Water on Mars

I saw in the globe and mail today a picture of mars with huge oceans, i couldnt find the rest of the papr cause it was at mcdonalds does anyone have a link, or can perhaps help explain it? I think its kinda cool if you ask me, one could only wonder what kind of things we could find there, i wonder what alien fossils look like?

Just so much science fiction at the moment but very interesting indeed.
With water on Mars, the first thing you might think of is some how exporting that back to earth to feed drought ridden areas or something like that.

Nah, Terra forming is the deal.
But whats funny about the whole thing is that they would have to use global warming to change the atmosphere to warm the planet to melt the ice to release the C02 to enable bacteria growth that uses photosynthesis to create oxygen in the atmosphere to allow life to come exist.

While this is all way out there, it might be possible. And some say it would take about 100 years give or take once we manage to land people on Mars.

Another smaller Earth like planet in our solar system.

I saw this on Global this morning. They have come to the conclusion that what they original though of as shorelines of oceans, but later discarded because they didn't line up, are indeed shorelines. They have accounted for the shifts in the levels which caused them to earlier reject this premise.

No idea about a link.

If memory serves me they did find frozen water still on mars.
The new theory is there once were oceans of it on mars.

Tera forming was a cute star trek episode. Funny how people adopt science fiction as fact. Though Jules Verne proved you can shape things to come with science fiction novels.

Bringing water from Mars to end our droughts.First thing that comes to mind is what r u smoking????too funny.Lets go to mars and sprinkle it on desert waste land...hahahahahahaha

We have 2 thirds of our planet covered in it already...Our global warming is threatening what land masses we have, from melting the artic and antartic.
LOL!!!!!!

Mystery Solved: Mars Had Large Oceans


Dave Mosher

SPACE.com Wed Jun 13, 1:45 PM ET

Since 1991, planetary scientists have floated the idea that Mars once harbored vast oceans that covered roughly one-third of the planet. Two long shore-like lips of rock in the planet's northern hemisphere were thought to be the best evidence, but experts argued that they were too "hilly" to describe the smooth edges of ancient oceans.

The view just changed dramatically with a surprisingly simple breakthrough.

The once-flat shorelines were disfigured by a massive toppling over of the planet, scientists announced today. The warping of the Martian rock has hidden clear evidence of the oceans, which in any case have been gone for at least 2 billion years.

"This really confirms that there was an ocean on Mars," said Mark Richards, a planetary scientist at the University of California at Berkeley and co-author of the study, which is detailed in the June 14 issue of the journal Nature.

Twin shores

Two major shorelines exist on Mars, each thousands of miles long--one remaining from the older Arabia Ocean, and another from the younger Deuteronilus Ocean, said study co-author Taylor Perron of UC Berkeley.

"The Arabia would have contained two to three times the volume of water than in the ice that covers Antarctica," Perron told SPACE.com.

Somewhere along the way to toppling over 50 degrees to the north, Mars probably lost some of its water, leaving the Deuteronilus Ocean's shoreline exposed. "The volume of water was too large to simply evaporate into space, so we think there is still some subterranean reservoirs on Mars," Perron said.

The remaining sea would have been located in the same lowland plain as the Arabia Ocean, but almost 40 degrees to the north.

Unstable spin

As a planet spins, the heaviest things tend to shift towards the equator, where they are most stable. Earth, too, has a bulge at its equator. The volcanic Tharsis region of Mars, a vast raised area along Mars' equator, is evidence for how this works.

"This is the reason why this discovery packs extra punch," Perron said. More than a billion years ago, he explained, something happened in the way mass was distributed on Mars to cause the imbalanced portion to shift toward the equator-and allow the vast shores of the Martian oceans to warp.

"We found evidence of the path the shift would have to have occurred, and it matches with the deformation of the shorelines," Perron said.

Elastic surface

Near the equator, the surface of a planet stays in a relatively flattened bulge under the pressure of centripetal forces. But outside of the equator, the rock behaves elastically and often bunches up, like the surface of a deflating balloon. Perron and his team reasoned that the oceanic shorelines were once near the equator, but warped into hilly up-and-down elevations of rock as they move towards the north with the tilting planet.

"On planets like Mars and Earth that have an outer shell ... that behaves elastically, the solid surface will deform," Richards said.

By calculating the deformation, which occurs in a predictable way, the planetary research team found the ridges had to have once been flat, like ocean shorelines.

"This is a beautiful result that Taylor [Perron] got," Richards said. "The mere fact that you can explain a good fraction of the information about the shorelines with such a simple model is just amazing. It's something I never would have guessed at the outset."

Perron and his colleagues aren't certain what caused the toppling of the planet, but they think forces beneath the surface are to blame. "There could have been a massive change in the distribution of mantle," Perron said, "which would have caused the planet to shift into its current position."

Announcing the discovery of water on Mars is a monthly event. I look forward to the next one.

thanks for the post eh 1 eh

do i pronouce your name like canadian AEH1Aeh
never figured how to do it AA

HAHAHAHAHAHA...yer funny

Like A1A. But it's canadeun eh, I don't f**k aboot with my name.

Clarification....I never figured out to type the canadian aa/ah/aeh/aah out..Is your name implying this for i only thought of it as i typed the thank you......sheeeeeeesh what a grouch!!!!lol

Holy crap man. I'm kidding. I'm never grouchy, I'm Canadian, Thank you and sorry.

no probs....my sheeeeeesh what a grouch deal is that cartoon runnin in the background and the nut part of me just blurts out the random shuffle noise in the background from the hardrive btw me ears.....i'm also gotta have things explained to me right out....so is your name a play on the canadian way ofsayin eh/AA/aeh/ ....sorry for being annoying too many programs as of late runnin in me head

It's a play on the highway that runs closest to the beach off of US 1 on the east coast, A1A. It is the honourary main street of Margaritaville. So in Canada it's just spelled different, eh.

thanks eh. yer alright eh....so does that song about margaritiville have anything to do with magaritaville..?? in all seriousness as much as i can getb serious..eh

from mars to drinking on the side of some coastal town....well at least water is invovled...lots of it so no need to start bringing dried up martian water here at the expense of taxpayers.

i agree that it is a monthly thing to have an announcment from mars and in 100 years mabye uranus about the possiblity of water, life whatever. BUt it said in the article that there may still be resovoirs underground. I think once we get there its going to be an archeologist and geologists, biologist, scientists dream zone

It is the national anthem.

I think you are right...but water does not exist in large quantities on the surface. There is a bit of water ice at the poles but that is all. "The average air pressure at the surface of Mars is 6 millibars (compared to 1013 millibars on Earth)." Any liquid water would boil away instantly.

what about underground?

It would be great to find liquid oceans on Mars.....As a kid I read E. Doc Smith SciFi stories about Barsoom and his Mars was a lot more friendly than what we have found on our Mars. It is possible that there is water on mars existing as permafrost, but liquid water, even underground, would have a vapour pressure far higher than the measly few bars of atmospheric pressure on that planet so it would evaporate immediately.

intersting

Would it be immediate? I realize that the boiling point of water would be very low but would it be 0c? How does one perform the calculations to determine what the boiling point would be with that atmospheric pressure?

I think I have also heard a theory that Mars at one point had more atmosphere. The problem I have with that theory is that it doesn't have more atmosphere today because it is too small to hold a bigger atmosphere. What would have made the distant past any different?

would that not create some sort of steam, water vapour creating some sort of atmospheric condition. The gravity would keep it part of Martian enviroment...no?..and there is no atmosphere...no?..dunno not an expert..
but i guess pretty good*wink*

me and dougly mind melding ...fancy that ...*waves* hi doug

there is an atmosphere

so wouldnt that mean people would boil if unprotected on the surface of mars?

Depends on the temperature. If you turn your heaters on to make it a comfortable 25c, the water in your body would probably boil.

My famly being Finnish we love our suanas and we get it right hot and my blood doesnt boil in those things lol

Well, the reason it doesn't is the atmospheric pressue on earth keeps the boiling point of water at sea level to be 100c. However, climb Mount Everest and boil water at the top, it will be lower than 100c when it starts boiling.

But even at the top of Everest, the atmospheric pressue is much more than Mars. If you set up a Sauna on Mars, you would certainly get your blood boiling.

Here is a link to a site that will answer most questions.

http://tinyurl.com/24gxvt

thanks juan