"Near the Martian shoreline"

Behind the Black ^ | April 2, 2018 | Robert Zimmerman

[Voption]

"One of the prime areas of research for Mars planetary geologists is the region on Mars where the geography appears to transition from the southern cratered, rough terrain to the northern low, generally smooth, and flat plains. It is theorized by some scientists that the northern plains were once an ocean, probably shallow and probably intermittent, but wet nonetheless for considerable periods..."

[WMarshal]

I suspect that the ocean is still there but that it’s frozen and covered with a layer of dust.

[mountainlion]

Is that where “The Face” is?

[PeterPrinciple]

It is theorized

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Written by scientist and not a politician or activist.................

[MNJohnnie]

I was just going to ask what they think happened to the water. Your theory makes a great deal of sense.

[kaehurowing]

I know I’ve read that somehow Mars’ gravity wasn’t enough to keep its atmosphere and under that I guess the water would have sublimated off into space. Seems contrary to the ocean being there in the first place though.

[Kickass Conservative]

Here you go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invisible_Enemy_(The_Outer_Limits)

[Lurker]

I loved that show. Scared the crap out of me when I was a kid.

L

[sevlex]

It’s a “dead” planet.

There is no longer a molten core to create a magnetosphere. Hence no protection from the solar winds. The water & atmosphere were stripped away as a consequence.

[WMarshal]

Check this out: Scientists discover huge water deposits on Mars that could sustain manned missions to the planet

[null and void]

YES! Just like Venus! No magnetic field = no atmosphere!

Note that being closer to the sun, Venus had 4X the solar wind ablation of its atmosphere...

[Lazamataz]

I suspect that the ocean is still there but that it’s frozen and covered with a layer of dust.

Unless it's buried deep, one of our Rovers would have found it.

Imagine this scenario, though:

We dig deep in Mars with a new Rover or in person, and we DO discover a shallow, frozen 'ocean'.

We take back a slice for analysis on Earth, and discover tiny microorganisms that are COMPLETELY alien to our biology. Maybe they are silicon- and not carbon-based. But they are so hardy, due to the harsh conditions of Mars, that when they inevitably get released into our world, they conquer it in a matter of months, killing all of us and any carbon-based life whatsoever.

I officially copyright this plotline. I shall write a short story about this scenario. See you all soon.

[DannyTN]

That’s why we need to create the mass-o-matic.

[piasa]

There was an Alan Dean Foster scifi book about a human getting stranded on a planet with silicon-based life forms, some of them sentient, called “Sentenced to Prism.”

It was refreshingly different in that even though nearly everything he encountered was deadly and just basic survival required thinking outside the box, unlike so much sci-fi, it wasn’t set on a post apocalyptic world where everyone acts like they are adult versions of the boys in Lord of the Flies.

[WMarshal]

“Unless it's buried deep, one of our Rovers would have found it.”

I guess that you didn't see this recent discovery that was not made by the Martian rover which has a digging tool the size of a fricking spoon:

Wired Magazine: SCIENTISTS DISCOVER CLEAN WATER ICE JUST BELOW MARS' SURFACE Jan 1, 2018

In this week's issue of Science, researchers led by USGS planetary geologist Colin Dundas present detailed observations of eight Martian regions where erosion has uncovered large, steep cross-sections of underlying ice. It’s not just the volume of water they found (it's no mystery that Mars harbors a lot of ice in these particular regions), it’s how mineable it promises to be. The deposits begin at depths as shallow as one meter and extend upwards of 100 meters into the planet.

Did you read the part about water ice deposits up to 328 feet thick under a minimum of 3.3 feet of dirt?

Please tell me, is there anywhere/anytime that the Mars rover has been able to dig more than a few inches into the surface of Mars with its "spork"?

Here is the sample processing hardware's integrated regolith scoop(Spork):

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the Mars rover mission overall but not of it is digging/drilling capabilities. NASA could not have made a weaker attempt at subsurface sampling if they had intentionally tried to sabotage that aspect of the mission. What NASA knows about digging could fit into a gnat's ass. Just saying.

[WMarshal]

I believe that as Mars lost its atmosphere to certain extent it then got so cold that the remaining atmosphere froze. When the atmosphere and oceans froze I believe that over time both Martian dust storms and meteor impacts buried and protected the water and atmosphere ices from sublimating into gas to then potentially being lost to the solar winds. I am not saying that none of the Martian atmosphere got stripped away when the magnetic field dies. What I argue is that a much larger percentage of that atmosphere and water than is commonly believed was frozen to ice and then buried under dust swept in from higher elevation land forms. For all the atmosphere to have been blown away by the solar wind it would've had to all sublimate to gas first which seems unlikely to me.

[IndispensableDestiny]

I guess that you didn't see this recent discovery that was not made by the Martian rover which has a digging tool the size of a fricking spoon:

Somebody needs to send a robotic skid steer there.

[Voption]

Andromeda Strain
(original trailer 1971)
https://youtu.be/8qEsqjJAY-k
(3:25)

[SunkenCiv]

The difference in the crater distribution is due to a single large impact event, which threw ejecta which formed secondary craters (IMHO). These are from the OppositeHemisphere keyword:

• Long-Destroyed Fifth Planet May Have Caused Lunar Cataclysm, Researchers Say

  03/25/2002 2:42:10 PM PST · by vannrox · 155 replies · 4,757+ views

  SPACE dot COM | 18 March 2002 ,posted: 03:00 pm ET | By Leonard David, Senior Space Writer

  Asteroid Vesta: The 10th Planet? Discovery Brightens Odds of Finding Another Pluto Nemesis: The Million Dollar Question HOUSTON, TEXAS -- Our solar system may have had a fifth terrestrial planet, one that was swallowed up by the Sun. But before it was destroyed, the now missing-in-action world made a mess of things. Space scientists John Chambers and Jack Lissauer of NASA's Ames Research Center hypothesize that along with Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars -- the terrestrial, rocky planets -- there was a fifth terrestrial world, likely just outside of Mars's orbit and before the inner asteroid belt. Moreover, Planet V...

• New Theory: Catastrophe Created Mars' Moons

  07/29/2003 8:56:47 AM PDT · by RightWhale · 62 replies · 1,837+ views

  space.com | 29 Jul 03 | Leonard David

  New Theory: Catastrophe Created Mars' Moons By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 07:00 am ET 29 July 2003 PASADENA, California - The two moons of Mars - Phobos and Deimos - could be the byproducts of a breakup of a huge moon that once circled the red planet, according to a new theory. The capture of a large Martian satellite may have taken place during or shortly after the formation of the planet, with Phobos and Deimos now the surviving remnants. Origin of the two moons presents a longstanding puzzle to which one researcher proposed the new solution at...

• Did A Giant Impact Create The Two Faces Of Mars?

  03/15/2007 2:14:24 PM PDT · by blam · 32 replies · 855+ views

  New Scientist | 3-15-2007 | David Shiga

  Did a giant impact create the two faces of Mars? 16:29 15 March 2007 NewScientist.com news service David Shiga, Houston Mars's northern hemisphere is lower in elevation - by about 5 kilometres - than its southern hemisphere (see image below). This coloured topographical map shows low elevations in blue and high elevations in yellow and red. The map is centred on a latitude of 55° north (Illustration: Mike Caplinger/MSSS) Mars's southern hemisphere is higher and more heavily cratered than the northern hemisphere, suggesting it is older terrain. The two low elevations (blue) in this map, which is centred on the...

• Red Planet's Ancient Equator Located

  04/24/2005 8:18:25 PM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 64 replies · 2,163+ views

  Scientific American (online) | April 20, 2005 | Sarah Graham

  Jafar Arkani-Hamed of McGill University discovered that five impact basins--dubbed Argyre, Hellas, Isidis, Thaumasia and Utopia--form an arclike pattern on the Martian surface. Three of the basins are well-preserved and remain visible today. The locations of the other two, in contrast, were inferred from measurements of anomalies in the planet's gravitational field... a single source--most likely an asteroid that was initially circling the sun in the same plane as Mars--created all five craters. At one point the asteroid passed close to the Red Planet... and was broken apart by the force of the planet's gravity. The resulting five pieces subsequently...

• Monster volcano gave Mars extreme makeover: study

  03/03/2016 11:08:06 AM PST · by BenLurkin · 17 replies

  phys.org | March 2, 2016 by | Laurence Coustal, Marlowe Hood

  A volcano on Mars half the size of France spewed so much lava 3.5 billion years ago that the weight displaced the Red Planet's outer layers, according to a study released Wednesday. Mars' original north and south poles, in other words, are no longer where they once were. The findings explain the unexpected location of dry river beds and underground reservoirs of water ice, as well as other Martian mysteries that have long perplexed scientists, the lead researcher told AFP. "If a similar shift happened on Earth, Paris would be in the Polar Circle," said Sylvain Bouley, a geomorphologist at...

• Red Planet Impact: Huge Moons May Have Crashed Into Mars

  07/04/2016 6:40:49 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 11 replies

  Space.com | July 4, 2016 11:01am ET | Charles Q. Choi

  Phobos and Deimos are both small for moons -- about 14 and 7.7 miles (22.5 and 12.4 kilometers) wide, respectively -- and sort of potato-shaped. Compared to other satellites in the solar system, they look more like asteroids. As a result, astronomers previously hypothesized that these moons were asteroids captured by Mars' gravitational pull. ...previous research suggested that Phobos and Deimos would have relatively irregular orbits. In reality, these moons have nearly circular orbits positioned near the Martian equator. ... huge impact that previous research suggested created the gigantic Borealis basin in the northern lowlands of Mars, which covers two-fifths...

[SunkenCiv]

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