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."
(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