Mars Dry as a Dead Dingo

[CraigS]

Well .. ya go away for a week … and it all seems to revert back to those boring old conformist mainstream ideas … so here we go … yet another scientist seeing Mars for what it is … and what it may have always been … dry !
Martian water vs. the volcanoes

For decades NASA has been "following the water" on Mars with hopes of finding signs of alien life there; or at least signs that future colonists won't die of thirst. Now a Texas geologist has dared to revive an old, almost heretical idea -- backed up with all the latest data -- that the Red Planet has been bone dry for billions of years.
…
Mars' spectacular grand canyons were not carved by catastrophic floods, says Texas Tech's David Leverington, but by slippery, low-viscosity lavas. This lava hypothesis fits happily within a wider geological framework of Mars and compares well with similar channel-like features on the moon and Venus, he said.

If Leverington is right, the odds of life on Mars plummet to near zero.

Yep … well whilst some of the flows we see on Mars may have originated from lava, some may have been carved by ablating CO2 also .. but the noteworthy item here is the realisation that the past "big" water on Mars, is now being referred to as a hypothesis:

Just because there are some problems with the water hypothesis is no reason to throw it out entirely

… Ok .. so finally we see some truth coming out in the media … all this business about the overwhelming geological evidence for big water flows in Mars' past is now devolving into mere hypothesis ! And the follow-on impact of this is that there may have never been any major planetary-wide environmental catastrophe resulting in the disappearance of any major water (it may never have been there to start with !) … like what we've all been led to believe for yonks !

Cute ..

Cheers

[xelasnave]

Thank goodness your back Craig it feels empty here without your neat posts.

I thought the canyons on Mars (and all places) were due to electrical activity as they expect in an EU Universe

I think politics may influence the desire that water is somewhere to be found on Mars because water hints at life and looking for life is easier to sell than mere research for the sake of science.

Thanks for the link.

alex

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

Thank goodness your back Craig it feels empty here without your neat posts.

I thought the canyons on Mars (and all places) were due to electrical activity as they expect in an EU Universe

I think politics may influence the desire that water is somewhere to be found on Mars because water hints at life and looking for life is easier to sell than mere research for the sake of science.

Thanks for the link.

alex

I agree, Alex … the mighty lighting bolts of the Gods wreaked its terrible and awesome power upon the surface of the planet and went and rusted it all, too !

As it is now politically correct to openly suggest that NASA exploration funding was only ever granted to those bids who had some kind of empirical exo-life support behind them (ie: presence of liquid water), we can now discuss this openly in this forum !

(… It being politically correct because it is now not really possible for NASA to be able to send humans into space to look for exo-life anyway … and probes are unlikely to recognise it … even if they did happen to stumble over it !! )


Cheers

[xelasnave]

I have spent some time reading the progress of the hunt for water on Mars and it is interesting to cram into an hour or so the ideas on the matter publised in support of Mars having water.
If you wish hard enough approach flavour about some of it.
alex

[renormalised (Carl)]

There's only one way to solve this once and for all........go there and look for ourselves. Simple as that. I'm a geologist....I'll go there if they like and do the research. What about all the other geologists, hydrologists etc etc etc. Instead of sitting off 35-240 million miles away and pontificating about what is or isn't there, and instead of peering down from hundreds of miles up with various orbiting satellites, why not get Mark 1 eyeball and brain down there to take a look and do the necessary ground truthing and study. You can't tell what's in a rock outcrop by staring at it with binoculars from 10 mile away. You have to go there and sit on the rock and look at what's there. There's far more to geology than staring at the results of remotely sensed data.

[CraigS]

Oh no !!
.. I wouldn't send a geologist .. especially when I could look at some good ol' tiger stripes (spectrographic data) !!

Cheers

[leon]

You all sound so surprised that Mars is just a big dry rock. !!!!.

Leon

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Oh no !!
.. I wouldn't send a geologist .. especially when I could look at some good ol' tiger stripes (spectrographic data) !!

Cheers

You're not even looking at that....just electron counts in a gamma ray detector. And with satellites that have vis-IR cameras, you're looking at the reflectance/absorbance properties of the minerals within the rocks you're looking at. However, you can use various types of spectrometers to identify the minerals, in conjunction with the other detectors.

But, they won't tell you everything that's going on. Far from it.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by leon

You all sound so surprised that Mars is just a big dry rock. !!!!.

Leon

No, not really. However, there is water there. That they do know. It's what form the water's in or was in that's the big question.

[DJDD]

there' an an article about water on mars in the latest AS&T, p.18. suggestion that there IS water flowing on mars...

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by renormalised

No, not really. However, there is water there. That they do know. It's what form the water's in or was in that's the big question.

Nah … there's no questions at all, if there never was any big water there !

Cheers

[CraigS]

Just to balance it up .. this one appeared just the other day … (notice it was NASA spinning the optimistic story .. again .. )

NASA research offers new prospect of water on Mars

NASA scientists are seeing new evidence that suggests traces of water on Mars are under a thin varnish of iron oxide, or rust, similar to conditions found on desert rocks in California's Mojave Desert.

.. all invented to explain why the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft's spectrographic camera can't detect more carbonates than expected.

Notice that they're modelling it all on the conditions in the Mojave Desert (on Earth !). The gist is that they're imagining that 'missing' carbonates on Mars, which would be indicative of the presence of 'big' liquid water in the past, might be buried under a 'varnish of iron oxide 'skin'.

Invoking some kind of condition, which may exist somewhere exotic on Earth, to me, is the problem with a lot of this type of speculation. Its vastly different from basing hypotheses on pure physics or chemistry. The formation of geology is subject to Complexity (a flow-on from Chaos Theory). As such, determinism is not the logical outcome of such processes.

They're all caught up with trying to continue the story about previous 'vast oceans' of water … which then forces them into having to invoke some kind of mysterious, catastrophic disappearance phenomenon.

Cheers

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Nah … there's no questions at all, if there never was any big water there !

Cheers

Proof will only come (either way) in the exploration by geologist on the ground. Simple as that and already pointed out

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by renormalised

Proof will only come (either way) in the exploration by geologist on the ground. Simple as that and already pointed out

Perhaps.

The point I'm getting from this is that I have never seen it openly admitted that the "Big water on Mars" story is just that … a hypothesis !!
In the past, it has been that this is the only explanation.

Clearly, it is now OK to speak of other explanations.

Y'know .. lightning bolts and 'stuff' !!

Cheers

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Just to balance it up .. this one appeared just the other day … (notice it was NASA spinning the optimistic story .. again .. )

NASA research offers new prospect of water on Mars



.. all invented to explain why the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft's spectrographic camera can't detect more carbonates than expected.

Notice that they're modelling it all on the conditions in the Mojave Desert (on Earth !). The gist is that they're imagining that 'missing' carbonates on Mars, which would be indicative of the presence of 'big' liquid water in the past, might be buried under a 'varnish of iron oxide 'skin'.

Invoking some kind of condition, which may exist somewhere exotic on Earth, to me, is the problem with a lot of this type of speculation. Its vastly different from basing hypotheses on pure physics or chemistry. The formation of geology is subject to Complexity (a flow-on from Chaos Theory). As such, determinism is not the logical outcome of such processes.

They're all caught up with trying to continue the story about previous 'vast oceans' of water … which then forces them into having to invoke some kind of mysterious, catastrophic disappearance phenomenon.

Cheers

That's all they have to go on....what they can see and comparison with Earth analogues. You take what you can see and know and then extrapolate from that into areas you don't know but find similarities between the two. Unless the laws of physics and chemistry are totally different on Mars as they are on Earth, if similar processes have appeared on both planets, then their outcomes will generally be similar. For instance, the weathering of granites via aqueous solution produces clays...both of which are abundant of both planets. Therefore, the processes and chemistry which occurs in the formation of clays will be similar on both planets. There's nothing wrong in speculating that the carbonates on Mars maybe covered by an iron oxide crust, like here in the Mohave Desert. Both the Mars areas and those areas in the Mohave return the same spectral signatures. That would point to a similarity in both areas. Now, all the have to do is ground truth it...and how many times have I said that??.

It's quite obvious you've never studied geology, because you're invoking Complexity in the determination of the processes occurring. You've got this bug under your bonnet about Chaos/Complexity and you see it in everything. As a matter of fact, you see it as the be all and end all of what is occurring. It's not. There's a lot more to geology, physics or any other subject/process etc, than chaos or complexity. Far more. That's not to say it's not important but you really need to be aware of the level at which it is important and to be aware of where determinism arises from any underlying chaos/complexity. Chaos and complexity do not function in a vacuum, so to speak. Neither does geology, or chemistry, or physics etc.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Perhaps.

The point I'm getting from this is that I have never seen it openly admitted that the "Big water on Mars" story is just that … a hypothesis !!
In the past, it has been that this is the only explanation.

Clearly, it is now OK to speak of other explanations.

Y'know .. lightning bolts and 'stuff' !!

Cheers

Not perhaps, Craig. It's a fact and a certainty. You can't really solely on remote sensing (either in orbit or on the ground) to tell you what's going on. You have to be there, sit on the rock, smell it, taste it, touch it, break it up and look at it through a hand lens or microscope, do all the tests needed to determine what's going on, map the rocks etc etc, to figure out what's going on. I can show you from plenty of 1st hand experience where remote sensing has misled people looking at the geology of a locality. It's only a tool and it's only as good as those who make the interpretations. and all those depend on the accuracy and the function of the detectors being used.

It's always been a hypothesis....to the scientists. This is another case of media beat up. However, the scientists can also be blamed for some of the beat up as well. So what if some of them want "big water" to be true. Surely they're entitled to some belief in something, or a feeling about the possibilities. It's no different from any other theory that ever been posited. Including SR/GR or QED, QCD, LCG, String Theory or anything else. It just waits to be either confirmed or refuted.

Lightning bolts.....yeah and my grandmother was Davy Crockett

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by renormalised

It's quite obvious you've never studied geology, because you're invoking Complexity in the determination of the processes occurring.

Nah … I'm not invoking it … nature does that for itself.

Originally Posted by renormalised

You've got this bug under your bonnet about Chaos/Complexity and you see it in everything.

Yep … all self-similar patterns formed in nature have chaotic processes causing them. Great stuff, eh ?

Originally Posted by renormalised

As a matter of fact, you see it as the be all and end all of what is occurring. It's not.

No … but the mathematical models developed in science used to describe the macro-level processes leading to self-similar structures, (like river beds/branching, galaxies, planets, biological structures etc), lead to a much deeper understandings of the physics involved, through interactions with other systems. Without the macro models, these interacting behavioural influences will remain unexplained, as will the impact on those external systems.

Originally Posted by renormalised

It's not. There's a lot more to geology, physics or any other subject/process etc, than chaos or complexity. Far more. That's not to say it's not important but you really need to be aware of the level at which it is important and to be aware of where determinism arises from any underlying chaos/complexity.

We all need to understand the scale and sensitivity over which chaotic behaviours can result in non-deterministic outcomes. Chaotic behaviour arises from non-linear influences acting upon deterministic processes. In geology, physics and chemistry form the basis of the deterministic components. The resulting macro-level structures formed in geology are the outcomes of deterministic chaos resulting from the interacting macro-scale non-linear systems (eg: weather patterns, fluid dynamics, etc).
Complexity resulting from a large number of interacting dynamical systems, can result in the formation of simple behavioural patterns. These patterns can then be modelled to determine the influence they have over other interacting systems.

Originally Posted by renormalised

Chaos and complexity do not function in a vacuum, so to speak. Neither does geology, or chemistry, or physics etc.

The studies of Chaos and Complexity lead to deeper understandings through modelling. Modelling is a relatively recent concept and has emerged alongside of computing technologies. The days of a simple deterministic formulae being sought to explain clearly complex behaviours, has been superseded by the combination of technology and the clever application of mathematical principles.

The 'new physics' you so often call for, is actually emerging from computational modelling. What the human brain cannot intuitively explain or predict, is the very output replicated by computer models which actually make use of the principles of the deterministic components of Physics and Chemistry, 'modulated' by the non-linear macro-scale process behaviours evident in nature.

This is the exact stomping ground of Chaos and Complexity Theory. A dedicated astrophysicist (or geologist), cannot ignore the benefits of mathematical modelling.

It is a crucial component of all future understandings of nature.

Cheers

[renormalised (Carl)]

I'm not denying the benefits of mathematical modelling for any science, but in order to show that chaos theory/complexity has any benefit or application towards any science, you have to show that it applies to the theories and processes that those sciences already espouse. In any case, there's more to mathematical modelling than chaos or complexity theory.

If you can show that chaos has any application to fossilisation, sedimentation processes, ore forming processes, orogenesis, coal and oil formation, remote sensing, structural geology etc etc etc, then you might have some chance of having geologists take it onboard. I've used plenty of mathematical models in geology but not once have I ever had to use chaos theory or complexity to model rather complex geological systems.

Like any theory, it's just a tool that can be applied in some situations, but not all.

[Ray?]

Sorry, dead dingos are found in central Australia and the only way that a dead dingo could have gotten there is if it had once been a live dingo, and live dingos require water.

Cheers

Ray

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by Ray?

Sorry, dead dingos are found in central Australia and the only way that a dead dingo could have gotten there is if it had once been a live dingo, and live dingos require water.

Cheers

Ray

Not only that, a dead dingo still has some water in its tissues, even if it has been desiccated for quite some time