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posted by mrpg on Monday October 11 2021, @03:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the fossils! dept.

Rover images confirm Jezero crater is an ancient Martian lake: The findings include signs of flash flooding that carried huge boulders downstream into the lakebed.:

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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  • (Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @10:38AM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @10:38AM (#1186103)

    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.

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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @02:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @02:41PM (#1186143)

    runaway1956, whichever member of the runaway team is currently hiding behind your nick

    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)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday October 11 2021, @03:58PM (#1186174) Journal

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @05:04PM (#1186200)

      > 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

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @06:30PM (#1186480)

      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)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 11 2021, @04:25PM (#1186186) Journal
    Well, if Earth is such a paradise, then where are the trilobites and dinosaurs? They aren't around anymore!

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @07:56PM (#1186265)

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @10:19PM (#1186302)

        especially from people like runaway, who doesn't even pretend some goodwill towards humans in general.

        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

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 13 2021, @05:29PM (#1186713) Journal

        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?

        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.

        especially from people like runaway, who doesn't even pretend some goodwill towards humans in general.

        I have to agree with the AC here. What does"goodwill" mean here?

        or people like you who deny that the ongoing climate change and mass extinction are problems worth fixing.

        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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @05:13AM (#1186587)
      Found the guy who doesn't understand how forces scale.

      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

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 13 2021, @12:51PM (#1186632) Journal

        Found the guy who doesn't understand how forces scale.

        Forces scale linearly. Extant trilobite DNA scales as exponential decay. That's how.

        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.

        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.