Nasa finds evidence of a vast ancient ocean on Mars

The Guardian & Observer ^ | March 5, 2015 | Ian Sample

[2ndDivisionVet]

An artist’s impression of the ancient ocean on Mars, which lasted for billions of years more than was previously thought.

A massive ancient ocean once covered nearly half of the northern hemisphere of Mars making the planet a more promising place for alien life to have gained a foothold, Nasa scientists say.

The huge body of water spread over a fifth of the planet’s surface, as great a portion as the Atlantic covers the Earth, and was a mile deep in places. In total, the ocean held 20 million cubic kilometres of water, or more than is found in the Arctic Ocean, the researchers found.

Unveiled by Nasa on Thursday, the compelling evidence for the primitive ocean adds to an emerging picture of Mars as a warm and wet world in its youth, which trickled with streams, winding river deltas, and long-standing lakes, soon after it formed 4.5bn years ago.

The view of the planet’s ancient history radically re-writes what many scientists believed only a decade ago. Back then, flowing water was widely considered to have been a more erratic presence on Mars, gushing forth only rarely, and never forming long-standing seas and oceans.....

[WhiskeyX]

The clouds are missing from the artist’s conception.

[samtheman]

Here's another article on this subject:

sciencedaily.com

I like this:

Ulli Kaeufl of ESO, who was responsible for building one of the instruments used in this study and is a co-author of the new paper, adds: "I am again overwhelmed by how much power there is in remote sensing on other planets using astronomical telescopes: we found an ancient ocean more than 100 million kilometres away!"

I would like to see bigger and better telescopes in space more than I would like to see a mission to Mars.

Mars is all dried up. Let's use the technology of big space telescopes to find some actual living planets out there among the stars.

I realize that the two endeavors are not mutually exclusive, but there are limited funds available.

[Robert DeLong]

And you thought that theory that Men are from Mars and women are from Venus was fiction, didn’t you.

[WhiskeyX]

“I realize that the two endeavors are not mutually exclusive, but there are limited funds available.”

Yes, but you must realize there is a more than abundant amount of time before Humans will be able to visit another planet located across the abyss of interstellar space. In the meantime, the Solar System’s own asteroids and planets are enough to preserve Human civilization indefinitely.

[lee martell]

Where are the spiders? There have been songs about the spiders on mars.

[Awgie]

It is hard to imagine a warm wet world without some forms of life. I am intrigued by the theory that we humans may be immigrants from Mars.

[Fresh Wind]

The view of the planet’s ancient history radically re-writes what many scientists believed only a decade ago.

But I thought that scientists were never wrong, especially climatologists.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

[samtheman]

But if you want to colonize a dead world, colonize the moon. It’s much more feasible. It’s sheer fantasy to think that Mars is more hospitable than the moon. It’s not.

[WhiskeyX]

Planets attract catastrophic impacts, impede interplanetary travel, and ultimately will doom the inhabitants. Asteroids, however, provide greater overall habitable space while minimizing the risks of catastrophic impacts for the whole of the populace. The asteroids can be moved to safety as the Sun enters its destructive giant stage. Mars is destined to continue to lose its atmosphere, even if it were to be Terraformed.

[Buckeye McFrog]

For Mars to ever have been warm enough to make that possible, the Earth would have been turned into a piece of charcoal.

[tet68]

Seems to me those incredible telescopes would
be better served by being placed on the moon.
It is our next stop, why not go there? Live there?
I guess I’m just a product of the 60s.

[WhiskeyX]

“For Mars to ever have been warm enough to make that possible, the Earth would have been turned into a piece of charcoal.”

No, that is nonsense. Mars had a much thicker and denser atmosphere, something like 99 percent Carbon dioxide. The weak gravitational force of Mars and absence of a strong and protective magnetic field resulted in most of that thick atmosphere and its hydrosphere to mostly be stripped off by the Solar Wind. The ancient hydrosphere and atmosphere made it possible to keep Mars a wetter and warmer place until they were lost to outer space.

[MD Expat in PA]

Thank you. I was about to post something similar, you saved me the trouble.

[WhiskeyX]

I forgot to also mention that the Earth has been undergoing a similar loss of atmosphere and is destined to lose all but a trace residual of its atmosphere and all of its hydrosphere. The Earth has already lost something on the order of 99 percent of its first and second atmospheres, previously composed of something like 96 to 99 percent Carbon dioxide. As the Earth’s atmosphere continues to thin until it is something like 1 to 5 percent of its present mass, the Earth will become drier and colder, resulting in new ice ages and virtual iceball Earth climates spanning periods of one-half billion to 1 billion years of time. These mammoth ice ages will then come to an end as the Sun swells in size to become a giant red star, vaporizing and consuming Mercury and Venus. The last of the Earth’s surface hydrosphere, atmosphere, and cryosphere will become vaporized and stripped off of the Earth by the Solar Wind and blown into the outer reaches of the Solar System. The Earth and Mars will likely drift in their orbits outwards from the Sun, but it is still unclear whether or not the Sun will envelope the Earth and vaporize it or the Earth barely escapes in its expanded orbit. If the Earth does survive, it will do so with its upper lithosphere largely vaporized and blown away into the Sun or outer space, leaving behind something more closely resembling today’s Mercury.

The future of Mars....

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks 2ndDivisionVet. But, no NASA doesn’t. There’s a constant drumbeat for an Earthlike past for Mars, and it comes pretty much exclusively from global warming demagogues — and not surprisingly, the founder of the ‘modern’ movement was none other than the revolting leftist demagogue, Carl Sagan, with his premature sufficiency and greenhouse effect on Venus, Earth, and Mars.

Mars has received water from space impacts, and all larger impacts can cause (and some have caused) ices in the soil to thaw straight to vapor, supporting a temporary microclimate with water vapor atmosphere, which allows water to flow for short periods — hence that odd from-nowhere-to-nowhere pattern in the ghostly traces of so-called streams and rivers on Mars. Anyway, extra to ApoD.

[SunkenCiv]

> The view of the planet’s ancient history radically re-writes what many scientists believed only a decade ago.

Ridiculous — a decade ago many scientists didn’t believe that Mars was dry, and this particular view doesn’t radically rewrite anything, because it’s a regurgitation of an old fantasy, reaching back at least as far as Schiaparelli and Lowell.

[WhiskeyX]

“Thanks 2ndDivisionVet. But, no NASA doesn’t. There’s a constant drumbeat for an Earthlike past for Mars, and it comes pretty much exclusively from global warming demagogues — and not surprisingly, the founder of the ‘modern’ movement was none other than the revolting leftist demagogue, Carl Sagan, with his premature sufficiency and greenhouse effect on Venus, Earth, and Mars.”

No, the “drumbeat for an Earthlike past for Mars...” is not “pretty much exclusively from global warming demagogues” at all. The presence of substantial amounts of water, including seas, on Mars was to be expected, because we have such an overwhelming amount of evidence for substantial amounts of water on the other planets, moons, and asteroids in the Solar System, now and in the distant past. Given Mars’ small size, weak gravitational force, and insubstantial magnetic field in the present, there can be little surprise that most of Mars’ atmosphere, hydrosphere, and cryosphere have been lost to outer space. The only real surprise has been the difficulty in being able to discover unambiguous evidence of substantial amounts of water and seas on Mars in its past geological ages. This report on the deuterium ratio is a very strong and perhaps decisive evidence of past Martian seas of water.

[samtheman]

I agree with what you say about asteroids. I think you give good reasons for looking at them as habitable spaces. Hollow them out, move them around where you want them. Supply them with air and water from comets. Inhabitants will be protected from radiation and can even be provided with spin-gravity. A lot of good SF on the subject.