In reply to Standing Bear's message of Mon, 11 Dec 2006 22:01:44 -0500: Hi, [snip] >This is going to get like Chekhov's 'Cherry Orchard'.
Probably. :) >Everybody is talking >past each other for their own ends....or jobs. >Water will be found and >incontrovertably proved when it is brought back or sampled by us. Until >then it is like 'bigfoot'. Or better like random intermittant phenomena not >unlike a bad connection in equipment. Now you see it now you don't. I think it's highly likely, given the preponderance of hydrogen in the universe, that there will be some hydrogen compounds found on Mars. Since there is also ample chemically bound oxygen, the manufacture of water will very likely be possible, if it doesn't already exist in one form or another. I think there is good reason to believe that water ice exists in considerable quantities, though water in the form of chemical hydrates in the rock is also very possible and even probable. However I'm not sure whether or not the temperature ever gets high enough for liquid water. Surely the two little robots running around up there have been recording the temperature, so that by now we should know the answer to this? >Personally I lean to the idea that we are not unique in the universe, and >physical laws governing us do so for others as well. Agreed. > Exo geoligical >processes seem earthlike on not only Mars but Titan as well. Branching >dendritic stream passagways seem the same everywhere no matter what >the fluid, water or ethanol or methane transported. ...and very fine dust acts in exactly the same way, if the gradient is steep enough. What would be much more interesting proof of a real liquid would be a meandering river. IOW flow where the gradient is very small. >By the same token, >organic material older than our central star was found in a meteorite >uncontaminated by terrestrial sources. Life in all likelyhood is panspermaic >by its very nature, and we are probably nothing special. All else is ego and >religion or both. Personally I would be happy even if we just found simple >single celled life in the deepest reaches of the martian deep equatorial >canyons. If ET is really in the process of "Terra forming" Mars, then there is likely to be quite a bit. ;) BTW has anyone considered the possibility that Earth itself may at one time have been "Terra formed"? Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://users.bigpond.net.au/rvanspaa/ Competition provides the motivation, Cooperation provides the means.
