Mars Water, Hmph.

I haven't written much about my favorite extraterrestrial planet Mars in quite a while -- primarily because there's not been much to say about it for quite a number of years. The problem -- at least in my estimation -- is the real reluctance of the planetary science community to go against established "knowledge" as promulgated by the Big Men of the Field. This has been true for decades, and one can assume it will be true for the foreseeable future.

But in advance of the release of the new Ridley Scott film, "The Martian," word comes that "flowing water" has been found and confirmed on the surface of Mars. Uhhh. Well....

Sure. Why not?

The streaks that have given rise to the current findings have been known and noted for nearly 20 years, and the "discovery" that they are presently active has been recognized for almost as long. The problem has been that their cause is mystifying. Because of a long-time consensus among researchers that the surface of Mars is too cold and the atmosphere is too thin for liquid water to exist at all, research tended to discount the notion that the streaks (known as linea) were the result of flowing water, or if they were that the water which made them had flowed recently -- which could be any time within the last few million years.

This tendency to discount what seems so obvious has been strong among Mars researchers for many a long year, and it continues today.

The idea that water can -- and does -- currently flow at the surface of Mars, at least intermittently, is still regarded with some suspicion. The idea that other substances may be liquid and flow at current Martian surface temperatures and pressures is generally dismissed entirely.

Myself, I was once a fairly strong advocate of current surface water on Mars as it seemed to me that the visual evidence* of what appeared to be geysers, springs, flows and so on was too strong to be ignored, yet it was ignored. Or the evidence was interpreted so as to preclude water or any other flowing liquid.
(* link is to a site which hosts thousands of images of the Martian surface acquired by the Mars Global Surveyor between 1997 and 2003, images that I and many others scoured intensely as they were posted for various interesting features, including streaks and other signs of current flows.)

After a time, I began to think about other volatiles on the surface that could mimic water -- look just like water but not be water and act almost identically under the current surface conditions.... what substance could do that?

It occurred to me that an aqueous solution of sulfuric acid -- which is stable in liquid form down to around -63C and .05mb atmospheric pressure -- would be an ideal candidate. It would appear to be liquid water, and it would act just like liquid water (apart from its solvent qualities), but it would not be liquid water. It would be battery acid. There would be no easy way to tell from a distance (such as an orbiting satellite or from Earth) just what the substance was. The only chemical difference between sulfuric acid and water is the presence of a sulfur atom and three additional oxygen atoms.

But at the time I was proposing sulfuric acid as a potential surface fluid on Mars, the consensus was that the likeliest fluid -- if there were current fluid flows -- would be water, probably water heavy with salt. Well, it would have to be because only brines can sustain a liquid phase under current Martian surface conditions. Even then, the period of liquid phase would tend to be brief unless the salt content was high.

When the Phoenix Lander exposed a patch of ice directly under the craft, the water scenario brightened considerably. Ice would indicate fresh water (although a brine could freeze at low enough temperatures). But there was a puzzlement: droplets of some fluid appeared -- and stayed -- on the landing struts for quite some time. It was at first assumed that these droplets were water liberated from the ice below by the heat of the retro rockets as the craft landed. But how could it be? The droplets were in shadow, and the temperature in shadow was well below the freezing point of even brines. These droplets appeared to remain liquid for... days, weeks, months. The atmospheric pressure was also low enough that when patches of ice were exposed during digging efforts they sublimated directly into gas once exposed to the air and sunlight. There was no observable liquid phase -- to water ice.

Some other fluid must have been seen on those landing struts, but what? It almost certainly wasn't water.

As analysis continued, salts were observed in the soil, one of the most interesting being perchlorate, used as a cleaning solvent on Earth. It was speculated that perchlorate in solution with water would produce a brine which could withstand surface conditions and remain liquid, and potentially, it could harbor microbial life.

This was actually a quite radical departure from previous "knowledge" about the surface of Mars. After the ambiguous life-detection results of the Viking Landers (c. 1976) a theory got going that suggested that the surface was sterile, and it was sterilized by a combination of some sort of hyper-oxide in the soil (substances which have never been observed) and the ultraviolet flux from the sun which is unimpeded by the Martian atmosphere. This theory was maintained for many years, and proposed that not only was the surface sterile, but it would be lethal to any living thing, including you and me. Simply breathing Mars dust might well be enough to kill you.

I never believed it, but it was the standard model of Mars for many years.

Just as a blood-red surface and brilliant orange-red sky were standard for so long. Though they were false renderings made for publicity, they remained the most frequently seen images of the Martian surface for decades despite repeated calls from the public for more accurate renderings.

The streaks that have caused all the buzz were first seen in the Mars Global Surveyor images in the late 1990s, though there were hints of them long before that. While much of the surface of Mars appears to be static -- except for dust storms and occasional small impacts -- there are areas that demonstrate considerable activity, including dust devils, some features that may be fluid geysers, active sand geysers, snow fall at and near the poles, possible glaciers, apparently explosive deflation of hillsides, land slides, and these streaks. They're found mostly in mid latitudes and equatorial areas mostly along the rims of craters and cliff faces. They tend to be a good deal darker than the surrounding terrain, but in some cases, they are quite a bit lighter. They have been observed to grow quite long and then they stop. Typically they fade away after a few months, and frequently they reappear in the same general areas once the surface temperatures warm up. Usually, they are seen when surface temperatures are between 250K and 300K -- in other words, somewhat cooler than to well above the melting point of pure water ice.

While it seemed possible to those with open minds that these streaks were the result of some kind of water flows, it was very difficult, indeed nearly impossible, to prove. Liquid water could not flow or persist at the Martian surface for any length of time because the temperature and pressure were in most places too low for too long. Thus even if there had been flowing water at the surface in the past, it would have been temporary unless the temperatures and atmospheric pressures were a good deal higher than they are today.

I'm one of those who tends to think that Mars is currently in a warm period, perhaps the warmest it's experienced in the planet's history. I doubt there was ever a warmer and wetter past, and I doubt there was ever an ocean as we would know one. There may have been a relatively heavy ice cover in some -- or many -- areas and there may have been intermittent lakes in many areas. But such water (or other fluid) which appeared at the surface for however long it may have done so came from below in almost every case.

Including those streaks. One of the problems with understanding them is that in most cases they begin at or very near the tops of crater rims and cliff faces. In many cases, their origin is a point source, really undetectable at the resolution of orbiting cameras, so it's impossible to tell just what the source of these streaks is. Somehow the fluid, whatever fluid it is, has to get up to the highest surface level before flowing downslope, sometimes for a kilometer or more.

I've often wondered why the streaks begin at the tops of cliff faces or crater rims rather than taking the easy route and forming at the bottoms where the fluid -- whatever it is -- might pool and be detected as a lake or pond even if ice covered for much of the time.

Actually, there are indications that that happens in various places at various times, but those who study the streaks don't seem to pay much attention to the indications of current ponds and lakes... ah, the division of labor...

Still, there is no explanation for the origin of the streaks at the tops of crater rims and cliff faces rather than their bottoms. The mechanism is thought to be hydrologic pressure from below which could be due to almost anything, Exactly why it manifests where and how it does remains a mystery.

The notion is that the streaks are underlain with a layer of permanent ice and that the flowing water which makes the streaks visible runs over the ice when temperatures at the surface are high enough. Interestingly, atmospheric pressure doesn't seem to play much of a role in the presence or absence of streaks, it's all about latitude and temperature.

There have been indications for many years that much of the surface of Mars is underlain with ice, not solely near the poles where it was expected but all over the planet. In some areas, this ice is very near the surface, essentially at the surface. In others it may be a few meters below. The indications come from hydrogen detection by orbiting spacecraft and the detection of widespread hydrated minerals. The belief is that only water (and ice) could cause these spectral signatures. And of course ice was found essentially at the surface at the Phoenix landing site.

So, there's no absence of ice on Mars, nor is there an indication that this ice is not water ice. I would imagine that it is water ice, and depending on where it is found, it is probably in a highly pure state. Meltwater from these ice deposits might well be potable. Whoo-hoo! Mission to Mars, here we come!

Well, that is unless it is filled with nasty microbes... Is that possible? Sure. There's no sign -- yet -- that such is the case, but it's worth noting that no orbiter or lander sent to Mars since the Vikings in 1976 have carried biology-detection instruments, not even biology inferring instruments. It's worth asking why not, but answers probably won't be forthcoming. Not only have there been no direct biology detection instruments, there have been no instruments which could analyse the soil for the hypothesized hyper-oxides which supposedly sterilized the soil at the Viking landing sites of any organic matter and thus of any biology. There weren't even instruments to measure the ultraviolet flux that was supposed to be a contributing factor in the complete sterilization of the Martian surface.

It seemed as if the hypotheses advanced to explain the failure of the Vikings to detect biology for certain in 1976 were being accepted on faith without even an attempt at verification. To me, as an interested observer, it was bizarre.

It occurred to me, though, that quite possibly the hypotheses of a sterile Martian surface were never accepted (13 pg pdf), and that was why there was no apparent effort at verification. Why verify something you know isn't true? On the other hand, it might have helped to falsify those sterility hypotheses, no?

What has been learned is a sideways falsification, I guess. There are organic materials in the soil, for example, materials which, for whatever reason, the Viking instruments did not detect. There are no signs of  hyper-oxides sterilizing the soil. Instead, there are widespread peroxides and perchlorates and salts and significant regions of near-surface ice, all of which indicate the presence of water both historically and currently. The notion that the surface of Mars is dry and dead and sterile is slowly -- painfully slowly -- yielding to a more complete understanding...

The surface of Mars may somewhat resemble a terrestrial desert, but it's not much like the surface of the Earth at all. It mimics... but it isn't the same.

The surface has many signs of flowing and pooling liquid -- both historic and recent/current -- but just what that liquid is or was isn't certain. It is assumed to be water, probably quite briny, but again, it's not certain. It may have been water in some places, whereas something else -- such as sulfuric acid -- may have been the surface volatile in others. There are indications of sulfates and sulfur in various places on Mars, which in combination with hydrogen and oxygen -- both of which are in fair abundance -- can produce various strengths of sulfuric acid. As an aqueous solution, it would behave almost like water -- except that it would remain liquid at very low temperatures and pressures, though eventually it would sublimate away like water.

So. The breathless announcement last week that "flowing water" had been "discovered" -- or rather confirmed -- on Mars has to come with a caveat or two. Those streaks have long been known and have long been speculated to be caused -- somehow -- by water flowing downhill. But how or why the water involved would be pumped to the tops of cliffs and crater rims in order to be released to flow down the cliffs and into craters is still a mystery. It doesn't really make hydrological sense, but it seems to be what happens.

Hydrated minerals/perchlorate salts have been spectrally found in association with the streaks but only when they are dark, not when they are faded or light. I have a problem with that in that hydrated minerals and perchlorates appear to be commonplace on the surface, found nearly everywhere. If the fading or lightening of these streaks is due to evaporation/sublimation, then the presence of salts should be stronger not weaker when the streaks have faded or lightened. But not what's found.

There has apparently been no spectral signature of water found in association with these streaks, and that's interesting all by itself. Water is simply assumed. Not necessarily wise given the way Mars deceives and mimics.

I suspect that we will not actually know about the surface of Mars until and unless people go there to measure and test and explore, and somehow survive the encounter. That adventure has been long-delayed, but what with all these new findings of "flowing water" -- and the blockbuster movie opening tomorrow -- you never know.

The 6th World

The 6th World Screen grab

Recently over at Ian's Place there's been quite a little hoo-hah over Ian's rather dire warnings about the Our Fate if We don't colonize Space. His presentation is couched in the familiar formulae of Western -- I would say "Anglo" -- colonialism and imperialism, and as is my wont, I take exception to it.

I realize Ian grew up in a colonialist/imperialist household, as he says his father was a minor functionary in the British Raj as India threw off its colonial shackles at the end of the 1940's, when with considerable bloodshed and dislocation, Pakistan divorced from India.

Yes, well. From what I've read Ian say about it, I get the impression he -- or his father -- believe India and Pakistan would have been better off under continued British rule and it was a mistake for them to insist on complete independence from the Raj.

I've read many British colonialists and imperialists who claim essentially the same thing. To me, it's an utterly bizarre position, but to many of those most directly involved -- especially in the context of Pakistan's separation from India -- it makes perfect sense to assert that a better world was possible under a benign British rule than the jibbering natives could ever hope to have on their own.

We sometimes hear the same claim made about how the United States might be better off -- certainly more civilized! -- if it had not become independent of Britain, and we see the same premise expressed in Africa (with the singular exception of the Union of South Africa -- which serves as the counter-example) when the former colonial powers send their troops to "restore order" among the always restive Natives.

Colonialism and imperialism are the problem, and more of it is not the solution.

We attended a Navajo film festival in 2012 as part of the activities during Indian Market Week in Santa Fe, and one of the films we saw was called "The 6th World." I really liked it because it showed such a different approach to the question of establishing a human presence Out There, in this case on Mars. The pioneers may have used the terminology of colonial expansion and empire, but they were doing something else entirely. Something most Anglos can't even imagine.

Compare and contrast with the Zubrinite vision of Mars colonization...

Mars (Still) Awaits

Mars! Bitches!

Getting to Mars Edition -- Saturday was PBS Science Cafe Day at Los Poblanos in Albuquerque. We've been signing up for this event pretty much since we've been in New Mexico. It's a rather easy-going opportunity to get together with some like-minded coots and other space and science junkies (of which there are many in NM) and hear some talk about what's happening in the field.

Saturday, the field was "Mars and how to get there." Sending humans to Mars, it was confidently asserted, has been a Dream of Mankind for Centuries. Has it? Being the skeptic I am, I questioned the premise right off. Has Mars been a long-sought destination for Mankind for... centuries?  I think not. The Destination factor of Mars has only been around since the age of rockets that made probing the Solar System and beyond a possibility -- if not always a probability. But the issue wasn't really how long Mankind has set its sights on the Angry Red Planet.

The issue was "Why Anyone Would Want To Go To Mars?" And once anyone decided to go, how would they do it?

These issues are being intensely wrangled at various sites in New Mexico as well as around the world. One of the visual aids brought by the speaker was the April 30, 1954 issue of Collier's Magazine featuring articles on Mars by Wernher von Braun, Cornelius Ryan and Fred Whipple, but mostly featuring the striking cover art by Chesley Bonestell seen above.

Well, yes. Without the cover art on popular magazines, and without the enormous number of science fiction movies produced in the 1950's, I sincerely doubt many of us would give Mars more than a passing thought. If that.

Because there was so much popular media focus on Mars when we were children, however, the planet has become a kind of ingrained Place In Space for a lot of people of my generation. But I've got to wonder: do younger people, especially much younger people, give a good gott-damb?

Plenty of spacecraft have visited Mars during my lifetime. The statistic we were given yesterday -- if memory serves -- was "Earth 15, Mars 24" (as in fifteen successful Mars-destination spacecraft, twenty four unsuccessful.)  There have been many discoveries. But oddly there have been none that either confirm or refute many of the various theories about Mars and its potential to harbor biology that have cropped up over the years.

Especially, there has never been a direct effort to confirm (or refute, for that matter) the rather baroque theories of super-oxides in the soils which were offered to account for the failure of the Viking missions to discover life or even organics on the surface of the planet way back in 1976. Nor has there been any direct effort since 1976 to confirm or refute the supposed sterility of the Martian surface.

This has long struck me as very odd behavior by the planetary sciences. The Viking biology results were enigmatic and contradictory to say the least; however, the scientific consensus at the time was that the surface was sterile, and the theory offered was that a combination of soil super-oxides and ultraviolet light destroyed carbon compounds as they formed or arrived on the surface so that there were none to found. A priori, that meant there was and could be no biology on the surface. Case closed. Move on.

While this consensus may be correct, it has never been tested. No trace of super-oxides have ever been sought or found at the surface of Mars, and no measurement of ultraviolet flux has ever been made at the surface. The presence of liquid water -- or some liquid at any rate -- long confidently asserted to be impossible at the surface, has been rather dramatically confirmed in a little known series of Phoenix lander images that show droplets of something on the landing struts of the spacecraft.

Personally, I'm quite leery of asserting that it is "water" in the sense that most of us would recognize it. Due to the fact that the Phoenix landed on a patch of ice which appears to have sublimated and condensed in response to the heat of the landing rockets, the proposition that it is water seen on the landing struts makes sense; yet the behavior of the droplets -- appearing to remain on the strut and remain liquid throughout the mission -- is not the behavior expected of water at the surface of Mars. Any water that was released by the heat of the rockets striking the ice below the lander should have either sublimated immediately or if recondensed, it should have refrozen within minutes; there should have been no detectable liquid phase at all.

And yet, there those droplets are, and there they persisted. How could that be?

I proposed that it's not water. It is instead a brine or an acid that remains liquid at typical Martian temperatures and pressures, and that furthermore, many of the apparently water carved surface features on Mars were actually the result of flowing brines or even a strong solution of sulfuric acid. There may never have been much water -- as such -- on Mars throughout its entire history and there may be very little there now, and what there is may all be frozen as ice.

I could go on at great length about these matters, and have done so in other fora, but yesterday it was the turn of New Mexico Space History Museum Director Chris Orwoll to hold forth on the topic of how to get to Mars and why bother -- oh, and his own journey from submarining in the Navy to his current perch at the museum outside of Alamogordo.

Getting there is being worked out as we speak, the major difficulties being the hazards of cosmic rays and meteoroids, both of which have damaged near-Earth orbiting space satellites and laboratories, and the sheer amount of stuff that has to be carried on the voyage and will be necessary to pre-position on the surface of Mars to supply the needs of landing crews. It's much simpler just to send a robot, as of course has been done many times in the past and will continue to be done for the foreseeable future. Getting people to Mars -- even though it is quite feasible right now -- may be a long time in coming, in part because it is very expensive, there is little current impetus for additional manned exploration of the solar system, and public sector budgeting for space exploration looks rather dismal indefinitely. The private sector is not picking up the slack.

While it wasn't mentioned yesterday, there's a rather good two part teevee movie out of Canada that dramatizes some of the issues involved in manned expeditions to Mars called "Race to Mars" which I recommend as a primer. While I enjoy the many Mars movies made in the past, they tend to be locked in their own time period or to foster highly dramatic but not necessarily apropos story-lines.

Documentaries as opposed to dramatizations often leave out human nature and how people respond to crisis, focusing more on hardware than the people taking the risks and making the voyage. "Race to Mars" strikes an interesting balance and features relatively recent (well, up to 2007) discoveries and understanding of the Martian surface and conditions.

Getting there is almost the easy part. What to do once there is the hard part. The final scene in "Race to Mars" shows the establishment of a little colony in Dao Vallis, where the fictional pioneering Olympus expedition had struck water -- and lost a crew member when the water gushed out as a snow and ice geyser destroying the drilling apparatus.

Water, of course, is the prime necessity for any human colonization of Mars, but whether there is any currently available -- even deep underground -- in Dao Vallis is something of a mystery. Dao is an ancient outflow channel in the Southern Highlands, arising near the Hadriaca Patera volcano and debouching into the Hellas Basin, the deepest hole on the planet. There likely has been substantial water and ice in this region, but whether they are there now -- at least near the surface -- is doubtful primarily because these features are very, very old, dating back nearly to the origin of the planet.

There are much more recent "watery" features, and as noted above, the Phoenix craft actually landed in 2008 on near-surface ice and released something ("") that stayed liquid at the surface for quite some time. If there is water to be found on Mars today, it is likely within meters if not centimeters of such surfaces -- high in latitude, low in elevation.

On the other hand, the Hellas Basin, Dao Vallis, and the surrounding terrain are relatively low latitude (ie: in places much nearer the equator than the pole) and low elevation (the lowest on the is planet found in the Hellas Basin) and are more likely to sustain liquid water near the surface than any other location in the Southern Highlands.

It was patiently explained to me by a planetary scientist some years ago that the Hellas Basin is unlikely to contain any liquid water today (though it may have done so in the past) because of an ongoing process of freeze-drying, similar to what happens in a frost-free refrigerator freezer. Evaporation and sublimation such as is likely to take place on Mars can maintain a frost and fluid free environment indefinitely even at relatively high temperatures and and atmospheric pressures.

The basic question remains, "why go to Mars?" And the answer is always the same: "It is human nature to explore and go where no one has gone before." Once the urge to explore fades, the progress of civilization is reputed to end.

Here's the problem, though. Too many times, those who are most intent on exploration of new frontiers are the very ones who threaten -- and often cause -- the extinction of the civilizations they encounter and/or the ruin of the pristine environment they claim.

I suspect Mars is such an inhospitable place -- whether or not it hosts native biology -- that any effort to colonize the planet from the Earth will be fraught with peril and failure to no apparent object. No one expects to find gold or jewels or a functioning civilization on Mars -- all of which were impetuses for exploration and conquest on Earth. There is no one to exploit. There are few or no resources to control. There is almost nothing that could sustain a modern expedition let alone a comfortable lifestyle on Mars. Whatever is found there in the by and bye, it won't be sufficient to sustain a viable human society. At least not as we know it.

The closest analogues on Earth to potential Mars colonies are the science outposts on Antarctica and the telescopes high on the Atacama Plateau in Chile. Neither is even remotely self-sustaining, nor could they ever be in the future. Such is almost certain to be the case on Mars should a colony ever be established there. The question is not so much one of getting there, it is more about maintaining a presence once there.

At one time, after all, it was widely believed -- or at least said -- that conditions at the surface of Mars were almost certainly almost instantly lethal to any and all carbon-based biology; even the slightest contact with the surface dust could be and probably would be a death sentence to terrestrial visitors. Surely the ultra violet flux and lack of protection from solar radiation and cosmic rays would take care of any survivors of Mars dust exposure.

The lethality of the Martian surface is yet to be proved, but it is still not a hospitable place no matter what.

Almost 60 years ago in the Collier's article linked above, Wernher von Braun, the father of (Nazi)German rocketry and the American space program predicted that it would take a century for Americans to prepare sufficiently to undertake a manned expedition to Mars.  That was pre-Sputnik, when there was no American or international space program to speak of.

The space program has once again fallen on (relatively) hard times. NASA lacks focus and budgeting for major space exploration programs is not likely to be abundant for many years to come -- if ever again.

Sixty years ago there was no lack of imagination, however, and it seems to me that we've lost the ability to envision the future. Without that imagination and vision, progress as we have known it ceases.


So just what in tarnation is this thing on Mars, anyway?

Shiny Thing On Mars -- Dubbed The Faucet Handle

The (Continuing) Mars Enigma

Today's announcement that various simple carbon compounds have been found in soils on Mars studied recently by the latest lander/rover was somewhat anti-climactic given the hype surrounding it. Anyone who's been following the saga of Mars exploration for any length of time would be pleased that organics on the Martian surface have -- finally -- been observed and confirmed.

Now if they could only find all those hypothesized oxidants and hyper-oxidants that were claimed to be sterilizing the surface since the ambiguous biological results of the Viking Landers more than 35 years ago.

As Gil Levin argued and attempted to demonstrate, the Viking results probably indicated the presence of organics and possibly Martian biology, but planetary science politics entered the picture and those indications were set aside in favor of a biologically negative interpretation of the data.

To suggest that the scientific community is suffused with "politics" is, of course, heresy. To go further and suggest that scientific results are not infrequently massaged to fit a pre-determined narrative can be a burning offense. Mars science has been particularly affected by these factors for generations, and given the latest hoopla, that's not likely to change any time soon.

[One of my earlier posts on Mars might be apropos...]

In Defense of Percival Lowell

I've spent some time looking at Mars in a telescope and looking at other people's pictures of Mars taken with their telescopes, and I've spent some time looking at Percival Lowell's drawings of Mars from which he derived his famous (or infamous) interpretations about canals and civilizations. I've also been to the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ and heard the stories they tell there of his observational acumen.

No one claims there are canals on Mars now, but for some time it has been customary to denounce Lowell's observations as "optical illusions," and to declare that there is "nothing really there" where he said he saw canals. Carl Sagan was among those famous for doing it.

And I never felt it was entirely fair. Lowell was said to have been one of the finest planetary observers of his era, though he lacked academic training in the field. His observatory was located in one of the finest observing locations in the country, and Lowell Observatory is still one of the nation's premiere observatories and research centers.

In an earlier post, I juxtaposed an illustration of Lowell's freehand drawing of what he saw in the Solis Lacus region of Mars in 1896 with three telescopic views taken with a CCD camera in 2006, 110 years later in the UK. The similarities are striking.

There are differences to be sure. Especially the size of the "pupil" of the Solis "eye." Lowell's is small and discreet, the "pupil" in the CCD image is large and extended. But many of the other features correspond almost exactly. Those features we now know include dark-floored craters, "fossae," dark and light terrains, volcanoes, and clouds among other things. I was able to toggle easily between the images, so it was startling to see the correspondences and to spot more of them each time I toggled.

Among the most striking correspondences is the appearance of lines on the CCD images, several of them in remarkably similar positions to those delineated by Lowell.

Side by side comparison; features seen on the CCD image are marked with arrows on the Lowell drawing [Note: South is at the top of the images.]

Side by side comparison of Mars Solis Lacus quadrant
left drawing by Percival Lowell, c. 1896
  CCD telescopic image by D. Peach, 2005
Correspondences noted on Lowell drawing

If you are able to relax your eyes a bit, you will see many -- many! -- linear markings on the CCD image, both light-toned and dark, some of which correspond to Lowell's markings, some of which don't. The correspondence of spots between the drawing and the CCD image taken more than 100 years later is remarkable, especially given the differences inherent in the, telescopes, the techniques and the tendency of the eye and hand to diverge when attempting to record visual impressions. (Think of courtroom drawings.)

The faint linear markings on the CCD image are NOT "optical illusions." They are on all the CCD images from that sequence so they are real in the sense that the CCD camera was able to record them. But there are many other CCD images taken by others around the same time that do not show linear markings as this one does.

What gives?

The "optical illusion" argument tends to fail when CCD images show linear markings similar to those Lowell recorded 100 years before. So other arguments have been put forth proposing that the linear markings are actually a telescopic artifact. Something in the optics of the telescope makes them "appear." This argument was offered in part because other astronomers also reported seeing linear marking corresponding to Lowell's canals, and Lowell for his part reported linear markings on the surface of Venus and Mercury when he trained the telescope on them.

I'm more inclined to accept the optics argument than I am the illusion argument, but even so, it seems to me there's something about the surface of Mars itself that allows and requires the appearance of linear markings in some telescopes but not in others. Given the fact that Lowell's telescope was a huge 24" refractor, and most of the modern amateur CCD images are made through a much smaller reflector or Schmidt/Maksutov Cassegrain telescopes, the "optics" argument becomes difficult to fathom.

[Note (as of 9:30pm Friday, August 10, 2012): a huge limb just broke off a eucalyptus tree down the street, blocking the road, exploding street lamps and power transformers, and causing much to do in the neighborhood. Power went out briefly, but there are wires crossed all over, and the exploded transformer is a big problem. Will probably lose power again as repairs are made. That tree has been there since God was a boy, and it periodically drops fair sized limbs, but this time the branch that snapped was enormous. Good thing nobody (that we know of) was under it at the time. Another big tree on the same property fell a few years ago in a storm, destroying the garage and badly damaging a neighbor's house. A neighbor said he witnessed the whole thing tonight, and he thought it was the end of the world...]

The point I'm making is that Lowell was a very accurate observer who honestly recorded what he saw when he observed Mars. Many of his contemporaries saw similar features. And similar features can still be seen and recorded on the surface of Mars with much different telescopes. I have seen some of them myself. It has never looked to me like the surface is crisscrossed with canals, but it is quite possible to resolve straight lines -- both dark and light colored -- that appear to connect various dark and light spots.

It's not an illusion.

There is something which produces the appearance of these lines, and given the absolute abundance of linear features of all kinds on the surface of Mars -- some of which have never been adequately explained, especially the "searchlight" and other linear features that Mariner 9 revealed, many of which are no longer seen in orbiter images -- it seems worth investigating how the surface features, the Martian atmosphere, the terrestrial atmosphere and telescopic optics all interact to produce the appearance of "canali" as described by Giovanni Schiaparelli in 1877.

Cerberus Fossae, set of deep troughs with dark interiors, about 1600 km long

The image above is from Google Mars and shows some of the most prominent linear features on the surface, the Cerberus Fossae, a paired set of dark-floored trenches, some 1600 km from one end to another, that are still something of a mystery. I did a brief survey of "fossae" using Google Mars, and there are literally thousands of examples, dozens of them 1000km long or more.

The conventional wisdom is that relief on the surface of Mars cannot be detected with Earth-based telescopes even today, and that the various and numerous fossae on the surface are so narrow -- at most, a few kilometers wide, in the case of the Cerberus Fossae above, only about half a kilometer -- they cannot be resolved by Earth-based telescopes. While volcanoes and craters have long been seen on the surface of Mars, including the vast Valles Marineris canyons, they weren't recognized for what they were because it was impossible to detect surface relief. In fact, prior to spacecraft explorations, it was assumed that Mars had very little surface relief because none could be detected.

This is an unlabeled US Air Force map of Mars from 1962, which will give you an idea of how widely  the linear features of Mars were accepted prior to the arrival of spacecraft:

USAF map of Mars, c. 1962. Clickage will embiggen.

I got the map from this site where the development of Mars mapping is explored. Lowell's maps of Mars are not nearly as sophisticated but they are not dissimilar.

Lowell's map of Mars, c. 1894 for comparison:

Map of Mars drawn by Percival Lowell, c. 1894

Some observers have seen surface features very much like those recorded by Lowell throughout the history of telescopic observations, and some of them can be detected by modern CCD cameras. The appearance of linear markings on the surface of Mars is quite real. They are well and truly there, and they are there at many different scales.

In another post, I may get into the scale issue, for in some ways it may be a key to understanding what is going on.

[Today and tomorrow are travel days....]

Ryan and Mars

I was watching a Mars Science Laboratory news conference yesterday, and I was struck with how young the panelists were. Of course, the star of the Mission has been "Mohawk Guy," Bobak Ferdowsi, but yesterday, his stardom was totally eclipsed by a bunch of kids going on at great length and detail about the Mars Mission currently underway in Gale Crater. It was an impressive and important display.

While watching the landing drama at JPL, it seemed that "nothing had changed" at the Space Agencies, it was still being operated the same way, with the hierarchies, the same ranks of monitors,  and the same 3 ring binders they've been using since the days of Werner von Braun.

But no. It's not the same. Not at all. There are similarities, to be sure, because what the Space Agencies are now is built on what they were 50 years ago when the Space Program became an integral part of everyone's life with the orbiting of manned spacecraft. The institutions that set our path to the stars are still the same, more or less, as they were at the beginning.

But it's an entirely different atmosphere and spirit than once pervaded NASA and JPL; these young people have a much greater level of accomplishment, when you get down to it, in their 20's and 30's, than their predecessors might have had in their 40's and 50's. They've done more, they've seen more, and with the spectacularly successful landing of the Curiosity Rover, they've managed an amazing task with grace, courage, and utter confidence in their skill and ability to do the impossible.

I just saw Mitt Romney introduce Randian Young Buck Paul Ryan as "the next President of the United States" and it immediately brought to mind the reality of the Bush Jr. presidency, in which the man who ran the show was VP Dick ("What a Dick") Cheney. And if there is a Romney presidency -- looking less and less likely as this Long Hot Summer drags on -- it's obvious that Mittster will defer to the Young Buck in the transformation of American society into a Randian dystopia.

That's the goal and game plan of our Overclass, and they have chosen Ryan as the man to implement their goals.

Ryan brings a young, indeed an almost adolescent, enthusiasm to the task he's accepted: dismantling what's left of the New Deal and Great Society and restoring America's position as a Third World hell hole the way it was meant to be. Like more than a few adolescents, he obviously enjoys bringing an end to the world as we know it, with as much malice and cruelty as he can engineer. It's a high for him.

The contrast between Ryan and the young people at the news conference yesterday could not be more acute. Ryan is a social demolition expert, that's his job. The young people at NASA and JPL, managing a Mars program that may well result in the first confirmation of life on another world (though I'm not holding my breath), are building what could well be a better future, or at least something that leads to The Future.

Ryan and his owners and sponsors (Willard is a nonentity now) have no such vision. They are obsessed with driving us backwards, destroying what's good in American society once and for all.

It is their mission.

It is their quest.

They are relentless.

It will be interesting to see how much Team Obama pre-concedes to them this time.

Lost Civilization

Percival Lowell's view of the Solis Lacus region of Mars, c. 1896

Telescopic view of the same region from 2005 by D. Peach, Bucks, UK
Note: At just about the limit of visibility, many people will see straight lines
on the surface of the telescopic images that strongly evoke the Lowellian canals.
It's not an optical illusion, as these lines are visible in all three telescopic images.
What they actually are and what causes them to appear is a mystery.

Like many youths, I was something of a science fiction fan during those awkward pre-teen and early-teen years, but I particularly enjoyed science fiction movies and television shows from the 1950s and early 60s both for their utter cheesiness and for their often very strong message of civilization's self-destruction. Who can forget "Science Fiction Theater," "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet," (on ViewMaster no less!) and the early "Twilight Zone?" There was much more than that.

Science fiction at the time could almost always be relied on to be a bracing counterpoint to the kind of hyper-American patriotism young people were being indoctrinated into every day of their lives.

I've mentioned Disneyland a few times in reference to my youth and the more recent events in Anaheim. I was a pretty frequent visitor from soon after the park opened until we left Southern California in 1959. Two of my favorite attractions were the Rocket to the Moon and the House of the Future both in Tomorrowland. The notion of a Future of Unlimited Possibilities was the American cultural counterpoint to the constant drumbeat of nuclear holocaust -- a holocaust that would destroy any hope of "civilization" forever.

Mars figured heavily in the science fiction of the era, as it had for generations, at least since the advent of the Martian Canals that later observers would insist were nothing but illusions -- as they pointed to spacecraft images of the surface of the planet that showed.... something like canals. Forbidden Planet -- a take-off on Shakespeare's The Tempest -- was set on a planet that resembled Mars, Angry Red Planet, Flight to Mars, Red Planet Mars, were just some of the pictures released in the 1950's that dealt with the Mars of imagination, sometimes touching on the fundamental Lowellian notion of a "Dying Civilization."

Of course Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ray Bradbury, among many other authors, would pick up on and elaborate the themes of rough going civilizations facing extinction, many of which were set on Mars or on a planet like Mars, but perhaps the most influential take on the Dying Civilization of Mars trope was that of H. G. Wells' brilliant "War of the Worlds," from 1898. 

Of course I saw the 1953 movie. In the theater. I was too young to understand it, but still it made a tremendous impression on me, especially the scenes of the destruction of Los Angeles. Given the constantly whipped up fear of Soviet attack during the era, such scenes were terrifying and too true to life.

Many years would pass before I read the novel and comprehended what Wells was getting at by positing the invasion of London by Martians and their essentially casual destruction of everything the British held dear. It was an allegory of the British Imperial behavior toward Natives everywhere, but at the time particularly in Africa. They arrived, they destroyed. It was quite the counterpoint -- and in some ways a complement -- to Kipling.

Be that as it may, the notion that Mars either has hosted or currently hosts an alien civilization -- whether dying or not -- is strong among the Planetary Anomalist community. It remained strong even after the the iconic Face on Mars was rather cruelly debunked. I say "cruelly" because there are so many claimed artifacts on Mars and supposed evidence of Civilization, some of which is faked, but there are so many real anomalies as well. The Face, while perhaps not being carved into the landscape by Martian artisans, is most definitely worth further study -- as is the case with the rest of the mesas and buttes in the Cydonia region -- because how it formed is not understood at all, and how the rest of the formations in Cydonia came to be the way they are is a mystery.

Planetary scientists do not know very much about how Mars "works" -- or if they do, they're not saying.

Interestingly, after 36 years of rigorous official denials that Viking Landers found evidence of biology at the surface in 1976, there have been some recent studies that suggest the early denials were in error. Yes, well, that would be typical of Mars study. Error is the rule in Mars study, no matter who is doing it, nor how rigorously they deny their own error! (Lowell comes to mind as setting the standard for that behavior.)

Given the way Mars has been studied, especially since the early space craft exploration era, it would be almost impossible to recognize the presence of a Lost Civilization on Mars if it ever existed. After decades of exploration and investigation, after all, there still no definitive conclusion regarding the presence -- or absence -- of biology on Mars. Many of the investigations that might support or refute hypotheses about biology on Mars are not done. It's as if, perhaps, the planetary science community doesn't want to know one way or another but only wants to extend the study indefinitely.

Some of the Anomalists -- and a few planetary scientists such as Gil Levin -- claim cover-up and worse, but I suspect it's not that. Science, especially the planetary sciences, often works on the Big Man principle, and progress in understanding is often a matter of the prominence and position of those who hypothesize and theorize, not necessarily a matter of skilled and insightful observation and coherent presentation. It's human nature, especially in institutional settings. Politics, in other words, always plays an important role in "what we know." Who is making a claim and in what venue matters.

It's Civilized!

The fact that the study continues, now in Gale Crater with Curiosity, but it cannot be conclusive about Martian biology -- if there is or was any -- or anything else for that matter, is no doubt deliberate, but not necessarily conscious. Gale is thought to have been a lake at one time,  just as Gusev was (the site of the Spirit Rover landing not far away). At the present time, however, Gale is dessicated and dry -- just as Gusev is -- and there is unlikely to be any evidence of recent water or other fluid on the surface; there is unlikely to be any evidence of biology either, at least none that could be recognized without endless dispute. The Opportunity Lander possibly imaged fossils at its landing site in Meridiani, but those images have never been accepted as definitive nor could they be because of the nature of the study itself.

Landing at a site known to be dessicated and dry -- such as anywhere near the Mars equator -- will be unlikely to show any evidence of recent fluid flow or biological activity. On the other hand, a few years ago, a lander plopped down at the margin of the northern polar region, landing on a patch of ice no less, and it appears that fluid droplets were promptly imaged on the landing struts. They remained for many days, but in most of the images released by the Phoenix Mission, the presence of those droplets was either ignored or consciously cut out.

Mars Water -- droplets deposited on Phoenix lander strut, 2008

It became something of a running gag among lay observers that the evidence of water at the surface of Mars that for so long had been sought so eagerly was right there in front of the investigators but it was being ignored. The problem was actually more complex. The droplets were on a landing strut that there was no way to get to for experimental purposes, just as the ice upon which the Phoenix landed could not be directly probed because there was no equipment that could reach it.

A problem with the drops on the Phoenix lander also theoretical. For decades, it has been conventional wisdom that there cannot be liquid water on the surface of Mars, period. Any liquid water at the surface would almost immediately freeze or sublimate/evaporate, because temperatures and atmospheric pressures are too low to sustain liquid water at the surface. This conventional wisdom has been challenged for years, but it has been treated as Iron Law in the planetary science community because -- as Carl Sagan was often wont to say -- "calculations show" that liquid water can't exist at the surface of Mars for more than a few minutes, which was extended to mean that it can't exist at all.

The droplets which you see in the pictures above are not only obviously there, they lasted for many days, and from those three images, it's clear that they are growing, moving and changing over the course of several days. This is, according to the Iron Law of Conventional Wisdom "unpossible." It can't be happening. (At the same time, of course, NASA and JPL and Malin Space Science Systems have routinely announced evidence of current surface water flows when presenting images of recent gullies.)

The article that's linked, however, describes means and mechanisms that make such an "unpossible" thing not only possible but likely, indeed certain to have occurred.

IMNSHO, biology is possible on Mars, and evidence for its active presence was likely found by the Viking Landers in 1976. That evidence was misinterpreted, I suspect to some extent maliciously. There has never been any follow up to the hypotheses that were presented to explain the conflicting results from the Vikings -- which is one of the reasons why I suspect that those involved in the furor actually understood the data to indicate biology rather than "exotic chemistry."

There is most certainly fluid at the surface of Mars, and there is much fluid underground, but how much of it is "water" in the sense we would understand it is an open question. I suspect there is very little pure liquid water anywhere on Mars.  More than likely, almost all liquid water on Mars is in the form of very salty brines, or -- as I came to realize Opportunity Mission in Meridiani -- actually dilute (in some cases concentrated) sulfuric acid. I suspect there has never been an actual "water regime" on Mars, and the images of an Ancient Watery Mars we sometimes see are as much fantasy as any Lost Civilization idea from science fiction literature.

It is highly unlikely that there has ever been any kind of civilization on Mars, not so much because it is "unpossible" as it is because the emerging understanding of the history of Mars will demonstrate there's never been an opportunity for a civilization to develop or become established, in part because of the continuing chaos of the Martian environment.

Despite terrestrial tribulations nowadays, the Earth has been a calm refuge by comparison.

If I continue with this Mars series, I may get into some of that "emerging understanding of the history of Mars.

Maintaining Stability in the Midst of Chaos

This post is mostly about Mars but no doubt will ramble all over the place as is my wont from time to time.

Three views of Mars from the Hubble Space telescope, March 10, 1997

There are so many images from the past few days, of the memorials for the new dead, of the Mars landing, of people just trying to hang on for dear life, of a planet incinerating, of despair, hope, grief and joy, that anyone's head would be spinning.

First to Mars for the thrill of adventure. For someone like me, this is really big-time exciting, though not quite as thrilling as earlier missions. They've become almost commonplace.

What we know of Mars today is nothing at all like the fantabulous Mars of Percival Lowell and Ray Bradbury; but neither is it much like the Mars of the 1972 revelations from Mariner 9.

Chesley Bonestell's vision of Mars, c. 1950

Portion of Noctis Labyrinthus from Mariner 9, 1972

Elysium "Pyramids" from Mariner 9, 1972,
used as an illustration in Carl Sagan's 1980 edition of "Cosmos"

Those images are burnt into my memory. They are the first to clearly show the presence of fluid-carved features on the surface, the first to delineate the Valles Marineris, the largest known canyon in the Solar System, and the first to clearly show the giant volcanoes of the Tharsis Ridge, particularly the one known then as "Nix Olympica," (Snows of Olympus) but now known as "Olympus Mons" (Mount Olympus), the largest volcano known in the Solar System, and on and on.

Mariner 9 had been preceded by Mariners 6 and 7 in 1969, and they had shown some of the same features, relatively clearly too (in some cases, the Mariner 6 and 7 images are higher quality than those of Mariner 9) but interpretation failed. For example Nix Olympica and the Valles Marineris are shown on the following full-planetary images from Mariner 7:

Mariner 7 (1969) images of Mars from 200,000 miles away

The circular feature in the upper center is the giant volcano; the squiggly business below it is part of what's known as Noctis Labyrinthus, highly fractured uplift area, and to the right of Noctis Labyrinthus is a dark feature with several dark spots around it which is the Valles Marineris feature together with associated canyons  and craters. Just barely visible are the tops of two of the three aligned Tharsis volcanoes which form a diagonal line at a 45 degree angle to Nix Olympica. The white patch at the bottom of the images is the extended South Polar cap.

All of these features and more are visible from Earth with the use of almost any fairly decent telescope, and they had all been reported and drawn -- though not necessarily photographed -- in great detail decades prior to the Mariner and later missions to Mars. These features are actually easily seen in Earth based telescopes; I've seen some of them myself.

The problem was -- and is -- one of interpretation. For example, "Nix Olympica." The name "Snows of Olympus" implies the presence of a significant mountain, which was how the feature was interpreted when initially identified and named; but the interpretation of the feature seen in the images above was that "Nix Olympica" was in fact a crater not a mountain at all. And the "snows" were clouds. Well, yes, there are clouds seen in this image, and Martian clouds were well known before space-craft explorations, but the original interpretation of a mountain is correct; the crater interpretation based at least in part on the Mariner 4 images which showed a heavily cratered Martian surface more like the Moon than the illustrations of a canal crossed smooth sand desert that had formed the basis of understanding the Martian surface prior to the arrival of Mariner 4 to take the first close-up pictures of the surface of Mars in 1965.

Mariner 4 image of the surface of Mars, 1965

But even here, where craters are obvious, interpretation is risky, and things in the image may not be quite what they appear to be. This is not a lunar surface, not even a lunar-like surface, but because there are craters at all, it was interpreted as lunar. You'll note in the lower left corner there is a straight line angled at about 30 degrees that extends about half way across the image; under certain conditions, it can appear to cross the entire frame. If this feature were visible from Earth (apparently it cannot be seen telescopically, however) it might well be interpreted as a canal. The formation is apparently a crack in the surface, of which there are very many over the entire globe, some of which are much longer than this one, and many of which evoke the "canals of Mars" as detailed by Percival Lowell.

According to standard interpretations, all of these features are associated with vulcanism and uplift. They do not form patterns of intersecting lines -- except when they do. And none of them are telescopically visible from Earth. According to standard interpretations, all of the "canals" so carefully delineated by Percival Lowell and testified to by other astronomers were optical illusions.

And yet the surface of Mars is crossed by literally thousands of linear depressions, some of them thousands of kilometers long, some of them roughly corresponding with the locations of Lowellian "canals."

How drole. Well, it would be if these linear features were acknowledged, but they are not. Few of them are even noted, though they be glaringly obvious in Mariner and Viking images especially. They are not "canals" in the sense that Lowell meant the term, but they are most definitely "canali" in the sense of "channels" as declared by Giovanni Schiaparelli. And there are thousands of them. Yet in standard Mars interpretation, there is essentially no mention of the abundance of cracks in the Martian surface, some of which indubitably mimic Lowellian canals.

Telescopic observers had also seen and recorded many craters on the surface of Mars well before any space-craft explored the surface, but these early records of craters on Mars tended to be ignored, not because the observations were necessarily in error (though they were definitely enigmatic) but because the dominant planetary paradigm was Uniformitarianism, and that implied that no planet with an erosive atmosphere (such as Mars) would preserve craters at the surface over the eons. Erosion would have long ago erased any evidence of abundant cratering, much as was believed to be the case with the Earth.

The following image from Mariner 4 shows another enigmatic linear feature that has defied interpretation for almost 50 years:

Mariner 4 Image of Craters in Atlantis region of Mars, 1965; linear feature at right edge of largest crater

What is it? It has not been located in later pictures of the area, or if it has, I haven't seen any announcement. From what limited scale information is available, it appears to be about 2.5 kilometers long, and .5 kilometer high, perfectly straight and perhaps 100 meters or so wide.

While this particular feature has not been located or identified in subsequent mapping and imaging of the area [see note below], there are many other enigmatic linear, circular and arcuate features on the Martian surface that defy ready explanation, so many in fact that there's a cottage industry of amateurs whose interpretations of these features as "buildings" of a Lost Martian Civilization are believed by many.

[Note: Now that I'm back doing vicarious Mars exploration again, I've made another "discovery." The Mariner 4 images above are of the same region; the upper Mariner 4 image is rotated 1/4 turn left and it has much lower contrast than the lower image. It appears they were taken at different times of day, but that's not possible as the Mariner 4 mission was a fly-by, not an orbiting mission. The upper image reference number is PIAO2979 while the lower image reference number is PIA02980, suggesting they were acquired one after another. The images were acquired with a miniature television camera most likely using different filters. For example, the upper image may have been taken through a green filter while the lower one was possibly acquired through a red filter. Interestingly, in the catalogues of Mariner 4 images, the first image is the only one that is referenced. The second one is not referenced in the catalogues and is almost never referenced at all. The crack that appears in the upper image is almost always referred to as a "ridge" -- as that was how it was described at the time the image was first released. The crack is part of the Sirenum Fossae ("fossae" means "fractures" or "ditches" not ridges.) The crack also appears in the lower image (just barely visible from the lower right corner rising at a 60+ degree angle toward the upper center.) The small linear feature noted in the lower image is barely visible in the upper image, but it is not linear. It appears to be more oval. A comparison was posted at Malin Space Science Systems in 2007 which shows the 1965 image together with a 1978 Viking Orbiter image of the same region at approximately the same scale:

Mariner Crater, Mars, as imaged by the Viking Orbiter, 1978

Mariner 4 crater image rotated.

The crack is clearly visible, extending straight through the bottom of the crater. A peninsula and a small ovoid hummock is visible on the lower rim of the crater that roughly corresponds to the oval feature in the upper Mariner image and to the location of the linear feature in the lower Mariner image. There is no sign of a linear feature in that location in the Viking image. It may be an imaging artifact. Or... ?]

The signs are that there has never been a civilization on Mars, "Lost" or otherwise, nor is it particularly likely there could be one, at least not one we would recognize. The surface of Mars is apparently extremely hazardous and potentially lethal to living things such as our own sweet selves and presumably to any potential aliens, let to alone bugs and microbes and such like. Not only are temperatures and atmospheric pressures typically too low for comfort (! to say the least), there are no ready resources -- at the surface at any rate -- to support biology on any but the simplest scale, and even then, there are many factors that argue against even the most modest biosphere on Mars.

That doesn't mean there is no biology on Mars. If biology on Earth can adapt to the most severe circumstances, there's no reason it couldn't do so on Mars. So the biology question should remain open until there is actual evidence one way or another as opposed to elaborate interpretations of ambiguous data. In fact, it has been suspected for some time that if biology is ever proven to exist on Mars, it will likely be in the form of microbes that were brought to Mars as contaminants on spacecraft launched from Earth!

Be that as it may, it has long been the practice in the planetary science community -- at least since Lowell -- to make broad and expansive interpretations of very limited and ambiguous data, and for those interpretations to stand for many years despite conflicting data. I've often called Mars "The Mimic Planet," and "The Planet of Deception." Much of what we see on the Martian surface mimics what we might see in terrestrial deserts, and yet, it's not really the same at all. Some of what we see mimics other features, whether canals or something else, and that mimicry can easily lead to erroneous interpretations, such as that of Nix Olympica as a crater rather than a mountain. There are many circular features on the surface of Mars that quite likely aren't impact craters but are interpreted as such because it is customary to interpret circular features on Mars as impact craters even if there are indications the feature formed through other means (such as undermining and collapse from below).

Geysers of some sort are not a newly theorized or even newly discovered phenomenon on Mars, but their broad acceptance by the planetary community seems to date only from 2006, whereas I and others were seeking them out as early as 1996 when the Mars Global Surveyor/Mars Orbital Camera images started being returned. It seemed natural that there would be surface geysers on Mars under certain circumstances. The surprise was that when geysers were found, they were in abundance, near the south pole, and were "sand geysers" rather than fluid geysers, caused by pressure release from below a layer of clear carbon dioxide ice warmed by the springtime sun.

Greg Orme is an Australian amateur Mars enthusiast whose tireless inspection of MOC images has resulted in numerous discoveries over the years. He was dogged and determined and I wouldn't doubt he's inspected every one of the hundreds of thousands of images returned by the MOC and other orbiting cameras. He's found hundreds if not thousands of "spiders," and these spiders are often seen as the remnants of the geysers that occur every Martian spring.

r1001457f

Above is one of my crops of the defrosting Inca City region near the south pole showing some of the spiders and some of the evidence of geysering (there don't appear to be any active geysers in this view.)

Note: Inca City is an enigmatic formation discovered in 1972 by Mariner 9 near the south pole. This is an image of it from the Mars Orbital Camera:

Inca City, Mars

It's considered to be a remnant of a buried crater due to its somewhat circular appearance, but it is not certain what caused the rectilinear features. Ice is suspected, but how the formation occurred is deeply mysterious. There are many somewhat similar features in many places on the surface, some of which resemble what a turbulent fluid might look like if it suddenly froze.

The geysering phenomenon got a good deal of coverage in 2006 when planetary scientists broadly accepted it. This Wikipedia article covers most of the story pretty well. This Mars Anomaly Research article from 2005 is quite complete, and it seems to be based in part on my original discovery of active geysering (c. 2001) as well as later images. Finally, this Mars Enigmas article from 2006, while somewhat confused and confusing, gives a pretty good overview of the phenomenon both from a popular and a scientific point of view.

Of course, none of this has anything at all to do with the Mars Curiosity's explorations in Gale Crater going on now. Gale shows evidence of once hosting a lake. The idea of ancient standing liquid water is far more exciting to planetary scientists than is the notion of presently active sand geysers bursting through a crust of solid CO2 (how boring.)

A sand geyser is probably not the most likely place to find present or past biology on Mars. Since the phenomenon is apparently both extensive and energetic, it's probably wise to stay out of the immediate vicinity of eruptions in any case. After going to all the trouble to land on Mars (and the Curiosity landing was spectacular), it wouldn't do to have the craft promptly blasted to smithereens by the nearby eruption of a sand geyser! We may never send landing craft close to an erupting geyser field.

There is enough chaos in our environment as it is.

On the other hand, Gale Crater, somewhat south of the equator, is bound to be calm and stable, much like Spirit''s stable location in Gusev Crater not all that far away (also thought once to have been a lake).

There will be discoveries no doubt, but more than likely, they will perpetuate rather than solve the biology enigma, and they will no doubt fuel more speculation about the poorly understood nature of the Martian surface.

I look forward to results!

Full resolution Curiosity heat shield on the way down. Courtesy NASA

Wheee!
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A note on how Mars images get manipulated.

The first image is from Viking 2, Mars winter 1976, altered fairly recently to resemble surface images from Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity.

Viking 2 lander image, 1976 altered to resemble more recent images from the surface of Mars

The second image is more or less what the picture looked like until it was layered with a sort of reddish "dust" which is widely believed to make the sky more or less pink more or less all the time, and thus make the surface appear quite red.

Viking 2 lander image, 1976, "dust" layer removed

The sky is pale blue, the ground ruddy but not particularly red, the rocks are multicolored, and white frost is clearly visible on the ground.

There are whole websites devoted to NASA'S  endless manipulations of the colors of Mars. At one time, there was wide circulation of an image from Viking 1 with a green sky and very red surface. The green sky picture is now only available with permission. That picture was recalibrated before the Pathfinder landing to look like this:

Viking 1 lander picture of Big Joe
Still a little bilious if you ask me.

Better