A Mars Panorama (APOD 12 Aug 2008)

[emc]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080812.html

Our APOD for today sparked a synapse about Martians and how they might stack up to us technically.

For example…

Q. How many Martians would it take to change a light bulb?

A. We don’t know… first we have to find a Martian… then the question comes to mind… What if they don’t know how and can’t grasp the concept? What becomes of the answer then??? “None” doesn’t quite work as an accurate answer because it implies Martians could change a light bulb without physical effort. That implication could lead many Earthlings into panic fearing some sort of Martian mind attack…

If it does turn out that Martians can’t change a light bulb, then another question comes to mind… Will we thumb our technological noses at them or will we embrace their obvious inferiority?

Maybe they are better at other things, like say… hiding from alien invaders... 8) You sure can’t claim that Earthlings are inconspicuous. I mean, think about it, if you wanted to hide from alien invadors what better place than Mars?

[Dr. Skeptic]

Q. How many Martians would it take to change a light bulb?

A: About one third less Martians than for a regular bulb.

Sorry
(Think beer)

[bystander]

... Maybe they are better at other things, like say… hiding from alien invaders... 8) You sure can’t claim that Earthlings are inconspicuous. I mean, think about it, if you wanted to hide from alien invadors what better place than Mars?

They must certainly be better at hiding than the inhabitants of previously the fifth planet. Look what happened to it, scattered everywhere.

[orin stepanek]

Maybe it's an illusion but on the panorama it kind of looks like the Phoenix is sitting in a hole or depression. Do you supose they're working the backhoe overtime?

Orin

[iamlucky13]

Maybe it's an illusion but on the panorama it kind of looks like the Phoenix is sitting in a hole or depression. Do you supose they're working the backhoe overtime?

Orin

It's an illusion, based partially on the need to project the panorama into a flat plane, just like the trouble with map projections versus a globe. The terrain Phoenix landed on is quite flat.

It's almost amusing they worked hard to design a lightweight arm that could dig half a meter through packed clay to find ice...they found it after only 5 cm. They hardly dug at all.

[ta152h0]

recent excitement was obvious recently reagrding finding water on Mars. Is it usable water ? If not, what is it that has to happen to make it usable ?

[apodman]

It's almost amusing they worked hard to design a lightweight arm that could dig half a meter through packed clay to find ice...they found it after only 5 cm. They hardly dug at all.

Two comments:

1. Overkill is a good thing. I went to the ballgame the other night, and my team won 9-1. I didn't say they should have saved some runs for another game when they need them. I enjoyed the prosperity while it was unfolding in front of me.

2. If you're impressed by what they found at 5 cm, just wait until you see what you get at 50. Or maybe you'll be disappointed, but I bet they run into some surprise or head scratcher for you.

They must certainly be better at hiding than the inhabitants of previously the fifth planet. Look what happened to it, scattered everywhere.

Asteroid Belt link (Wikipedia)

Ceres link (Hubble)

Ceres link (The Planetary Society)

Ceres accounts for 1/3 of the mass of the Asteroid belt. Yet it has only 1.3% of the Moon's mass and 3% of the Earth's surface gravity. So there's not enough material in the Asteroid belt to account for a former planet large enough to support an atmosphere and aerobic life. But if we postulate anaerobic life on Former Planet 5, we can also make it bioluminescent so there need be no light bulb changing. Ceres itself looks round and intact, and is thought to have (frozen) water.

More Ceres:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060821.html
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070622.html

Now comes the inevitable digression. I was reading all those asteroid articles I linked, and found a forgotten favorite old word. I once wrote a reggae song around the word "planetesimal" because I liked the musical sound of its syllables. The song was actually performed for a brief time by a band consisting primarily of employees of the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute. (Who else will play your astronomy songs, and how else can this be about astronomy?) The neighborhood in the Asteroid belt is "Dread Rock", and our reggae miner is "Dread Flintstone" who, it seems, is the one responsible for all the destruction in the Asteroid belt as described in Verse 2:

"De sun be shinin' all de day an' all de night, mon
Find de planetesimal an' set de dynamite, on
T'ree we push de plunger an' we watch de explosi-on
Catchin' all de pieces den we bringin' all de booty on in"

[AJ]

Is finding perchlorates a big surprise? Based on a link on that page, it is both naturally occurring and man-made...and found in rocket fuel. Did the powered descent contaminate the LZ?

[BMAONE23]

recent excitement was obvious recently reagrding finding water on Mars. Is it usable water ? If not, what is it that has to happen to make it usable ?

This would depend on what you might mean by useable??
1) to support life?
___there are bacterial lifeforms that survive in ice at depths of up to two miles beneath the surface
http://www.livescience.com/animals/070828_old_dna.html
http://live.psu.edu/story/31052
2) useable liquid water?
___You would need to place the ice (or surface) in a warmer pressurized environment. If you were to try to melt it without this, it would boil away before it began to melt.

[henk21cm]

Is finding perchlorates a big surprise? Based on a link on that page, it is both naturally occurring and man-made...and found in rocket fuel. Did the powered descent contaminate the LZ?

On the website of the planetary society the next quote can be found:

<<Quote: They must still rule out all other possibilities, including a long shot possibility of contamination from Earth. Although the retro-rocket engines Phoenix used for descent to the Martian surface did not use fuel that contained perchlorates, the fuel that powered the Delta rocket that lifted it into space did. Even so, checkouts and dry runs of the instruments showed that they weren't contaminated, and the scoop has spent more than a month now scraping itself clean gathering and dumping and depositing various soil samples, so any contamination there should be veritably nonexistent. :etouQ>>

The argument of the scoop: "it is being cleaned by a month of scraping", is weak, without any further information about adsorption and desorption properties of chlorides on the surface material of the scoop.

The fuel as used in the descending rocket, hydrazine, does not contain any chloride derivatives, nor carbon based components, nor does it need oxigen. This was done on purpose, to rule out any earth bound carbon and oxygen components, which could be inadvertently assigned to Arean origin.

[ta152h0]

in the context of a possible future trip to MARS by humans, i would define usable water as a liquid required to sustain life in a natural state, and grow food. There is plenty of water around but it is locked up in either a frozen state or molecular state within travel distances of mankind.

[apodman]

in the context of a possible future trip to MARS by humans, i would define usable water as a liquid required to sustain life in a natural state, and grow food. There is plenty of water around but it is locked up in either a frozen state or molecular state within travel distances of mankind.

Does it have to be in a glass and served by a butler to be usable? I wouldn't settle for just a farm pond if I were you. Seriously, I don't see frozen as a problem, I see it as almost usable. Surely we can use a magni-fry-ing glass or equally advanced solar technology to melt water by day. We could use vat, tub, and bottle technology to store it for use by night.

The argument of the scoop: "it is being cleaned by a month of scraping", is weak

This is the Flintstone influence on Martian lab procedure. "Weak" understates the lameness and absurdity of the idea.

[BMAONE23]

The major trick is melting and storing it at normal Earth Atmospheric pressure at a temterature above 3dC or 37dF. (pressure so it doesn't boil away before it melts(sublimate) and temperature so it doesn't refreeze)

[iamlucky13]

It's almost amusing they worked hard to design a lightweight arm that could dig half a meter through packed clay to find ice...they found it after only 5 cm. They hardly dug at all.

Two comments:

1. Overkill is a good thing. I went to the ballgame the other night, and my team won 9-1. I didn't say they should have saved some runs for another game when they need them. I enjoyed the prosperity while it was unfolding in front of me.

2. If you're impressed by what they found at 5 cm, just wait until you see what you get at 50. Or maybe you'll be disappointed, but I bet they run into some surprise or head scratcher for you.

Just to be clear...my post wasn't a criticism. It's like a lopsided game of tug-O-war, where the losing side decides to have their fun by suddenly letting go. NASA was prepared for a tough dig to find ice and Mars just dropped it in their lap.

I wish they could still dig to 50 cm, but the arm isn't strong enough to make a major dent in solid ice, as far as I know. It can just rasp/scrape up a little bit at a time.

[Dr. Skeptic]

The major trick is melting and storing it at normal Earth Atmospheric pressure at a temterature above 3dC or 37dF. (pressure so it doesn't boil away before it melts(sublimate) and temperature so it doesn't refreeze)

I don't see that as a major problem, reserve H2O can be stored in a solid state, also, ice will reach equilibrium and not sublimate in a sealed container.

Putting the H2O rich soil in the equivalent to Grandpa’s still, skim off the H2O, pump it into vats and your done. When the H2O is needed, heat it and pump it, it will liquefy when introduced to a human environment.

[BMAONE23]

Or you could also build a large pressurized environment (dome over a small crater) and raise ambient pressure to equal earth at sea level and temperature, The localized Subsurface ice will thaw creating wells and pools to utilize. Possibly even artesian type springs.

[Arramon]

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoen ... 80814.html

This color image is a three dimensional (3D) view of a digital elevation map of a sample collected by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Atomic Force Microscope (AFM).

The image shows four round pits, only 5 microns in depth, that were micromachined into the silicon substrate, which is the background plane shown in red. This image has been processed to reflect the levelness of the substrate.

A Martian particle -- only one micrometer, or one millionth of a meter, across -- is held in the upper left pit.

The rounded particle -- shown at the highest magnification ever seen from another world -- is a particle of the dust that cloaks Mars. Such dust particles color the Martian sky pink, feed storms that regularly envelop the planet and produce Mars' distinctive red soil.

The particle was part of a sample informally called "Sorceress" delivered to the AFM on the 38th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (July 2, 2008). The AFM is part of Phoenix's microscopic station called MECA, or the Miscroscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer.

The AFM was developed by a Swiss-led consortium, with Imperial College London producing the silicon substrate that holds sampled particles.

The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/University of Neuchatel/Imperial College London