Tag: Mars

Would You Volunteer?

The weekend and time to lighten up a bit….we have all had enough gut wrenching reports and we need to think of stuff on the lighter side…..

You could volunteer for the Peace Corps or Americorps or for some charity but these people have volunteered for a one of a kind mission……..from Salon.com…..

Mars colony

Mars One

Only a few dozen will be chosen for the 2023 mission to colonize the red planet.

Five months after the Netherlands-based private spaceflight project Mars One announced it would begin accepting applications for a one-way trip to the red planet, 202,586 people from more than 140 countries have submitted videos explaining why they should be chosen for the mission.

The first of four selection rounds ended August 31. Now, the Mars One selection committee will spend the next several months narrowing down the applicants. There are even plans to launch a reality TV show to choose the final candidates. The goal is for 24 to 40 people to begin a seven-year training program in 2015. Then, working with the private space flight company SpaceX, Mars One hopes to send the prospective Martian settlers to the red planet in teams of four, beginning in 2023.

Okay my question is…..would you volunteer for a one way mission?  If so….why?

Life Here Started Out There

Famous opening of the original scifi show, Battlestar Galactica…….but how true is it?  if you believe the ancient astronaut theory then we are all children of the stars………but does science back this up?

Newser) – Were our earliest ancestors Martians? A new study suggests that all life on Earth may have originated on the Red Planet, the BBC reports. That’s because Mars would have had plenty of the minerals that are best at forging RNA, which is one of the key components of life and is believed to have predated DNA. On Earth, those minerals would have dissolved into the ocean (water is “corrosive” to RNA, adds Space.com). But life could have formed on Mars, then headed here on meteorites, suggests US scientist Steven Benner; he’s not the first to propose such a theory, the BBC notes.

The investigation centers on how atoms were arranged to form RNA, DNA, and proteins. Benner says minerals containing the elements boron and an oxidized form of molybdenum were central to the process—but at the time, Earth was probably incapable of supporting enough of such minerals. He tells Space.com that analysis of a Martian meteorite revealed the presence of boron on Mars, and “we now believe that the oxidized form of molybdenum was there, too.” As such, “the evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock,” says Benner. “It’s lucky that we ended up here, nevertheless—as certainly Earth has been the better of the two planets for sustaining life.” Click for more on how nobody really wants to head back there.

So are we the children of organisms from mars or are we the product of some guy with an intelligent design in mind?  Or is it the same thing?

Thoughts?

Water, Water Everywhere

The weekend and time for some sciencey stuff……..we have learned that water is essential for the development of life forms……and now we have a report from Mars……

(Newser) – Photos of an enormous crater on Mars indicate possible underground water—water that could have supported life, and could still be doing so. Images taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show the 57-mile-wide McLaughlin Crater, which is now dry. It’s one of the planet’s deepest spots at 1.3 miles, and minerals there indicate upwelled groundwater may have formed a lake on the spot some 4 billion years ago. One other sign of a former lake, per Space.com: channels that climb 1,650 feet up the walls of the crater’s eastern side.

Because the surface of the planet is inhospitably cold, scientists have focused on lower layers in a search for possible life. Earth’s underground is home to almost half its living matter, in the form of microbes, and in like fashion, “the deep crust has always been the most habitable place on Mars,” says the study’s head author. His work began as an attempt to disprove that water had flowed to Mars’ surface. But “lo and behold, there was strong evidence for that process in this crater,” he notes. “Science is special because we are allowed to change our minds.”

Are we talking about H2O or some liquified substance?  Thoughts?

Red Rover, Red Rover

My “political walkabout” has given me the chance to get caught up with important issues….I wish I could say that I miss not trying to make sense from a pathetic election, but I cannot….it is refreshing to do something relaxing……..

And now for more sciencey stuff!

For decades there has been a debate on whether there is life on Mars or if it now extinct or if Mars is just a rock in space…….the possibility that we could have an answer very soon……we have agent working on the surface that may be able to answer the questions that have long plagued man…..

Newser) – The Curiosity rover landed safely on Mars early this morning, prompting whoops of joy and relief in NASA’s mission control center, reports the New York Times. The rover quickly beamed back a picture of its own shadow cast on the surface of the Red Planet. “Touchdown confirmed. We are safe on the surface of Mars!” the team read out after receiving signals from the rover.

After a journey of 354 million miles, the rover, which is much bigger and more complex than previous models, had to land in a new way that could never be fully tested on Earth, leading to what control room staff described as “seven minutes of terror” before confirmation was received, notes the Washington Post. As earlier reported, the spacecraft ferrying it had to rely on a supersonic parachute to slow it from 13,200mph to about 1.7mph; with seconds to go, the rover was then lowered to the surface using three nylon tethers and retro rockets.

WE may wait on the edge of our chairs…well those of us that care….waiting for the answers…..Curiosity is loaded with the most sophisticated instruments to study Mars’ environment _ with convoluted names to match. “Mastcam” refers to the pair of 2-megapixel color cameras on the rover’s “head.” “SAM” _ short for Sample Analysis at Mars _ is the mobile chemistry lab designed to sniff for carbon compounds. “ChemCam” stands for Chemistry and Camera, otherwise known as the rock-zapping laser. And “RAD”? That’s the radiation detector.

Here are a few fun facts about Mars……

About the color: It’s called the red planet because the landscape is stained rusty-red by the iron-rich dust.

_Quick weight loss: Its gravity is only 38 percent that of Earth. So if you weigh 150 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 57 pounds on Mars.

_Hot and cold: Mars’ temperatures can range from 80 degrees at its equator to -199 degrees at its poles.

_The air is different: Mars’ atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide with traces of nitrogen and argon. Earth’s atmosphere is a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen and other gases.

_Longer days: They last 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth.

The space agency has William Shatner detail what it expects to happen, including the Hollywood-esque “seven minutes of terror” that precedes the landing, reports SkyNews. If Kirk doesn’t cut it for you, another Trekkie, actor Wil Wheaton, also made a video.

Life Out There

Another Saturday and lots of rest and mental relaxation……

For a year or more I have been writing about stories of ET (may never get on Ancient Aliens)………..there seems to be stories pointing to the possibility of left here started out there…..

A new study from NASA postulates that if life ever existed on Mars, it was probably underground.

Ever since clay minerals were discovered on Mars in 2005, scientists have thought warm and wet conditions that could have supported life may have existed, according to NASA. That’s because clay is formed when water and rock interact with each other.

According to NASA, the study, which is published in the current issue of the journal Nature, backs up a hypothesis that warm water was present only on the planet’s surface for geologically short periods of time.

“If surface habitats were short-term, that doesn’t mean we should be glum about prospects for life on Mars, but it says something about what type of environment we might want to look in,” Bethany Ehlmann, the lead author of the paper and a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. “The most stable Mars habitats over long durations appear to have been in the subsurface. On Earth, underground geothermal environments have active ecosystems.”

But we can’t rule anything out. Space.com notes that just because the water on the surface was only present for a short time doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been habitable.

There seems to be more and more about Mars…..is it a matter of time until Mars Attacks?  Think Marvin the Martian!

Who Is Colonizing Mars?

Two days of thinking about stuff other than the insanity that is our political system…..it is so hot here that if I could pull it off I would go about in a speed-do….(now there is a picture you should not try to imagine)…..but speaking of strange things…….

Remember when ‘War of the Worlds’ creating a panic because people though we were being invaded by Martians?  Of course you don’t!  That was in the early days of radio….the Bronze Age we call the 30’s.  Okay let us leap into to the not so distant past….remember when we were told about the face on Mars?  And of course that started a whole thing about who, what and why it was put there.  Or maybe you can remember some of those pics from a rover (I believe) that showed what appeared to be parts of some android (the robot not the phone)…….and the same questions popped up….who, what and why?

Well all that hoopla is about to start all over again…..why?  It seems that some Calif. amateur astromomer has found something interesting while he was Googling Mars……got you attention yet?

Watch the vid and let me know what you think it is……

http://n.pr/lpj1aK

Are we looking at a replay of “Mars Attacks”?