Liquid water in Gusev?
Robert Clark
material near the rover:
Alien Textures 'Weird Stuff'
Geologists Just Scratching the Surface
http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=761
GRS on Mars Odyssey has shown there are near equatorial spots on Mars
with high hydrogen content, including Gusev:
****************************************************************
From: Robert Clark (rgrego...@yahoo.com)
Subject: Re: Los Alamos Release New Maps Of Mars Water
Newsgroups: sci.astro, alt.sci.planetary, alt.astronomy, alt.life-mars
Date: 2003-07-26 10:46:30 PST
news_naught <news> wrote in message news:<d8lUa.5$hk....@dfw-read.news.verio.net>... > why is the rover going there?
Gusev is at about -15 lat. and 185 W long. As you can see in the
first map on this page, that lies within the area of high hydrogen
content near the equator:
Photos: Water on Mars
http://www.lanl.gov/worldview/news/photos/mars.shtml
This is also discussed in this report of Natalie Cabrol et.al. about
the MER mission:
Synthesis of the Testable Hypotheses for Gusev.
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/mer2003/doc/arcadia_03/talks/Cabrol/cabrol.pdf
Bob Clark
**************************************************************
Experiments under Mars-like conditions have also shown that liquid
water can exist on Mars at least for short periods:
Done deal: Liquid water CAN exist on Mars!
Thursday, September 04 2003 @ 01:43 AM CDT
http://www.aoas.org/article.php?story=20030904014348849
Bob Clark
Uncle Al
>
> The released color image from Spirit showed clay-like or mud-like
> material near the rover:
>
> Alien Textures 'Weird Stuff'
> Geologists Just Scratching the Surface
> http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=761
>
> GRS on Mars Odyssey has shown there are near equatorial spots on Mars
> with high hydrogen content, including Gusev:
[snip]
1) Look up the vapor pressure of ice and water, -10 C to 10 C.
2) Locally measured atmospheric pressure in Martian lowlands is
7-10 torr.
3) No water.
The whole surface of Mars short of its frigid poles has been
lyophilized for a billion years, cooked under vicious solar deep UV,
and cooked by particulate radiation. If it has any biologically
interesting water, then that water must be buried deep - sealed
against evaporation, pressurized by depth, and warmed above freezing
by internal planetary heat from original accretion and continuing
radioactive decay. You'd want a seismic survey, then a kilometer or
three of deep drilling, followed by sample retrieval and examination
both for frank biota and their metabolic products. Bugs are a pain in
the patootie in oil drilling.
The seismic survey is not too bad: Pepper the terrain of interest
with remote seismometers, then crash something big traveling at more
than orbital velocity. That gives you a big sharp isolated pulse.
The drilling is left as an exercise for the alert reader. You might
start at the second seismic pulse crater.
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!
puppe...@hotmail.com
> The released color image from Spirit showed clay-like or mud-like
> material near the rover:
>
> Alien Textures 'Weird Stuff'
> Geologists Just Scratching the Surface
> http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=761
Well, it certainly does not show liquid water in the picture.
And my non-geology-trained eye can't tell for sure even which
chunk of rock is causing the stir, never mind whether it's
clay or mud.
It's kind of brutal. Here's this camera sitting within a meter
or two of the damn thing, and it's hard to tell what kind of
rock it is.
Socks
Robert Clark
You make a good point about the water vapor pressure on Mars. But
this tells us there are no large scale bodies of water (lakes or seas)
currently on Mars, which we already knew from orbital imaging. You
couldn't tell this about small oases from orbital measurements of
water vapor that might exist only for a few hours during the daytime
for a few days of the local summer and which freeze over every night.
You also couldn't tell this about thin liquid films of larger areal
extent but of similar transitory character.
The GRS instrument on Mars Odyssey has already shown there exists
deposits of water within centimeters of the surface at equatorial
locations. Some of these sites such as Gusev can reach peak
temperatures of 80 degrees F during the warmest part of the year. This
is probably warm enough for the high temperature to extend down far
enough to melt water this close to the surface.
Bob Clark
TL the Geologist
I Volunteer to go!!! Hell, I'll even be the drill hand, I don't have to be
the geologist on this one! Damn I want to go.
TL
mothman_prophecies2003
position (latitude, longitude and altitude) of the site where The Spirit landed?
Best regards
Mothman
Sam Wormley
George
"TL the Geologist" <notgo...@tellyou.com> wrote in message
news:jY2dnfQ2TJD...@comcast.com...
I'll clean split spoons!!!
Carsten Troelsgaard
> 1) Look up the vapor pressure of ice and water, -10 C to 10 C.
> 2) Locally measured atmospheric pressure in Martian lowlands is
> 7-10 torr.
> 3) No water.
>
> The whole surface of Mars short of its frigid poles has been
> lyophilized for a billion years, cooked under vicious solar deep UV,
> and cooked by particulate radiation. If it has any biologically
> interesting water, then that water must be buried deep - sealed
> against evaporation, pressurized by depth, and warmed above freezing
> by internal planetary heat from original accretion and continuing
> radioactive decay. You'd want a seismic survey, then a kilometer or
> three of deep drilling, followed by sample retrieval and examination
> both for frank biota and their metabolic products. Bugs are a pain in
> the patootie in oil drilling.
>
> The seismic survey is not too bad: Pepper the terrain of interest
> with remote seismometers, then crash something big traveling at more
> than orbital velocity. That gives you a big sharp isolated pulse.
> The drilling is left as an exercise for the alert reader. You might
> start at the second seismic pulse crater.
ROFL
TL the Geologist
"George" <geo...@george.net> wrote in message
news:IshLb.828$Id...@bignews4.bellsouth.net...
Hey thats two! One more and we can have a small team! Now all we need is
funding, air, and a big ass rocket, any one got one of those lying around?
George
No rocket needed. I've got my nifty pocket popeal super duper sling shot
cannon!
Carsten Troelsgaard
> Well, it certainly does not show liquid water in the picture.
And the desert-kind of landscape has no traces of water
erosion/sedimentation or geomorphologic landscape-features or aparent
imprint of water in the sediment around the rover. I gather that the site
was chosen for the aparent erodet vally (presumably carved by a river) ...
the hilly landscape has a conspicuous lack of water-erosive features.
> And my non-geology-trained eye can't tell for sure even which
> chunk of rock is causing the stir, never mind whether it's
> clay or mud.
As a working-hypothesis: no traces of water. From that follows, that the
finegrained sediment seen neither is clay nor mud. The closest we can get is
to asume that it is silt-sized eolean dust/sand. The atmosphere/wind
carrying/sorting the sediment aparently has properties different than the
Earth-atmosphere and thus a carrying-capacity and generally different
sedimentary properties than at Earth. As the water on Earth (among other
things) mediates an effective (bio-) chemical breakdown of fresh sediment -
what we see on the photoes may be very different from what we are used to
deal with on Earth (mature wellsorted sediments: rounded quartz-grains). I
feel convinced that 1) the 'not so well-rounded' sediment has different
'cohesive' properties than equally sized rounded quartzgrains. 2) The
diverse chemistry possible in the sediment due to lack of chemical breakdown
opens for another unknown array of possibilities.
Well, this Mars-thing has sparked off somewhat odd comments from non
geologists/sedimentologists and it's hard not to put a few basic things on
place.
> It's kind of brutal. Here's this camera sitting within a meter
> or two of the damn thing, and it's hard to tell what kind of
> rock it is.
Black rocks are fairly common on Earth ... should set your mind wandering
til proper results are made when you see them on the photo.
Carsten
Uncle Al
George
I had an Uncle Al once. He died of a heart attack. Just thought that might
be pertinant. Maybe not. Nevermind.
TL the Geologist
Friggen "HUH?"
TL the Geologist
"mothman_prophecies2003" <mothman_pro...@yahoo.it> wrote in message
news:9b20ba49.04010...@posting.google.com...
One Big crater, Mars Lane, Mars 3020339-5000
Robert Clark
site:
Jan. 13, 2004, 2:00PM
Scientists speculate over mudlike material on Mars
By MARK CARREAU
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.hts/space/2350159
I was especially interested (or annoyed) by this passage:
"But scientists discounted the notion that the patch of ground they
dubbed "magic carpet" might be mud because the atmosphere on Mars is
too thin and the temperatures too cold for liquid water."
It seems a continual mistake scientists make in discussing the
possibility of liquid water on Mars is that they always look at the
average conditions or the lowest temperature conditions.
But obviously to form mud you only need the surface to be warm SOME of
the time. At other times when the temperature dropped below freezing,
such as at night, the mud would just become frozen. It is important to
note then that in the daytime when the image was taken Spirit has
shown that in Gusev the temperature can reach 5 degrees C during the
day.
It is also important to keep in mind the gamma ray spectrometer on
Mars Odyssey has shown Gusev to be an area of high water content
within centimeters of the surface:
Synthesis of the Testable Hypotheses for Gusev.
p. 14
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/mer2003/doc/arcadia_03/talks/Cabrol/cabrol.pdf
As far as the pressure, Gusev is at about the same elevation as the
Pathfinder site, and the pressure never dropped below the triple point
for pressure during the entire time of the Pathfinder mission. Since
they are at similar elevations this will also likely be the case at
Gusev.
Bob Clark
cf:
From: Robert Clark (rgrego...@yahoo.com)
Subject: Mars temperatures - they're doing it again!
Newsgroups: sci.astro, alt.sci.planetary, alt.astronomy,
sci.geo.geology, sci.astro.amateur
Date: 2002-03-23 06:08:58 PST
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=971ba4533d20c402
--------------------------------------------------------------
For email response, send to same userid as above, but append
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rgrego...@yahoo.com (Robert Clark) wrote in message news:<832ea96d.0401...@posting.google.com>...
Uncle Al
>
> This article discusses the mudlike material seen at the Spirit landing
> site:
>
> Jan. 13, 2004, 2:00PM
> Scientists speculate over mudlike material on Mars
> By MARK CARREAU
> Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
> http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.hts/space/2350159
>
> I was especially interested (or annoyed) by this passage:
>
> "But scientists discounted the notion that the patch of ground they
> dubbed "magic carpet" might be mud because the atmosphere on Mars is
> too thin and the temperatures too cold for liquid water."
>
> It seems a continual mistake scientists make in discussing the
> possibility of liquid water on Mars is that they always look at the
> average conditions or the lowest temperature conditions.
> But obviously to form mud you only need the surface to be warm SOME of
> the time. At other times when the temperature dropped below freezing,
> such as at night, the mud would just become frozen. It is important to
> note then that in the daytime when the image was taken Spirit has
> shown that in Gusev the temperature can reach 5 degrees C during the
> day.
1) What is the vapor pressure of water at 5 C? 6.54 torr
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/kinetic/watvap.html
2) Martian lowland atmospheric pressure is 7-10 torr total.
3) No liquid water.
Water has a hugely intense infrared absorbance 4000-2500 wavenumbers,
1800 wavenumbers and on down. If there were any water gas phase,
local satellite telemetry would trivially detect and quantify it.
Hell, it would be detectable from Earth. All you are seeing is vacuum
packing of finely divided bone-dry solids, maybe with a little
magnetic interaction.
Bigdakine
Static Cling, anyone?
Stuart
Dr. Stuart A. Weinstein
Ewa Beach Institute of Tectonics
"To err is human, but to really foul things up
requires a creationist"