Scientist Says No Hope of Mars Colony: Are You Disappointed?
SodaHead News
2011/08/01 19:09:56
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This is probably one of the saddest bits of space-related news we've heard in a while. Sadder than the end of the space shuttle program; sadder, perhaps -- and we hesitate to write this -- than Pluto's demotion.
According to Dr. David Leverington, a research scientist at Texas Tech University who studies land formations and "surface processes," is claiming that, based on the surface structures on Mars, he believes the Red Planet has been completely devoid of water for "billions of years," The Daily Mail reports.
You may have read something about Mars having been the subject of an enormous flood, not unlike the Christian account of Noah's Ark, which formed many of the canyons, mountains, and ravines on the planet's surface. If that's true, it means we could potentially cultivate life on the planet and even "terraform" a breathable atmosphere.
Leverington says that's just not possible.
He said, "The question is: 'How do you get that volume of water? How do you move it quickly enough to rush out at a rate to carve channels like these?' I would argue that all of these diverse types of data point firmly at volcanic mechanisms."
But not everyone's buying it.
Victor Baker, a University of Arizona scientist, told Science magazine, "He's reasoning on the features of the moon and Venus when we don't know the causes of those features either. It's very obvious that immense flows of water and lava have been involved."
According to Dr. David Leverington, a research scientist at Texas Tech University who studies land formations and "surface processes," is claiming that, based on the surface structures on Mars, he believes the Red Planet has been completely devoid of water for "billions of years," The Daily Mail reports.
You may have read something about Mars having been the subject of an enormous flood, not unlike the Christian account of Noah's Ark, which formed many of the canyons, mountains, and ravines on the planet's surface. If that's true, it means we could potentially cultivate life on the planet and even "terraform" a breathable atmosphere.
Leverington says that's just not possible.
He said, "The question is: 'How do you get that volume of water? How do you move it quickly enough to rush out at a rate to carve channels like these?' I would argue that all of these diverse types of data point firmly at volcanic mechanisms."
But not everyone's buying it.
Victor Baker, a University of Arizona scientist, told Science magazine, "He's reasoning on the features of the moon and Venus when we don't know the causes of those features either. It's very obvious that immense flows of water and lava have been involved."
Top Opinion
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Jake - 4Q2 2011/08/01 19:11:25Yes
+13Of course, when we get another President that LIKES this country, perhaps the space program will be restarted.
I've perused many of the responses and no one seems to have acknowledged this fact. No matter how hospitable Mars is or how hospitable we might be able to make it, Mars has one third the gravity of Earth. What that means is that after a very short while, our muscles, heart muscle, and all other organs, skeletal frame and bone mass would adjust themselves to the Martian gravity.
You would never be able to return to Earth without being crushed to death by Earth's gravity. Anyone who lived on Mars for any length of time or anyone born on Mars would be imprisoned there....except for visiting a planet with the same or less gravity.
In other words, it might be a nice place to visit, but I would not like to live there.
As far as just _visiting_ the planet, it would hardly be fun with an estimated price tag of half-a-trillion (plus) dollars just to send a handful of "lucky" astronauts to humanly confirm what unmanned probes have already observed to be an difficult challenge: Finding any sign, much less any undebatable "signature" of life on Mars, past or present. Say we did go and some astronauts got lucky and discovered a suberranean source of concentrated oxygen which they investigated further and found it to be associated with one or more naturally occuring ground fires. Then they could say they found a form of life, since fire meets similar criteria to that we use to identify a living organism on earth: (1) it breathes, it produces waste products, it grows if self sustains when resources are available and it divides and self-replicates (although in a very fluid way, but we're straining our imaginations here to be as ultra open minded as speculative logic will permit to the possibility of some process we can construe in principal be a life form). Of course I'm being semi-sarcastic here, but only to illustrate a point: When you put all your eggs in one basket like this, devotees brains are going to be working overtime to find a way to convince themselves and others that whatever they did see could in some way be philosphically reinterpreted to actually be what it is they've desperately come all this way to find.
you need more than watter to support eaven "simple" life
earth is specail!
Sigh.
The amount of money put into space doesn't compare to the amount used for defense or social services,.. yet yours is the same arguement against exploration,..
Sigh.
I'm saying it is very possible to do both and to do one w/o the other is to grow stagnant. Every great civilization that fell in History started to fail when it turned it's concerns inward.
We are starting to do that.
How does a marriage survive? How does a family survive? How does a community survive? How does a city survive? How does a country survive? How does a state survive?
How does a nation survive? Nothing is wrong with exploring, but what is the purpose of it, does it add benefits to you and to those around you? Is it even feasible in helping to solve the current problems being seen? What are the cost benefits of it? Is it worth venturing into right now? Greed accompanied by covetousness will bring down any family, company, firm, organisation and civilization, and worst of all when God is not involved in any entity it will fall.
We have never cured any problem with set-back and do nothing.
The space exploreration has just begun for Man Kind.
Walked on the moon in the sixties and then really not much other than rockets to our planets and the shuttle program, now it is shut down.
Hubble was a bright spot in the space program with the shuttle.
Did you see those hubble pictures ? WOW! I beleive the Pic. you show is one.
From the sixties it is a short time in the universe.
To just quite because of financing?
What awaits us in this endeavor?
Maybe answers to many science secrets, and better prosperity for Man Kind.
The Spaniard Queen could have said, "too much money to send Columbus to the other side of the world, besides he may fall off the edge". What? First real secrete comfirmed of planetary science, "the world is round and has gravity'
A friend of the Earth
take care
Exploration is our middle name.
We need new horizons.
Somebody is sabotaging our growth and the great possibilities for us coming tomorrow if we only keep reaching beyond our grasp.
Signed
Obamageddon
Check out this, called HAARP: for High-frequency Active Aurora Research Project.
Google Site : http://www.disclose.tv/forum/...
Perhaps those research dollars can, now, be diverted to OTHER space exploration projects/destinations!