Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoenix Lander results

[3488]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

Yes indeed, I share silylene's gratitude Rob for you sharing these with us.

I also think it os wind & or ice sublimation moving those particles. The movement is real Rob, that is for 100% certain, just figuring out what is causing it. I think along the same lines as silylene, that it is wind & / or sublimation blowing the particles around.

Phoenix did uncover a lot of ice, that much is for certain, plenty of material for sublimation in that very thin atmosphere, at the datum line (6.1 mb), the same as Earth's atmosphere is at 30 KM / 19 miles above sea level.

Despite Phoenix landing approx 3,700 metres below the datum line, that atmosphere is still pathetically thin, still approx 28 KM / 17.5 miles above sea level on Earth.

Below I have pulled the final weather reports from Phoenix Mars Lander from Sol 108 to Sol 151. Sol 151 was the final scientifically productive sol from Phoenix (Phoenix did survive to sol 157 but that was engineering data only).

Andrew Brown.

 

[rlb2]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

Thanks Andrew but it has to be more exacting than that, for instance if it was windy that sol, it would most likely be windy at dust like it was at the Viking sites where the winds picked up the most during the day just before the sun went down the wind speeds would pick up as mush as 7 meters per seconds or more during this time period. An occasional cleaning of the solar cells would register abruptly as extra energy and therefore could be explained by a passing dust devil but the exact time would be an unknown, I think a dust devil only went over the Lander one time during the full mission.

Also note that there is over 24 hours in a sol, 1 day on Mars, or over 86,000 seconds - so if you track that down to in between the second that the images were taken then you can actively claim that it might have been some kind of reaction from the wind. This is a daunting task at best but stored in the archive somewhere is all that data for someone to tap into who has the knowledge to extrapolate it out. Once their done with that they would have to see if they moved any instruments - vibration from moving instruments is what I think caused some of what you see.

Then their is the possibility of the Strong Magnetic field science experiment turned on to check for magnetic material, in that case something would most probably only move once. These images are over minutes apart so if something moved more than one time then that is definitely something of interest. The wind would have to be strong enough to move said object several times over the course of the time the first image is developed to the last image used is developed some of these images go for hours in between frames some just a few minutes. As a result more than one object should move Then there is what type of effect does sublimation have on the object.

There is no simple answer here without digging into the Phoenix Landers Archived unpublished data if they have it?

What also interest me is a antifreeze life form like some earth's extremophiles could take the brutal cold, heck male penguins can survive the brutal cold in Antarctica in the coldest winter temperatures and at the same time provide warmth for their young. The penguins do this at night time because it takes months before the sun finally rises again. The winters on Mars are more extreme and the summers at the Phoenix Landing site varies to be like late fall to winter at the Antarctica but the sun provides added warmth to darker soil areas on Mars in the summer time.

No doubt if some of these images I showed you are life they are subterranean life forms that the Phoenix Lander dug up who have learned how to survive the cold harsh climate like some of earth extremophiles have done. They most likely would hibernate most of the Martian Year. When the darker soil is exposed to the sun it is heated much more than the air above the surface is so the temperature on the soil is much warmer than just centimeters above it durring the daytime.

For a larger higher quality image of this image

Go to:

http://members.cox.net/theinnovator/OS123EFF907130339_MGM1.77.jpg

Also notice the top item in the image above in the second frame it looks fluid-like then in the last frame it looks like rocks???

Here again is the YouTube animation Link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhfSjJeQf58

 

[silylene]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

I also mentioned a thrid force that could move the soil grains: the capillary forces at the boundries of water droplet evaporation. This is a very strong force, and can be seen in the accumulation of grains at the perimeter of a drying coffee stain, or the pattern collapse of wetted nanopatterns. If this was occuring it would be very interesting, because it would imply that there is a thin film of water (or brine) which exudes to the surface, and then dries.

 

[rlb2]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

Hi silylene, thats an interesting thought, what do you think is going on in this short video?

OS137EFF908370829_MGM1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd_tko9X9ds

There is 19 minutes in between first frame to last frame, there is 5 false color images animated

 

[rlb2]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

___________________________________________________________________________________
New Popular Science article

Life Thrives Below Antarctic Glacier

If microbes can survive without sunlight and oxygen on Earth, what does it mean for the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe?

Other unusual life forms have also been found in the Dry Valleys, such as lithophiles -- microbes that live in tiny pockets of water that fill pore spaces between grains in rock. These organisms obtain energy from chemical reactions between the water and surrounding rock.

Most biologists agree that a search for life elsewhere in the universe should include looking for organisms that live in a variety of conditions -- not just in the type of environment considered habitable by human standards. Because we now know that life can exist in these extreme conditions, the number of places we might find life is much greater than was previously believed.

Analysis revealed that the liquid supported a community of microbes living in a place where lack of sunlight and oxygen would have led scientists to believe that nothing could live there.

If life exists on Mars, scientists believe it is most likely to be in pockets of liquid water beneath the Martian surface. These underground water chambers could harbor microscopic organisms that have evolved unique strategies for survival -- much like the ones under Taylor Glacier.

http://www.popsci.com/environment/artic ... ic-glacier

 

[abq_farside]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

rlb2 - thanks for posting. I found the "scorpion's tail" video pretty interesting.

 

[rlb2]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

Thanks abq_farside, it is important to keep an open mind if we are too every see past a closed door.

 

[paulscottanderson]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

See my response on the other thread, in which I cited an article which says unreacted hydrazine was in the hot exhaust on the way down.

As I had also subsequently noted in the other thread:

Even if the previous pre-landing estimates from 2007 (your cited reference) showed a possibility of significant hydrazine contamination, the actual landing data reportedly showed very little if any, as also noted by Jon, as well as any venting being on the opposite side of the lander from the droplets. How then would this be an easy explanation? I note too that you now also see the possibility of thin brine films in these new animated images.

 

[rlb2]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

New image from Spirit that I turned from raw images into color and sharpened a bit, a lot of white stuff near home plate???

2P293978293EL5M1.5.jpg

 

[nimbus]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

Very nice work.

 

[rlb2]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

Thanks

Couldn't get back to you in a timely matter, I was on vacation, I will start posting MER rover color images again on a limited basis hopefully they won't be "lost in space" or another one of Space.com's famous crashes. I do hope to get over 3,000 MER rover color images I have processed so far on a free image download place, a lot of the color images I made were never processed by NASA or JPL. All I want in exchange is a little credit for the images if posted somewhere else.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Here posted today at space .com is something on planned experiments on extremophiles.

Outer space is known to be unfriendly to biology, but it has been hard to determine just how long it takes for life and life-related compounds to be negatively affected. A new research project plans to monitor samples of organic compounds and living organisms as they orbit the Earth in a small satellite.

The hope is that this will give astrobiology researchers vital data about chemical evolution in the early cosmos, and about the survival of life that may be transported between the planets.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090508-am-oreos-experiment.html

Here is an interesting article about Synechococcus (NŠgeli) halophilic cyanobacterium isolated from the evaporitic gypsum-halite crusts that form along the marine intertidal, and Halorubrum chaoviatoris member of the Halobacteriacea isolated from an evaporitic NaCl crystal obtained from a salt evaporation pond.

http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/nai/li...ts/2008/arc/projects/interplanetary-pioneers/

 

[rlb2]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

Sprit wheel stuck in the muck, about the worse I have ever seen it buried?

PASADENA, Calif. - The Mars rover Spirit has become stuck in loose dirt while ambling around a low plateau, NASA said Monday.

The rover slipped during a recent series of backward drives and its wheels were stuck halfway in the ground. A team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was diagnosing the problem and planned to use a test rover on Earth to try to figure out how to get Spirit out of its jam.

"Spirit is in a very difficult situation," JPL project manager John Callas said in a statement.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30690911/

Above color image I made from L2,L5,L7 raw Pam cam image from JPL site

Above Hazcam greyscale raw image from sol 1899 JPL site

I had to make a movie out of it where it showed how it got stuck go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4LjmE9rJ0I

 

[rlb2]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

Interesting finding in microbiology just published:

Chemist shows how RNA can be origin of life
Discovery, if correct, should help scientists solve many other mysteries

An English chemist has found the hidden gateway to the RNA world, the chemical milieu from which the first forms of life are thought to have emerged on earth some 3.8 billion years ago.

He has solved a problem that for 20 years has thwarted researchers trying to understand the origin of life — how the building blocks of RNA, called nucleotides, could have spontaneously assembled themselves in the conditions of the primitive earth. The discovery, if correct, should set researchers on the right track to solving many other mysteries about the origin of life. It will also mean that for the first time a plausible explanation exists for how an information-carrying biological molecule could have emerged through natural processes from chemicals on the primitive earth.

Other researchers say they believe he has made a major advance in prebiotic chemistry, the study of the natural chemical reactions that preceded the first living cells. “It is precisely because this work opens up so many new directions for research that it will stand for years as one of the great advances in prebiotic chemistry,” Jack Szostak of the Massachusetts General Hospital wrote in a commentary in Nature, where the work is being published on Thursday.

Instead of making the starting chemicals form a sugar and a base, they mixed them in a different order, in which the chemicals naturally formed a compound that is half-sugar and half-base. When another half-sugar and half-base are added, the RNA nucleotide called ribocytidine phosphate emerges.

A second nucleotide is created if ultraviolet light is shined on the mixture. Dr. Sutherland said he had not yet found natural ways to generate the other two types of nucleotides found in RNA molecules, but synthesis of the first two was thought to be harder to achieve.

If all four nucleotides formed naturally, they would zip together easily to form an RNA molecule with a backbone of alternating sugar and phosphate groups. The bases attached to the sugar constitute a four-letter alphabet in which biological information can be represented.

The reactions he has described look convincing to most other chemists. “The chemistry is very robust — all the yields are good and the chemistry is simple,” said Dr. Joyce, an expert on the chemical origin of life at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif.

In Dr. Sutherland’s reconstruction, phosphate plays a critical role not only as an ingredient but also as a catalyst and in regulating acidity. Dr. Joyce said he was so impressed by the role of phosphate that “this makes me think of myself not as a carbon-based life form but as a phosphate-based life form.”

Dr. Sutherland’s proposal has not convinced everyone. Dr. Robert Shapiro, a chemist at New York University, said the recipe “definitely does not meet my criteria for a plausible pathway to the RNA world.” He said that cyano-acetylene, one of Dr. Sutherland’s assumed starting materials, is quickly destroyed by other chemicals and its appearance in pure form on the early earth “could be considered a fantasy.”

Dr. Sutherland replied that the chemical is consumed fastest in the reaction he proposes, and that since it has been detected on Titan there is no reason it should not have been present on the early earth.

 

[rlb2]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

Cloud ice crystals carry biological matter: research

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Ice crystals plucked from clouds and quickly analyzed in flight show bits of biological material -- bacteria, spores and plants -- play a role in the formation of clouds, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.

The finding, reported in the journal Nature Geoscience, offers the first direct evidence of airborne bacteria in clouds, they said.

The team, lead by Prather's graduate student Kerri Pratt, found that biological matter accounted for 33 percent of the particles in ice crystals, and mineral dust accounted for 50 percent.

"It's almost like the biological material is hitching a ride along with the dust," she said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE54G1ZW20090517?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

 

[rlb2]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

Astronaut Searches for Life ... on Mount Everest

Searching for signs of life on Mount Everest could provide a window into the extreme environments that organisms might inhabit elsewhere in the universe.

Ultraviolet radiation is a key parameter in the sustenance of life," Parazynski said. "But too much, of course, and everybody gets skin cancer and it affects plankton blooms. We'll be up at those altitudes at the peak of UV penetration, and we'll be able to assess the amount of ultraviolet damage taking place."

He'll also leave sensors on rocks to detect whether any liquid water exists at any time during the day, or if ice and snow simply sublimate to vapor without passing through the liquid phase.

"If water does exist in certain areas, then life can form there," Parazynski said

Credit - Everest_kalapatthar_crop.jpg‎

Looking for life on top of the world is something that they are finally going to do after so many wasted years and I applaud them for that. Its still not Mars with an atmosphere of apx 280 millibars compared to Mars at 5 to 13 millibars but it is a hostile environment; anything crawling around up there could be tested in a lab under Martian similar conditions later on. It should be no surprise that water buried under the soil could form from the build up of pressure including vapor if there is a heat source, solar radiation striking and heating up rocks are a very logical way to conserve the heat energy from solar radiation.

I have been talking about the heating of exposed surface rocks from solar radiation since the Pathfinder mission in the nineties. UVs could be a good thing for life forms that are protected underground, because of there higher energy they radiate more energy when hitting an object, most UVs are stopped by our atmosphere but on Mars they not stopped therefore there is much more high energy UV radiation hitting the surface than is on Earth. That’s why it would be much warmer on the exposed darker surface of Mars than a few centimeters above the surface, it would supply a heat source for water to develop right below the surface.

 

[rlb2]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

A new look at Spirit

If they keep spinning the tires then they will be more dust settling on the hood.....

Opportunity - A look at what is going on, on the other side of Mars, if it looks like muck and tracks like muck it must be muck....

 

[centsworth_II]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

...If they keep spinning the tires then they will be more dust settling on the hood.....

The rover wheels "spin" at less than 4 rpm.

...if it looks like muck and tracks like muck it must be muck....

I guess you have grandfather status. A new poster would be given a stern talking to for such a comment, and his thread marked for possible transfer to "The Unexplained".

 

[rlb2]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

censtworthII- I guess you have grandfather status. A new poster would be given a stern talking to for such a comment, and his thread marked for possible transfer to "The Unexplained".

rlb2 reply- Hey I remember you we go wa-y-y-y-y back, when flame throwing bullying was in fashion to drive off others who want to serious discus the topics. You guys did a good job here already. No doubt anything you don’t approve or understand must be "the unexplained." This old grandfather blog had over 250,000 hits on it before they changed over.

Any kind of spinning of the wheels is going to kick up dust, you can see it in some of the images soon after. You can see it a little bit in this animation where it most recently got stuck that I made up here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4LjmE9rJ0I

There taking about talcum powder, very fine grain soil, so dust will come up, that’s their reason for the mucky looking tracks.

Levin added: "If it looks like muck, and it puddles like muck, and it tracks like muck -- it must be muck."

This is what he was talking about:

As for that saying read all about it here

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/spirit_gusev_040116.html

I started this post years ago saying the same thing and I will continue to say the same thing if it looks like muck, track like muck then it must be muck. The opportunity image looks like muck, subsurface frost melts builds up pressure from the vapor from sublimation causes water particles to form in the soil etc etc etc.

 

[centsworth_II]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

Levin added: "If it looks like muck, and it puddles like muck, and it tracks like muck -- it must be muck."

This Levin guy doesn't strike me as a very good scientist, drawing definitive conclusions based on the most superficial of observations. I guess it runs in the family. His son, Ron, infamously reported puddles seen by the rover Opportunity. Unfortunately it turned out that the surface of these "puddles" inclined thirty degrees! A neat trick for water! I wonder if Ron ran his scientific findings past pop before releasing them.

There is plenty to be excited about on Mars without making stuff up.

 

[rlb2]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

centsworthII - This Levin guy doesn't strike me as a very good scientist, drawing definitive conclusions based on the most superficial of observations. I guess it runs in the family. His son, Ron, infamously reported puddles seen by the rover Opportunity. Unfortunately it turned out that the surface of these "puddles" inclined thirty degrees! A neat trick for water! I wonder if Ron ran his scientific findings past pop before releasing them.

There is plenty to be excited about on Mars without making stuff up.

Rons reply - I Know your MO, you don't want to talk you want to inflame, thats what you are good at. Bullies are that way they aren't too smart, they get their pleasure out of smart mouthing people they think they can bullie around....

Read the very first part of this post, "Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars" it is from actual research that went on by two researchers in 2005 recreating the temperature and conditions on Mars with the triple point of watery brine. They did it in a Martian-like CO2 environment, instead of a N²O² environment similar to earths at the same pressures and temperature on Mars using the same soil-like conditions. Note all references to the tripple point of water is from an atmosphere of N²O² not one made out of mostly CO2 like Mars as a result you have apples and oranges here when you talk about the tripple point of water.

http://dailyheadlines.uark.edu/5717.htm

University of Arkansas researchers have become the first scientists to show that liquid water could exist for considerable times on the surface of Mars.

"Brine formation could considerably increase the stability of water on Mars by both extending the temperature range over which liquid water is stable to negative-40 degrees Celsius and by decreasing the evaporation rates by two orders of magnitude," the researchers wrote.

This Petri dish contains the Mars soil stimulant used in the experiments inside the simulation chamber. Note the layers of ice and dust and the darkening of the dust. Also, water has flowed out onto the surface and in some places lies over dry soil. The mud forms a seal and helps retain water. Photos courtesy of Derek Sears.

Credit - Derek Sears, director
Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences

Here is a flat area in Endurance crater similar to what he was talking about in the same area with the same effect and yes it can happen on a sloped surface where the water is seeping from under ground I saw this effect many times while hiking.

And here is one in Endurance crater that looks like fog

Centsworth - If you don't like talking about this stuff then go away, stop harassing me...

 

[centsworth_II]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

I have no problem with your statement: "Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars." Read my post of Tue May 19, 2009 10:11 pm again. My issue was with your definitive "...if it looks like muck and tracks like muck it must be muck...."

Stating that something must be a certain way does not leave much room for discussion.

Having a thread devoted to theories, experiments, and observations that show how liquid water could exist on Mars is perfectly fine. Deducing from a photograph that "it must be muck" is most definitely not fine.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

I will note also, that centsworth has as much of a right to comment on your posts as anyone else.

Responding to your posts made on a public forum is not harassment.

 

[rlb2]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

Todays Space.com news:

Entire Region of Mars Likely Shaped by Water

NASA's intrepid rover Opportunity spent two years exploring the geology of Mars' Victoria crater, often perched perilously on the crater's edge.

The results of that effort are now detailed in the May 22 issue of the journal Science. They've given scientists a clear view of some of the processes that have sculpted the Martian surface, including evidence that water shaped much of the entire region where the crater is found.

Another separate study, detailed in the May 21 issue of the journal Nature, looked at the question of how liquid water might have formed on early Mars. The research shows that even though the planet's surface temperature could have been well below freezing, water might still have flowed there if enough minerals were dissolved in it.

Scientists had already seen distinctive sediment layers in Endurance, as well as evidence that water had been an active ingredient in shaping those layers. But Victoria offered a different perspective of the region because it is deeper than Endurance and sits slightly higher, offering a chance to peek at different layers of the ground.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 ... d-wet.html

Some people for years argued the point that if Mars has water ice, valleys, rivers, lake-like terrain then water must have flowed, how can such a thin atmosphere provide the fluid motion to make such feature unless it was much thicker at one time if it was much thicker then water could form, a simple logical conclusion.

Then came more detailed information after Viking etc, but most people was told by the scientific community that water cant exist on Mars today and most likely not in the past so false global models were created spurning ridicule of others who would dare to think otherwise even ones who made models to show otherwise. Don't get me wrong there was a lot of good science coming out of Viking. This bullying logic cost us years of wasted time exploring Mars, just like when false models claiming all moons in our solar system were like our Moon, before Pioneer and Voyager.

At the Viking Landing sites when white colored ice crystals littered the ground and sublimated away they still said water-ice has not been found even though Mars had polar ice caps, yet years later the Phoenix Lander found some water ice sublimating and then declared that indeed water ice is on Mars, such a foolish waist of time yet when years ago people making this same argument got ridiculed. By the way the same argument I made about the Viking Lander I made over one week before the Phoenix Landing team came out with it and declared that through visual evidence of sublimation process which I also provided evidence on at Space.com blog over a week before they did, now all of a sudden we have water-ice – wow someone got the credit for listening to a person who has preached this for decades and even found it before they did at the Phoenix Landing site.

Don't get me wrong I have a lot of respect for the MER rover science team and the Phoenix Landing science team, I am just sick of the years of using simple logical deduction and seeing other people who try to do the same thing trying to explain ourselves to people who all they want to do is ridicule us while throwing this false god, "model", at us.

 

[centsworth_II]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

...I am just sick of the years of using simple logical deduction and seeing other people who try to do the same thing trying to explain ourselves to people who all they want to do is ridicule us...

No one should ridicule using deductive reasoning to envision possibilities. What should be ridiculed is using deductive reasoning to declare certainties. It's one thing to say 'this may be water (or ice), what else could it be, what empirical data can be gathered to distinguish between the possibilities?' It's quite another thing to say 'this looks like water (or ice) so that is what it must be.'

I understand feeling frustrated when the Phoenix scientists looked at the white patches under Phoenix and said 'it looks like ice', but took what seemed a long time before saying 'it is ice.' That's the difference between doing real science and doing armchair science. Real science requires that evident truths be subjected to rigorous scrutiny. The armchair scientist has the luxury of treating a 90 percent probability as if it were a 100 percent probability. Thus the armchair scientist can declare his discovery while the real scientists rigorously rule out the 10 percent chance that there is some other explanation.

 

[rlb2]

Re: Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars / New Phoe

centsworth - The armchair scientist has the luxury of treating a 90 percent probability as if it were a 100 percent probability.

Ron’s reply - They take 10 percent probability make a model out of it turn it in, most people buy in to it scorning those who find it illogical to begin with, in the mean time hundreds or more papers are turned in using the model as if it was a fact. I am all for tried and true testing and research I am against persecution of those who see the obvious by those who are siding for the 10 percent obvious illogical model to begin with. More often than not, after wasting a lot of time reality ends up biting them in the backside making them look like fools and the hundreds of people who turned in papers supporting the fool’s logic.

I am 100 percent for research and exploration to find the truths before coming to an acceptable conclusion, 100 percent against illogical models based on making a science out of something that is only 10 percent probability to begin with.