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Troll_Bait
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)
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 Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 10:40 pm Post subject: Life on Mars? Scientists say pictures are first evidence of |
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Life on Mars? Scientists say pictures are first evidence of flowing water
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Scientists have discovered tantalising evidence of water gushing down gullies on Mars, dramatically boosting the chances that regions of the planet might still be capable of harbouring life.
Pictures taken from Nasa's Mars Global Surveyor, which has been orbiting the planet for 10 years, reveal distinctive streaks of what is believed to be water, bursting out of crater walls and flowing around boulders and other rocky debris strewn across the surface.
Researchers have previously found evidence that ancient lakes once dotted the Martian landscape, and vast quantities of water ice are known to be locked up in sheets of permafrost at the planet's frigid poles. But this is the first evidence that liquid water, crucial to nurture life, might still be found on the planet today.
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 10:41 pm Post subject: |
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But you haven't posted anything about America?!  |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 10:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| But you haven't posted anything about America?! |
America discovered it!
edit: and I am intrigued by the theological problems that life on Mars would present to fundamentalists. Go Mars life! |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 11:19 pm Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| But you haven't posted anything about America?! |
America discovered it!
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Phew! I'm relieved to hear that. For a moment I thought this forum had gone completely off topic!! |
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wannago
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:21 am Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| gang ah jee wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| But you haven't posted anything about America?! |
America discovered it!
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Phew! I'm relieved to hear that. For a moment I thought this forum had gone completely off topic!! |
Good god I get sick of british *****.
Mod Edit: Edited for langauge. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 1:15 am Post subject: |
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Deleted -
In a fit of carefree frivolity I broke my unwritten rule not to indulge the more adolescent of our online community by engaging with them.
Last edited by Big_Bird on Thu Dec 07, 2006 4:22 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 1:20 am Post subject: |
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| You think of yourself as being quite clever, eh? |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 1:30 am Post subject: |
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No, not at all. Just thought I would point out that your self-image is quite transparent. You play it up far too much. You go hard for this pretentious, so-above-it-all eurotrash snob identity. You try too hard to be clever and arrogant and just end up looking like a bored, mediocre, bitter, past her prime blowhard. You need a different angle. Ditch the big_bird (how ironic and self-aware that a fat British woman acknowledges her weight problems in her eslcafe name) and come back as somebody else.
Just sayin. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 1:34 am Post subject: |
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Anyhow, enough of that nonsense. Back to the topic at hand.
I find this discovery amazing. Especially, given the current resurgence of religiosity in America and elsewhere. Reading about other planets and the possibility of life on, surely helps put us in our place. Perhaps we aren't the center of the universe and the most wonderful of gods creations? |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 1:37 am Post subject: |
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Deleted
Last edited by Big_Bird on Thu Dec 07, 2006 4:23 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 1:40 am Post subject: |
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I don't have any socks. I find the whole concept of having multiple internet persona to be wildly immature. Much like being concerned about your internet persona full stop.
Just post your opinion and keep your (not)witty banter to yourself.
Why don't you return to the topic at hand and contribute or go away. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 3:32 am Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| But you haven't posted anything about America?! |
America discovered it!
edit: and I am intrigued by the theological problems that life on Mars would present to fundamentalists. Go Mars life! |
Many would deny it, like Meegook who posits a universe literally 6,000 years old. Of course there's the possibility life was seeded from earth. Lots of creationists admit these days evolution does take place, at least among "kinds". I guess they have to admit that to explain how Noah's ark could hold the entire diversity of life we see.
Of course if we found life that was using something radically different from DNA that would be more solid evidence life arose separately. |
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Troll_Bait
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)
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| Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 5:35 pm Post subject: |
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Scientists says photo evidence suggests water flowed recently on Mars
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After decades of scouring images of Mars for signs of water, scientists believe they have found stunning evidence that water may even now be flowing through the Red Planet's frigid surface.
The news excited scientists who hunt for extraterrestrial life. If the finding is confirmed, they say, all the ingredients favourable for life on Mars would be in place: liquid water and a stable heat source.
"This is a squirting gun for water on Mars," said Kenneth Edgett, a scientist at San Diego-based Malin Space Science Systems, which operates a camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor.
It was the Surveyor that prompted the announcement Wednesday by taking photographs of Mars before it lost contact with Earth last month. The latest findings will appear in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
The images do not actually show flowing water. Rather, they show changes in craters that provide the strongest evidence yet that water coursed through them as recently as several years ago, and is perhaps doing so even now.
In all of its Mars exploration missions, NASA has pursued a "follow the water" strategy to determine if the planet once contained life or could support it now.
Scientists believe ancient Mars was awash with pools of water. And at present-day Mars' north pole, researchers have spotted evidence of water ice. But they have yet to actually see water in liquid form.
"This underscores the importance of searching for life on Mars, either present or past," said Bruce Jakosky, an astrobiologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who had no role in the study. "It's one more reason to think that life could be there."
Some researchers were skeptical that liquid water was responsible for the surface feature changes seen by the spacecraft. They said other materials such as sand or dust can flow like a liquid and produce similar results.
"Nothing in the images, no matter how cool they are, proves that the flows were wet, or that they were anything more exciting than avalanches of sand and dust," Allan Treiman, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston said in an e-mail.
The Global Surveyor previously spotted tens of thousands of gullies that scientists believed were geologically young and carved by fast-moving water coursing down cliffs and steep crater walls. Scientists decided to retake photos of thousands of gullies in a search for evidence of recent water activity.
Two craters in the southern hemisphere that were originally photographed in 1999 and 2001 were examined again in 2004 and 2005, and the images yielded changes consistent with water flowing down the crater walls, according to the study.
Scientists said five to 10 pools of water rushed down the craters in each case. In both craters, scientists found bright, light-coloured deposits several hundred metres long in gullies that weren't present in the original photos. They concluded that the deposits - possibly mud, salt or frost - were left there when water recently cascaded through.
Edgett said a combination of factors, including the shape and colour of the deposits, led the team to believe it was recent water action and not dust that slipped down the slope. He said dust would leave dark deposits.
Water cannot remain a liquid on Mars for long because of sub-zero surface temperatures and low atmospheric pressure that would turn water into ice or gas. But scientists theorize that liquid water is being shot up to the surface from an underground source, like geysers.
Mars formed more than 4.5 billion years ago and scientists generally believe it went through an early wet and warm era that ended after 1.5 billion to 2.5 billion years, leaving the planet extremely dry and cold.
"We're now realizing Mars is more active than we previously thought and that the mid-latitude section seems to be where all the action is," said Arizona State University scientist Phil Christensen, who was not part of the current research.
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NAVFC
Joined: 10 May 2006
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| Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 8:55 am Post subject: |
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| How would life on another wrld pose a problem for christians? The bible doesn't say one way or another wether life was created else where and when it comes to space it is rather ambigous and only says "he created the heavens and everything in them" |
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twg
Joined: 02 Nov 2006
Location: Getting some fresh air...
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| Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 10:22 am Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| But you haven't posted anything about America?! |
America discovered it!
edit: and I am intrigued by the theological problems that life on Mars would present to fundamentalists. Go Mars life! |
I don't care what anyone says. You guys won the internet today. |
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