What can evolve in a billion years? On Earth, quite a lot. On Mars, maybe more.
Curiosity team: Massive collision may have killed Red Planet
Dual tests by instruments on the Curiosity rover, combined with data from the first Viking probes and Mars meteorites that have fallen to Earth, suggests that the Red Planet lost its atmosphere within the first billion years of its history, according to two papers in the latest issue of Science. Curiosity's tunable laser …
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Friday 19th July 2013 01:52 GMT Destroy All Monsters
You can get to photosynthesis, but Mars is smaller and colder, so the laboratory needs more time.
Now, if Pluto rammed Mars, wouldn't that have zeroed the surface of the whole ball and be evident??
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Friday 19th July 2013 08:12 GMT fandom
One theory is that the impact was so great that it stopped Mars' core from spinning, pretty much killing all possibility of life there.
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Friday 19th July 2013 14:37 GMT fandom
Anything else?
Of course, how could there not be something else. It takes about a minute at Google to find it.
Although I have to admit that I linked to the wrong photo.
"Bizarro stuff some guy makes up in his basement ahoi!"
You got to admit that some random guy in a basement sending a probe to Mars to take photos is quite an impressive feat.
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Saturday 20th July 2013 09:47 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Dear fandom...
Finally a good link
Unfortunately it is marred somewhat by the second link to WiseGeek where the author is terminally confused about the Northern Basin and Vallis Marineris not being the same thing at all. Not-so-WiseGeek also says "Moon-sized object nearly hit Mars, but instead scraped a deep scar in the planet".
NO! The MIT article says
"We knew there must be impacts between these size ranges," Zuber says. "But nobody had identified one." Analysis in the theoretical papers accompanying this one show that the impacting object that produced the huge basin on Mars must have been about 2,000 km across - larger than Pluto -- and struck at an angle of about 45 degrees, creating the oval shape of the basin.
I would say that's a "full absorbtion impact". Masses of that size do not behave like billard balls. They behave like very liquid droplets.
Must have been a slow-motion impact though so that the southern half of Mars is even retaining any trace of the before-impact era.
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Thursday 25th July 2013 16:23 GMT Marshalltown
Electric Universe
Actually, years ago - well decades really - the electric universe idea even got play in Scientific American. Some of the empirical elements such as Alfven Waves are still important ideas and were observed for instance on the sun in 2011. The most important proponent of the idea was Hannes Alfven, who won a Nobel in 1970. Details of the structure of objects like the "Red Suare Nebula" - http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110323.html - are less difficult to explain using EU concepts than when using standard gravitational model ideas. So, no, not one guy working out of his basement. Just a non-mainstream theory that doesn't get much respect these days.
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Friday 19th July 2013 10:09 GMT Richard 81
@AC
No, actually this news story comes from a press release that describes one idea that they do have, based on the evidence that they've gathered. Finding evidence and coming up with theories that explain the evidence and allow you to make predictions is called science. If you don't like it, I suggest you consult your nearest homoeopathist, who'll no doubt help you through the trauma.
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Friday 19th July 2013 14:37 GMT Nigel 11
Impact? Isn't lower G and solid core sufficient?
Mars is less massive than Earth. Mars has a negligible magnetic field compared to Earth. If the latter has been true for a long time, isn't that sufficient to explain how the sun's solar wind stripped all the water from Mars? Note, water vapour is the lightest gas in the atmosphere. Methane (a likely major component of Earth's early atmosphere) is even lighter.
So do they really need to postulate a catastrophe? (Other than the freezing of whatever liquid/magnetic core Mars might once have had, which would have been a catastrophe for Mars life when taking the long view).
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Friday 19th July 2013 15:29 GMT 2nobel2013
Re: Impact? Isn't lower G and solid core sufficient?
Mars "stole" atmosphere and water from the Earth in the Theia impact (that created the Moon - and Mars - at the right tilt ...). Mars didn't have the gravity to hold on to its stolen atmosphere so it sublimated into space (though many of the mechanisms you speak of).
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Friday 19th July 2013 03:04 GMT Wzrd1
So, a smaller sibling of Earth got smacked hard and died.
Earth got smacked harder, but being larger, hence, hardier, Earth survived.
Initially, I was considering rejection, based upon the current Earth's and Mars magnetic field, but then, I considered the mass of each and reconsidered.
Less massive, cool faster. Geomagnetic field dies sooner. Remnant of atmosphere is erased sooner.
No Barsoom here, move on.
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Friday 19th July 2013 13:31 GMT Nick Ryan
IIRC some of the recent theories on the Earth and Moon, there was one body initially and something comparatively large smacked into it, possibly shattering and then leaving or possibly merging with the resultant mess. In the debris that was left the Earth reformed out of the larger set of debris and the moon formed from the accretion(?) disk.
It's a neat solution to the problem of why Earth has such an enormous satellite and as I understand it, the chemical make up of both bodies does lend some support to it.
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Friday 19th July 2013 16:45 GMT Beachrider
Where the Earth impactor story came from...
There is ample evidence that the Moon is spiraling away from Earth, over time. It is getting about 3.8 cm/year further away from Earth. Winding that backwards gives a timeframe for separation of the Moon from Earth.
Apollo data indicates that the Moon was not 'captured', like Mars's two satellites were. The Moon has lower density than the earth, but its chemical composition is of a type expected at Earth's orbital distance from the Sun.
The numbers for separation are all about 4.5 Bn years ago, so things-still-orbiting within Mars's orbit are unlikely to be evidence from that. It is all a theory, so no one 'knows', though.
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Friday 19th July 2013 03:21 GMT amanfromMars 1
The Second Coming ...... and in Steganographic Code for Stealthy Colonisation of Invaded Forces
What can evolve in a billion years? On Earth, quite a lot. On Mars, maybe more. … Palf Posted Friday 19th July 2013 00:56 GMT
Hmmm? …. Evolution on Mars is revolutionary thinking, Palf …… and it would illogical and naive to not imagine that it be, whenever maybe more advanced, also counter-revolutionary and a quantum quandary for intelligence and presumably intelligent species to ponder and wonder at … and for primitives to definitely waste time and effort [which are a limiting, universal unlimited source and resource] worrying about and fearing what they don't know, but know is out there and a'coming in all manner of irregular and unconventional phorms/means/memes in Complete Command and Complex Control of ITSignals and AIMessages to/from/for Global Operating Devices with SMARTR IntelAIgent Systems of Remote Virtual Operation with Untouchable Intangible User Interfacing for Fault Tolerant Cyber Security and Failsafe Virtual Protection?!.
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Friday 19th July 2013 04:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re. Martian evolution
Google "Shultslaboratories", Sir Charles has extensively studied the data from the MER and other sources and conclusively proved the existence of fossils on the Martian surface.
Of course, NASA still won't admit that they even exist, but a catastrophic loss of atmosphere would have preserved the surface quite effectively so it is possible that in the past some sort of oceanic Cambrian Explosion could have occurred on Mars leading to very similar fossils being laid down.
The presence of perchlorates wasn't known at the time of the Viking missions so the negative life result on some of the instruments could have been explained; perchlorates are basically rocket fuel and if Mars had achiral life ie the amino acids and proteins the other way around then this alone could explain a lot.
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Friday 19th July 2013 09:42 GMT Professor Clifton Shallot
Re: Gussie
"If you believe that amino acids and proteins could be achiral, then that would explain a lot too."
I think he means that they might have had the opposite chirality but it is hard to be sure due to all the insanity.
Out of interest is there a simple proof that you couldn't make an achiral protein-building system? Is there a level of complexity of carbon chemistry at which chirality is unavoidable and below which there's an insufficient range of possible structures?
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Friday 19th July 2013 12:34 GMT Loyal Commenter
Re: Gussie
Re: Peter Ford
You can make a chiral molecule with four atoms, if you use Nitrogen, as its lone pair is steroegenic, for example you could make chiral ammonia if you had one hydrogen atom, one deuterium,and one tritium. It would probably flip between the enantiomers pretty quickly though, so you'd probably have to keep it cold to keep it stable. Oh, and it would be radioactive, but you get my point...
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Friday 19th July 2013 14:18 GMT Fink-Nottle
Re: Gussie
> Is there a level of complexity of carbon chemistry at which chirality is unavoidable and below which there's an insufficient range of possible structures?
That's pretty much it - chemical complexity or symmetry, you can't have both.
The carbon atom has a propensity to bond with other atoms or groups of atoms. The resultant organic molecules are three dimensional and have different shapes dependant on their composition. Stereochemistry is the study of these molecular shapes and how they interact; while the term 'chiral' describes a particular stereochemical property of an atom or molecule.
Sterochemistry is undoubtedly a consideration in the chemistry of life, where complex molecules interact like 3d jigsaw pieces. Proteins (with one exception) by their very nature posesss chirality. So, to refer to 'achiral' proteins is simply gobbledygook. In IT terms, it's like saying compiled C runs faster than uncompiled C.
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Friday 19th July 2013 14:27 GMT Nigel 11
Re: Gussie
Out of interest is there a simple proof that you couldn't make an achiral protein-building system? Is there a level of complexity of carbon chemistry at which chirality is unavoidable and below which there's an insufficient range of possible structures?
Sort of, and yes. A chiral molecule is any molecule with four non-identical sub-groups bonded to one Carbon atom. (There are also lots of other sources of chirality, but that one will do to start with). So, almost any complex carbon-based molecule will have a non-identical mirror-imaged form.
The more interesting question is whether mirror-life is likely to have evolved elsewhere in the universe. Life based on much the same building blocks as ours, but all components the mirror image of ours. Classical chemistry provides no reason why not. Quantum physics reveals that the weak nuclear force is itself chiral, and that there's a tiny difference in stability between Earthlife amino acids and their mirror-world alternatives. It's only about one part in 10^24, but there's a tipping-point in that L bonds stably with L, D bonds stably with D, and mixxed amino-acid polymers are much less stable than pure-L or pure-D ones. Ours is the mort stable. Evolutionary coin-toss, or inevitability?.
All speculation until we find some other instances of life. May be a long wait.
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Friday 19th July 2013 12:28 GMT Loyal Commenter
Re: Re. Martian evolution
'Conclusively proved', eh? I think the term you actually meant to use was 'hypothesised', or possibly 'scammed', since the web site that turns up appears to be touting a book, amongst other things. I'll believe this conclusive proof, once the author of that website has his orbital power stations up and running, which he promises 'very soon'. I stopped looking at the site after this, as it appears to have broken the needle on my bullshit detector.
Also, 'catastrophic' things tend to not preserve things well due to their, umm, catastrophic nature. Unless you have a different definition of the word catastrophic to everyone else. Usually in astronomical terms, it refers to something large hitting something larger, the sort of thing that woudn't so much leave things preserved, as leave them as a large glassy crater.
Also, the word you are looking for is not achiral. Achiral means a lack of chirality, i.e. compounds which are asymmetric, or consist of both enantiomeric isomers in equal measure (which would normally be referred to as racemic, as they still are not strictly achiral). The word you were probably looking for is heterochiral, meaning 'of the opposite chirality', but that would have to involve you learning something about chemistry rather than just pretending you do.
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Friday 19th July 2013 07:08 GMT John Smith 19
Interesting science and a cautionary tale for us as well?
It sounds like Mars could have been quite a lot like Earth at one time, but with taller people.
But lose 99.9% of your atmosphere and.....
One wrong move in the great game of celestial pool and the Martians would be saying that about us.
Thumbs up for 2 paths to this result.
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Friday 19th July 2013 07:33 GMT 2nobel2013
Maybe it was just one impact
Maybe the Earth impact that created the moon - also created Mars? Makes a lot more sense then these Nasa jokers who don't explain EVERYTHING (how did Mars get its atmosphere and water in the first place? Why is Mars tiled at a similar angle to the Earth? Why are Martian rocks very similar to Earth's mantle rocks?). I have a better theory, read mine. http://rampsontheory.blogspot.com
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Friday 19th July 2013 15:19 GMT 2nobel2013
Re: Maybe it was just one impact
Did you read the blog - or do you just want to see yourself in print? If Earth and Mars both formed in situ, and Earth was hit by a "Mars-sized object" that created the Moon and tilited it on its axis - how then is Mars ALSO tilted a very similar amount? TWO impacts? Is that easier to believe than just one?
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Friday 19th July 2013 20:41 GMT Mike Moyle
Re: Maybe it was just one impact
@ 2nobel2013
"...how then is Mars ALSO tilted a very similar amount? TWO impacts? Is that easier to believe than just one?"
Earth, Mars, Saturn, and Neptune all have axial tilts clustered within 5 degrees of each other, with none of the others anywhere near them.. By your post hoc, ergo propter hoc argument, therefore, one of them MUST have made a cracking good billiard shot to effect that result.
An at least as likely explanation is that, because the original protoplanetary disk wasn't one molecule thick but rather extended well above and below the mathematical "plane of the ecliptic", millions of impacts -- as well as close encounters with objects from WELL outside the plane that passed through it, such as we still have today -- gradually tugged the axes of rotation out of a strict perpendicular alignment with the plane of the disk into something of a "sweet spot" around 25 degrees.
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Friday 19th July 2013 15:08 GMT wowfood
Re: "how did Mars get its atmosphere and water in the first place"
Isn't it obvious?
Millions and millions of eyars ago billions even. Earth was lush, and Mars was Lush, then along came some douchebag moon.
The moon smashed into mars, knocking off its orbit and destroying the ozone completely. Then just to be a prick it crashed into earth as well. This is what killed off the dinosaurs, and created the grand canyon. Lots of dust etc killed off pretty much everything as most of the moon was disintegrated after its second big collision (probably an elderly woman driver)
So finally the moon tries to make a run for it, but gets snagged in earths gravity. Now the moon is our bitch for killing our sister and they all lived happily ever after, except the martian... Because theyr'e dead.
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Friday 19th July 2013 16:10 GMT Grikath
venus
Venus gets a "tad" more radiation from the sun, has an acidic cloud cover that makes for a very comfy blanket, and as such has an atmosphere that is not so much more dense than Earths' but at higher temperature, and thus pressure.
Put Venus in Earths' orbit, and wait for things to cool down, and you will see something that pretty much resembles the Big Rain our planet went through in its' infancy. You will only have to wait a couple of million years...
As for Mars, it's pretty clear that there has been a serious geological upheaval in its' past. Serious enough to leave traces of massive global vulcanism. And not unlike we see in the Earths' geological past after confirmed meteor strikes. As opposed to earth, however, Mars has a relatively small gravity well, and the whole picture of low gravity, and large masses of water being vapourised by large volcanic fields into the atmosphere strikes me as a surefire way to bleed a lot of the atmosphere off into space before things "calm down" again.
And we know for a fact that Phobos and Deimos are captured asteroids ( and we really wouldn't want either of them crashing down here...) Could well be that one of their bigger brethren was captured in a rather more terminal way.
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Saturday 20th July 2013 12:34 GMT Salafrance Underhill
Re: venus
I was under the impression that there was very little water in Venus' atmosphere, so the big rain scenario isn't likely to occur. Additionally, using an admittedly very simplistic application of the ideal gas laws, a temperature drop from 735K to 288K would see a pressure drop from 92 atmospheres to 35.
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Friday 19th July 2013 18:23 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: I thought this was by Ron Hubbard?
Nah. Immanuel Velikovsky got there yonks before Hubbard did, and I don't suppose he was the first either.
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Friday 19th July 2013 08:09 GMT Montreux
The core solidifying removed the magnetic field
I remember a different explanation from Professor Brian Cox on Wonders of the Solar System. A planet needs to have a molten iron core to have a magnetic field, and in its history Mars used to have one like our planet and that gave it a magnetic field. A magnetic field protects your planet from the atmosphere being eroded by the solar wind. As Mars is smaller than our planet it couldn't maintain the temperature of the core and it solidified. Hence removing the magnetic field and leaving the atmosphere open to erosion from the solar wind.
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Friday 19th July 2013 08:29 GMT Dodgy Geezer
Re: The core solidifying removed the magnetic field
An interesting theory, right up to the point where he proposes that Mars does not have a molten core....
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11962-lab-study-indicates-mars-has-a-molten-core.html refers...
(However, it does not have a magnetic field, so that bit's true enough... The Universe is a more complex place than we think...)
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Friday 19th July 2013 17:03 GMT Erik N.
Re: The core solidifying removed the magnetic field
"The core needs to spin in order to generate a magnetic field. Specifically in relation to the solid/liquid core boundary.
'Tis the Dynamo Effect wot does it."
Exactly. Mars being smaller cooled enough so that it's core stopped spinning. When the magnetic field stopped, the solar wind started pulling off the atmosphere.
For what it's worth, in the next one to two billion years the same will happen to Earth. At that point it will very quickly turn into Mars 2.
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Friday 19th July 2013 12:44 GMT Tom 7
Re: The core solidifying removed the magnetic field
The Earth's core is about 4800C, Mars 1500C - IF it is liquid it looks like its too viscous to be a spinning self sustaining dynamo like Earth's.
If we do planet building it would be a good idea to make the core Fe3O4 - I wonder how big a core we would need to make a radiation deflecting spacecraft?
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Friday 19th July 2013 10:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
so that's what it was......who knows? Ah, nobody!
I guess that's why there's an ASTEROID belt - debris from one humungous collision maybe?
Didn't someone once speculate that the Moon was ejected from the hole in the Pacific?
Perhaps a coalescence of planetary objects that ended up on collision course?
Maybe the Earth (and Mars) were moons of Jupiter at one time.
Who really and honestly knows or will ever know?
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Friday 19th July 2013 13:34 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: so that's what it was......who knows? Ah, nobody!
> debris from one humungous collision maybe?
Asteroid belt mass: 4% of the mass of the Moon.
NO. It was in "Captain Future" though.
> Didn't someone once speculate that the Moon was ejected from the hole in the Pacific?
Words fail.
> Perhaps a coalescence of planetary objects that ended up on collision course?
Perhaps an ensemble of neurons firing randomly, forming sounds vaguely resembling a phrase?
> Maybe the Earth (and Mars) were moons of Jupiter at one time.
Maybe the Moon is made of cheese.
NO.
> Who really and honestly knows or will ever know?
Spouting CRAP and ending with PSEUDO-OPEN-MINDED PHILOSOPHY will win you friends.
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Friday 19th July 2013 12:56 GMT Faux Science Slayer
Earth's atmosphere is under continuous erosion from solar wind and cosmic ray decay. During the Jurassic period reptiles and insects had double the wingspan of current flying animals. Since 'lift' is a function of wing area, the longer wingspan and increased wing area suggest an atmosphere of between double and four times current atmospheric pressure. The solar wind is blowing the top of the atmosphere into space, modulated by a varying magnetosphere. Cosmic rays cause decay Nitrogen and Oxygen two-atom molecules and lighter molecules reach escape velocity and exit to space from the top of the atmosphere. The atmosphere is partially replaced by fission by-products that are outgassed primarily at under sea volcanic vents. This is described in "Earth's Missing Geothermal Flux" at the Faux Science Slayer site. Find and share Truth...it is your duty as an Earthling.
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Friday 19th July 2013 14:51 GMT Nick Ryan
I'm pretty sure that's the case as well.
As In understand it, the large size of the these ancient critters was due to there being a rather higher oxygen content which allowed the invertebrates to grow bigger. Without lungs there is only a maximum size/area that can be adequately supported through surface oxygen absorption.
Which is why we don't have 1.2m wide dragon flies* or 5m long centipedes* to deal with. * or modern equivalents.
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Friday 19th July 2013 16:26 GMT Grikath
Oxygen had something to do with it, but there's some severe limitations to their body plan as well. There's plenty of modern insects that match the size of the *average* critter in the carboniferous period ( and there's some modern beetles that come pretty close to the giants of that age...) The giants are just that. Same as the dinosaurs and the glacial megafauna(s). There's a tendency for life to grow *big* up to the limitations of the bodyplan if there's no competition from other ("superior") bodyplans.
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Sunday 21st July 2013 12:41 GMT Jonathan Richards 1
Re: made it to 10 figures-worth of birthdays
Also, in any reasonable frame of reference, Mars wouldn't be counting its birthdays in Earth-orbits, i.e. years, but rather in Mars-orbit time. The current ratio is a little over 1.88 to 1, so a billion Earth-orbits is only 531.7M Martian birthdays.
Furthermore, "10-figures-worth" as a cute name for a billion only applies if we think that Martians count in base 10, which in turn is an artefact of the pentadactyl limb...
Alright, don't tell me, I know when I've stepped over the line.
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Friday 19th July 2013 17:06 GMT Stevie
Bah!
"Tunable" laser? Curiosity has a frikkin' tunable laser beam screwed to it?
Is this so it can hunt down and kill Spirit and Opportunity once and for all and free up much -needed grant monies from the claws of the wrinklies still controlling them?
If so, will the Mars Rover Slapdown be filmed and put up on YouTube for all to see?
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Saturday 20th July 2013 20:54 GMT Adam Foxton
Clearly it was the departure of Mondas
When the populace of Mondas determined that their planet was dying, they launched a big-ass rocket to bring their population to Earth. This pushed so hard it knocked their planet out of solar orbit and caused no end of problems for the remaining populace, which they helped fix by building a really big vacuum cleaner and sucking away the nacent Mars' atmosphere. The 'spare' atmosphere was used as propellant in a planetary ion-drive.
This, being based on a shocking ignorance of even Science-Fiction level physics, is still more believable than some of the 'theories' being presented here.
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Sunday 21st July 2013 12:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
RE. Re. Martian evolution
OK so I posted this very early in the AM.
I meant opposite chirality, besides which even NASA admits that Mars might have had life at some point.
The latest discoveries show that a combination of the core solidifying and at least one large impact did for Mars, any water is either locked up in the poles, underground or sublimated off into space.
The interesting thing is that a sufficiently large nuclear explosion *might* start the outer core rotating again even if its centre is solid; the energy needed borders on absurd but my back of the envelope calculations indicate it to be about 500M megatons.