What is Digg?247 Comments
- PaulLev, on 06/26/2008, -1/+110Even if life wasn't there in past, this means that we're that much closer to setting up human residence on Mars.
- devolved, on 06/27/2008, -1/+89Buried for inaccurate title -- the article specifically states that the scientists were *flabbergasted* not shocked. What kind of journalistic standards are we upholding here, people?
- disingenious, on 06/27/2008, -2/+73MARS NEEDS ASPARAGUS
- webyatri, on 06/27/2008, -5/+69any oil?
- SilenceIsFoo, on 06/27/2008, -0/+62Yeah. We just have to figure out how to get around that whole breathing oxygen thing.
- skipthefrog, on 06/26/2008, -1/+50up the water table, and you have earth part 2. With a little bit of work that is.
- 3tcp, on 06/26/2008, -0/+47Awesome. Well, get to terraforming then. Lets launch a box full of that antarctic moss to the poles and see what happens.
- Marijuana, on 06/27/2008, -4/+45I wonder what would happen if we grow weed over there. Martian Haze :]
- KSUdesigner, on 06/27/2008, -3/+42Source? An article I just found states that Mars does have a molten core.
"Above ground, Mars is mostly a bone-chilling desert pocked with craters. Hundreds of miles below, however, a molten sea of iron, nickel and sulfur churns."
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070531_mars_ ... - SteveCUBE, on 06/27/2008, -1/+38Get the Dharma initiative up there to see what's up.
- lazycat, on 06/27/2008, -6/+42Mars has no electro-magnetic field. This will make any terraforming efforts extremely difficult, if not futile.
- uptwolait, on 06/27/2008, -3/+36I'm so excited, I soiled myself. Get it?
- TheMachine1, on 06/26/2008, -2/+35It gets warming as you digg deeper on Earth. If the same applies to Mars does that mean there is liquid water below the surface of Mars?
- megamod, on 06/27/2008, -1/+33I just got this funny picture in my head of the Phoenix probe planting asparagus, wearing a gardener's hat/apron and pouring water on it with its flimsy little arms... =)
- inactive, on 06/27/2008, -1/+30The electro-magnetic field protects the Earth from solar something-or-anothers
- freezerburn666, on 06/27/2008, -1/+30plants
- MasterThief117, on 06/27/2008, -0/+28Your comment is very appropriate considering your name.
- angusm, on 06/27/2008, -0/+26The real obstacles to Mars being Earth II are that the mean atmospheric pressure is less than 1% that of Earth's, such atmosphere as exists is primarily CO2, and the temperature can drop as low as -220F. (It can rise to as much as 70F on summer days, but the thin atmosphere won't retain the heat: come night time, it's back down well below freezing). The low gravity gives little hope that it could retain a denser atmosphere for any great length of time.
Maybe we should wrap Venus in a vast silvered Mylar bubble to reduce the level of incoming solar radiation, and see what happens once the surface temperature there falls off a bit ... - diggtoast, on 06/27/2008, -1/+27we don't
- gcacho, on 06/27/2008, -0/+25send in the microbes. It's time to terraform the planet.
- gcnaddict, on 06/27/2008, -1/+25That magnetic field is what's keeping your brain from frying right now. You know, those charged particles flying through space at ridiculously high speeds that find a way into the atmosphere near the poles where the field is weakest, thus causing the Northern Lights? Yeah... those things... cooking your brain.
That might be a problem. - TheAkolyte, on 06/27/2008, -5/+28Because we make assumptions based on rationality
- inactive, on 06/27/2008, -0/+23This has already been solved back in 1992 by Richard Taylor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming#Paraterr ...
Paraterraforming would only need about a tenth of the atmospheric gases as traditional terraforming theory requires.
It's basically a tented structure (think more along the lines of an awning that would keep the atmosphere contained within it's confines. In realistic terms they think this would be doable on a scale large enough to colonize Mars with 500,000 people fairly quickly.
Meanwhile, they could use standard terraforming to eventually make the whole planet habitable without the need for a Worldhouse.
Taylor has said they could eventually roof over 84% of Mars.
The unroofed 16 percent would include Valles Marineris, a tectonic rift system with evidence of crustal layers. The abundance of mineral deposits found in Earth's rift zones suggests that Valles Marineris might provide materials for manufacturing MWH structures.
Other unroofed areas would include the poles, which would provide ices and gases and serve as "dumping zones," and volcanoes taller than seven kilometers. The calderas of such volcanoes rise above most of the thin martian atmosphere so this would make them ideal locations for solar power generators. - jimmaculate, on 06/27/2008, -1/+23Yahoo put up an article saying it could grow asparagus. Mmm. Asparagus.
- AmyVernon, on 06/26/2008, -10/+32holy! wow. verrrry cool.
- crazzy88ss, on 06/27/2008, -0/+20I think the EM does things to protect Earth's life forms from things in space (like gamma rays?) that would otherwise kill us. Yes?no?
- UltX, on 06/27/2008, -0/+19I say way take off and nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
- s4g4n, on 06/27/2008, -3/+21Its 420 for all martians out there.
- iXam, on 06/27/2008, -0/+18But think of the lag between earth and mars.
Sure, you be on mars but back on earth you are the high ping bastards ruining the game experience.
;) - bendiggn, on 06/27/2008, -0/+18Eh... hem. That there is Vanilla Ice.
I am actually jealous that you didn't know who he was.
Word to your age. :) - griz, on 06/28/2008, -0/+18It's entirely possible he means that his back yard absolutely refuses to support life.
- citnaj, on 06/28/2008, -1/+17*****. Let's look at the Myths and Realities:
Myth 1: Mars can't support liquid water.
Fact 1: It can, it does, and already has been announced by NASA. (http://www.thinkerofthoughts.com/?p=5 )
Myth 2: The soil is an oxidizing agent and would destroy life.
Fact 2: See link in this post.
Myth 3: No magnetosphere implies no safe environment for life to thrive.
Fact 3: Once life gets started, it's able to adapt even to extreme environments, such as high radiation and in fact thrive on it. And life certainly has more than one viable spring board: The fact that Mars was warmer, wetter, and geologically active (and had a magnetosphere in the past), and the fact that Earth could have sent life our way via panspermia.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2007/0 ...
Myth 4: NASA has not detect signs of life on Mars.
Fact 4: The very man who designed the life detection test that returned a positive on the Viking lander mission disagrees vehemently. His name is Dr. Gilbert Levin, a researcher at MIT. http://mars.spherix.com/spie/spiehtml.htm (He's rational, by the way :) ). Another life detection test proved to have been unable to detect life on Earth!
I've seen enough to be convinced that there's a lot of misinformation going on as far as the topic of life on Mars is concerned. It's unfortunate because the reality of the planet is much more exciting and cool then the public generally believes. - SilenceIsFoo, on 06/27/2008, -0/+15Hm. We could use a Genesis torpedo to get the plants started, but *then* you've got to deal with that whole spontaneous self destruction thing.
Kirk: "You fool! Look around you! Can't you see this planet is destroying itself?
Kruge/Doc Brown: "Yes! Exhilarating isn't it?" - pixeldust, on 06/27/2008, -0/+15As long as you love high doses of radiation it's a dream.
- moobies, on 06/27/2008, -5/+19How do we know there isn't life on there right now?
- inactive, on 06/27/2008, -4/+18My back yard defiantly won't support life.
- tim507, on 06/27/2008, -0/+14I don't know if "shocked" is the best word, because its was looking quite optimistic from the get-go, but this is great news. Hopefully I see some more cool things come out if this in my lifetime.
- deanoplex, on 06/27/2008, -0/+14I wonder what the temperature would be, inside a greenhouse on the Martian equator.
- wazzledoozle2, on 06/27/2008, -2/+15Er, lwell a few years ago (before that discovery) the prevailing opinion was that there was a solid core.
Either way, it's an insignificant enough amount of molten core than mars has no volcanic activity nor magnetic fields. - CiXeL, on 06/27/2008, -0/+13hello greenhouse!
honestly how terrible would it be if we started with greenhouses and moved on to perfect domed cities on mars? - Hetman, on 06/27/2008, -0/+12You are right. Eventually earth will be like mars when our internal heat source runs out. It will be a long long time but eventually it will happen. That is unless the aliens have left a way to restart the planet, and it takes a daring expidition by are governer Arnold to go to the planet and restart it.
- BobbyMC, on 07/21/2008, -1/+12Even though I firmly believe that we have the power to fix Mars up, there is another way of looking at the terraforming debate which I would refer to as the "Life will find a way" method of terraformation. Even if Mars absolutely, no way could EVER sustain the things needed for human life, there is still a VERY strong possibility of building greenhouse bases to adapt Earthen plant life. If human technology could keep plant life alive while still being strained by the unfamiliar Martian atmosphere, the possibilities would be better than that of life on Earth, which was ENTIRELY up to pure luck. Specifically, I mean that by already having a pre existing life form to work with, you stand to be able to CREATE "alien" life by nature of the fact that eventually these test subjects would become foreign. I wouldn't be surprised that if you even managed to make it through oen generation, the very next generation would already have profound genetic deviation due to the fact that the differences in atmosphere and chemical balance are so much more extreme than the slow changes on Earth.
Earth changed too, and it still works for us because we're used to it.It's quite likely that even early man couldn't survive in our own atmosphere thanks to the dilution of oxygen by loss and introduction of pollutants. It all comes back to life finding a way, and if you can keep plants alive, you can create atmospheric conditions. Ween a human off what their bodies are used to and you might not get the kind of survival of life on Mars that you expect, but rather entirely new genetic deviations. Mars has too many things going for it now to rule out the idea life being able to adapt itself there,.
Of course if we can really make bugs that exrete fuel now, relying on nature at all is irrelevant. We can just send in bugs that eat up Martian toxins and excrete earthen atmospheric necessities. - andyd273, on 06/27/2008, -0/+11As gcnaddict said, no magnetosphere, no protection from solar radiation.
Also, if earth lost its magnetic field, the atmosphere would get stripped away by the solar wind.
Thats why mars atmospheric pressure is so low. It may well have had a thick atmosphere long long ago, but eons of no EM field has reduced it to almost nothing.
Terraforming is still possible, but it will have to start with genetically engineered plants that can survive in very cold temperatures, very low pressure, lower light, high salt and high radiation environments.
domed cities wouldnt work very well right away, because the pressure is so low they would tend to pop under earth pressure. We'd have to start out in buried cities until the atmosphere thickened up.
What we need is plants that can take the CO2 and convert it to oxygen, but we'll also have to find other sources of oxygen, either liberating it from the soil (I think it's red because it is an iron oxide), or from aero-braking water comets through the atmostphere and splitting the h2o into hydrogen/oxygen.
Until then, it's the neo-caveman lifestyle for any colonists. - scy1192, on 06/27/2008, -0/+11Next mission: can asparagus survive on Mars?
- CiXeL, on 06/27/2008, -1/+11thats alot of smelly pee
- dtilford, on 06/27/2008, -0/+10Higher...
- Rizzen, on 06/27/2008, -2/+11See guys, its okay, we can trash this planet and just move on!
- wertach, on 06/27/2008, -0/+9peabrain, the name fits!
- Hetman, on 06/27/2008, -0/+9Why would we need to tereform New Orleans? It supports life now.
There are currently many different drinking water projects going on, on earth. Again there are multiple people trying to come up with ways of green ways of getting around on earth. Again there are people currently/still cleaning up chernoble. So basically we are doing all the things you say we are not doing plus we are trying to explore our solar system. - stuffradio, on 06/27/2008, -0/+9I call dibs on Uranus
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