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A pictorial case for life on Mars.
The expectation should be that life found a way on evolve on Mars. Any mystery should be in why it ...didn't evolve. Imho. Compare these two pictures below, one shows a very old site. The other shows a very ...young Meridiani site, no rocks at all. A typical lag deposit of an ancient site, lots of weathered our rocks. http://areo.info/mer/spirit/526/tn/2...5L6L6.jpg.html A very young site, the difference is plain to see. http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/069...5L5L6.jpg.html In fact the only large rocks at Meridiani turn out to be meteorites. Like this one http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/200...5L5L6.jpg.html This is because Meridiani is the bottom of a 'recently' dried up ...ocean. Only an water or ice can create this horizon. http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/405...5L5L6.jpg.html And water melts out and flows on the surface of Mars....TODAY. This animation (a couple of clicks down) shows water flowing now. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_918860.html And this dark soil coating Meridiani is...clay-like. Clay means water and ...recently. But clay coating an ocean floor topped by a /thin crust/ of /uniform sized/ spheres? That's a very curious find. How can these be wind blown dunes if they're topped with a thin crust? http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/842...5L5L6.jpg.html http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/al...P2955M2M1.HTML And the spheres also come in .../two uniform sizes/...and only two, no matter where they form in the highly ..salty Martian soil. Large http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2907M2M1.HTML http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2933M2M1.HTML Small http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/a...0P2956M2M1.JPG http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2956M2M1.HTML BIOGENIC STRUCTURES FROM A HYPERSALINE LAKE IN THE BAHAMAS. Lunar and Planetary Science XXXII (2001) 1068.pdf " Our FE-SEM analy-sis indicates a range of microbial life forms on the fractured stromatolite surfaces. Spheroidal features are the most common, with four distinct populations, characterized by their highly uniform intrapopulation sizes:" http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2001/pdf/1068.pdf Spheres amidst slash-like 'vugs'. Whatever filled those slashes were softer and eroded away first. Wonder what they were? http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2933M2M1.HTML Lunar and Planetary Science XXXVI (2005) PROCESSES OF FORMATION OF SPHEROIDAL CONCRETIONS AND INFERENCES FOR "BLUEBERRIES" IN MERIDIANI PLANUM SEDIMENTS. "In summary, simple nucleation controlled growth will form clumps or bands of cement not spheroids. Spheroidal nodular concretions on Earth result from spherical diffusion of products of diagenetic reactions involving organics" http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/2148.pdf And btw.... Mars has a /currently existing/ frozen ocean the size of the North Sea. Some 900 km by 800 km in size, and some 45 meters deep. http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/1741.pdf They say these are concretions that formed in a wet substrate. If Mars has been dead for a billion years plus, why are the spheres so pristine? Various micro imager pictures of spheres (field of view postage stamp size) http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...nity_m014.html http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...nity_m182.html http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2956M2M1.HTML http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2956M2M1.HTML http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2933M2M1.HTML http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2953M2M1.HTML http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2953M2M1.HTML http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2957M2M1.HTML http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2956M2M1.HTML Various wide angle images of spheres http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/186...L4L5L5L5L6.jpg http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/180...5L5L6.jpg.html http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/012...5L5L6.jpg.html http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/505...5L6L6.jpg.html http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/123...L2L5L5L6L6.jpg http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/183...5L7L7.jpg.html http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/533...5L5L6.jpg.html .................................................. ...... There's plenty of open questions on Mars, and plenty of people that think we...should find life there. NASA Technical Memorandum WORKSHOP ON THE SOCIETAL IMPLICATIONS OF ASTROBIOLOGY "One of the reasons for this is a sense of urgency: confirmation of extraterrestrial life could occur at any time and in any of a number of ways. When it occurs, we may have only limited control over the situation." page 36 "The discovery may stimulate a worldwide resurgence in religious activity." page 29 " .... it is extremely important for us to be highly knowledgeable about the likely reactions of different constituencies (the press, various religious groups, political leaders, and the general public). We would be foolish and negligent if we did not study such reactions well ahead of time and make state-of-the art preparations for major discoveries." page 6 http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/wor...tal_report.pdf For the conspiracy minded, the above link has been active for at least six or seven years. I used to quote it often, but not for the last couple of years. I checked the link on Thursday when I posted it somewhere else, and it worked fine. But the next day it went dead and has been dead since then. Someone saw my post and took the page down the next day....hmmm! Curiouser and curiouser! It's still here though. http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=...3ifHCume2j_nzw Jonathan s |
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A pictorial case for life on Mars.
A couple of comments. First, the lack of a decent moon should tend
permit the planetary axis to wander. This if it happens should episodically raise CO2 in the atmosphere and might warm the climate some and certainly would move the local of cap both CO2 and then even the water ice cap. This might explain more 'recent' evidence. If one wanders around the surface of the antarctic ice cap surface, one thing found are the remains of the incoming and landed rocks from space ;-) Plus the ice cap depending on depth can do interesting things like raising the pressure over an area and then throw in some heating from below and then maybe there could even be liquid water. As to finding some sort of microflora on Mars, I doubt it will change the religious discourse. The Neanderthal DNA may seem to say more than distant microflora or microfauna. Has that shaken the world order view en mass in the fundamentalist churches? It is all more of a drip drip affect on the common world view. Times are interesting and that isn't so pretty........................Trig |
#3
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A pictorial case for life on Mars.
wrote in message ... A couple of comments. First, the lack of a decent moon should tend permit the planetary axis to wander. This if it happens should episodically raise CO2 in the atmosphere and might warm the climate some and certainly would move the local of cap both CO2 and then even the water ice cap. This might explain more 'recent' evidence. If one wanders around the surface of the antarctic ice cap surface, one thing found are the remains of the incoming and landed rocks from space ;-) Plus the ice cap depending on depth can do interesting things like raising the pressure over an area and then throw in some heating from below and then maybe there could even be liquid water. Below is excerpts from a great article on Martian ice-ages. Turns out the lack of oceans mean Co2 would swing much more on Mars due to ice ages than on Earth. And right now Mars in in the middle of the warmer part of it's recent ice-age cycle "Recent ice ages on Mars" Mars, on the other hand, is characterized by a lack of oceans in its recent past, an abundant and mobile dust supply, and extreme orbital forcing factors. Its major atmospheric gas (CO2) is in dynamic equilibrium with its solid phase, resulting in the potential for significant changes in atmospheric CO2 abundance and pressure. Glacial periods on Earth are characterized by colder temperatures at the poles on average, while on Mars, the reverse is true. Over the past 10 Myr, Earth's obliquity has ranged from 22 to 24.5, while for Mars the range was 14. to 48 degrees. Similarly, the eccentricity of Earth's orbit varied from 0 to 0.06, while for Mars the range was 0 to 0.12. The consequent changes to insolation and seasonality at middle to high latitudes on Mars have inevitably caused significant changes in the seasonal cycles of carbon dioxide, water and dust. Thus Mars may have experienced the most significant quasi-periodic variations in its climate over the past 10 Myr of any planet in the Solar System. Startling images show what appear to be very recent water-carved gullies that occur preferentially in this region and have been interpreted to represent groundwater sapping, melting of ground ice or snowpack during higher obliquity The very high near-surface water-ice content inferred from the Odyssey g-ray and neutron spectrometer data is consistent with a model of deposition of a relatively uniform ice rich dust layer from the atmosphere. Over the past 300 kyr the obliquity has remained relatively stable within a range of 22-26 (Fig. 4). During this period, high eccentricity causes differences in seasonality of the northern and southern hemispheres (for example, the southern hemisphere today experiences shorter, warmer summers and longer winters than the northern hemisphere) while retarding of Lp causes the seasonality difference to reverse every 25 kyr. But earlier than 300 kyr ago, obliquity regularly exceeded 30, totalling 15 discrete excursions over the past 2 Myr, during which each excursion lasted of the order of 20-40 kyr. When obliquity exceeds 30, water ice is stable in the near surface down to the lower mid-latitudes. We thus conclude that the emplacement of the ice- and dust-rich mantle extending from polar regions down to low mid-latitudes represents the equivalent of an ice age on Mars. If such an ice cover had occurred on Earth, it would have reached southward to latitudes equivalent to Saudi Arabia, North Africa and the southern United States. http://www.ocean.washington.edu/peop...N549C/head.pdf As to finding some sort of microflora on Mars, I doubt it will change the religious discourse. The Neanderthal DNA may seem to say more than distant microflora or microfauna. Has that shaken the world order view en mass in the fundamentalist churches? It is all more of a drip drip affect on the common world view. Times are interesting and that isn't so pretty........................Trig |
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