On Wed, 06 Dec 2006 23:05:38 GMT, in a place far, far away, David
Spain made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

Rand Simberg wrote:
On Wed, 06 Dec 2006 22:43:51 GMT, in a place far, far away, David
Spain made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

The BBC reports that others claim this could have been due
to liquid CO2 flows instead of water.

"Liquid CO2"? On Mars? Do they know the atmospheric (non)pressure
there?


"Others claim" that we didn't go to the moon.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6214834.stm

Para. 8 and 9.

I don't know the state table for CO2, but the article did mention
a surface temperature of -107 deg C.

Temperature isn't the issue, if it's on the surface. Someone at the
BBC needs to look at a phase table for CO2. You need a lot more
pressure than is available to get above the triple point. At anything
less than earth atmospheric pressure (let alone Mars), and actually
quite a bit higher than that, you don't get liquid CO2 at that
temperature--you get solid CO2. It sublimes directly from solid to
gas, which is why they call it "dry ice."