Mars Water Debate Rages (archival thread reposting #4)

[serak_the_preparer]

gbbaker<br />(<font color="blue">B</font><br />01/08/03 07:58 AM<br /> <br /><br />Jesu* Chris* that's brine!<br />Wow. Look at that stuff where it pooled at the bottom.<br />Ok. I'm getting a little excited.<br />It brings to mind a concept I wanted to run by some of you guys and see what you think because it has to do with a water problem that I don't know how to technically figure out.<br /><br />Although I'm sure that many of you have already heard me speak many times by now of the additional method I came up with to assist in the terraforming of mars which involves using anaerobic bacteria to convert the approximate 19% rust content in the regolith into magnetite so as to lower the albedo.<br />The idea is to do it as a companion to the other most widely agreed upon method which is to use super greenhouse gases (pfc's and SF6).<br />I'll just to go over it very quickly here so as to orient you for my question.<br />If any of you have read Fogg & McKay's pdf paper which mathematically goes over terraforming mars, specifically where it goes over how it (it being rising pressure/temperature) will progress with the PFC's/SF6 gases arriving at the needed 12 parts per billion, you know that one of the problems in it's effectiveness is that as pressure increases it becomes increasingly harder for CO2 in the most coldest and deepest areas to release.<br />If you've read that then you should be able to see how my idea of having nuclear powered rovers running around with 4 or five foot long heater drill bits under little domes for the sole purpose of keeping the regolith warm enough so that these little critters turn the rust to magnetite which will lower the albedo which will increase the ground temperature. The idea is that you have a number of these (say four

 

[serak_the_preparer]

rlb2<br />(<b><font color="yellow">F</font>/b>)<br />01/10/03 11:57 AM<br /><br />Mars Red, White or Blue?<br /><br />There is an another very good reason that Mars past should be considered blue. If for a moment we can compare apples to applejacks (Earth to Mars) what would the Earth look like billions of years from now.<br /><br />When I say billions of years I mean before the sun starts acting up and all its hydrogen fuel has been used up and it vaporizes the Earth. In 1 billion years our moon will depart from its orbit around the Earth if it continues to recede from Earth at its present speed. The tidal forces from the moon will be getting weaker and weaker. Therefore the process that helps guarantee Earth's magnetic field, Earth's core magnetic dynamo, will weaken. A weaker magnetic field will mean more harmful radiation from the solar wind striking the Earth. The gas in the atmosphere will be constantly impacted by radiation, which after impact will increase its kinetic energy to the point that it heats up the atmosphere. At the same time the lighter gas N2 and O2 will gain velocity and start escaping the atmosphere. This is happening while the heavier greenhouse gas of CO2 gets thicker. In the mean time all the poles will melt and the oceans begin to boil away. Then the oceans would recede enough to release some of the stored CO2 and would heat up and release more CO2.<br /><br />There will be a parched Earth where all the vegetation would more easily burn so fires will sweep across the continents and release more CO2. While the atmosphere is getting warmer the core is getting colder. Earth's atmosphere by now is very thin. After millions of years of extreme hot temperatures in the atmosphere the Earth will cool down. This happens because at Earth's p</b>

 

[serak_the_preparer]

voyagerwsh<br />(<b><font color="red">M</font>/b>)<br />01/10/03 12:37 PM<br /><br />Interesting article, RLB 2!<br /><br />I remeber member Abracadabra contributes one comment in the "Life on Mars" thread is very interesting and worthwhile to repost here...<br /><br /><i>"I predict huge fozen oceans will be found on Mars. The reason they are not obvious is because their surface ice has been covered with debris from dust storms and meteorite impacts over millions of years. But the lower levels of the oceans will be found to be heated from within the planet. So there will be a considerable depth of liquid water beneath the ice, containing, probably anaerobic, life forms - perhaps considerably developed. How thick is the ice? I dunno. A couple of thousand feet perhaps. Possibly some of the rift valleys with landslides evident on their sides are simply cracks in the ice under very deep accumulated dust layers. The free flowing water that appears to have carved out some of the features of the terrain may have been ejecta from a meteorite impact large enough to have penetrated the ice through to the water below."</i><br /><br />I have read it many times and pondered what the possibility of such scenario of water/ice on Mars? I like member Abracadabra's idea or prediction very much. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> Two keys to this scenario, subsurface geothermal energy and water/ice not only in the shallow depth (as detected by the Odyssey) but kilometers thick beneath the crust.</b>

 

[serak_the_preparer]

rlb2<br />(<b><font color="yellow">F</font>/b>)<br />01/11/03 08:44 PM<br /><br />voyagerwsh<br /><br />Interesting article, RLB 2!<br /><br />rlb2<br /><br />thanks<br /><br />This quote from Abracadabra I find very interesting.<br /><br />"The free flowing water that appears to have carved out some of the features of the terrain may have been ejecta from a meteorite impact large enough to have penetrated the ice through to the water below."<br /><br />I to have always thought that there are some lakes at the bottom of some of the larger craters. If you look at some the dormant volcanoes on Earth such as Crater Lake and some past asteroid impacts you can easily imagine this. Water tends to flow on a path of least resistance, downhill. During the early days of Mars if it had aquifers then anything impacting it could disturb those underground aquifers. All you have to do is go to an abandoned gravel or sand pit on Earth and see for yourself. I use to swim in sand pits (small lakes) formed by mining companies in Northern Illinois when I was a kid. If there are lakes of water ice in these craters then we can help disprove white Mars theories. If the craters aren't full of water ice below the dust and sediment then we will have a lot of explaining to do for a blue Mars. We will have to go a lot deeper than 3 meters to find out.<br /><br />Logic would tell you that after the impact of an asteroid the cold weather soon takes over and forms a permanent ice cover over the water at bottom of the craters on Mars. Million of years of dust-storms will cover these frozen top layers up. If there is still some heat radiating to the surface of the planet from below it will heat some of the ice up. Now remember at the bottom of the oceans, because of the high pressure, it can be bel</b>

 

[serak_the_preparer]

spaceseed<br />(<font color="blue">B</font><br />01/12/03 10:29 PM<br /><br />If Mars has sub-surface oceans, then the prospect for life is similar to that on Europa. One can imagine anaerobic bacteria living in such an environment. But, on Earth at least, all anaerobic bacteria produce gasses such as NO2, N2, H2S, or even CH4 (I won't get into the liklihood of methanogenic archaebacteria on Mars here). For reference, see this site on Anaerobic Respiration<br /><br />If this is happening in any significant quantity, where is the evidence in the atmosphere?

 

[serak_the_preparer]

borman<br />(<font color="blue">B</font><br />01/28/03 05:41 PM<br /><br />Late replies<br /><br />spaceseed,<br />Sorry to have taken so long, over a month, to reply, but your questions begat an avalanch of other questions which reach beyond the current thread. The outcome of these additional questions is some idea how a potential new science, paleohelioseismology, could impact current ideas regarding planet and moon formation. I'll start a new thread about this later and will address your questions at hand and try to avoid going off-thread very far.<br /><br />1) Odyssey found what is best interpreted as ice. The GRS can only see about a meter deep. As to deeper water. the GRS can say nothing either way. The possibility of subsurface oceans will be best ruled out by seismometer readings. GRS, radar, and THEMIS will be too superficial to be of use here. Seismometers, on the other hand, are very good in this regard. They were able to tell that the Moon was dry throughout because of seismometer readings for example. I believe one of the missions under consideration was going to try to land a seismometer in a good valley floor location where it could listen for subsurface liquid water.<br /><br />2) Early accretion of nebular material between the time the sun ignited and the over million year gap before first starshine gives time to acquire nebular volitiles including all that water. Late accretion commences after initial starshine evaporates and blows away volatiles leaving a much lower percentage of water in the nebular near continuum. The role of asteroid belts is not as a source of drier material but rather it functions as a zone of discontinuity that arrests further inward migration of planets due to accretion. No belts may lead to hot Jupiters. The astero

 

[serak_the_preparer]

borman<br />(<font color="blue">B</font><br />01/29/03 11:58 PM<br /><br />Trails, Shergottite, and antipodes<br /><br />Not sure whether this is a viable thin line or more likely just junk research.<br /><br />1) Mysterious trails near the Martian South pole:<br />http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20021209/marssled.html#<br />Best guess is it looks like a glacier trail, but there are no obvious glaciers around. Next best guess is a wind blown pattern that reaches a rather long 250 miles. Less likely, but volunteered anyways is that the structure rather than being surficially created (most likely explanation), it might have been created beneath the thinner polar surface. Is this evidence of an ice Band which has imprinted itself upon the overlaying dirt? Wrinkles in the clown face mascera?<br /><br />2) NWA 1669: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20030127/marsmeteor.html<br />The recent interpretation of this shergottite is that it is wetter than Earth rocks.<br />Albert Jambon: "This is the first sample of Martian rock which enables us to confirm the theory that deep below Martian surface the rocks are more water-rich than is the case on Earth."<br /><br />The find is puzzling, however, because Mars has no oceans and the amount of surface water there "appears to be very small," he said.<br /><br />Could this be a clue to favor subterranian liquid water?<br /><br />3) So long as this is considered just conjecture and so lacks the foundation strength of the first three correlations observed by Sherghofer et al., here is a possible 4th correlation regarding the antipodal locations of Dark Slope

 

[serak_the_preparer]

maddad<br />(<b><font color="red">M</font>/b>)<br />01/30/03 11:12 AM<br /><br />borman<br />"<font color="yellow">Early accretion of nebular material between the time the sun ignited and the over million year gap before first starshine</font><br />Huh? What is Late talking about? We had starshine before we had ignition.<br /><br />"<font color="yellow">asteroid belts is not as a source of drier material but rather it functions as a zone of discontinuity that arrests further inward migration of planets due to accretion.</font><br />Huh? What is Late talking about? The asteroid belt, singular, doesn't have enough mass to arrest anything. The planets do not migrate inward, and accreation is not an inward or outward motion.<br /><br />"<font color="yellow">The hypothesis is that belts formed at the same time as planets and halted their accretional advance because space became too empty and chunky to support the needed continuity for accretional advance.</font><br />That's convoulted because the word advance is a poor choice. Belts, meaning zones, do not advance as in move in or out relative to their distance from the Sun. They may though advance in that they collect and compact more material.<br /><br />"<font color="yellow">Heavy bombardment is . . . the consequence of planets running into belts.</font><br />By what mechanism does Late postulate that these planets run anywhere?<br /><br /><br /><font color="orange">Where are we going and what are we doing in this hand-basket?</font>/safety_wrapper></b>

 

[serak_the_preparer]

voyagerwsh<br />(<b><font color="red">M</font>/b>)<br />01/30/03 11:25 AM<br /><br />Borman, due to its large, but not global, weak magnetic field, Mars may have local subsurface salty ocean but perhaps not at global scale as Europa might have.</b>

 

[serak_the_preparer]

borman<br />(<font color="blue">B</font><br />01/30/03 03:40 PM<br /><br />Nuclear fusion and belts<br /><br />Maddad,<br />I will try to address your questions in the order your present them.<br /><br />1) Nuclear fusion is what causes stars to shine. The only heat prior to fusion is Brown Dwarf heat which is considerably less effective at burning away volatiles to a great distance. However, a star is not just instantly born with its nuclear furnace blazing away. It too must accrete enough mass to reach the critical pressure where the weight of accreted gas will heat to fusion temperatures. This will take time. Meanwhile, the nebular material has not just stopped observing physics while waiting for the star to start thermonuclear reactions. It has to obey physics as well during the same time by collapsing into a disk and setting the stage for planetary formation. Something is needed, a shock event, to get the initial perturbation going that is going to manifest itself as starting points for planetary formation. When fusion occurs at the core of a star, it takes a long time for the photons to reach the surface. It is estimated that in our sun, even after it is hot like today, it takes about a million years for the photons created to reach the surface via random walk. Of course, after reaching the surface, they can strike Earth after only about 8 1/2 minutes. The million-year number is just a lower bound. Many of the intial photons from first nuclear detonation will be absorbed by the outer layers of the sun to heat it up first. It could take tens of millions of years after first detonation before photons actually reach the planets. Recent studies have shown that planets can form this fast. Its just that they form in the dark and do not wait for millions of

 

[serak_the_preparer]

borman<br />(<font color="blue">B</font><br />01/30/03 04:39 PM<br /><br />Mars relic magnetic imprints.<br /><br />Voyagerwsh,<br />Jupiter has a very strong magnetic field, possibly attributed to superconducting metallic Hydrogen. Europa is quite a bit closer to Juptier than Mars. If Europa has a salty ocean, Jupiter can induce a secondary field in Europa that the local spacecraft measured. If Mars was also as close to Jupiter and had a salty ocean buried beneath the ice we might also infer an ocean. Unfortunately, there's no big Jupiter around when you need one for induction to test for salty oceans.<br /><br />A prior post was assuming not only a short duration early magnetic field for early Mars but also a very wide angle uniform field that could be broken via stress fractures. Considering how far these remanent fields stretch around the planet, the second assumption becomes implausible. I.e. it seems too wide to be one pole formed. Where is the other pole formation? Is it serendipitously all demolished? I don't like coincidence arguments, so I offer an alternate possibility consistent with the frozen ocean idea with dirt on top.<br /><br />Suppose it is early in Mars history and a dynamo is still present to produce a magnetic field. It is already cold and the oceans have frozen with drier accretions piiling on top. The volcanoes have started forming but have not yet reached the water's surface nor breached the ice. Europa has no breaching volcanoes, just sulpher spots. Well now suppose a rather large asteroid makes a glancing or oblique impact upon the as yet unanchored surface. This will cause relative motion between the magnetic core and melted outer surface. The ice mantle does not melt through, but the dirt on tops melts well enough to recieve a mag

 

[serak_the_preparer]

remcook<br />(<b>A</b>)<br />01/30/03 04:42 PM<br /><br />"Borman, due to its large, but not global, weak magnetic field, Mars may have local subsurface salty ocean but perhaps not at global scale as Europa might have. "<br /><br />Isn't that the other way around?

 

[serak_the_preparer]

maddad<br />(<b><font color="red">M</font>/b>)<br />01/30/03 05:11 PM<br /><br />borman<br />"<font color="yellow">The only heat prior to fusion is Brown Dwarf heat which is considerably less effective at burning away volatiles to a great distance.</font><br />Ah, I don't think so. First of all your term "Brown Dwarf heat" is a bit vague. Before a star goes main sequence it spends perhaps less than a million years as a protostar. Here is shines with an energy output <b><i>many times its future main sequence self</i></b>. The source for the energy is gravitational collapse. The clump of molecular dust cloud that eventually becomes a young star starts out being light years across and perhaps only ten degrees Kelvin. As it condenses, becoming many orders of magnitude smaller in diameter, its temperature tries to rises by <b><i>three times as many orders of magnitude!</i></b> Some of this energy radiates away and is lost to interstellar space, but some of it stays behind to heat the core to ten million degrees Kelvin. Fusion begins; the star is now on main sequence.<br /><br />The point of this is that the star is extremely energetic <b><i>before</i></b> it ever ignites its fusion core. Much more energetic.<br /><br /><font color="orange">Where are we going and what are we doing in this hand-basket?</font>/safety_wrapper></b>

 

[serak_the_preparer]

borman<br />(<font color="blue">B</font><br />01/30/03 06:55 PM<br /><br />Heat of collapse does not exceed thermonuclear heat<br /><br />Maddad,<br />Go back and reread your sources that implies that multiple nuclear explosions will cause a star to get very much----Colder! Gravitational collapse can not be a source of heat that greatly exceeds thermonuclear energy conversion that goes on within a star. If you feel this is the case, even though it is contrary to known physical laws, then please submit a link supporting this claim. I rather think protostar shine is caused by nuclear fusion instead of gravitational collapse, but I will be happy to read any link you give to support your idea. I do not claim that protostar states do not occur. I only distinguish between first core fusion and the time it takes for first light from that fusion to escape the star.

 

[serak_the_preparer]

maddad<br />(<b><font color="red">M</font>/b>)<br />01/30/03 07:43 PM<br /><br />borman<br />"<font color="yellow">Heat of collapse does not exceed thermonuclear heat.</font><br />If you had used temperature instead of heat I would have agreed with you.<br /><br />"<font color="yellow">Go back and reread your sources that implies that multiple nuclear explosions will cause a star to get very much----Colder!</font><br />Uh, what? Go back and reread your sources that says I think that.<br /><br />"<font color="yellow">Gravitational collapse can not be a source of heat that greatly exceeds thermonuclear energy conversion that goes on within a star.</font><br />Why would you think that? *Giving you a curious look*<br /><br />"<font color="yellow">it is contrary to known physical laws</font><br />Fascinating. What known physical laws does it contradict?<br /><br />"<font color="yellow">I only distinguish between first core fusion and the time it takes for first light from that fusion to escape the star.</font><br />What is your point in making this distinction?<br /><br /><br /><font color="orange">Where are we going and what are we doing in this hand-basket?</font>/safety_wrapper></b>

 

[serak_the_preparer]

borman<br />(<font color="blue">B</font><br />01/30/03 09:37 PM<br /><br />Circular defense<br /><br />I see that you choose not to give even one link to support your view that the energy output of a protostar is many times that of its main sequence energy and that the energy is due exclusively to energy of gravitational collapse. You assert that no fusion whatsoever is going on. I do not believe this is because you do not wish to give a link, but rather that no such link exists.<br /><br />You ask for a simple counter. OK. Most theorists would say that gravitational collapse goes on until nuclear fusion begins. At this point collapse is balanced by the outward pressure of heat of fusion. If the energy of collapse is greater than the possible energy of fusion as your arguement implies, then the energy of fusion can not overcome the energy of collapse. The result will be that all stars immediately go to a neutron star or black hole without any of them ever entering the main sequence stage. This clearly is not observed.<br /><br />I simply and politely ask for further information from you regarding your idea that would "correct" my lack of proper information. I did not ask for evasive circular statements.<br /><br />The one question you ask that is actually worth responding to is:" What is your point in making this distinction?"<br /><br />First, it is you and not me that dragged a protostar distinction into my theory. I find it irrelevant and arbitrary to the theme I am persuing. Further, I feel that it is too simplistic to think that there is just one or two stages that a star goes through during its life. Any theory that at its outset tries to attach too close a significance to such simplistic deas may cause an idea to fail prematurely. To be sure, it may fail

 

[serak_the_preparer]

spaceseed<br />(<font color="blue">B</font><br />01/31/03 09:13 AM<br /><br />borman: Can you explain how acoustical waves can travel through space? I thought a medium was required.<br /><br />About the underground ocean on Mars: According to your theory, the inner planets were formed with their water in place. This contradicts other ideas that lighter compounds like water would be found further out in the nebula, with heavier elements closer in, due to centrifugal force. This accounts for the inner rocky planets. Water arrived later from cometary infall. But then, you ask, where are the orbit-crossing comets now? They would not have all impacted planets. Good question.<br /><br />In your model, Earth and Mars were formed with oceans. The late bombardment was mainly solid material. This would sink in Earth's liquid ocean, but stay on top of Mars' frozen water. But how do you account for the quantity of material that must be present to cover Mars' oceans to the depth that they must be below the surface?<br /><br />Another thought: If we had the forsight to place seismic instruments on the moon, why did we not do the same during the Martian lander missions? Or does it require people to set them up?

 

[serak_the_preparer]

voyagerwsh<br />(<b><font color="red">M</font>/b>)<br />01/31/03 10:34 AM<br /><br />Borman, very impressive write-ups you have presented above.<br /><br />Current martian magnetic field could be the remnant of ancient magnetic material, such as hematite. But it may suggest that a plate tectonic phenomenon was going on during Martian early days. Also, the detection of magnetic strpies by MGS were mostly in southern hemisphere where regolith are conceived much older. However, one could not rule out the possibility of weak conductive dynamo inside its crust at present days.<br /><br /><i>"Whether this weak magnetic field implies that we are observing a fossil crustal magnetic field associated with a now extinct dynamo or merely a weak but active dynamo similar to that of Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune remains to be seen"</i>-- Dr. Mario H. Acuna, principal investigator for the magnetometer/electron reflectrometer instrument at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.<br /><br />Europa does have a 5 1/2 hour reversed magnetic field of its own vs Jupiter's magnetosphere as observed by the Galileo spacecraft. That does suggest a salty ocean inside its icy crust.<br /><br />Reference<br /><br />MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR DETECTS MARTIAN MAGNETIC FIELD AS AEROBRAKING BEGINS, JPL</b>

 

[serak_the_preparer]

maddad<br />(<b><font color="red">M</font>/b>)<br />01/31/03 10:36 PM<br /><br />borman<br />"<font color="yellow">I see that you choose not to give even one link to support your view that the energy output of a protostar is many times that of its main sequence energy and that the energy is due exclusively to energy of gravitational collapse. You assert that no fusion whatsoever is going on. I do not believe this is because you do not wish to give a link, but rather that no such link exists.</font><br /><br /> <b><i><font color="green">Believe!</font></i></b><br /> 1. Article<br /> 2. Article<br /> 3. Article<br /> 4. Article<br /> 5. Article<br /> 6. Article<br /> 7. Article<br /><br />Those stars are shining for up to tens of millions of years before nuclear fusion of Hydrogen (not Deturium and Lithium which are insignificant in energy production) supplies most of the energy. Your idea that light takes a million years to travel from the core to the surface applies to main sequence stars, not these protostars and T Tauri stars. There is no million year gap in solar output.<br /><br />"<font color="yellow">The new science I propose . . .</font><br />You need to at l</b>

 

[serak_the_preparer]

borman<br />(<font color="blue">B</font><br />02/01/03 01:19 AM<br /><br />The difference between energy and luminosity<br /><br />Maddad,<br />Thank you for the links. I've already read most of them but reviewed them all the same. I quite agree with all the information that they give and find no contradiction between them and what I have been postulkating. However, none of them support your statement:<br />"Here is shines with an energy output many times its future main sequence self." If you substituted luminosity for energy output, I would not be disagreeing with you. It is elementary physics that energy is proportional to frequency. Luminosity is propotional to the the flux, the total number of photons. But it is the total sum of photon at their particular frequency that determines the total energy output from a star. During the contraction proccess, the star begins to heat due to gravitational collapse and it is still very large in volume compared to its main phase. Because of its large size it will be more luminous. The point is that the photons are red or infrared. The energy per photon is much less than the energy of post fusion photons which will have a much shorter wavelength. Shorter wavelength means more energy which makes sense. I never said a star emits no radiation prior to fusion. I refered to this red phase that occurs before fusion as the Brown Dwarf phase. I defined the difference between this early phase and the very first moment when core fusion occurs arbitrarily as the difference between cold star phase (infrared) and Hot star phase (yellow/white). The hot phase has much more energetic photons due to high energy photons being created by core fusion. These core fusion photons normally take about a million years to reach the suns surf

 

[serak_the_preparer]

maddad<br />(<b><font color="red">M</font>/b>)<br />02/01/03 03:38 PM<br /><br />borman<br />Luminosity <b><i>is</i></b> the word we use to describe a star’s energy output.<br /><br />What you are talking about is the <b><i>Stefan-Boltzmann</i></b> law. It relates the total energy coming from a unit of area of an object to the fourth power of its temperature. It says that if you double the temperature (absolute scale) then the energy output goes up 16 times. You think this helps your case, but you only think you thought.<br /><br />The Sun's surface temperature is 5,800 degrees Kelvin. The molecular gas cloud starts out at about ten degrees Kelvin. That is a ratio of 580 to one, and therefore has an energy output ratio of 100 billion (5804) to one. The Sun develops 100 billion times as much energy as that original part of the molecular gas cloud that created it, or so you think you thought.<br /><br />The other factor relates energy output to the square of the size of the object. Double the diameter and the energy output goes up four times. The Sun’s diameter is 8 million miles. The molecular gas cloud is light years across. Just for S&G let us assume 8 trillion miles. Although that is a touch conservative, that diameter is exactly a million times greater than the Sun, so the surface area is a trillion times more. Divide that by 100 billion and we discover that the original molecular gas cloud puts out ten times as much energy as the Sun does now. Now we get to the fun stuff. We are going to shrink that molecular gas cloud and find out what happens to its energy output.<br /><br />When the molecular gas cloud has shrunk to 1/1000th of its original diameter (half way to the size of the Sun on the log scale), the surface area is now a millionth of its origina</b>

 

[serak_the_preparer]

remcook<br />(<b>A</b>)<br />02/03/03 08:11 AM<br /><br />borman/maddad: how was this related to water on Mars again? I lost track a bit. Couldn't you fight this dispute in a new thread, dealing with protostars?<br /><br />Anywayzzzz....water..Mars...

 

[serak_the_preparer]

spaceseed<br />(<font color="blue">B</font><br />02/03/03 12:07 PM<br /><br />The formation of stars and their planets from a gas cloud determines the initial distribution of elements and compounds, including water, among the planets. This affects how much water Mars had when it was created, and how much arrived from comets later on. This, in turn, affects the viability of the hypothesis that Mars has large underground oceans, which may be affecting surface features.<br /><br />So while the discussion has digressed into first principles, ultimately it is relevant. I hope it sticks to science and does not digress (further) into name calling.*<br /><br />borman: What does your model predict about about the distribution of water and other light elements? It seems that the denser planets are closer to the sun, so would the water be initially found in the outer reaches of the solar system?<br /><br />|||*Note from the Mad Archivist: Name-calling post to which Spaceseed refers and its inevitable - though moderate - response both edited out of this copy of the deleted thread.|||

 

[serak_the_preparer]

remcook<br />(<b>A</b>)<br />02/03/03 12:38 PM<br /><br />ah ok. Thanks spaceseed

 

[serak_the_preparer]

voyagerwsh<br />(<b><font color="red">M</font>/b>)<br />02/12/03 02:18 PM<br /><br />Gullies are most likely carved by liquid water from shallow subsurface aquifers (200-300 meters deep), according to Jennifer Heldmann and Michael Mellon of University of Colorado, Boulder.<br /><br /><i>"The bottom line is that the shallow aquifer model matches most of the predictions and observations," Heldmann said. "Liquid water is the more likely agent," she said.</i><br /><br />Gully Search Supports Liquid Water on Mars, Space.com</b>