canals on mars, can the martians be far behind?

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-bwm072711.php --
seasonal fluctuations in martian canyons.

I do not own a telescope, but I am old enough to remember being taught
that there were canals on mars and they had the telescope pictures to
prove it.

So do we reconsider the current stance which rejects the previous
observational evidence? Are there amateur or professional astronomers
out there who can now see the martian 'canals'?

'how long will it take us to wipe out the life on mars because our
astronauts need their water for our mining operations?'

"dfarr --at-- comcast --dot-- net" wrote in message
...
| http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-bwm072711.php --
| seasonal fluctuations in martian canyons.
|
| I do not own a telescope, but I am old enough to remember being taught
| that there were canals on mars and they had the telescope pictures to
| prove it.
|

I do not own a red nose, but I am old enough to remember being taught
that Rudolph had one and they have the pictures to prove it.

http://en.loadtr.com/Rudolph_pictures-471657.htm

--
Einstein: God does not play dice.
God: Yes I do, Einstein is a poor loser.

dfarr --at-- comcast --dot-- net wrote:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-bwm072711.php --
seasonal fluctuations in martian canyons.

I do not own a telescope, but I am old enough to remember being taught
that there were canals on mars and they had the telescope pictures to
prove it.

You are "misremembering". No one ever photographed canals through a
telescope. The only people who claimed to see canals were some astronomers
using visual observing techniques. Even in the 1950s, it was known that the
impression of canals could be gained from seeing random patterns of spots.


So do we reconsider the current stance which rejects the previous
observational evidence? Are there amateur or professional astronomers
out there who can now see the martian 'canals'?

No. I'm not sure your question has any meaning.


'how long will it take us to wipe out the life on mars because our
astronauts need their water for our mining operations?'

There is an awful lot of water on Mars in the form of subsurface ice.

--
Mike Dworetsky

(Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)

On a sunny day (Sat, 20 Aug 2011 09:02:26 +0100) it happened "Mike Dworetsky"
wrote in
:

dfarr --at-- comcast --dot-- net wrote:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-bwm072711.php --
seasonal fluctuations in martian canyons.

I do not own a telescope, but I am old enough to remember being taught
that there were canals on mars and they had the telescope pictures to
prove it.

You are "misremembering". No one ever photographed canals through a
telescope. The only people who claimed to see canals were some astronomers
using visual observing techniques. Even in the 1950s, it was known that the
impression of canals could be gained from seeing random patterns of spots.


So do we reconsider the current stance which rejects the previous
observational evidence? Are there amateur or professional astronomers
out there who can now see the martian 'canals'?

No. I'm not sure your question has any meaning.


'how long will it take us to wipe out the life on mars because our
astronauts need their water for our mining operations?'

There is an awful lot of water on Mars in the form of subsurface ice.

Just as a thing to take into account,
recently there have been pictures of salt water flows on mars (NASA),
and they think these flows happen every year.
There are many canal like structures that SEEM empty,
but slight wobbles in the mars orbit can cause climate changes that would fill those canals up with sub-surface water.
The NASA article states that the salty water has a much lower freezing point, that is why it is still fluid.

Here is the original NASA article, it was posted in sci.spacenews with as subject 'NASA Spacecraft Data Suggest Water Flowing On Mars (MRO)':

From:
Newsgroups: sci.space.news
Subject: NASA Spacecraft Data Suggest Water Flowing On Mars (MRO)
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 18:35:09 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: JPL Information Services, InterNetNews
Lines: 112
Sender: sci-space-news
Approved:
Distribution: world
Message-ID:
NNTP-Posting-Host: zagami.jpl.nasa.gov
Steve Cole
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0918


Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6278


Daniel Stolte
University of Arizona, Tucson
520-626-4402



RELEASE: 11-245

NASA SPACECRAFT DATA SUGGEST WATER FLOWING ON MARS

WASHINGTON -- Observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
(MRO) have revealed possible flowing water during the warmest months
on Mars.

"NASA's Mars Exploration Program keeps bringing us closer to
determining whether the Red Planet could harbor life in some form,"
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, "and it reaffirms Mars as an
important future destination for human exploration."

Dark, finger-like features appear and extend down some Martian slopes
during late spring through summer, fade in winter, and return during
the next spring. Repeated observations have tracked the seasonal
changes in these recurring features on several steep slopes in the
middle latitudes of Mars' southern hemisphere.

"The best explanation for these observations so far is the flow of
briny water," said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona,
Tucson. McEwen is the principal investigator for the orbiter's High
Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and lead author of a
report about the recurring flows published in Thursday's edition of
the journal Science.

Some aspects of the observations still puzzle researchers, but flows
of liquid brine fit the features' characteristics better than
alternate hypotheses. Saltiness lowers the freezing temperature of
water.

Sites with active flows get warm enough, even in the shallow
subsurface, to sustain liquid water that is about as salty as Earth's
oceans, while pure water would freeze at the observed temperatures.

"These dark lineations are different from other types of features on
Martian slopes," said MRO project scientist Richard Zurek of NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Repeated observations
show they extend ever farther downhill with time during the warm
season."

The features imaged are only about 0.5 to 5 yards or meters wide, with
lengths up to hundreds of yards. The width is much narrower than
previously reported gullies on Martian slopes. However, some of those
locations display more than 1,000 individual flows. Also, while
gullies are abundant on cold, pole-facing slopes, these dark flows
are on warmer, equator-facing slopes.

The images show flows lengthen and darken on rocky equator-facing
slopes from late spring to early fall. The seasonality, latitude
distribution and brightness changes suggest a volatile material is
involved, but there is no direct detection of one. The settings are
too warm for carbon-dioxide frost and, at some sites, too cold for
pure water. This suggests the action of brines which have lower
freezing points. Salt deposits over much of Mars indicate brines were
abundant in Mars' past. These recent observations suggest brines
still may form near the surface today in limited times and places.

When researchers checked flow-marked slopes with the orbiter's Compact
Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), no sign of
water appeared. The features may quickly dry on the surface or could
be shallow subsurface flows.

"The flows are not dark because of being wet," McEwen said. "They are
dark for some other reason."
A flow initiated by briny water could rearrange grains or change
surface roughness in a way that darkens the appearance. How the
features brighten again when temperatures drop is harder to explain.

"It's a mystery now, but I think it's a solvable mystery with further
observations and laboratory experiments," McEwen said.

These results are the closest scientists have come to finding evidence
of liquid water on the planet's surface today. Frozen water, however
has been detected near the surface in many middle to high-latitude
regions. Fresh-looking gullies suggest slope movements in
geologically recent times, perhaps aided by water. Purported droplets
of brine also appeared on struts of the Phoenix Mars Lander. If
further study of the recurring dark flows supports evidence of
brines, these could be the first known Martian locations with liquid
water.

MRO is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington. The University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary
Laboratory operates HiRISE. The camera was built by Ball Aerospace &
Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., provided and operates CRISM.

For more information about MRO, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mro

-end-

Me again:
For a look at what the 'canals' could look like, look at these ESA pictures on my site:
http://panteltje.com/panteltje/space...22_reull_v.jpg
http://panteltje.com/panteltje/space...lake2color.jpg
http://panteltje.com/panteltje/space/mars/

I am not claiming to agree with any of the other posters statements about martians etc..(have not even read it).
But if these canals are periodically filled with (salty) water then that would explain
why in the past a very experienced astronomer DID see canals.
Hopefully these thing will fill up gain in the near future :-)

On Aug 19, 5:36*pm, "Androcles" .
19th.2011 wrote:
"dfarr --at-- comcast --dot-- net" wrote in ...
|http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...wm072711.php--
| seasonal fluctuations in martian canyons.
|
| I do not own a telescope, but I am old enough to remember being taught
| that there were canals on mars and they had the telescope pictures to
| prove it.
|

I do not own a red nose, but I am old enough to remember being taught
that Rudolph had one and they have the pictures to prove it.

*http://en.loadtr.com/Rudolph_pictures-471657.htm

--
Einstein: God does not play dice.
God: Yes I do, Einstein is a poor loser.

Let me clarify.

I want toknow the state of the art in ground-based astronomy. When
they look at Mars now, is it possible to see these 'canals'.

And I did not assert that Mars had telescopes, or that Rudolph had
canals.

I grant your point re photography.

http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast121/lectures/lec12.html has some
drawings and pictures.

But the photographs didn't arouse suspicion in anyone to refute the
earlier drawings

Is anyone making better pictures today than they could make in the
60s? (from Earth)

On 8/20/2011 12:44 PM, dfarr --at-- comcast --dot-- net wrote:
On Aug 19, 5:36 pm, .
19th.2011 wrote:
"dfarr --at-- comcast --dot-- wrote in ...
|http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...wm072711.php--
| seasonal fluctuations in martian canyons.
|
| I do not own a telescope, but I am old enough to remember being taught
| that there were canals on mars and they had the telescope pictures to
| prove it.
|

I do not own a red nose, but I am old enough to remember being taught
that Rudolph had one and they have the pictures to prove it.

http://en.loadtr.com/Rudolph_pictures-471657.htm

--
Einstein: God does not play dice.
God: Yes I do, Einstein is a poor loser.

Let me clarify.

I want toknow the state of the art in ground-based astronomy. When
they look at Mars now, is it possible to see these 'canals'.

The supposed canals simply aren't. They were the result of drawings of
telescopic views of Mars, by folks like Percival Lowell, who believed
that there were intelligent beings on Mars capable, and in need, of
channeling water, presumably for agriculture and drinking purposes.

The following wiki site tells the tale. It also has an image of Mars as
seen through a 6" reflecting telescope, giving a view of Mars similar to
the one Schiaparelli saw and drew. Lowell took Schiaparelli's drawings
as showing 'canals' (Schiaparelli's word was 'canali', which means more
'channels' than the English word 'canals'), with the meaning of 'dug out
by folks', rather than 'created by flowing liquid'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canal

So the answer to your question is no, we don't see canals any more
because we know what they are.

And I did not assert that Mars had telescopes, or that Rudolph had
canals.

On 8/20/2011 12:51 PM, dfarr --at-- comcast --dot-- net wrote:
I grant your point re photography.

http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast121/lectures/lec12.html has some
drawings and pictures.

But the photographs didn't arouse suspicion in anyone to refute the
earlier drawings

Is anyone making better pictures today than they could make in the
60s? (from Earth)

From just above the Earth:

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/arc...01/24/image/a/

And from the surface of the Earth:

http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/m...oundbased.html

On 20/08/2011 18:51, dfarr --at-- comcast --dot-- net wrote:
I grant your point re photography.

http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast121/lectures/lec12.html has some
drawings and pictures.

But the photographs didn't arouse suspicion in anyone to refute the
earlier drawings

Is anyone making better pictures today than they could make in the
60s? (from Earth)

Yes, far better.
in the 60's photographic imaging relied on long exposures, and
atmospheric turbulence tended to smear out fine details.

Nowadays, digital imaging allows much shorter exposures to be stacked,
and this means that fine details can be brought out with smaller apertures.

"dfarr --at-- comcast --dot-- net" wrote in message
...
On Aug 19, 5:36 pm, "Androcles" .
19th.2011 wrote:
"dfarr --at-- comcast --dot-- net" wrote in
...
|http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...wm072711.php--
| seasonal fluctuations in martian canyons.
|
| I do not own a telescope, but I am old enough to remember being taught
| that there were canals on mars and they had the telescope pictures to
| prove it.
|

I do not own a red nose, but I am old enough to remember being taught
that Rudolph had one and they have the pictures to prove it.

http://en.loadtr.com/Rudolph_pictures-471657.htm

--
Einstein: God does not play dice.
God: Yes I do, Einstein is a poor loser.

Let me clarify.

I want toknow the state of the art in ground-based astronomy. When
they look at Mars now, is it possible to see these 'canals'.
And I did not assert that Mars had telescopes, or that Rudolph had
canals.
==============================================
Let me muddy the canal water, it usually is anyway.
No. Never was, whoever "they" are. The fruitcake that drew canals
on Mars was Lowell, following a suggestion from Schiaparelli who
saw some straight lines he called "canali", Italian for channels.
Because navigation canals on Earth are artificial that sparked off a lot
of silly speculation.
And I did not assert that Mars has a red nose, or that Rudolph had
a telescope.

--
Einstein: God does not play dice.
God: Yes I do, Einstein is a poor loser.