11 m?
Given that there are cliffs of 2 kilometers high, how can the planet be 'swamped' by an ocean of 11 meters deep?
Mars Express has completed 5,000 orbits of the red planet, just short of four years after it arrived on Christmas day, 2003. The craft has sent back marvellously detailed pictures of Mars' surface, adding to our knowledge of the planet's geological history and evolution. Clay deposits on Mars Clay deposits on Mars. Most …
data != knowledge, ergo
lots of data != knowledge, ergo
lots of data != lots of knowledge
- unless you're infatuated with dialectics and/or fatuous marxist-leninist notions of transformation of Quantity into Quality (see also Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance). Or pre-scientific.
11 meters over what? Sea level? :-)
I suppose what they mean is that if you could somehow make the water follow the contours of the planet, there would be enough to cover everything 11m deep. Since Mars is by no means flat, it would likely collect mainly as an ocean in the northern hemisphere -- more than 11m deep, but significantly less than the entire surface of Mars.
The question is: how did they calculate this? 11 metres on a flat surface?
As we all know, Mars isn't flat. Olympus Mons is 26 km high! And the largest of the canyons (or canals in the good old days) is 4000 km long and has a maximum depth of 7 km.
If these canyons fill up (as well as all the impact craters), how much water is left to 'swamp' the planet?
And if there were pictures, the conspiracy theorists would only argue they were fakes (just like NASA airbrushed out the 'Martian face' pyramid).
I think the 11m depth is calculated assuming the surface of Mars to be perfectly spherical - the volume of water it contains would then be enough to cover the surface to a depth of 11m. On the same basis, water would cover the Earth's surface to a depth of several km.
Hey Sillyfellow- shut the fuck up. Nobody wants to hear your blather. Conspiracy nuts are irrational and will make up any excuse to believe what they want, no matter how unlikely. I have a friend who thinks McCartney is dead, Lennon is alive, the world is full of body doubles that somehow even fake out wives and parents, etc...
And most government conspiracies fall apart by the sheer logic of:
1. Most governments are barely capable of getting anything useful done
2. Most conspiracies are too complicated for those governments to pull off
3. Way too many people have to keep a secret, and there are frequently unintended witnesses to shoot holes in the story (9/11 anyone?)
Regarding Mars, the subject here- I assume this means 11m deep on average wherever there is water. Obviously some places are deeper, some more shallow. Earth is some 70% water, and it's very deep, so from a planetary perspective, I'd say Earth is "swamped."
1. Take all the land mass on the moon.
2. Squash it down till you get a sphere.
3. Add water.
Measurement - 11m.
On earth this would be a much larger value as if you took all of the himalayas and dumped them in the pacific none of them would even break the surface! Earth has a lot more water!