What is Digg?Sponsored by Travelzoo
Take Advantage of Ridiculously Low Holiday Airfares view!
travelzoo.com - Flights $52 and up for Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Year. But move on it now.
27 Comments
- inactive, on 05/09/2008, -2/+11How about we concentrate on not completely ***** up the perfectly good planet we have here before moving on to Mars?
- MJDub, on 05/09/2008, -1/+9No, because we'll be greeted as liberators.
- inactive, on 05/09/2008, -1/+6Because that would be false. There is water on mars, that has been confirmed. There just isnt liquid water on the surface, its frozen at the poles (although underground there may or may not be water, I dont think that has been confirmed or denied yet).
Between implies a cycle, that cycle implies that the water may return. It may be that they are intentionally trying to indicate that there is a cycle, even if its a long one. The article also states that the 3.5B year guess was incorrect, saying that it was active as little as 10-100M years ago.
From the Article:
This evidence of recent activity means the Martian climate may change again and could bolster speculation about whether the Red Planet can, or did, support life.
"We've gone from seeing Mars as a dead planet for three-plus billion years to one that has been alive in recent times," said Jay Dickson, a research analyst in the Department of Geological Sciences at Brown and lead author. "[The finding] has changed our perspective from a planet that has been dry and dead to one that is icy and active." - MacSuxWindozSux, on 05/09/2008, -2/+6Just plant a bunch of grass, nuke the poles, and see what happens.
That's all I ask. - 1807, on 05/09/2008, -0/+3Isn't the earth inbetween ice ages too? I mean why is this news?
- auto98, on 05/09/2008, -0/+3Absolutely untrue - the magnetic field provides far less protection than the atmosphere itself, and there have been periods with virtually no magnetic field (when it swaps polarity there is a gap) with very little effect - there would likely be a small disruption in communications, but even that is debatable
However as there is only a very thin atmosphere, you are right, but for the wrong reason - cricketsymphony, on 05/09/2008, -0/+3a modest proposal
- antiver, on 05/10/2008, -0/+2... and Earth is between ice ages, too.
- craiginct, on 05/09/2008, -0/+2Between ice ages - that's just another way of saying 'global warming,' right?
- auto98, on 05/09/2008, -0/+2well what would mainly ahppen atm would be that the water boils off - you would need to increase the atmosphere first ;)
- zadadka, on 05/09/2008, -0/+2We'll know a LOT more within 90 days of May 25th when the Phoenix mission arrives.
(with fingers tightly crossed NASA have resolved descent/impact issues that lost previous landers). - moomeep, on 05/09/2008, -1/+2we soooooo need to go there some time!
- batmanbury, on 05/09/2008, -1/+2You know what would be sweet -- If below the surface of Mars there are remnants of another civilization that was covered up after billions of years of climate changes or some other planetary occurrences.
- da_bradler, on 05/09/2008, -1/+2That all depends on what your definition of knowing is. I mean by your standard it is IMPOSSIBLE to know how the solar system was first created and the planets and what not, but we currently have a pretty good idea of how our solar system was formed by observing the creation of other solar system and by reading the signs of our own.
Also we have a pretty good idea of what our climate was like a couple billion years ago threw sediment samples and various other tests.
Nothing is impossible as long as there are people who don't think like you. - Dysarthria, on 05/09/2008, -5/+6Wow, 3.5 billion years is one hell of a "between".
Why not just say Mars had water on it a long time ago, and now doesn't? - solid12345, on 05/10/2008, -0/+1Must be the massive amount of Martian hummers and Republicans causing this
- auto98, on 05/09/2008, -0/+1LOL aye - that and the scientologists....
- jplily, on 05/10/2008, -0/+0 agree with the Representative.
- SailingAlien, on 05/09/2008, -2/+2No doubt caused by global warming here on earth.
- iamthearm, on 05/09/2008, -0/+0I don't know. When you find out for sure, let me know.
- playuhh, on 05/09/2008, -1/+1Hey so... if we took a giant hose... created a manmade lake/sea on mars... jammed all the water creatures we could into it... and waited like ten thousand years... i wonder what it would look like... I wonder if organisms could adapt to a martian environment... i hate my imagination because it makes me sad that i'll probably never see those farfetched things happen =/
- da_bradler, on 05/09/2008, -2/+1Just for the record, mars has no magnetic field(no spinning molten core) There are no complex organisms on our planet that can survive without the protection of the magnetic shield.
even if mars was teraformed I highly doubt humans could live on the surface unprotected, currently as it stands we can't send humans to far beyond the moon without them dying from radiation poisoning(were not even sure if you could survive on the moon long term)
Unless we can somehow give mars a magnetic field it's basically a lost cause, the suits our astronauts would have to wear would make the moon landing suits seem like bathing suits the new suits would have to be so big(lined with lead and other extremely dense materials, or maybe even a personal magnetic field generator(which currently doesn't exist).
At our current pace we'll be lucky to get a human out of the solar system in about 10,000 years(unless we meet some friendly aliens before.) which isn't so long actually considering we have around another 2 billion years of livability left on this planet. - inactive, on 05/09/2008, -4/+2dont u think the martians would be kinda i donno....PISSED OFF?
- CosmicJustice, on 05/09/2008, -6/+4It is IMPOSSIBLE to know what Mars was like 3.5 billion years ago. We're not even sure what's going on there NOW. It's all f**king guessing.
- inactive, on 05/09/2008, -7/+5Mars - the Moon of the 21st century.
We'll blow untold amounts of taxpayer dollars on it, waste a couple of human lives, then call it quits and forget about it. - inactive, on 05/09/2008, -6/+1What's the cry over this unliveable planet? I'd rather them make their voyage to mars and just get it over with. I'd rather our money be spent on finding liveable planets and creating spaceships that can travel in lightspeed. I don't know a lot about rocket science or anything like that but we should be worrying about more things than the mere geology of a planet that's possibly had a longer ice age than humans have been in existence. Even better, if we could manipulate the atmospheres of planets, that would be great. But i'm just ranting and it's probably unrealistic as hell but it's a start. And the Bush administration is not helping NASA funding either (even if it's besides the point).
/rant - Witchbaby, on 05/09/2008, -10/+4I wonder if this is what ***** sapiens thought millions of years ago when viewing pictures of a barren earth from their home planet of Mars??
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is