Here are two galleries for you, both of photos taken from space. One is of islands here on Earth, the other of landscapes on Mars. It’s amazing, the similarities between the two places when you look from a certain distance.
November 4th, 2009
Prof To Predict Weather On Mars Texas A&M
Is there such a thing as “weather” on Mars? There are some doubts, considering the planet’s atmosphere is only 1 percent as dense as that of the Earth. Mars, however, definitely has clouds, drastically low temperatures and out-of-this-world dust storms, and Istvan Szunyogh, a Texas A&M professor of atmospheric sciences, has been awarded a NASA grant to analyze and forecast Martian weather. Mars is the most Earth-like planet we know, but it is still quite different. For example, it is much colder on Mars.
The south pole of the Earth is covered by water ice, but the south pole of Mars wears a dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) cap. In winter, the temperature at the poles can dip to -140°C (-220 degrees Fahrenheit), which is so cold that even carbon dioxide freezes.
October 26th, 2009
Mars Caves Might Protect Microbes (or Astronauts)
series of newly discovered depressions on the Martian surface could be the entrances to a cave system on the red planet.
Hints of subsurface tunnels have been found in images of Mars before, but the new evidence is more suggestive, said Glen Cushing, a physicist with the U.S. Geological Survey who discovered the possible caves.
Such a subsurface system could provide shelter to future Mars-visiting astronauts, as well as a protective habitat to any potential past or present Martian microbes, Cushing said.
September 21st, 2009
How Mars Turned Red: Surprising New Theory
Mars was not always red, according to a new theory for how the planet took on its characteristic ruddy hue.
Until recently, Mars’ color was thought to be a product of liquid water, which scientists think flowed over the planet’s surface billions of years ago, rusting rocks. But after the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on the planet in 2004, they found evidence of certain minerals that would have been destroyed by water, suggesting that the red dust on Mars never came into contact with flowing water.
“That was a surprise to everybody,” said Jonathan Merrison of the Aarhus Mars Simulation Laboratory in Denmark.
June 18th, 2009
Researchers Find First Definitive Evidence for Ancient Lake on Mars University of Colorado
A University of Colorado at Boulder research team has discovered the first definitive evidence of shorelines on Mars, an indication of a deep, ancient lake there and a finding with implications for the discovery of past life on the Red Planet.
Estimated to be more than 3 billion years old, the lake appears to have covered as much as 80 square miles and was up to 1,500 feet deep — roughly the equivalent of Lake Champlain bordering the United States and Canada, said CU-Boulder Research Associate Gaetano Di Achille, who led the study. The shoreline evidence, found along a broad delta, included a series of alternating ridges and troughs thought to be surviving remnants of beach deposits.
“This is the first unambiguous evidence of shorelines on the surface of Mars,” said Di Achille. “The identification of the shorelines and accompanying geological evidence allows us to calculate the size and volume of the lake, which appears to have formed about 3.4 billion years ago.”
May 1st, 2009
Did Mars’s Magnetic Field Die With a Whimper or a Bang? ScienceNOW Daily News
Giant asteroids may have wiped out Mars’s magnetic field. The energy released by massive collisions upset the heat flow in the planet’s iron core that produced the magnetism, according to a new study. The finding offers a solution to the mystery of the disappearing magnetic field and sheds light on early Earth conditions.
A planet’s magnetic field results from a process called convection, Within the core, molten iron rises, cools, and sinks. The convection induces a magnetic field, in a system known as a dynamo.
Like Earth, early Mars had a magnetic field and perhaps an atmosphere conducive to liquid water. But magnetic analysis of the martian surface indicates that when Mars was a mere 500 million years old, its magnetic field withered away. Without this shield, streams of ionizing particles spewing from the sun strip away a planet’s atmosphere, killing any life that may have emerged or forcing it underground.
April 21st, 2009
NASA Spacecraft Detects Buried Glaciers on Mars Arts.com
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed vast Martian glaciers of water ice under protective blankets of rocky debris at much lower latitudes than any ice previously identified on the Red Planet.
Scientists analyzed data from the spacecraft’s ground-penetrating radar and report in the Nov. 21 issue of the journal Science that buried glaciers extend for dozens of miles from edges of mountains or cliffs. A layer of rocky debris blanketing the ice may have preserved the underground glaciers as remnants from an ice sheet that covered middle latitudes during a past ice age. This discovery is similar to massive ice glaciers that have been detected under rocky coverings in Antarctica.
March 4th, 2009
Mars had ‘recent’ running water
Mars appears to have had running water on its surface about one million years ago, according to new evidence.
Images from a NASA spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet show fan-shaped gullies on the surface which seem to be about 1.25 million years old, the study says.
They believe the channels were sculpted by surface water from melting ice.
It may represent the most recent period when water flowed on the planet, a team from Brown University in Rhode Island, US, report in the journal Geology.
February 12th, 2009
More Details Emerge on Possible Mars Hot Springs
Mounds on Mars that could be from ancient hot springs are described in a new study, after setting the astrobiology community abuzz last spring.
Hydrothermal springs on Earth, like those in Yellowstone National Park, harbor what scientists figure are the closest relatives to the original organisms that lived on our planet. Finding these features on Mars (or any other planet) could have big implications for the question of extraterrestrial life.
Mars has many features that suggest the planet was once warmer and wetter. At the least, the ancient vents — if that’s what they are — would make great places to look for signs of past life.
January 27th, 2009
It’s snowing on Mars The Guardian
High in the sky above Mars, it is snowing right now. Very gently snowing. The snow does not settle on the rubble-strewn land below – not these days, anyway – but instead vaporises into the thin atmosphere long before it reaches the ground.
The first flakes of snow, on a planet that until fairly recently was believed to be waterless, were spotted just a few months ago. A Nasa lander near the planet’s north pole was scanning the sky with a laser when it noticed the telltale signs of snowfall. The probe, called Phoenix, announced the news in a radio signal that was picked up by an overhead orbiter and beamed back to Earth. Nothing like it had ever been seen before.