Water flow on Mars! NASA Scientist says.

reply to post by Arken


Great thread

And i do have some images of oozing/flowing "water" from the whole face of a mountain side...
nasa calls them "streaks". They could be "water" or could be anything that's liquid in form...
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/c7142a372286.jpg[/atsimg]

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People
reply to post by TheSparrowSings

 

It wasn't the rover Spirit, but rather the Phoenix Lander (which is not a rover) that found water ice near Mars' North Pole.

Phoenix also saw what may be liquid water condensing on the lander itself. The water could have remained liquid for a while (instead of immediately evaporating) because of levels of salt and perchlorates

Good information. Heres something else that is "dated" but still interesting. Snow falling in martian atmosphere?
www.redorbit.com...

reply to post by alphaMegas


Very nice picture. I notice it isn't in real color... does anyone have access to photos of these "streakings" that are in real Mars color?

reply to post by TheSparrowSings


you may check this link, compliments of Armap

hirise.lpl.arizona.edu...

as my mom has been saying since i was a kid "we ARE the martians!!"

The movie Total Recall comes to mind. With Arnold Schwarzenegger finding the huge atmosphere regenerator in a underground mining cave left by an ancient civilization or something. The whole plot of the film was the cover up of the machine being there because it would have cost the mining company it's profits somehow. The machine melted the frozen water which then caused the atmosphere to stabilize. Just something that popped into my head as I was reading this thread. No relevence what so ever to the main post.

carry on.....

reply to post by alphaMegas


Thankyou very much. And now I can further my research by knowing that they are referred to as slope streaks.

Something interesting I have stumbled across already... (you must excuse the scientific language of the following, I couldn't completely understand some of the words but it is a recent discovery from the Mars astrobiologists. (Source: www.colbud.hu...)

Originally posted by Holly N.R.A.
I feel many believe that there may be intelligent life in our system, as well as the universe proper.

I'm not sure what you mean by "our system", if you mean our solar system I've never met one person who believes there's any intelligent life in our solar system except on Earth, though many believe there may be simple, non-intelligent life forms in our solar system on places other than Earth.

For intelligent life not on Earth, we'd need to look outside our solar system which is what SETI is doing.

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People
NASA has been quite convinced for some time now that water once flowed on mars -- and they even think that it is possible for water to flow (albeit only for limited times) even today.

Absolutely correct, there's nothing new about the idea of ancient water flows on Mars, though the idea of the currently possible more limited water flows is more recent.

Originally posted by blend57

The movie Total Recall comes to mind. With Arnold Schwarzenegger finding the huge atmosphere regenerator in a underground mining cave left by an ancient civilization or something. The whole plot of the film was the cover up of the machine being there because it would have cost the mining company it's profits somehow. The machine melted the frozen water which then caused the atmosphere to stabilize. Just something that popped into my head as I was reading this thread. No relevence what so ever to the main post.

carry on.....

Maybe.....if it wasn't all a dream that was implanted in Quaid's head at the Recall place. Good movie.

reply to post by Boreas


just a we note . in fact Mars has an atmosphere primarily of co2 thin but there no where near the 14.7lb per inch as we have here on earth interesting hypotheses but lets not plan a swim just yet

If the valleys,clefts or canyons are INCREDIBLY deep,wouldn't the air pressure be high enough for liquid water?

In the Valles Marineris,f'r instance?

It's five miles deep.....

reply to post by Arken


I wouldn't consider this as a confirmation, just something that gives more credit to a theory, but it remains just that, a theory.

I suppose you noticed that, according to the theory, "heat from magma beneath the surface caused ice held in the rock to melt and released water locked up in salts", so when it happened (if it happened that way) that area on Mars was covered in ice, not flowing water.

Knowing that Hebes Chasma is near the equator makes me think that, if that area was covered in ice, that means that the whole planet was covered in ice.

Does that mean that Mars had only flowing water from melting ice?

I hope we get at least some of the answers in the coming years, I am getting old and the answers have yet to come.

Originally posted by Ericthedoubter
If the valleys,clefts or canyons are INCREDIBLY deep,wouldn't the air pressure be high enough for liquid water?

In the Valles Marineris,f'r instance?

It's five miles deep.....

If I have it right, at a very low depth on Mars the triple point where water can exist is possible at 0 degrees C, Hellas Planitia is thought to be once such place, I forget what the pressure needs to be...my bad!

reply to post by G.A.G.


According to some ESA scientists, there is water ice below the CO2 ice in the Martian south pole. When the temperature rise the CO2 cover disappears and the water evaporates. The vapour then creates high clouds (seen in several photos from Mars) and the clouds move up to the north pole, where they get colder again and turn into snow.

I will look for the article where I read this.

Ponder this, what if mars is in its infancy opposite of what many think? What if we hadn't seen water before because the planet itself is just starting out? Now what if we go and ruin it by putting humans on it,might we just f* up its natural course? We've already ruined the greatest organism we have ever known, Our own planet!

Originally posted by laurosantos
Ponder this, what if mars is in its infancy opposite of what many think? What if we hadn't seen water before because the planet itself is just starting out? Now what if we go and ruin it by putting humans on it,might we just f* up its natural course? We've already ruined the greatest organism we have ever known, Our own planet!

You may be onto something there. Sounds plausible and your post makes good sense to me. Thankyou for your thoughts.

Originally posted by laurosantos
What if we hadn't seen water before because the planet itself is just starting out?

Then how do you explain the many areas with clear signs of water erosion?

Everything points to the existence of water a long time ago.

Originally posted by ArMaP

Originally posted by laurosantos
What if we hadn't seen water before because the planet itself is just starting out?

Then how do you explain the many areas with clear signs of water erosion?

Everything points to the existence of water a long time ago.

You both make valid points. I am curious now. Is mars becoming closer or more distant from the sun, as time goes by? Is water the "only" liquid that has the ability to exhibit erosional behavior? Was mars previously in orbit around the sun, at a closer distance than earth...possibly to have its original orbit disturbed by an asteroid impact altering its' course. Seems there is liquid water, and snow, and a thin atmosphere in nominal amounts on mars, but as cold as this planet is, and without a heated core like earth, any liquid water may not stay in liquid form very long at all. I am currently from the camp that says there is no such thing as perpetual motion, and as the sun ages, its gravitional properties will weaken and the planets will become more distant over time. To me that suggests that if it were indeed liquid "water" erosion, than those days are probably long gone.

Originally posted by NISMOALTI
what if we were the ones who lived there a long time ago and the knowledge of the past was lost somehow. we landed on earth and had to start all over again...

There are amazing similarities between ancient Sumerian myths and the Noah story in the Bible... What if the boat was really a spacecraft, built to escape a cataclysmic event on Mars? Spreading from planet to planet like a virus.

Originally posted by G.A.G.
Is mars becoming closer or more distant from the sun, as time goes by?

If you're wondering why liquid water on Mars is less abundant now you provided your own clue, and it's not the distance of Mars from the sun:

without a heated core like earth, any liquid water may not stay in liquid form very long at all.

Yes, it's got something to do with the heated core, Mars lost its magnetospere about 4 billion years ago, when it still had that abundant liquid water was possible there:

en.wikipedia.org...

Mars lost its magnetosphere 4 billion years ago,[91] so the solar wind interacts directly with the Martian ionosphere, lowering the atmospheric density by stripping away atoms from the outer layer.

So the solar wind probably carried away a lot of, but not all, of the water on Mars, after it lost its magnetosphere (which would have resulted from a molten core).

The lack of a magnetosphere and extremely thin atmosphere of Mars are a challenge: the planet has little heat transfer across its surface, poor insulation against bombardment of the solar wind and insufficient atmospheric pressure to retain water in a liquid form (water instead sublimates to a gaseous state).

So that's probably why it doesn't have liquid water today, because of the loss of the molten core, not because of the distance from the sun, though the distance from the sun could have played a minor role...though I'm not sure about that. I know the Earth is moving away from the sun about 15cm a year, but I'm not sure if Mars is also. But I'm pretty sure the loss of the magnetosphere is the primary reason Mars lost much of its water, and atmosphere.