Mars

A Few Brief Martian Links

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Why was Mt. Sharp chosen for the Curiosity Rover landing site, and what about those rounded stones that it photographed, indicative of long ago ankle to hip-deep water?  If the Martian surface is likely so full of perchlorates and life-hostile, irradiated soil, what are the chances of pockets of microbial life below ground?

The discussion later moves to Venus, Jovian moon Io, and the Chinese lander on the dark side of the moon in the final minutes:

Event Horizon discussion with Emily Lakdawalla.

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As posted:

Imagine sub-freezing temperatures and free radicals bombarding the near atmosphere-less Martian surface (oxidized and rusted red, barren), but below the Martian surface lurk big blocks of briny ice; ice with freezing cold, incredibly salty water around them and maybe just enough O2 to support some microbes.

Worth thinking about.

What are you doing with your imagination?

‘Due to the scarcity of O2 in the modern Martian atmosphere, Mars has been assumed to be incapable of producing environments with sufficiently large concentrations of O2 to support aerobic respiration. Here, we present a thermodynamic framework for the solubility of O2 in brines under Martian near-surface conditions. We find that modern Mars can support liquid environments with dissolved O2 values ranging from ~2.5 × 10−6 mol m−3 to 2 mol m−3 across the planet, with particularly high concentrations in polar regions because of lower temperatures at higher latitudes promoting O2 entry into brines’

Jordan Peterson And Slavoj Zizek-Some Weather And Space Links

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Challenges to many post-Enlightenment radicals, true-believers and narrow ideologues continue apace.  Hopefully, colonizing the Arts & Sciences for reasons other than making good art and doing good science will not come so easy.

Who’s got the Truth?  Who’s got the better models?

Jordan Peterson & Slavoj Zizek will be debating on April 19th:

On this site, see: Adam Kirsch responds to Zizek’s responses.  Kirsch reviewed Zizek’s In Defense Of Lost Causes in a New Republic piece entitled ‘The Deadly Jester.’

Interesting quote from Roger Scruton here:

So, what is all this Nothing-ness about? ‘My view’, says Scruton, ‘is that what’s underlying all of this is a kind of nihilistic vision that masks itself as a moving toward the enlightened future, but never pauses to describe what that society will be like. It simply loses itself in negatives about the existing things – institutional relations like marriage, for instance – but never asks itself if those existing things are actually part of what human beings are. Always in Zizek there’s an assumption of the right to dismiss them as standing in the way of something else, but that something else turns out to be Nothing.’

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On that note, keep living a good life and keep learning:

Via Eric Weinstein, Science On A Sphere has got to be a dream of all weather and map geeks, no matter their level of commitment:

High-fidelity photographic images and satellite loops give you snatches of the bigger picture.  Get enough data sets and processing power together to build a basic model of Earth, however, and and you can start mapping months of actual data over the model.  Then you can start doing the same for other planets.

Perhaps with the cheaper availability of AI modeling, costs will come down enough to allow localized and predictive weather observations and modeling.  Amateur weather geeks can start adding input channels and competitive, real-time knowledge which strengthen and/or challenge the big models in real-time.

Engage your visual cortex along with actual recorded weather data.  Choose a particular weather event from your own memory, and align it with this visual representation of the data on the macro-level:

You probably already knew: If you keep scrolling out of Google Maps from your lat/long (https://www.google.com/maps) in satellite view, you will eventually see a similar Earth model.  You can then choose other planets from a sidebar if you can’t afford $45K!

I’ve been enjoying Event Horizon lately; good questions and good answers from Astronomers and serious practitioners.  Subscribe!:

Three Thursday Links-Mars, The Dead & The Perpetual Public Victims

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Imagine sub-freezing temperatures and free radicals bombarding the near atmosphere-less Martian surface (oxidized and rusted red, barren), but below the Martian surface lurk big blocks of briny ice; ice with freezing cold, incredibly salty water around them and maybe just enough O2 to support some microbes.

Worth thinking about.

What are you doing with your imagination?

‘Due to the scarcity of O2 in the modern Martian atmosphere, Mars has been assumed to be incapable of producing environments with sufficiently large concentrations of O2 to support aerobic respiration. Here, we present a thermodynamic framework for the solubility of O2 in brines under Martian near-surface conditions. We find that modern Mars can support liquid environments with dissolved O2 values ranging from ~2.5 × 10−6 mol m−3 to 2 mol m−3 across the planet, with particularly high concentrations in polar regions because of lower temperatures at higher latitudes promoting O2 entry into brines’

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Perhaps quite a bit can be explained within modern movements by the following:

Freedom is precious, and liberty comes with responsibility.  Radical liberation might well involve releasing oneself from an obligation right into the clutches of some less fair, less just and less reasonable obligation.

No one’s going to tell you the new rules emerging from the latest moral ideas sweeping the ‘culture,’ you might only find out after breaking a new rule.

Due process easily becomes ‘do process our way’ and you’re wise to surmise how people are behaving now is probably how they’ll behave into the future.

Trying To Club Your Club To Death, Fictional British Towns & Mars-Some Links

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Imagine trying to ban all the Moose Lodges, Elks’ Clubs, Little Leagues, and Girl Scout Troops across the nation in the name of fairness (if these clubs and civil associations can’t be ‘equal’ according to the loudest voices demanding ‘equality’, then nobody’s going to have any clubs).

Of course, many of the same individuals and orgs seeking to influence everyone’s behavior at Harvard are also seeking to do so through the Federal Government.

Some people seem locked in [a] kind of slavish ideological dependency on the institutions they seek to either control or destroy.

From FIRE.org: ‘Harvard’s Steven Pinker on proposal to ban social clubs: ‘This is a terrible recommendation’

‘Members of the Harvard University community are reacting to news yesterday that a faculty committee recommends the Ivy League institution eliminate all exclusive social clubs. The ban would effectively shutter any Harvard-connected off-campus clubs, including all fraternities and sororities, by the year 2022 — despite Harvard’s continued promises of unfettered freedom of association for its students.’

Via kottke.org: ‘Fictional Names For British Towns Generated By A Neural Net‘

Two miles from Brumlington, as the crow flies, deep in the moor past Firley Binch, lieth Fuckley….

I recommend Simon’s blog for photos and text of the English Countryside.

Mick Hartley’s blog is pretty good, too.

Five years on Mars can be boiled down to 1 1/2 hours of discussion.  The data is telling a story, so how is that story being told?:

Did Mars harbor life?

Could it have harbored life?

What does this new data mean for Earth and our story?

From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’

A very Harvard affair: The Spelke/Pinker debate-The Science Of Gender And Science

Repost-Revisting Larry Summers: What Did He Say Again?…

Harvey Mansfield At The City Journal: ‘Principles That Don’t Change’…

Via Youtube: ‘Curiosity’s First Year On Mars’

Robert Zubrin At The New Atlantis-‘Colonizing Mars: A Critique Of The SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System’

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Full piece here.

Strengths and weaknesses:

‘The duration of the journey would of course depend on where Earth and Mars are in their orbits; the shortest one-way trip would be around 80 days, according to Musk’s presentation, and the longest would be around 150 days. (Musk stated that he thinks the architecture could be improved to reduce the trip to 60 or even 30 days.)’

Via Youtube: ‘Curiosity’s First Year On Mars’

So many doomsayers in the prediction racket:

From Youtube Via Reason: ‘Robert Zubrin: Radical Environmentalists And Other Merchants Of Despair’

 

Via Youtube: ‘Curiosity’s First Year On Mars’

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Do you click through to videos found on a blog?  Probably not, so I’m putting this up for my own benefit as much as anyone else’s.  I was fortunate enough to attend a Curiosity Rover landing party at Boeing in south Seattle, which included some speakers from JPL (NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory) discussing the mission.

There’s so much science going on, and so many new discoveries, it’s hard to keep up.  Yet,  it’s also easy to overlook some of the data and evidence piling up which allow for an ever-expanding picture of what Mars is like.

Ashwin Vasavada, a JPR Research Scientist gave a presentation open to the public at the one-year mark, which included some very basic and very interesting questions from the audience.  Easy to follow:

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Research papers here. A summary of some of what’s been found so far:

‘Research suggests habitable conditions in the Yellowknife Bay area may have persisted for millions to tens of millions of years. During that time rivers and lakes probably appeared and disappeared. Even when the surface was dry, the subsurface likely was wet, as indicated by mineral veins deposited by underground water into fractures in the rock. The thickness of observed and inferred tiers of rock layers provides the basis for estimating long duration, and the discovery of a mineral energy source for underground microbes favors habitability throughout.’

You can also watch a 12/05/13 press briefing from JPL discussing those papers above.  These rocks are much newer than the older wet period theorized.

They’re more focused on the search for organic carbon, now, within the environments they’ve discovered.

Via The Mars Science Laboratory At NASA: ”Mount Sharp’ On Mars Links Geology’s Past And Future’…Via Youtube: ‘The Challenges Of Getting To Mars: Selecting A Landing Site

NASA Via Youtube: December 21st, 2012 Mars Curiosity Rover Report

NASA Via Youtube: ‘The Martians: Launching Curiosity To Mars’…NASA Via Youtube: ‘Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity Rover) Mission Animation…

From IBTimes Via Youtube: ‘NASA Mars Rover Finds Evidence Of Lake’

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It looks like Gale Crater has its advantages.

Research papers here. A summary of some of what’s been found so far:

‘Research suggests habitable conditions in the Yellowknife Bay area may have persisted for millions to tens of millions of years. During that time rivers and lakes probably appeared and disappeared. Even when the surface was dry, the subsurface likely was wet, as indicated by mineral veins deposited by underground water into fractures in the rock. The thickness of observed and inferred tiers of rock layers provides the basis for estimating long duration, and the discovery of a mineral energy source for underground microbes favors habitability throughout.’

You can also watch a 12/05/13 press briefing from JPL discussing those papers above.  These rocks are much newer than the older wet period theorized.

They’re more focused on the search for organic carbon, now, within the environments they’ve discovered.

Via The Mars Science Laboratory At NASA: ”Mount Sharp’ On Mars Links Geology’s Past And Future’…Via Youtube: ‘The Challenges Of Getting To Mars: Selecting A Landing Site

NASA Via Youtube: December 21st, 2012 Mars Curiosity Rover Report

NASA Via Youtube: ‘The Martians: Launching Curiosity To Mars’…NASA Via Youtube: ‘Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity Rover) Mission Animation…

From JPL Via Youtube: ‘Twelve Months In Two Minutes: Curiosity’s First Year On Mars’

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From what I’ve learned as a layman:

-Curiosity isn’t necessarily looking for life, but it’s looking for the conditions that make life possible here on Earth with its 10 instruments, such as trying to determine the origins of the methane on Mars’s surface by being better able to analyze the kind of carbon (12 or 14) in the atmosphere to find its source.  It’s also much better able to look for amino acids (the building blocks of life on Earth) and better able to analyze the rock and crystal samples it picks up.  It’s got a cool laser. It’s about the size of a Mini-Cooper.

-Unlike Earth with its dynamic interior and tectonic plates, relatively strong magnetic field, thick and dynamic atmosphere etc., Mars is a bit like a time capsule.   With just over 50% the diameter of Earth, about 38% the gravity, and  less than 1% the atmosphere we’ll be able to get a much better picture of what happened during the formation of our solar system about 4 1/2 billion years ago as it’s much less disturbed.  The trip up the rock face in Gale Crater over the next few years is like a trip back through time.  What happened to Mars?  Did the Earth and Mars have common experiences?

Some more Mars facts.

No methane on Mars, so that rules out the certain kinds of microbial life hoped for.  There is water on the surface, in the soil. at about 2%, which is good for colonial prospects.  It probably had liquid water in the past, but that is thought to have been billions of years ago.  A lot of evidence points to ancient Mars and current Mars being very different.
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So, what about a more human problem that interests the libertarian-minded?
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The problem is that over time, human organizations succumb to decay, bad incentives, and get weighed down by their own internal politics, increasing layers of bureaucracy, and regulations.  They can end-up no longer boldly and creatively solving the problems they were designed to solve, becoming risk-averse and losing their spirit of innovation and flexibility to free-up the top talent.  You can put more and more money in, but get less and less in return.  In fact, I’d argue along with many others that we’re in a period of American life where many other bureaucracies and government agencies may have also reached that point.  Such is my road-map.
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After the terrible Challenger explosion in 1986, Richard Feynman was included on an independent panel to find out what went wrong.  He discovered a profound difference between engineers’ and managements’ probability estimates for number of flights without failure.  One potential (and very important) reason that a system-ending failure can go unnoticed is the tendency of managers to believe top-down explanations.

It’s vintage Feynman, inconoclastic, penetrating and brilliant:

“for whatever purpose, be it for internal or external consumption, the management of NASA exaggerates the reliability of its product, to the point of fantasy.”

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.“

Watch Robert Zubrin and other Mars Undergrounders pursue their quest despite NASA at times, but ultimately benefitting from collaboration with NASA engineers’ experience and insight, giving a boost to this deepest of human dreams:  the next frontier.  A colony on Mars.

We can do this, and it will be both like and unlike anything we’ve ever done before.

Via Slate: ‘The First Martians’

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Brief interview here.

Spitballing ideas for the next phase of human exploration:

‘However, after learning more about the research they had carried out, I became convinced that human flights to Mars could become a reality within 10 years. So in the end, I said yes.’

There was a fresh-water, habitable environment on Mars long ago, at least according to drilling in the John Klein rock area.  There were lakes, and there was an atmosphere, but we’re talking a long-time ago.

More here.

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Related On This Site:  Via The Mars Science Laboratory At NASA: ”Mount Sharp’ On Mars Links Geology’s Past And Future’…Via Youtube: ‘The Challenges Of Getting To Mars: Selecting A Landing Site

NASA Via Youtube: December 21st, 2012 Mars Curiosity Rover Report

NASA Via Youtube: ‘The Martians: Launching Curiosity To Mars’…NASA Via Youtube: ‘Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity Rover) Mission Animation…

Via Youtube: Mars Curiosity Rover Report February 21st, 2013

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If you have an hour, the drilling team gives a presentation and a Q and A. They explain the significance of the first non-Earth drilling.

They’ve driven the Rover over to a flat area of rocks they call ‘John Klein,’ in a depressed region called ‘Yellowknife Bay,’ beyond Glenelg which was originally a target point from the landing site.  There’s a group of likely fine-grained (siltstone or mudstone?) rocks on the Martian ground.  They’ve photographed white veins in the rocks amongst other features, and used the ChemCam to determine the veins are probably a calcium sulfate, which forms on Earth usually due to water percolating through rocks, but they’re still doing analysis.

They’re now using the drill for the first time, doing a test drill of 2 centimeters, and then drilled 6 centimeters down into these flat ‘river’-looking rocks in John Klein.  The Rover scooped up the material and it’s gray in color,  as at the surface has been exposed to iron oxidation.

You can download these photos or view them a slideshow, and the Rover team keeps updating them with each new tool they use and each new location they move the Rover.  You can track the whole mission that way in photos with captions explaining what’s going on.

Here’s animation of how the drill works (follow that link for all video updates).

Could Mars have once harbored life?

Related On This Site:  Via The Mars Science Laboratory At NASA: ”Mount Sharp’ On Mars Links Geology’s Past And Future’…Via Youtube: ‘The Challenges Of Getting To Mars: Selecting A Landing Site

NASA Via Youtube: December 21st, 2012 Mars Curiosity Rover Report

NASA Via Youtube: ‘The Martians: Launching Curiosity To Mars’…NASA Via Youtube: ‘Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity Rover) Mission Animation…