, Phobos! It's nice to know I'm not the only one who goes purple in the face and gets blood-pressure about these pet subjects!!
                                     

    About the tower thing: I must be confusing HighLift with some of the other ideas for an elevator.
    Apparently, the diameter of the top end of the 'cable' has to be made greater (increasing its strength) in proportion to the length of the cable and in inverse proportion to its tensile strength.
    With materials like steel etc., the diameter of the cable at GEO becomes totally impracticable - something in the kilometres range, from memory!
    But, even with Carbon Nanotubes, increasing the length (a linear increase, obviously), increases the top-end diameter more than linearly. I don't recall the ratio with CNT, sorry!

    Anyhow, the point is that building a tower as high as possible, to meet the cable as it 'grows' downwards, makes a big difference to how wide the cable needs to be at GEO.

    I guess the people at HighLift have done the calculations and decided they can get away without any tower at all. And if they're happy, so am I!!
                                         

The "Buzz Aldrin Method" ... Ha Ha!!   

    I love it!
    And I think you're probably 100% correct, Ranger_2833. It's the only method they'd understand!!

    Buzz Aldrin happens to be one of my all-time favourite people too. In my view, he's one of the greatest living Americans - here in Australia, he'd be described as a living treasure! (God, I wish we had a space program ... and some people like Buzz to go with it! )

And Hi Phobos!
    I meant to respond to your 'favorite hoaxers "proof"' survey but got side-tracked and forgot.
    I like the one where they point out John Young (I think) isn't casting a shadow as he 'stands' next to the US flag. The photo, of course, is a 'still' from a film which shows Commander Young jumping straight up while saluting. The reason for the lack of a shadow on the ground at his feet, is because his feet were nearly a metre off the ground at the time!!!
    What incredible fools these conspiracy theorists are! What manner of madness drives them to spout all this nonsense?!
                                         ???

You tell 'em, Phobos!!  :laugh:

    I love your optimism and I love your enthusiasm! And I agree with you that huge steps towards a working space elevator could come quite quickly.

    The tower might be the tricky bit, though. How high do they think it needs to be (was it 20 kms? ) and how much is it going to cost to build?
                                    ???

Was the man wearing any clothing?
    Was he naked?
    Was he inside a building?
    Was he out in the open?
    Were any of his bones broken?
    Were there any burns on the man's body?
    Was a lack of oxygen involved in his death?
    Was the stick less than 30 cms long?
    Was the stick between 30 cms and 100 cms long?
    Was the stick straight (manufactured)?
    Was the stick irregular in shape (not shaped by man)?
    Was the stick hollow?
    Did the stick weigh less than 100 grams?
    Did the stick weigh between 100 grams and 1 kg?
    Did the stick weigh more than 5 kgs?
    Was the puddle mainly water?
    Any sugar molecules in the puddle?
    Was the volume of liquid in the puddle less than 1 litre?
    Was the volume of liquid in the puddle more than 10 litres?
                                       ???

Does anyone have a link to this 'white sky' thing?
    I remember reading somewhere that raising Mars' atmospheric pressure to 2 bars of CO2 (maybe impossible anyway) would produce a white sky. But I can't find the site at the moment.
    Another site, click here, suggests that: "If the Martian atmosphere were to be completely cleansed of dust, the daytime sky would appear blue, just as our own sky because of Rayleigh scattering by the molecules (primarily carbon dioxide molecules) which make up the atmosphere."

    This seems to be saying that CO2 molecules are just as capable of producing a blue sky as nitrogen/oxygen molecules. All you have to do is keep the dust out of the air - which is going to be much easier in a denser more water-laden atmosphere anyway.
    So maybe a terraformed Mars with, say, a 500 millibar CO2 atmosphere (ahead of a fully converted N2/O2 atmosphere further down the track), and a new ocean in the north, would have a beautiful blue sky, except during dust storms.

    Who is actually right here?
                                             ???

There's no way to deny that Josh might well be correct in saying early Martian life could have died out due to one cause or another.
    And, of course, Dickbill's argument that, while life is tough, it isn't indestructible, is equally valid.

    But I'm very impressed by the fact that even if just one bacterium survives a catastrophic environmental event, a whole planet can be repopulated with bacteria in a short time.
    Apparently, bacterial 'generation time' (interval between doublings) can be as short as 15 minutes! Even if we take a conservative interval between doublings of, say, 4 hours, in one day 1 bacterium can become 64 bacteria. A day later there'll be 4096. And at the end of the first week (assuming enough living space and nutrient) we could have approximately 4.5 trillion bacteria!!
    If such bacteria (or archaea) live in a region of the Martian crust where geothermally-warmed water percolates through fissures in the rock, billions of their number could quite easily be transported large distances.
    A year after the catastrophic event which destroyed all but one bacterium, enormous areas of the Martian crust could be repopulated with countless organisms. And, with that rate of reproduction, random mutations and natural selection could already have produced new types of bacteria - new species could already be developing to fill empty ecological niches.

    And we also have impact transfer between Earth and Mars as a second means by which organisms could cheat cosmic catastrophes. Smaller impacts were more common than planet-sterilising ones (still are, thank God! ). And it's becoming apparent that large chunks of relatively undisturbed Mars have been delivered regularly to Earth, and vice versa, throughout the history of the solar system. While one planet was sterilised, the other could have been harbouring life waiting to be re-established on the first.
    Even if both Mars and Earth were pulverised simultaneously by asteroids large enough to completely melt the crust of each, there would still be large numbers of rocks containing dormant organisms in transit between the two planets. Some would be landing on Mars and Earth millions of years later, after the crusts had re-solidified.
    It has even been theorised that millions of mildly shocked rocks, containing viable bacteria, could have been lifted into unstable orbits around Earth by an impact big enough to kill all life on or under the surface. As the unstable orbits decayed over hundreds of thousands or millions of years, life would have been restored to the surface by those returning rocks. This idea has been used to explain how life on Earth could have established itself so quickly after the 'Late Heavy Bombardment' 3.8 billion years ago.

    Of course, I never originated any of these ideas. I know of them only by reading about the research being done by people much smarter than I am! But these ideas do hold water, in my opinion, and I've thought long and hard enough about them to come to the conclusion they must be right.
    There is no doubt in my mind that DNA based life, perhaps indistiguishable from Earthly forms, will be found on Mars. (Though maybe, as Josh surmises, only underground.)
    To me, the logic is simply inescapable. And I'm not alone in thinking this, by any means. The only real mystery, is why it's taking people so long to assimilate the recent revelations into their view of things!

I'll drink to that!!!
                                       

Hi Josh!
    I agree with you that if life existed on Mars, there will surely be fossil evidence. And a fascinating discovery it would be too!

    I take that argument a little further, though, in asserting that if life existed on Mars in the past, it will certainly still be there in some form today.
    Life - particularly microscopic bacterial life - is extraordinarily hard to kill off once it's established.
                                       

Hear hear !!

    I agree wholeheartedly Cindy and Phobos.