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Nice Guy Eddie

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Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13723

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Thursday 1pm CT major announcement of a discovery

https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-host-live-discussion-on-new-mars-science-results

I doubt that today is about finding evidence of life but I hope that in my lifetime we find some evidence of life on other planets even microbial.  If it can be established that life isn't an one-off anomaly in the universe, it changes many previous assumptions including implications to our religions.

 

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smokebomb

smokebomb 360

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No aliens but they found building blocks for life:

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/07/617235884/nasas-curiosity-rover-finds-chemical-building-blocks-for-life-on-mars

Quote

NASA's Curiosity Rover Finds Chemical Building Blocks For Life On Mars
June 7, 20185:05 PM ET
 Joe Palca


For the first time, scientists say they have clear evidence that the chemical building blocks of life exist on Mars.

What they can't say yet is whether there is, or ever was, life on the Red Planet.

The new evidence comes from a pair of rocks. NASA's six-wheeled Curiosity rover drilled into the planet in late 2014 and early 2015. The two rock samples, from sites named Confidence Hills and Mojave, are at the bottom of Gale Crater.

Powder from the rocks went into an analyzer on the rover called SAM that can determine what they were made of.

But the SAM results were hard to interpret — there were a lot of extraneous signals that didn't make any sense. So NASA astrobiologist Jennifer Eigenbrode at the Goddard Space Flight Center spent the intervening years figuring out which signals were clearly junk and removing them.

Then she looked at the analyzer results again. "There were signals there that were telling us that we had detected certain types of organic molecules," she says. Organic molecules contain carbon, the chemical element central to life.

That raises the obvious question: Where did the carbon come from?

"We don't know," Eigenbrode says.

She sees three possibilities.

"It could have been from meteorites," she says. Meteorites are constant pummeling Mars, and many of them contain carbon.

"It could be from rock processes," processes that have been going on during the billions of years since Mars formed.

And then there's the most intriguing possibility. Eigenbrode says the analyzed rocks came from the bottom of what was once a lake at a time when Mars was a much warmer, wetter place.

"Because this lake had everything that organisms needed to be happy, maybe there was life in the lake," she says. If there was, then that life would have left behind organic molecules when it decayed.

Penn State astrobiologist Kate Freeman agrees the new evidence makes that interpretation possible, but "it's not standing up and waving a flag and saying, 'I'm life.' "

She isn't ruling out that possibility, however.

"I don't believe there's life on Mars at the present," Freeman says, because Mars is very dry, very cold and lacks much of an atmosphere. "Whether there was in the past or not is certainly an open question."

Freeman says finding organic molecules only a few centimeters below the surface of Mars is an encouraging sign for finding possible life. That's because the surface of Mars is constantly bombarded with radiation that can break down organic compounds. There may be more material buried deeper.

"There's a new mission in the planning where they'll be able to drill much deeper than the Curiosity rover can," Freeman says. "That gives me great hope because we can perhaps get past these surface environments that are so harsh and maybe [go] a little deeper and find better-preserved materials."

In addition to finding organic molecules in the rocks in Gale Crater, rover scientists are reporting another intriguing finding.

The rover has been seeing seasonal changes in the amount of methane in the Martian atmosphere. Methane is another organic molecule.

"We were kind of shocked to see that with the seasons, the signal changes by a factor of three, which is a huge change and completely unexpected," says Chris Webster, a rover scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

He and his colleagues think the methane is coming from underground.

"It's coming from sub-surface reservoirs" and then seeping up to the surface, Webster says.

"Once it's on the surface, the temperature on the surface regulates the way in which it holds on to the methane through 'stickiness,' or surface adsorption as we call it," he says. "So it holds it in the winter time and releases it in the summertime as temperatures get warmer."

Webster says the rover results don't say whether the methane being released has been trapped for eons or is being generated now.

The results also don't indicate whether the methane is being created by chemical processes involving rocks alone, or whether some living or formerly living bacteria generated it.

Clearly, there are more questions about Mars that need answering.

The studies on methane and on organic molecules were published Thursday in the journal Science.

 

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NotActuallyALonghorn

NotActuallyALonghorn 4999

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7 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Thursday 1pm CT major announcement of a discovery

https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-host-live-discussion-on-new-mars-science-results

I doubt that today is about finding evidence of life but I hope that in my lifetime we find some evidence of life on other planets even microbial.  If it can be established that life isn't an one-off anomaly in the universe, it changes many previous assumptions including implications to our religions.

 

I wouldn't say it changes implications to our religions, just some folks' interpretations of them. Eventually we would have mormons knocking on their doors on Saturday morning.

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Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13723

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2 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

I wouldn't say it changes implications to our religions, just some folks' interpretations of them. Eventually we would have mormons knocking on their doors on Saturday morning.

We have posters here that say the earth is 6000 years old.  Life on other planets destroys all earth-centric views for good.  

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NotActuallyALonghorn

NotActuallyALonghorn 4999

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Well yeah. As a Christian, their particular brand of stupidity is mystifying. I understand that some folks won't believe that Jesus did all that they say he did in the Bible and I can understand that. But if you start with the assumption that there might be a God there really isn't anything about his life that we've been told that isn't possible without a huge stretch of logic. You might not think it is plausible, but assuming that God is a possibility then it isn't impossible. The young earth creationists are a different breed. 

The sheer weight of scientific evidence is all a conspiracy to disprove God to them, never mind any logic to the contrary. Never mind that if any scientist wanted to make a name for himself by proving decisively that the theory of evolution or the big bang was wrong he would do so, because scientists don't have a whole lot going for them other than personal satisfaction and prestige. It's not like they get paid a ton. But no, it's all a conspiracy by the devils scientists to try and make everybody disbelieve the bible. Or they just aren't that smart. Never mind the fact that there are many ways to incontestibaly demonstrate that the earth and universe are older than the YEC say it is. Like how we can accurately measure the distance to stars that are many thousands of light years away. They could say that God created a mature earth and universe and the were merely designed to look like they were old and avoid all this trouble, but instead they've chosen to die on an utterly indefensible hill. It bottles the mind, and I'm rambling.

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HOOK'EMHOOAH

HOOK'EMHOOAH 1610

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On 6/8/2018 at 7:56 PM, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

Well yeah. As a Christian, their particular brand of stupidity is mystifying. I understand that some folks won't believe that Jesus did all that they say he did in the Bible and I can understand that. But if you start with the assumption that there might be a God there really isn't anything about his life that we've been told that isn't possible without a huge stretch of logic. You might not think it is plausible, but assuming that God is a possibility then it isn't impossible. The young earth creationists are a different breed. 

The sheer weight of scientific evidence is all a conspiracy to disprove God to them, never mind any logic to the contrary. Never mind that if any scientist wanted to make a name for himself by proving decisively that the theory of evolution or the big bang was wrong he would do so, because scientists don't have a whole lot going for them other than personal satisfaction and prestige. It's not like they get paid a ton. But no, it's all a conspiracy by the devils scientists to try and make everybody disbelieve the bible. Or they just aren't that smart. Never mind the fact that there are many ways to incontestibaly demonstrate that the earth and universe are older than the YEC say it is. Like how we can accurately measure the distance to stars that are many thousands of light years away. They could say that God created a mature earth and universe and the were merely designed to look like they were old and avoid all this trouble, but instead they've chosen to die on an utterly indefensible hill. It bottles the mind, and I'm rambling.

They can claim whatever they like. However, any claim that is made without evidence will be dismissed without evidence. Until their is evidence to support such claims they will be dismissed as for the absolute bollocks they are.

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Hagbard Celine

Hagbard Celine 11201

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let's get this thread back on track...

first, there were the alignments on earth.....

http://home.hiwaay.net/~jalison/index.html

then, the Viking orbiter gave us Cydonia.......

http://spsr.utsi.edu/articles/geometry/geometry.htm

https://www.collective-evolution.com/2017/09/10/researchers-find-tetrahedral-geometry-reflections-of-pythagoras-dirac-in-the-mounds-of-cydonia-on-mars/

http://raphaelonline.com/Marsface.htm

but everyone has forgotten about Carl Sagan's (YES, CARL PARADOX NO-ET-UFO SAGAN).... Pyramids of Elysium:

http://mars-news.de/mr9/4205-78.html

there's lots of places for Musk to land, but Cydonia and Elysium have to be high up on his list.....

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smokebomb

smokebomb 360

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Reminder: Today at 2pm CDT the InSight Lander will land on Mars. InSight is not a rover but lander that

Quote

...will deploy a seismometer and burrow a heat probe. It will also perform a series of radio science experiments to complement the studies of the internal structure and rotation of Mars.

The landing itself will be pretty interesting (from Verge )

Quote

Once the lander hits the top of Mars’ atmosphere, it will perform a complicated multistep landing routine that will last between six and seven minutes. During the first phase, InSight will free-fall through the atmosphere using a heat shield for protection as the surrounding air slams into the spacecraft, heating it up to temperatures of 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit. The atmosphere will slow the lander significantly, but InSight will need to deploy a supersonic parachute to slow even further. Eventually, the lander will ignite onboard thrusters, which will lower the vehicle to the ground.

Another interesting part is the Cube Sats that are following InSight:

Quote

During the descent, InSight will send out data about each major step of its landing process using one of its less powerful onboard antennas. Scientists will try to pick up these signals from Earth, but two nearby spacecraft will also be listening in. Those two probes are the MarCO spacecraft, which launched with InSight in May and have been traveling to Mars ever since. The MarCO probes are made from a type of standardized satellite known as a Cube Sat, which consists of 10-centimeter cubes that can be stacked together. Cube Sats have become crucial tools for gathering data in orbit around Earth, but the MarCO satellites are the first to ever be sent into deep space.

Coverage begins at 1pm CDT and you can watch the live stream at https://www.youtube.com/NASAJPL/live 

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retread

retread 2951

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8393_D000M0000_596535424EDR_F0000_0106M1

 

The Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC), located on the robotic arm of NASA's InSight lander, took this picture of the Martian surface on Nov. 26, 2018, the same day the spacecraft touched down on the Red Planet. The camera's transparent dust cover is still on in this image, to prevent particulates kicked up during landing from settling on the camera's lens. This image was relayed from InSight to Earth via NASA's Odyssey spacecraft, currently orbiting Mars. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

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RPM

RPM 26602

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Ya know I watched the 7 Minutes of Terror video a couple of times and started to have very serious doubts of NASA being able to pull this rabbit out of a hat 128 million miles away. The ultra complicated landing procedure had 1000 different ways it could go wrong and no way to do a correction. Hats off to you steely eyed missile men that pulled this off. Muy impressed.

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Doc Reeves

Doc Reeves 6434

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NASA to release actual footage of Mars rover landing. Here's how to watch

NASA is about to release “first-of-its-kind footage” showing the Perseverance rover’s arrival on Mars last week.

The video is expected to show the spacecraft going through its most challenging moments as it delivers the car-sized rover to the Martian surface. The complex landing process is known in the industry as the “seven minutes of terror.”

Announcing the imminent release of the video, NASA said space fans will be able to “see Mars like never before.”

Certainly, if the space agency’s recently posted image of Perseverance heading toward the Martian surface is anything to go by, then the video promises to be something very special. It could even include audio, as NASA’s most advanced rover to date is the first to include microphones.

While NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover sent back a stop-motion movie of its descent in 2012, Perseverance’s multiple cameras have captured high-quality color video of its touchdown, the space agency said.

We can also expect to see footage shot by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been traveling around the red planet since 2006. The agency said the orbiter used a special high-resolution camera to capture the spacecraft sailing toward Jezero Crater, with its parachute trailing behind.

How to watch NASA’s rover landing video:

NASA will broadcast new images and the highly anticipated footage of Perseverance’s Mars landing on its YouTube channel at 2 p.m. ET on Monday, February 22. For easy access, we’ve embedded NASA’s live TV feed at the top of this page.

What’s next for Perseverance?

NASA said that in the coming days, engineers at the mission headquarters at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California will examine Perseverance’s system data and updating its software before running tests on its various instruments.

After that, over the coming weeks, the rover will test its robotic arm and take its first, short drive.

And then, in a month or two, Perseverance will release Ingenuity from its underbelly ahead of a historic moment that should see the small helicopter become the first aircraft to make a powered flight on another planet.

Finally, Perseverance will spend the rest of its two-year mission scouring the surface of Mars for evidence of ancient life, while also collecting rock and soil samples for later return to Earth. During its adventure, there should be plenty more high-quality video coming our way, too.

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