NASA: Solar Winds Destroyed the Ocean on Mars

[bananas]

Source: US News & World Report

NASA on Thursday unveiled data from a Mars probe that confirms the red planet once had an ocean and air, but it transformed into a frozen desert because it lost the ability to protect itself against the solar currents of the sun.

Scientists during a press conference explained findings from the eight scientific instruments on the satellite that has spent a year orbiting the skies of the red planet – known as the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution probe, or MAVEN.

<snip>

Water was “abundant” on Mars until between 3.7 billion to 4.2 billion years ago, at a time when the surface of Earth was also in its infancy, said Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator on the MAVEN team. A mystery remains regarding exactly how – and when – its core cooled and it stopped generating its magnetic field, enabling solar winds to slowly sweep away the atmosphere over eons and making it unable to sustain the massive ocean that once covered much of its northern hemisphere, Jakosky said.

<snip>

Mars could have lost much of its atmospheric gas billions of years ago when the radiation and solar wind from the sun could have been stronger than they are today, Jakosky said. The probe recorded recent waves of solar winds sweeping rope-like tendrils of atoms up to 3,107 miles into space, taking the building blocks of life away from the planet.

Signs that the atmosphere of Mars continues to fade after millions of years could doom hopes that it might ever be made more like Earth. This process, known as terraforming, could theoretically use carbon dioxide and other molecules trapped in the planet’s surface to rebuild the atmosphere, but “if it was stripped away into space it is not possible to bring it back,” Jakosky said.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/11/05/nasa-solar-winds-destroyed-the-ocean-on-mars

[Joe Shlabotnik]

1. Solar winds...

I hate those guys...

[IMG][/IMG]

[ffr]

32. Great one!

[puzzledeagle]

2. Really depressing to think about, we might be stuck on Earth forever

No FTL travel, no planets to colonize, no government willing to fund space exploration...what a shitty future we live in today.

[geomon666]

3. It won't be forever.

Eventually we'll kill ourselves off or the universe will do it for us.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

5. Only in America. Other countries are going for it.

[bananas]

12. I've become very optimistic about this, for a number reasons.

I've never considered terraforming Mars to be essential to colonizing it. We can create large biodomes on the surface, as well as large underground cities. The L5 Society planned to build a colony at L5, at the distance of the moon. What's really held us back is launch costs. And that is changing, we are entering a new era of space exploration.

We've just reached a milestone of 15 years continuous habitation of low-earth orbit in the ISS, and commitments to maintain the ISS through at least 2024.

I was truly inspired as officially atheistic China built it's own space station, "The Heavenly Palace", and sent men and women there on it's own rocket, "The Divine Vessel". Chinese television broadcast a woman performing the Taoist practice of T'ai Chi in zero-g aboard The Heavenly Palace. Taoism has been a big influence on me, so I was very pleased to see this, along with the poetic naming of the spacecraft as well as the technical accomplishment.

China has also committed itself to building a lunar base which will be open to all countries, and has gotten Europe involved.

The biggest roadblock to space is launch costs, and watching Elon Musk's tests of landing his boosters convinced me he's really doing it. We are entering a new era of space flight, and Elon has his sights set on making it affordable to get all the way to Mars.

In the UK, Reaction Engines has demonstrated all aspects of their SABRE technology, and just contracted with BAE to build a ground test engine. Independently reviews have been very positive. This will eventually power a space plane, the kind we saw in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Bigelow finished development of NASA's inflatable transhabs, put two in orbit years ago, and will attach another to the ISS in a few months. NASA called them "transhabs" because they are habitats for the transit to Mars - Congress defunded the project in the 1990s because there was no funding for a rocket to send it to Mars.

So things were looking bad for a while, but now are moving along rather well. As long as we can avoid WW3, which would teally suck.

[cantbeserious]

15. Keep Dreaming The impossible Dream - We Reached Low Earth Orbit - There It Ends

eom

[leveymg]

18. You do realize that as far as propulsive energy needs, that's the hardest part?

Get the fuel and materials to about 150 miles up, and travel to Mars is a snap - a long, slow snap, but very doable. The question is: why, and at what opportunity cost (what are we willing to trade off)? I propose we do away with the next generation bomber and simply close down the F-35 program. That would free up hundreds of billions over a decade.

But, aren't there more important things than putting a handful of humans on Mars?

[cantbeserious]

19. Yes - And I Also Realize The World Will Not Support The Investment As De-industrilization Unfolds

eom

[Android3.14]

17. Good analysis. Have you read Seveneves?

Don't let these people who always wear blues-colored glasses pull you down. Humans are the first species we've encountered that have the ability and resources to survive extinction level events.

The novel by Neal Stephenson, Seveneves, is a great read and uses some excellent projections to envision how humans might survive as a space faring civilization. Stephenson's fiction is amazing.

We can solve these problems.

[bananas]

42. Haven't read it, but it looks interesting.

Just the fact he worked at Blue Origin makes it interesting:

http://www.nealstephenson.com/seveneves.html

SEVENEVES is a very old project; I first started thinking about it when I was working at Blue Origin, probably circa 2004.

<snip>

[brush]

20. Has anyone else thought how did Earth's atmosphere survive the solar wind . . .

since we are even closer to the sun than Mars?

Something seems wrong with that theory.

[cpwm17]

24. We have a magnetic field which protects us.

[brush]

25. The article says Mars had one too

"A mystery remains regarding exactly how – and when – its core cooled and it stopped generating its magnetic field, enabling solar winds to slowly sweep away the atmosphere over eons and making it unable to sustain the massive ocean that once covered much of its northern hemisphere, Jakosky said."

Yeah, that's some big mystery. A lot of holes in that theory if you ask me.

How did the Earth not lose it's magnetic field also?

[cpwm17]

27. I assume that since the Earth is a much larger planet than Mars

it takes the Earth much longer to cool off. The Earth's iron core hasn't solidified.

[-none]

28. Two reasons.

Earth is bigger than Mars. And the Earth's core is radio active enough to maintain the heat. Also Mars core may be made up of different materials. Even the Earth's moon helps heat the interior through gravitational friction. Mars moons are much smaller.
OK, that's 4.

[brush]

36. All of that seems logical but . . .

do we really know about Earth's core vs Mars' core being the reason for Mars' losing it's magnetic field?

Even the experts in the article admit to not knowing the reason for that.

Earth being larger could certainly be a factor but then again Mars 154 million miles from the Earth's approximately 93 million would seem to lessen the solar winds' impact.

I wish these guys would wait until they're sure without proclaiming something while qualifiying it a big "question mark" in the theory (not really knowing why Mars' magnetic field disappeared).

But it's all speculation really so I guess they can't know for sure.

[Android3.14]

43. Define "really know"

Science is about models that allow us to predict behavior and which appear to behave in harmony with other models. The model of the Earth creates a model that helps us predict how the weather works, aurora, earthquakes and other phenomena.

A modified model of other planets fits relatively well with past behavior and future predictions. While the model works and tends to build on itself, we keep using it.

Sure, the magnetic fields may not be the issue, but until we find a model that provides better predictions, we'll stick with that.

But you need to understand it is not "all speculation", any more than weather models are "all speculation".

[EL34x4]

39. We will lose our magnetic field in about 2.3 billion years.

Not that we'll be around to notice. We've got 600-800 million years left before the sun's increasing luminosity disrupts the carbonate–silicate cycle. Long story short, photosynthesis is no longer possible and multicellular life dies out.

And this is if we haven't been whacked by a meteor or gamma ray burst long before then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

[NickB79]

41. There are ways, just not carrying live, adult humans

Perhaps human embryos.

http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2008/03/seven-ways-to-control-galaxy-with-self.html

[BlueJazz]

4. Domes might be the answer on mars.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

6. Caves are cheaper and safer from meteors.

[BlueJazz]

7. Yeah? Well, what the hell are you going to do when winter comes and some fat-ass bear..

...wants his spot. You didn't think of that, did ya?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

9. Sure I did...

Just leave a picnic basket at the door.

[BlueJazz]

11. Rats. Why do I never think of these things.

You're right, of course. The domes would be open season for meteors. Are there caves on mars? If not, I suppose we could make one deep enough for protection.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

14. Put those coal miners to work after we go carbon free.

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

21. As long as we can call it a pick-E-nick basket!

[harun]

37. Plenty of good caverns to dig in. Our life on Mars will be underground.

[BlueJazz]

38. I agree. I flip-flopped

[paul ofnoclique]

8. We don't need no stinkin' solar winds!

We'll destroy our oceans and atmosphere all by ourselves!

[whereisjustice]

10. And some other planet will send probes to Earth to try and figure out what happened...

[paul ofnoclique]

13. Nah, I don't think they'll give a damn

After all, we obviously don't!

[byronius]

16. Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Red Mars' has an answer.

Ice asteroids, set on orbits to graze the planet's tenuous atmosphere and slowly break up as the orbit decays. Many other methods and ideas are described, but that would be the most successful for large-scale relatively quick terraforming.

The asteroid belt is full of that stuff. Water everywhere.

What a cool image that must have been, the Martian ocean.

[SoLeftIAmRight]

34. Red Green Blue

fun reads

I liked the political aspects also

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

22. This really perplexes me.

We have the greatest planet in the solar system - everything we need is already here. It seems we would rather continue to trash this planet until we are forced to go live in a cave on desolate Mars. Why not put all those dollars required to going to Mars, as well as all the construction, to use trying to save our own planet?

Something seems very wrong about that.

[cpwm17]

26. You're right – some people like their science fiction fantasies.

There is no future for us anywhere else but here on our planet. We evolved here and this is where we belong.

It takes special conditions to support human life. We exist because our Universe is huge or infinite and there is most likely a huge or infinite existence beyond our Universe. This gave us a huge or infinite number of planets with various conditions and great odds there would be one (very likely many more) that can support intelligent life. Naturally we live on one that can support us – most planets cannot, including Mars.

We can send a few masochistic humans to hang out on Mars for a while, at great expense, but we have no future there – or anywhere else but here that we could ever reach.

At much less expense, we can send unmanned rockets to explore our neighborhood. By doing so, we are learning why we need to protect our planet and why this is where we belong.

[puzzledeagle]

29. Putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak

It's just as likely that this planet might be the only one in the entire universe with life, and considering how we've almost nuked ourselves several times already we're likely to fuck up this planet even more in the future. Least we could do is spread life out to other planets before we end up destroying this one.

[cpwm17]

31. If our Universe is infinite, there are infinite planets that can support us (and infinite with life)

but if only one in a million planets can support us, the infinite planets that can support us are spread rather thin.

Mars can't support us. All the other planets in our solar system are worse than Mars. All the planets beyond our solar system are only reachable by science fiction.

[LanternWaste]

33. No doubt, you place great faith in your prophecies.

No doubt, you place great faith in your prophecies. Human nature to do as much...

[SoLeftIAmRight]

35. listen to you or steven hawking?

you have been turned off

[blackspade]

23. Bummer.

I didn't realize that Mars' core was inert.

[ffr]

30. No questioning of NASA Mars data??? ?????? ?????

Saw Fox Noise list this as their story online yesterday. What a joke!

NASA's credibility is called into question by these same folks if it has to do with compelling evidence about Earth's climate. But inter-planetary travel, geology and climate data from the same agency about all other planets, solar systems and galaxies isn't questioned?

Where's the consistency in that? I'll have to ask the RWNJs I know. How do that accept one, but never the other???

[roamer65]

40. Plus Mars has a elliptical orbit.

36 million miles difference from the sun between aphelion and perihelion, versus 4 million miles for Earth. Along with its 25 degree axial tilt, these two factors set up very distinct seasonal climate differences. Any initial colonies will need to be underground.