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The first scientific analysis of images taken by NASA's Perseverance rover has now confirmed that Mars' Jezero crater -- which today is a dry, wind-eroded depression -- was once a quiet lake, fed steadily by a small river some 3.7 billion years ago.
The images also reveal evidence that the crater endured flash floods. This flooding was energetic enough to sweep up large boulders from tens of miles upstream and deposit them into the lakebed, where the massive rocks lie today.
[...] "We now have the opportunity to look for fossils," says team member Tanja Bosak, associate professor of geobiology at MIT. "It will take some time to get to the rocks that we really hope to sample for signs of life. So, it's a marathon, with a lot of potential."
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Rover Images Confirm Jezero Crater is an Ancient Martian Lake
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(1)
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 11 2021, @04:54AM (21 children)
Need some big ice asteroids. Disrupt their orbits so that they fall into Mars' gravity well, and crash into the surface. And mirrors in orbit to focus a lot more sunlight on the surface. Maybe some smaller rock asteroids to add more mass to increase the gravity. Then start planting lichens and bacteria to produce oxygen. Might need to find some asteroids that have a lot of carbon in them, give them a long slow decaying orbit around Mars so they burn off a lot of carbon as they fall. Mmmmmm-mmmm - good primordial soup! Give it a few thousand years, and maybe man can survive without sixty tons of technology per person.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by coolgopher on Monday October 11 2021, @07:06AM (5 children)
The inert core no longer producing a sufficient magnetic field to prevent the stripping of the atmosphere due to solar winds would still be a problem.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @08:19AM (4 children)
Everybody brings that up. Loop a superconductor 20 times around the equator. Put 50,000 amps through it. Bingo, Earth equivalent magnetic field. Do it properly and run the current the right direction and you can actually put the north magnetic pole on the Martian North Pole.
(Score: 2) by fraxinus-tree on Monday October 11 2021, @08:28AM (1 child)
It doesn't even need to be superconductor. A power line this big would cost few billion dollars on Earth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @01:56PM
True, but you'd need an ongoing source of power. Be a toss up whether that was cheaper than an ongoing source of cooling for 12,000 km of cable. Either way, it would be a small cost relative to re-gassing the planet.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @10:12AM (1 child)
yeah, because superconductors just grow on trees, you know...
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 13 2021, @04:57AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @10:38AM (10 children)
humanity has access to the best Earth-like planet in the universe: Earth itself. we don't even need to get out of a gravity well to reach it, and it already has metals and water and a breathable atmosphere.
literally a fucking breathable atmosphere, safe enough to fuck and give birth in.
no, we will not terra-form mars.
maybe some rich idiots will throw resources into setting up small off-Earth communities, but they will not be self-sustaining in the long term.
if anyone would be able to set up off-Earth self-sustaining communities, they would first do it on Greenland, Antarctica, the Sahara, etc.
I'm pretty sure it's cheaper to buy uninhabited land on Earth than to travel to Mars.
we ALREADY have an Earth-like planet that is ideally suited to be a paradise.
it ALREADY has a self-sustaining ecosystem.
and humans are obliviously destroying it while busily trying to best each other in various ways.
many self-titled educated people will happily explain that a centralized economy cannot possibly function, and yet they proclaim that humanity is already doing a good job of managing the ecosystem.
because complex interdependent biological agents are so much easier than interdependent able-to-speak self-aware human economic actors.
and you.
runaway1956, whichever member of the runaway team is currently hiding behind your nick: what the fuck do you care?
you've made it pretty clear that you don't give a shit about people in general.
do you actually want your grandkids and other descendants to live a full happy life away from Earth's problems?
or are you just confident that your suggestions are so good that people will follow them and then build you a statue in eternal gratitude?
what is the point of this comment?
yes, I am just taking out my general frustration on you, but why are you making these ridiculous suggestions?
happy that I made myself even more angry and wasted twenty mins writing this reply?
you're fairly competent at some specific job, at least that's the impression that you give.
if you want to help humanity, go do that job, and donate whatever excess you have to making sure that humans on earth have access to drinkable water.
ice asteroids on Mars will happen once resourceful middle-class kids of a too-crowded Earth will see a better future for themselves on Mars, and no earlier.
so AFTER we've colonized Antarctica and the ocean floor and all the baren mountain tops.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @02:41PM
Presently on runaway1956.3004841431917155730051840379443118594345687816813715603157714244. runaway1956.3004841431917155730051840379443118594345687816813715603157714245 will be on duty at midnight.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 11 2021, @03:58PM (2 children)
Earth is the most habitable place in the solar system for humans. There is still a lot of it that could be inhabited, and which would be much easier to terraform than Mars would. Canada is 99% uninhabited. So are Greenland, Australia, and Siberia. Then there are the oceans, which cover 2/3rds of the Earth and which we might learn how to inhabit by either giving ourselves gills or by developing habitats that can withstand the corrosive forces of the sea.
On the other hand, colonizing Mars would be amazing. It would be Mankind's real first step toward leaving the cradle and exploring the galaxy. I know, I and people like me have been biased by lifetimes of sci-fi, but is it such a bad thing to dream and to reach for the impossible?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @05:04PM
> dream and to reach for the impossible
But you could do something useful, like rearranging deck chairs on the Titantic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @06:30PM
Inhabiting 100% of earths surface with with human settlements, leaves about 0% for non-humans though. Don't we need to keep some for forests, and farms and all the support that people need?
If you go by ecological footprint how much capacity remains?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 11 2021, @04:25PM (5 children)
The problem with paradise is that it sours. If you have experience living elsewhere in non-paradises, then that's not such a big deal. But if not, then sucks to be you.
While I don't know the value of completely terraforming Mars into a second Earth, I do know that it's easier to slam large ice asteroids into Mars than it is to bring back the trilobites. One is just a rather mundane application of physics. The other is bringing back DNA information that has had half a billion years to vanish.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @07:56PM (2 children)
actually, I think it would be a useful exercise to compare Earth after a major meteor hit with Mars, in terms of survivability.
because we're not really talking about taking half of the human population to Mars, only enough to make a self-sustaining colony, right?
it seems to me that you can easily save an order of magnitude (or two) more people on Earth.
yes, I do want us to spread around the galaxy, and I have absolutely no moral issues with even eradicating pre-existing unicelular life forms to do it.
but I'm tired of hearing empty cliches about it.
especially from people like runaway, who doesn't even pretend some goodwill towards humans in general.
or people like you who deny that the ongoing climate change and mass extinction are problems worth fixing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @10:19PM
Define "goodwill". I'm certain that what you really mean is, "runaway doesn't agree with anything I think is important". Go back to your cave now, troglodyte.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 13 2021, @05:29PM
Well, would there be a lot of people on Earth after that disaster? You could indeed be talking about half or more of the human race after a significant enough disaster.
I have to agree with the AC here. What does"goodwill" mean here?
Why should I agree with your position? I'll note that nobody has made a strong case for urgent climate change mitigation. And most of the present mass extinction happened before human civilization existed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @05:13AM (1 child)
Also found the guy who in one breath admits we're shitting on the planet, but at no point wants to admit that externalities exist, and should be disincentivized against.
Zero competence in physics and economics - got any other fields you want to fess up complete ignorance of?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 13 2021, @12:51PM
Forces scale linearly. Extant trilobite DNA scales as exponential decay. That's how.
So what if it were true rather than some narrative you pulled out of your ass? Part of rational argument is understanding what is relevant. In particular, the trilobites and dinosaurs were long gone before human externalities could play a role.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Monday October 11 2021, @02:43PM
I think this [mcgrewbooks.com] is the one where Mars is being terraformed, haven't dpuble checked.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 11 2021, @07:53PM
The problem with Science Fiction and Terraforming other planets is that it would be vastly cheaper and faster to work with our planet to make it better. I mean, look at the average weather on Mars/Venus and then look at the average weather on Earth. Seems like we're not so bad off here after all. Now, eventually, there might be a Lunar Colony and/or Mars Colony, but there has to be enough support for that to happen. There also needs to be enough there to make it worth while. A Mars colony can't survive long-term, if it must rely on Earth to survive. A Lunar colony could, because it's a week trip there and back, more or less. In the event that we actually want to do things like capture asteroids for resource mining or just for research. A Lunar colony makes some sense. Mars is just the next best thing as far as Earth is concerned, because it might feasibly be survivable. In the event that Mars is resource rich enough and reasonably survivable. It could at the least be a manufacturing hub or some such thing. So, I guess in that extent, it might be a reasonable option, if if if if. There's so many if's in the Mars equation, it's unreal. Planning on Mars being anything other than a giant money hole with some cool exploring to be done, is not financially responsible.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday October 11 2021, @08:36PM (1 child)
That disruption may require more than just a wee bit of energy to achieve. At the very least you have to get some apparatus out to that block of ice.
We may or may not not have a few thousand years.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 13 2021, @12:54PM
Why? AC just said we're living in paradise.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Mockingbird on Monday October 11 2021, @05:06AM (2 children)
Greatest scientific advance in this century, and all we have is comments like this.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday October 11 2021, @08:37PM (1 child)
You could try submitting some good stories that get accepted.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Mockingbird on Monday October 11 2021, @09:08PM
Tried that! My acceptance rate is 6%. Looks like I am not good at picking good stories.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Monday October 11 2021, @05:54AM (7 children)
I can't wait for the day when we learn that life really started on Mars and was then blasted to earth after a large impact. When this happens, I'm going to sit quietly and think to myself... "Yea, I called it."
That will be a good day.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by coolgopher on Monday October 11 2021, @07:10AM (3 children)
The US will have a nationwide crisis when they realise everyone is an alien that needs to be deported right away. Well, deported or punched in the face [youtube.com], I guess.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @05:06PM (2 children)
Dude, 75% of Americans believe Jesus personally gave birth to them by cutting off his ribs. Nobody gonna give a shit about Mars bugs.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 11 2021, @07:59PM (1 child)
There's so much wrong in that statement, I don't even want to think about it. I hope that 75% of Americans wouldn't think that Jesus gave birth to them by cutting off his rib. Then again, I also hope that most people want good things for others besides themselves. It's one thing to say and another to do.
The average person in America is concerned with exterminating bugs and that's about it as far as bugs are concerned, though.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 13 2021, @05:21AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @01:10PM (1 child)
more like lofe started everywhere, then got burnt blown, frozen and disolved off most bodies in the solar system. nature being universal and all.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 11 2021, @03:51PM
Lofe mostly starts with yeast. Burning, blowing, freezing, and dissolving are not recommended. Rather, baking is called for.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Monday October 11 2021, @02:47PM
No, it was Venus before global warming. [mcgrewbooks.com]
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 5, Funny) by EJ on Monday October 11 2021, @06:48AM (15 children)
Why is it that meteorites always land in craters?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday October 11 2021, @03:29PM (14 children)
The craters have an attractive property which draws the meteorites in. I'm sure I can find some paid experts who will support this. Teach the controversy. It's not which idea has merit and which does not. It's that there is an opposing viewpoint and thus they have equal weight and validity.
Climate change? There is a paid expert who will say it is not real. They will even say it is real but not man made -- if you pay them enough.
Evolution? Just find a paid expert who is willing to say the evidence is not real. It is being misinterpreted, etc.
Pandemic? Just find an equal and opposite paid expert talking head.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 11 2021, @08:03PM (13 children)
At least one of those things is based wildly on hypotheticals and faith, just as much as the "controversial" side.
https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_06 [berkeley.edu]
Okay, I'm going to start with a ball of goo, I will set it in this box and wait 500 Million Years.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday October 11 2021, @08:30PM (12 children)
I think that one thing is based on a lot of hypotheticals and faith on both sides of the argument.
For the record I believe in creation. That said, I understand the overwhelming record of evidence for evolution and the big bang. Things we can see and measure in the universe and on this planet. I find astrophysics to be more persuasive, to me, than geological evidence.
No matter how it got here, I accept the world as it is, with all of the facts that we can observe and measure. Creation is similar to me stating that the universe as we see it today, including all our memories, was all created by my cat last Thursday. Untestable.
We do observe evolution at work. In organisms that reproduce much more quickly the effect of adaptation and selection is more easily observed. Like bacteria.
If your ball of goo is Play-Doh, then nothing may happen. If your goo is very long chain complex molecules -- what we would call organic molecules -- and there is some energy in the system to keep mixing them up for 500 million years, then something might happen. By pure chance. How likely is it that I could flip a coin ten times and get ten heads? Unlikely. But if I do it enough times, it becomes almost certain to happen.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 11 2021, @09:10PM (11 children)
There is no way to prove that life began 500 million years ago through observable science and reproduction of said experiment.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday October 11 2021, @09:43PM (9 children)
Reproduction of an experiment does not necessarily mean going back and redoing it completely. It's obviously ridiculous to propose that we dump a ball of goo on a planet, wait 500 million years and see if humans evolve from it. But we _can_ run smaller scale experiments and extrapolate. That's what P values are for!
What is your alternative theory, and how does it better fit the body of evidence available to us?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 11 2021, @10:31PM (8 children)
My theory is a lot more magical than you are prepared to accept. Then again, I don't know you, so who am I to judge. The biblical Creation of Earth in seven days. That still begs the question, where did God come from. Yet, I am willing to take it on faith that my ancient ancestors weren't anymore akin to Gorillas than you or I.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @11:17PM (1 child)
You should, because they weren't. That's not how evolution works.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 13 2021, @05:57AM
You're assuming that speciation is accompanied by everlasting symmetry.
There's no reason for that, and, more importantly, there's no known mechanism for that. On top of that, there are good reasons why it should be false - read some Gould, the pressures that affect one species significantly need not effect its nearest cousins at all - if that was their evolutionary deviation. The equilibria have no reason to line up, or last as long, at all, and the punctuations thereof have no reason to be equal in effect.
It's an assumption that should not be made, and given that if you test it, it fails horribly, it should be rejected.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mykl on Tuesday October 12 2021, @12:19AM (5 children)
I find the whole "7 Days" thing very interesting. Most people (perhaps yourself too) believe that a lot of the Bible is written in parable, rather than to be taken as the literal truth. Read that way, the 7 'days' (phases) of creation actually follows the Big Bang and theory of Evolution. The two are actually compatible. As for what caused the Big Bang, God is as good an answer as any other we have. An all-knowing God could create the rules of the universe, knowing the mechanisms that would lead to the creation of single-celled life and the adaptations and mutations that would eventually give rise to humans. In other words, he wrote the program that is currently running, but works on a much longer time-scale than humans can comprehend.
Given you believe in a literal 7 day (144 hours of work and 24 hours of rest) creation (presumably 6,000 years ago?), there are some questions that remain:
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday October 12 2021, @01:50PM
Those are all good questions. I've pondered that for much of my life. Of course, I don't know. It does seem like the creation was built as if it had a long history. If I were to create a sophisticated detailed universe as some sort of hypothetical computer simulation using technology we don't have, that simulation would probably be filled with things that had just happened yesterday, or last week, or millions of years ago, etc. If you cut down a tree in the garden of Eden, would it have rings? I think so.
I have no problem with the history of the universe that smart people deduce based on observations and measurements; ether with their own senses or instruments that augment their senses.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 12 2021, @02:09PM (3 children)
#1 The Flood, it caused all kinds of destruction and was responsible for the weird mass graves of the dinosaurs. In the event that you believe that the fountains of the deep were broken up and the heavens opened up/poured down rain. The devastation a world wide flood could easily be the cause of the "weirdness". Ditto, #2.
#3 Why are you putting so much faith in being able to accurately determine the weathering patterns of a few thousand years or so?
#4 The belief is that the garden of Eden and Creation was perfect at the time of Creation, up until the time that humans first sinned. After which, the ground was cursed, snakes could no longer fly (yes, there is a gliding snake), etc. There are at leas two schools of thought on dinosaurs. First thought, God created them, but he knew they wouldn't be able to survive post-flood, so he let them die in the flood. (My wife's preferred version, because she likes dinosaurs.) Second thought, they were amalgamations created by evil men and/or Satan. Imagine an entire people of Geniuses who could live nearly 1000 years. The real decline in human health/vigor came after the flood, Noah lived a total of 600 years or so and subsequent generations died off much faster. Imagine what some of our geniuses have accomplished, then multiply their life span by 8-10x, then you can start to see what they might have accomplished. Then again, they didn't need computers to remember things for them, either.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @05:01PM (2 children)
How do you trust your religious books to be true when it's demonstrably clear that there are errors in transmission and political meddling for thousands of years? How does a book wholly produced by men propose to faithfully reproduce the message of a being beyond the comprehension of men?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:21AM
Yeaaah
Critical thinking and religion do not go together, kinda by definition. When you turn ignorance into faith, no matter how well intentioned, you eventually end up with more ignorance and often hate. Thus why we have a politicized pandemic!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:01PM
When you look at the history of the bible, you might be surprised at just how accurately translated and preserved it is.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 13 2021, @05:43AM
We've know small steps are doable, as we're seen them done. We know of no mechanism that would prevent small steps from accumulating into large changes, and we've evidence that supports prior large changes. We have a mechanism for it to happen that we know happens, we have no way of preventing it from happening, we've seen what appears to be it happen, and we have no alternative hypothesis with any believability or support at all. If that's not good enough to be considered "proof", then nothing will be. *Nothing*.
You seem hung up on some simplistic theoretical Popperian model, one so simplified that even Popper wouldn't subscribe to it. (Finding evidence of alternatives that deny the hypothesis would disprove it, so something can be disprovable even if it's not testable.)
All of astronomy, for thousand of years, has been done this way. Do you think astronomy's not a science?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves