Mars once covered in water, space agency says

reply to post by ShadowRamesses


Not bloody likely. mars' soil is extremely fertile. This is evident that it is untouched.

LOL this thread makes me chuckle. The two of you going on about dates as if they are real scientific fact. Again how do you know these dates?

Originally posted by Phage

 

You determine the age of a rock by comparing the ratios of radioactive isotopes contained in it. It isn't perfect but it's pretty darned good.
[edit on 6/26/2010 by Phage]

What?

Do all rocks contain radioactive isotopes? If so then how do you know how many the rock had when it was formed? You must know this to compare with how many it has now in order to tell it's age right? If not then what do you compare it to in order to get the ratios you refer to? Apples to oranges? When was this technique developed? I',ve never heard of it. I grew up being told you can't tell the age of a rock... You need organic material to get a basic general guess about somethings age, and even then carbon dating has proven to be less than accurate.

But much more importantly and more on topic, how many rocks from Mars have we studied in this manner? None? One or two meteorites? What about rocks from the rest of the solar system that you seem to know the age of? Zero?


Don't get me wrong, I understand that this is our best guess at the present time, and that's fine and good, but when you start to jump to so many conclusions based on so many guesses you're bound to overlook and miss things... like the fact that life could have been present on Mars, or that it is still there today.

If you input the wrong data into a machine it will allways give the wrong anwer.

reply to post by fieryjaguarpaw

As far as I know, all rocks contain radioactive isotopes. The quantity of isotopes originally in the rock does not matter. After the rock forms, the isotopes decay at a steady rate. It is the ratio between the quantity of the isotope and its decay products that matters.

Radiometric dating was first demonstrated in 1906. You were told wrong, rocks can be dated. What cannot be dated is when they may have been put into a pile by humans or moved around after they had formed.

The meteorites from Mars (34 have been found) have been dated from 180 million years to 4.09 billion years but that is not really relevant. There are thousands of asteroidal meteorites, the oldest (and most) of which are 4.5 billion years old. It is thought that they and the rest of the Solar System formed at the same time. An assumption, yes. But there is no reason to think otherwise. They are the oldest rocks which have ever been found.

[edit on 6/26/2010 by Phage]

I was looking at Google Mars one night and I found what appeared to be a riverbed. There was a meteor crater that the riverbed went through and it appeared to have washed that part away. That was proof to me that there has been liquid water on the surface in fairly recent times. I had the coordinates written down, but I can't find them right now.

Just some quick googleing and i came up with thermal vents can get up to 860 something degrees Fahrenheit and that Venus surface can get up to 900. True Venus has other chemical issues with life as we know it we think, but i don't see why some sort of simple life couldn't of evolved there like we have around and in our vents.

i know this thread was about mars, but Venus was brought up at one point. With mars, if its soil combined with its weak atmosphere could protect underground pockets of water from space and its hazards, then I don't see why simple life couldn't of evolved there either.

with that said, i also don't see why that simple life wouldn't of evolved into complex forms of some sort. If they were as destructive to their planets as we are to ours they would be allot more obvious. so maybe they are more evolved than us?

i personally love science, im not as knowledgeable as i would like to be, but thats what books are for. but i do also believe that those books should be read like, say a history book. even the peer reviewed journals have their politics and beliefs etc. and i do not believe they are all based purely off of scientific fact. even those that are based off of pure facts might not be seeing the whole picture (even if it is most of the picture ).

but that is just one crazy nut from an online conspiracy boards opinion.