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NASA / JPL / Stuart Atkinson
A close-up from NASA's Opportunity rover shows the line of light-colored rocks known as "Homestake" or "The Vein." Components of Opportunity's robotic arm are visible in the left foreground.
NASA's Opportunity rover has come across a light-colored line of rocks that could serve as solid evidence for Mars' watery past — and help set the stage for the next Mars mission, due for launch this month.
The formation, nicknamed "Homestake" or "The Vein," showed up in pictures that the rover sent back from the rim of Endeavour Crater early this week. It looks like a few paving bricks, sticking edge up from the surrounding soil. Not all that impressive, but it caught the attention of the rover science team as well as the amateur observers who are following Oppy's every move.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Stuart Atkinson
This stereo view from NASA's Opportunity rover shows the view looking out past Cape York to Endeavour Crater. Use red-blue glasses to see the 3-D effect. Click on the image for a larger view.
Cornell astronomer Steve Squyres, the principal investigator for the Opportunity and Spirit rover missions, told the Planetary Society's A.J.S. Rayl that he and his colleagues have been keeping an eye on similar light-colored veins of rock for months during Opportunity's dash to the crater rim. Squyres said tracing the veins to find Homestake was a "real triumph of geology."
"These are different from anything we've ever seen with either rover, a completely new thing on Mars, never seen anywhere," Squyres said. "And we're pretty charged up about it."
Stuart Atkinson, a British educator, author and amateur astronomer who has been working up wonderful imagery from the rover missions for years, produced more than a dozen pictures over the past few days documenting Opportunity's surroundings, and particularly what's happening with Homestake. The rover has already been taking a close look at the formation with its microscopic imager.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Stuart Atkinson
Opportunity's microscopic imager looks at the Homestake rock formation and its surroundings in detail.
So what is it? Squyres isn't willing to "hazard a guess" yet, but the speculation is that the rock could point the way to minerals that are linked to Mars' wetter, warmer past. Five years ago, the now-defunct Spirit rover churned up light-colored, silica-rich dirt that had to have been formed in the presence of water.
The Opportunity team has also been looking for phyllosilicates, clay minerals that have already been detected through orbital observations. Such minerals are an important clue to Mars' geological history, since they form in water that's not as acidic as the water that gave rise to Spirit's silica. A less acidic environment would be more hospitable to life.
It may be too early to say what Homestake is, but based on the buzz, it's likely to be something interesting.
More buzz will be stirred up in the weeks to come over the Curiosity rover's upcoming $2.5 billion mission to Mars. The car-sized rover, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, is due to be launched on Nov. 25 with Mars' Gale Crater as its objective.
Gale Crater should be a candy store for geologists, because it boasts a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mound of phyllosilicates and sulfates. The composition of the soil at different elevations could help scientists document a billion years of geological and climate history. It could even point to particular eras when Mars was actually habitable by life as we know it. And if those conditions still exist underground ... well, that would be a vein of pure gold for astrobiologists.
By the time Curiosity touches down on the Martian surface next summer, Squyres and his colleagues may well have unraveled Homestake's secrets, and the lessons learned from one rover mission will carry over to the next. Stay tuned...
Tip o' the Log to Discovery News' Jason Major. Special thanks to Stuart Atkinson for sharing his processed images of Opportunity's views.
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also add me to your Google+ circle, and check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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I like this. It's an excellent example of why so many people are more interested in fantasy and religion than science.
Fantasy like the Cosmos blowing up 14 billion years ago and getting 'lucky' countless times to make Humans? Yeah RIGHT! Like NYC blowing up millions of years ago and getting 'lucky' to evolve the Brooklin Bridge. Oh, BTW, I can sell the Brooklin Bridge to you if you believe that!!!
In our beloved earth, we share the space with 2 other creatures: genies and angels. I believe there should be more creatures somewhere, but we will never be able to see them.
Kdc43,
The universe didn't get lucky and develop in a way to allow for human beings to evolve. Humans got lucky that the universe developed in a way for them to exist. Just think, we could have all been intelligent acid-based organisms feeling like we're so damned lucky that the universe developed in just the right way for us to evolve. The universe is not suited for you; you are suited for the universe. Before you learn that, you'll never be capable of learning anything useful about evolution and how you came to exist.
A posthoc calculation of the probablility of an event which has already occurred is not "luck". Statistics is predictive not postdictive.
kdc43,
I bid $100,000 for this Brooklin Bridge that you speak of.
KDC43 just curious how much did you pay for the Brooklyn bridge?
Why does a science topic always bring out the religious wing nuts and religious fruitcakes who take the bible as strictly 100% fact? A lot of it is mythology anyway.
I beg to differ. I would say that all of the bible is mythology. There is not one single shred of historical evidence that any of the tales told in that book ever took place. Believers accept it on faith alone. Just as the Ancient Greeks believed that many different Gods controlled their destiny.
I'l bid 200000 quatloo's for that bridge!
The universe exists because we are here to observe it. There was no long series of happenstance that provided the conditions that made our development possible. Those events were exactly what had to happen for our creation. If that is the result of an entity some chose to call "god" something else, noone knows for sure. It is what it is. Nothing more, nothing less.
Martin-1245065, WELL SAID, but WAY over the heads of those who do not accept the abiotic and biotic evolution of our planet and the universe beyond. ;)
Let me paraphrase if I may be so bold:
The problem with religious people citing our very existence as somehow evidence of a creator god has two huge problems; the first and most obvious is it demands an explanation for the creator god itself, and then you're in the realm of magic and myth - but zero science and zero known facts to support any of it. The facts indicate a total amoral and non-sentient gradual progression given ingredients and the vast spans of time involved and various energy sources.
The second is that it's arguing probability backwards. Example: This is the same thing as if a person who JUST WON the lottery for $250 million dollars stating that BECAUSE the odds against them winning was one in a billion (or whatever extreme odds againt it happening), they DID NOT WIN the lottery. After winning it. Doesn't work that way.
The religious do not understand the distinction between impossible and improbable.
Impossible CAN NOT happen. Ever. It is outside the realm of possibility. You will never see 2+2 add up to 7. You will never have an offspring that can also be your grandfather or grandmother.
Improbable CAN happen, even if the chances are remote in the extreme. EXAMPLE:
Your existence, as calculated in the past.
It's pointless to try to disprove the existance of god to the religious. They're too well entrenched in their lifelong brainwashing. I too was subjected to this brainwashing from my parents from a very early age. It's pretty powerful how these controlling teaching have on someone that lives in the religious fear.
The best thing, is to just let them believe. Religious folks love to argue with non-believers. That's what they're taught to do. And that's fine.
But if you don't believe in god, or have escaped from the hold of lies, then I congratulate you! You have earned a cookie. =:D
300000 quatloos !!!
I will trade the Grand Canyon for the Brooklyn Bridge.
I must say, looking at the vastness of the universe, and applying the improbable odds of life to form, then I would say it is not surprising we are here. there are truly billions of stars, and many times more than that of planets. Many of them at one time or another were at least somewhat habitable by some sort of life. With that many billions of chances of life to form, of course it will, eventually. The only real question is how many other planets have life, and how many have had life evolve into a self-aware entity.
I cannot see how people can still claim the love of God and how he hears your prayers. Remember the tsunami in Indonesia? How many children lost there parents and were forced into foster homes? How many parent lost their children? Look at cases of the severe child abuse across the world. How could you ever look at this and say God is great. He lets innocent kids suffer at the hands of such horrible people and we think it's just "Gods Will".
I believe in God because it is logical to believe God exists. DNA is evidence of intelligent coding. I would not expect a biologist to understand this, but I am a computer programmer and I can recognize intelligent coding. I would also add that there is no new evidence of new coding being added, although loss of data (translated into genetic mutations) is in evidence. Therefore, I logically conclude that the creative process is ended. Adaptability is governed by the foresight of the intelligent coding and genetic variation is a process of adaptability. Naturalistic evolution simply is nonsense, because code does not write itself, nor does it come about by environmental variations. Evolution is an attempt to interpret the initial install of life, but it comes up short in explaining the function of life and cannot explain how interdependant functions were developed (for example, all the parts of an eye must be present for an eye to function - cones, retina, cornea, optic nerve, etc). Those who write off the presence of an intelligent coder, or God, are the ones abandoning logic and reasoning. Every postulation I have made here is completely logical and based on observable science. To make an assumption about the non-existence of God because a tsunami (or some other catastrophe) happened, or because many Christians behave in a non-scientific manner, is an emotional argument, not based in logic or scientific method.
Keith Bradbury You need to step away from the keyboard. There is a BIG difference between computer code and genetic code and yes genetic code can and does write itself. Its call evolution. So Keith where did God come from? does God have a God ? Does Gods God have a God? kind of sounds like a run away loop doesn't it?
This new rock formation indicates that the rover is in a passing lane.
Keith - If the DNA is so intelligently designed, then why does it have so much useless and unused code in it. As a software engineer I disagree with your view, it wouldn't have even met 6 sigma in errors.
Keith, other patterns occur naturally, without any agency to create it. Natural processes lead to patterns and information, and that's how DNA formed.
i bid i million quatloos!
"I don't expect a Biologist to understand this" What? As a software developer myself I wouldn't even begin to set into another discipline and says something as stupid as that?
I like Keith Bradbury's comment. The day of the self righteous evolutionist is passing, thankfully, although echoes abound around the chasm. Darwinian/ Dawkinian logic sort of says that in the age of the machine the internal combustion engine developed itself :)
@super t , your statement is just as idiotic. very much of the bible is historical fact. there is also alot of incorrectly added text. not defending, just saying do your research before you speak. lest you sound just as much a fool as the biblethumpers.
MyOwn - Would you mind justifying the following statement?
I would be interested in hearing how the evolutionist is passing. The growth in genetics is astounding and this is the basis for evolution now.
Darwin was talking about speciation and how evolution played a role in that.
Now, if were talking about the self righteous, including the the right wing religous, then I wish they all would pass on. But the religous right wing is never self righteous. *sarcasm* By being self righteous, that would put them before God and that wouldn't make them too Christian, now would it?
For people that don't believe in god you do talk about him or her a lot if you don't believe there should be no reason to debate.As some one who looks at theorys and knows you believe in your theory i also know theorys can be disproven.I'am not a great man of science or of god.I would not won't to be the man or woman that has to stand in front of God and explain why you thought he was an unproven theory or a made up story. . .just saying, something to think about
So disprove it, and I will stop accepting it. Until then what you have is only a desire to be smarter than a scientist and not an actual theory which opposes evolution.
As for god judging us - I would explain my case that I was simply using the intellect that god himself bestowed upon me to describe the world and that it seems god has gone to great lengths to hide himself from it. Therefore I could hardly be blamed for not believing in a god who has been absent these many eons.
There Rovers were/are absolutely amazing. Totally impressive that they lasted so much linger than expected. Beyond that, how can ANYONE look at pictures of another planet and not be in awe?
Only souless, boring, over self involved people can do so.
Mt......The Rovers have provided a wonderful bargain, Spirt and Opportunity were only designed to last 90 days. And here we are years down the road, and one of them is still chuggin' down the road. My only concern is that they have become somewhat of a moneypit.
Since very soon after the original 90 days were up.......They have provided very little science, that is "new". Oh they have ground out a slug of pictures but very few of them differ from the pics that were taken in the early stages of Spirt and Opportunities mission.
It's great that one of the probes is still running, but it's become more of a works project at Nasa, than it has been a science project after it's planned mission time.
Spirit and Opportunity are the future of space exploration. Not only did they far outlive their bargain-basement 90-day price, but every day the price of their science gets cheaper.
If you try to send a man to Mars, you have two initial problems, muscle/bone atrophy (for which there is no practical fix) and exposure to cosmic radiation (for which there is no practical fix.) Then when he gets there, in a weakened and perhaps compromised state, the first thing you have to start worrying about is getting him back alive (about 10 times as hard) on an untested system that is already more than a year old.
It is a lot better to send robots. If one crashes, you don't have to spend all that effort re-naming junior high schools, you save all the life support problems, DNA damage from cosmic radiation is not an issue, and robots don't lose muscle or bone. And robots can withstand greater heat, cold, g's, etc, and you don't even have to send porn with them because they don't masturbate. LOL
While robots don't set well with a fighter jock-dominated NASA, even the Air Force is saying that fighter jocks are obsolete and the current manned fighter aircraft will almost certainly disappear in favor of UCAV's for the same reasons.
Good work, robotocists!
I have to say these 2 Rovers have been tough little guys, the best I have ever seen.
Steve Squyres did a Fantastic job over seeing this project when they were on the ground here, and I tip my hat to him. Good Work Steve. I wonder how much longer they will last???? LOL
Tom And Lyn
Big Daddy, Opportunity is exploring somewhere human eyes have NEVER BEEN BEFORE.
"A works project"?!? Really?
By that same logic we should call back all subs here on Earth; after all, see one part of the ocean bottom and you've seen it all!
Not.
Pity you can see but you can't touch! What happens when robots replace man? Maybe it will help with the problem of overpopulation.
Big Daddy-771288, you might be missing the fact that the engineers are learning a ton about what martian conditions do to machines, what strategies robots can use on the martian regolith in the case of mechanical breakdown, the fact that the solar panels will not be obscured by dust, etc.
Probably the second most successful mission of NASA beyond Earth orbit (after Voyager).
I agree. They are NOT works projects. They've opened our minds to what will be possible as an every day occurence in the near future. I can't wait for them to land on more planets....
And even Voyager is still sending back info after all this time.
To all you poor, sad athiests out there, just accept you don't completely understand God's creation and appreciate that He allows us the brain He did to investigate and find out what we can. Doubt all you want, but you CANNOT account for the fact of where it all originated.
kraussk - I shouldn't reply as this is just a science news thread and I apologize in advance.
I may be an atheist and I may be poor, but I am not sad. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to see the stars at night and know that there are billions upon billions of places upon which living things may take root, grow and evolve.
The logic is quite simple, Moses, a brilliant man, said that we should not believe in a false gods or make idols of such imaginings. The rule is for our personal not our neighbors benefit, you can believe in what you wish.
I can imagine distant planets with life and intelligent beings on them but I have no tools in which to create an image of God. Any attempt to apply attributes to said creator must necessarily paint him/her/it with false colors and is akin to idolatry. Other such attributes are sex, human characteristics such as desire, will and lastly human intellect. I know this to be difficult but try to remove the obvious false attributes from your creator and see what remains. Good Luck.
BIG DADDY- yeah, they are costing a few billion $$ , but at least we are getting something for it other than feeling useless dumping down the black hole of welfare....
As for "not finding anything new" , the same could be said for every explorer there ever was. if every sailor never left the dock because the water looked the same 10 miles off shore as it did 20, then the Indians would still be running America! (YES, I know...they were here first, etc...)
And it wouldn't BE called America!
Gotta keep looking. Might be something good right over the next dune!
Kraussk - For the Christian scientists out there, are you saying they are atheists because they are scientists. Who are you to judge? And by doing so, you have become a hypocrite and very non-Christian.
Yes, the closer you look, the spookier these pictures become. They look almost exactly like the bricks I have lined up in my back garden. Only a matter of time before the Face on Mars folks make something out of this.
Well of course it's a part of an early Martian road. Built, no doubt by Martians wishing to travel to see the Face.
So the face had a garden with a brick edge. So what. So do I.
Scientists lead sheltered live. These are just lane markers on an old highway.
Or the very tops of an old wall to keep illegals out!!
Like people from Saturn. They built the rings to keep people from Jupiter out.
Nibor....what a unique perspective. Kudos!!!!!
Well , Shouldn't they, seriously, if we knew for a fact that intelegent life exisited on mars, would we look at this evidence with a different approach? Is our prejiduce from certian assumptions that life can't be there, so its not, actually in the way of asking the correct questions?
Wow. Please use spell check...
A grammar checker wouldn't hurt either.
Who exactly is making the assumption that there is no life on Mars? Isn't that one of the missions of all of the expeditions to Mars - to determine if there is life?
These may look intelligently built by untrained eyes, but similar structures are right here on Earth and they weren't formed by any man. What you are looking at is a cross section of a mineral/rock layer that was laid down, possibly in water. The layer may no longer be horizontal due to tectonics, though I know Mars has been inactive for a very long time. Or it could be minerals carried by water seepage through faults in the rock, which were laid down in that fashion creating a seam. Those types of occurances happen much more frequently than brick laying - even here on Earth.
Doug: FYI.
"There" is a place.
"Their" is possessive.
Squarepeg- WTF???
Squarepeg,
the "reply" button at the lower right of a post allows you to address your comments to the correct source. Otherwise, we have no idea who "Doug" is, and I sure as heck am not going to scroll up just to figure out who the heck you're trying to comment on.
Quote:
"It could even point to particular eras when Mars was actually habitable by life as we know it."
Wow, last time I checked, Mars did not have a magnetic field, therefore it is not habitable. We would die from radiation exposure. Exploring it with the rovers is a neat idea. We get to see things that scientists can speculate on. Are they right? Who knows... There educated guesses are not always right anyway.
Soon we will know more about the surface of Mars than we know about certain areas on our own planet.
But what good will it really do us? We can't go there yet, we can't live there due to the radiation. And if we ever do get there and figure out a way to live there, we will probably just mess it all up by exploiting whatever we find without thinking out the consequences of our actions prior to doing so.
So then what? It is the only other planet anywhere near us that we could ever possibly live on. If we ruin this one, and we are well on are way there now. Will Mars be our next and final victim?
I am not against looking there, or sending probes there.
As far as the comment on "intelligent life" If there was life there at one point and now there is not, that would tell me that your chances of surviving there are very slim. If it is still there, and it is intelligent, we wont find it, they will see to that. If I lived somewhere other than Earth and just watched one of our 6 o'clock news casts. I would not want Earth to come visit as all.
If there is intelligent life out there somewhere that is far more advanced than us. I am sure they will keep their distance from us. We would be like ants to any intelligent life that could get to us from wherever they were coming from.
Scientist have been looking for intelligent life for years, and the still have not found it anywhere, not even here on Earth.........We think we are intelligent, but in reality, our race is far to young to have a clue. We can't even fully explain things happening right in front of us, let alone on another planet.
Doubtfull needs a happy pill.
And a better spell checker.
Doubtfull; how would you mess up something that is messed up to begin with? You pointed out yourself its non inhabitable, the only thing I can say is we have to start somewhere, its our nature to explore and what we learn along the way may help us to understand a vast amount of other things we can apply these new found technologies to. so its worth while to proceed.
Scientists think Mars DID have a magnetic field at one time. In case you didn't know it, ours is weakening all the time but won't fade out for a very long time. Doubtful need to get a life.
"we are well on are.....OUR ....way"? Mercy!
Doubt: Amusing that you, of all people, would bring up the phrase "Intelligent Life"!
I've always wondered: Has anyone ever given any thought to the implications of removing the usable resources from a planet or asteroid- I mean, really given it thought based on scientific calculations of what happens in relation to spinning or rotating objects as they lose or gain mass?
I'm no expert, but it stands to reason that an object (such as a planet in a relatively stable orbit around a star) that had some of it's mass removed (or mass added) would not stay in that same stable orbit given x amount of time. Furthermore, what if said mass was a fairly large portion of iron? Would that not also affect the magnetic fields of that planet? What about removing hydrogen, oxygen, or even carbon from a lifeless planet- what about moral and ethical implications that we could be destroying the potential for life to exist there in the future?
My point in saying this is not only to make those of higher intellegence think about these things, but to point out that there must be laws and regulations governing these things, but only after there is solid proof that we will not cause the destruction that we have seemed to create for ourselves here on Earth. Taking a few rocks is one thing, but I have think that any resource mined on Mars should be used and should stay on Mars, lest we get greedy and cause trouble on a system level.
Doubt,
"life as we know it" does not necessarily mean intelligent life like us humans, it could include something as basic as bacteria.
Rune,
The amount of mass that would be necessary to produce the type of changes you're referring to would take a million years to move.
Doubtfull, Your view on man's existance needs help. Rune, Although your point is valid (in some small sense) we could never retrieve enough mass from another planet to effect any great change in its orbit/trajectory. As for the moral aspect, how is it immoral to use a resource if ther'es no-one there to steal it from? And worrying over whether some sort of life MIGHT develop in the future? com'on!! --S--
could not help but notice the straight parallel lines across the top of homestake....almost look like tool marks, I'll reserve the not natural comments though, pity we don't see like fifty yards of this though, and ya, pity oppy can't dig down a bit to see if there is a brontasaurus below....future rovers need to be able to move dirt, an air compressor of sorts for example might be a worthwhile tool here, if nothing else than to show the shelf like rocks go down more than several inches...in a way the rovers are cheating the first boots on the ground our of some great mysteries to solve, but still it is awesome that we all get to share in the puzzlement and unraveling of these riddles in just about real time with the nasa dudes, that REALLY makes these rovers unprecedented, all the secrecy and paranoia around so many projects and here is one where they go, "and look here, we just found this and don't know what it is, you know what it is?"
HOW COOL IS THAT? MAN.
p.s, future rovers also need to be able to drill, I mean really drill, like a whole automated drilling rig hell-bent of finding water (not oil, it'd be a heck of a way to prove life once was on mars, then I'd hafta take the counterpoint that oil can form by natural process, just to play devils advocate).
KEEP GOING OPPY! WE ARE SENDING BACKUPS BUT UNLIKE THE SHUTTLE, WE WON"T GIVE UP UNTIL YOUR BACKUP IS IN PLACE, HOLD IN THERE BUDDY!!!
anybody up for a few moon rovers?? at this point a consortium of universities could well do it without nasa (read congresional jerry mandering) oversight, in my not so humble opinion. Meanwhile keep your eyes open for opy to spot some clam shells or snail shells, I feel sure they are nearby, turtle shells may also be around there somewhere but less likely to of been turned up via the dust storms....also, life is surely still on mars, we gotta get near the caves of mt. olympus to find it near the surface, microbes most likely by now, least silica life is all around the rover and we just don't know what we are looking for.............some of the first life on this planet was those darned silver dollars, with a good probability of getting here from elsewhere......
I noticed those lines too and find them quite curious- straight and parallel. You know, I wish to hell they would aim the rovers to some of the unusual things that have been spotted on Mars like the exposed underground tubes or the areas that change color seasonally indicating plant life or one of the domes inside of a crater. It is like they landed in the middle of a desert area and are merely wandering around from one crater to another to see more desert and rocks. While geological info is interesting and all, there are too many REAL interesting anomalies they could drive up to to investigate. Hell, this mission is going anywhere except to the interesting places!!! This so-called search for Martian life is a farce. Let me choose the next rover's landing site and we'll have proof of Martian life within a week.
Ray and Merlin, your point(s) argue for a manned mission. I'm on board for that!
why not move to the ice caps of mars
NASA = bold faced liars. If you look through their photo archive you will find blurred out regions on thousands of photos. If you aren't trying to hide something you don't need to alter photos and you don't need to put a buffer on video feed.
Cite references please.
I'm just glad they're not bald-faced liars, that's much worse
How about some examples to support your accusations.
Destroy needs to get a life!
I’m sorry but Destroy is spot on !! You all scream that you want examples? Well here you go. For starters please go to marsanomalyresearch.com. I love this website because this guy gets it. And he gives links that literally point to the pictures that have been tampered. The good news is that the tampering software isn’t perfect and true gems show thru. And they are eye-opening
Destroy is correct. Heck you can go to just about any Lunar or Mars anomaly site and see the proof of the blurring etc... in thousands of photos! The amount of photo alterations is astounding just on the moon pics alone. This is more than enough information to start finding them yourselves. Take a look at Lunar or Mars anomalies on youtube too. Many people have collected them into presentations. It is too bad that so many of you need someone to tell you where to look instead of just using your search engine to find out yourselves. That is what I did.
Oh yeah, and if someone makes a claim about a subject in which you know absolutely nothing, you might want to give them the benefit of the doubt until you learn something on the subject yourself. This knee jerk disbelief will never help you do or learn anything.
the buried SIGN!, "welcome to our spot, human know-it-alls". titanium on the moon, jump to the cu? leftovers from the arnold schwartznegger movie (why couldn't he change his name, artist formerly known as prince, something more spellable), "your" is indeed a pronon, we have always drooled on the minerals (you don't have to bother with evolution for that) or you can blame columbus.
All this money spent to find out if there is water on Mars????
Yet we can not find a cure for cancer!!!
Here are the NASA Spinoff Database listings for "cancer". I believe you will find that NASA is doing good things with what they are discovering on these space missions. Including the manned ones.
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/spinoff/spinsearch?BOOL=AND&ALLFIELDS=cancer&CENTER=&BOOLM=AND&MANUFACT=&STATE=&CATEGORY=&ISSUE=&Spinsort=ISSUED
OOPS!
Common sense tells me there was no life on Mars..Proof? If the Earth moved from its orbit nothing will survive..
The universe/galaxy/solar system we inhabit is not static. Things have changed over time. So, just because Earth is now the perfect distance from the sun to support life (as we know it), doesn't mean that it has always been that way.
The Earth was formless and Void..It had to be a certain distance from the Sun in order for life to begin.The Earth did not float around until it decided it will stay in one spot and spin.It was formed and stayed right where it was born..
That's easily some of the most meaningless drivel I've ever seen. Granted the Earth may once have been "formless", or as formless at a coalescing cloud of gasses and rocks can be while gravity works it's tender, loving magic upon it, but it was certainly never "void", whatever that's supposed to mean. You can't look at someplace where the earth isn't yet and say that's the earth, it's just not there yet.
The sun also wasn't the same strength three or four billion years ago as it is today. The conditions life formed in were drastically different from what they are now... so drastic we couldn't survive if we went back in time for a peek.
Keep in mind... when they say "life as we know it" may have formed on Mars in the past something very important... we're not the only "life as we know it". Anaerobic microbes, for example, are "life as we know it".
Get him Parrothead!! First of all, ask any astronomer and he'll tell you that we have NO proof that the earh "stayed in one spot" and that the probability for it moving around (distance from sun) is quite high. That and the sun's varying output (over the course of billions of years). most planetary formation models have gas giants forming closer to the sun and migrating outwards. Early solar system was quite the dynamic place!!!
If Mars had life and water..Jupiter must a been a small sun.The problem with this theory is that pluto would not be ball of ice, but a liquid that would be flat,and not be frozen in to a ice ball, but a flat frozen surface instead..
paragus
Let me guess, you must be a member of the "FLAT EARTH SOCIETY".
"If Mars... Jupiter must a been..." / Palmface
paragus, And, not only that, if Mars ate himself for lunch, what would he have for supper?
wat matter paragus? english no good? Mungo like fire...
Paragus---you seem as stupid as they come. Are you a graduate of the California or Texas school systems?
David, does someone need to get a life? ;)
If they were to find gold on Mars, imagine how quickly human technology would advance to get there.
The problem of sending astronauts to mars can be solved by making it a one way trip. Seriously, think a little bigger than a lander and a 3 day stay. Plan for continual one way missions to an area near the north or south pole. Coming back to earth would not be an option after a prolonged stay in an environment with 1/3 earth gravity.
Yes, I would consider going.
Be sure to go to the Stuart Atkinson link above (embedded in the phrase "more than a dozen pictures") for lots of wonderful photos. I've Favorited his blog and will read it regularly from now on. Dang, I wish we could go to Mars and look more closely at this Homestake feature! I'd just love to dig alongside it and see what's under the surface. (Sigh)
Frustrated Mars colonist wannabe...
Is the space program the biggest freakin waste of money ever .... or what?? We have wasted trillions of dollars to come to what conclusions that help you and I on a daily basis?? It's all about ego. You think this country could use those trillions right now??
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/
This is the NASA Spinoff web site. Search on your favorite topic and see how the space program has helped it.
By the way, less than a half trillion dollars has gone into NASA since it was ceated in 1958. I believe the current budget for NASA is $19 billion which is less than the rounding errors in the total federal budget.
a really big finger?... pointing the way? the possibility we werent Gods first, last or even best idea. just saying. does it make you think
Contrary to the notion that humans cannot survive on Mars because the gravity is too weak, the radiation exposure is too great, there is no magnetic field, it is too cold, there is not enough water, there is no free oxygen in the atmosphere, etc. etc. I offer the following link that provides appropriate answers to all of these objections:
http://www.marssociety.org/home/about/faq
Now is the time to once and for all banish the dragons that have so far deterred us from making the attempt. We could have placed the first humans on Mars in 1981 using NERVA-powered rockets under a von Braun-NASA plan that was canceled by President Nixon. We could have placed humans on Mars by 2000 using a NASA mission architecture that was never adequately funded by the first President Bush. We could now place humans on Mars within a decade under the "Mars Direct" mission architecture first proposed by Dr. Robert Zubrin during the 1990s if only our current president were to commit our nation to achieving that goal. While it is a tough challenge, it is a challenge that is not beyond our current technological capability. Further, it is a challenge that is not beyond the technological capability of any other nation willing to vigorously make the attempt. We can either choose to lead the way into this exciting new frontier, or we must learn to content ourselves with merely following in the footsteps trod by others who choose to do so.
But why would we want to live on Mars? I'm all for exploration, and I'm sure it is a fascinating rock, but it is a rock nonetheless.
Well, I suppose you could say the same thing about the earth. More to the point, this is the sort of objection many Americans raised at the time when Thomas Jefferson decided to go forward with the Louisiana Purchase, and also later when the US acquired Alaska from Russia.
Stan,
If you in all honesty see a parallel between the Louisiana and Alaska purchases and using our children's future in the pursuit of knowing more about a dead planet, then any discussion or argument to the contrary would be futile.
Well, it may or may not be a completely dead planet today, that is a question we still need to answer. After we arrive at Mars it will certainly no longer be a dead planet, but a second earth that will be home to a new branch of human civilization. In the immortal words of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky "while the earth is the cradle of mankind, a man cannot live in the cradle forever." As Arthur C. Clarke observed prior to his death in 2008, the day will come in which many of the the descendants of mankind will find it a challenge to point to which part of the sky in which the earth is located! There is no prior period of history that is nearly as exciting as the one in which we now live as we boldly set off into a new frontier that dwarfs any of the adventures recounted by any of our ancestors. From a brief 12-second powered flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903, mankind first set foot on the surface of the moon in just 66 years. If we had not wavered in our resolve, we could have first set foot on Mars in 1981 and have a permanent lunar colony operating in that same decade. We may have fumbled the ball then, but our destiny nonetheless awaits us.
I like the way the media and NASA ignored this "new thing" recently that I found
"In the beginning"--We have all heard the story of the creation in the Bible.. How God pulled all the resources together, is the mystery. God pulled this sphere, we call earth, out of another galaxy that had died. This other galaxy had an atmosphere much different than ours and the gravity pull was much different. This is why the dinosours became so large as the gravity was not same as we now have it.
Why not... this would explain a lot about the real age of this world we now live. There are all kinds of life forms God has created, some not in the same orbit, or around the same sun... Could God do this? Of course and many other such miracles.
Um....
Oh never mind.
Evolution never happened, never will. This universe was created by Divine Design and any attempt to disprove the reality and power of God is just plain stupid. I've heard too many scientists debunk the "big bang" and "natural selection" myths, but yet those myths are still taught around the Bedouin camp fires for the intelligently and spiritually challenged, still prevail without any legitimate science to back it up at all! Oh well . . . you can't fix stupid!
You are right, Larry, Curly and Moe have denied the big bang and the natural selection theories.
The fool hath said in his heart, 'there is no evolution.'
Psalm 54:3
You're right Trooper, not only can you not fix stupid, you can't even convince get it to understand why it is stupid.
jock: Do your best to pat these fools on the head and realize that they can't add. 2 + 2 does not add up to 4 for the willingly ignorant. It's no wonder that the state of education in China is leaps and bounds ahead us in science education.
Trooper - As is trying to prove the existence of God. It is futile. Neither can be done. Not only do you seem ignorant of science, but possibly ignorant of God. And yet you rush to judge with belief only. That seems quite unjust and borderline stupid. Would you have your life depended on these same rules?
Trooper would also argue that the Earth is only 5000 years old regardless of the geological and archaeological evidence that is presented. We the open minded should not berate this individual, we should pity him or her.
These little robots are the reason we should go gungho for more of them and forget manned spaceflight for the far future with better technology. Just a lot of extreme waste sending man around in a vacuum. More science has been done with the rovers than all of the rest of the hundreds of billions put together.
Disagree. A man could do in a week with shovel what these rovers have done over the last 6 years. Robotics will improve of course, but you still can't weigh that against the biomedical advancements that have been made on the space station. Do a google search for the vaccines and other technologies they have come up with.