Mars has huge erosional features formed by water. How could this be? It is far too cold for there to be liquid water on Mars.
You can’t blame it on the Sun, because according to astronomers the Sun used to be dimmer.
You can’t blame it on CO2 (even if you believe that nonsense) because the atmosphere is already nearly 100% CO2.
So what could it be?
I hate pop tests..
The atmosphere would have to have been a lot thicker…
…I have no idea why or what happened to it
Problem is, so far there’s no carbonates.
That makes it really weird.
Isn’t there a theory that there is/was water held at high pressure under a cap of ice. Something punctured the ice layer and the water came rushing out in a huge flood similar to the Lake Missoula event that produced Dry Falls?
When I let my eyes slightly cross I see a ‘happy face’ on what looks like a balloon headed seal… could that be it?
Closer to reality, why is that feature just isolated there? That does not look any erosional feature anywhere on earth. If it was what TinyCO2 suggested, it would lead somewhere… like the Columbia River does. But this goes nowhere, except apparently towards it center… where we are supposed to believe it drained away into the crust???
Now I’m not sure but I would guess that under its crust may be millions of degrees like earth (Gore 2008), so that seems odd.
It’s funny you should say that you see a ‘happy face’ their actually is one there.
‘Happy face’ crater on Mars
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMMTFNFGLE_1.html
To follow up… it actually does sort of resemble the Great Rift in Africa, so maybe it is similar to that.
That’s another theory.
Is it me, or is a lot of science a fancy name for guessing?
100%
The ones that stick to the wall the longest get worked on the most…
CO2 wind?
My $0.02 on the subject:
Early in its history, Mars had far more volcanism, which spewed gasses into the atmosphere, replenishing the gas stripped away from the atmosphere by the solar wind.
Unlike Earth, Mars lacked sufficient quantities of Uranium and Thorium to keep the natural occurring nuclear reactor going in its core. The planet cooled, the volcanism waned. The cooling accelerated the loss of atmosphere, for as the core cooled and solidified, the motion of molten iron came to a halt. The magnetic field became weak and fractured. This allowed the solar wind to strip ever greater quantities of gas into outer space.
In the end, Mars only retained a fraction of its atmosphere. Its now too weak to retain enough heat to support liquid water on the surface.
Educated Guess:
Martians drove too many SUV’s.
A very pleasant atmosphere became almost 100% CO2.
It got hotter before it got colder (climate change)
All the water boiled off.
You can see where the water used to be, but it is not there any more because it boiled off.
Now it is cold and there is no water.
The Martian Inconvenient Truth
Molecular weights of common atmospheric gases on earth:
O2 – 16
N2 – 14
Ar – 18
CO2 – 28
The gas CO2 is less prone to escape or be blown away by the solar wind?
To make Mars habitable an increase atmospheric pressure will be required. The question is how best to achieve this?
I know the answer. Use orbiting lasers to “cook” the surface so that volatiles will be available again.
I’d recommend orbiting also a large electromagnatic shield to help cope with the effect of solar particles on the infant atmosphere.
Elementary, the martians put anti-freeze in the water.
Some other guys have this theory:
http://thunderbolts.info/online_videos.htm