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New findings point to an Earth-like environment on ancient Mars

discover.lanl.gov

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Re: New findings point to an Earth-like environment on ancient Mars

#211

Post by kmeisthax »

nwienert wrote: post #120
pdonis wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not familiar with the extent of his crimes, if any. He was the Nazis' best rocket engineer, responsible for, among other things, the V2s that devastated much of London. By the standards of the Nuremberg trials, he probably should have been tried and convicted. But he was never even accused, because the US wanted his rocket expertise--by the time of the Nuremberg trials, he was already working for the US Army.

Genuine question - unless he was directly involved with the genocide, was he not doing the exact same thing the allies were doing? It’s not a war crime to participate in a war for your country. The US bombed German civilians and Japanese civilians in mass numbers.

A significant chunk of the adult male population of Nazi Germany was involved with the genocide. Hitler made sure there was blood on as many German hands as possible. In retrospect the Allies were extremely lenient[0] on Germany and Japan and they probably could have punished them way, way worse.

As for Allied war crimes, many of those were only criminalized after-the-fact. For example, the justification for nuking Nagasaki was "well, there's a factory nearby, so that's a valid military target".

[0] For example, "fiduciary duty to shareholders" was a valid excuse that saved several businessmen at Nuremburg, despite them running forced labor camps that were deadlier than Auschwicz.

Re: New findings point to an Earth-like environment on ancient Mars

#212

Post by heavyset_go »

adastra22 wrote: post #27
pjmlp wrote: post #9

Maybe we are about to discover that we came to Earth after messing up Mars.

You jest, but I seriously believe we are likely martians. Early panspermia from Mars settles a LOT of astrobiological questions about origin of life and LUCA complexity. To be clear, Mars’ descent into inhospitality was totally natural and the result of a smaller planet with stripped atmosphere just outside the habitable zone as the Sun cooled. I doubt Martian life developed to be multicellular. But I bet when we go…

I'd go one step further and say that life began in the protoplanetary disk, explains how quickly life established itself on Earth.

Re: New findings point to an Earth-like environment on ancient Mars

#213

Post by dylan604 »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #209
jiggawatts wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The voice feature of ChatGPT on my phone is basically the Star Trek ship computer. The weather radar app replicates a feature of the Star Trek tricorder that I saw in an episode of TNG. Household robots like in The Jetsons are coming soon, a couple decades at most from today. Etc…

Do you really need sci fi in either direction to come up with those ideas? I don't read or consume sci fi, but considering the tech available, these just seem like natural things you would try to do.

> considering the tech available,

Wow, you're doing some heavy caveating with that comment.

Sure, someone today can say that a handheld device to show you the weather in any part of the world seems like a "duh" thing now, but in the 60s when Star Trek came to TV with a tricoder or really a handheld anything was pushing credibility. Computers at the time took up rooms in buildings. Of course zillenials never knowing the world before handheld mobile devices can't imagine a time when it took imagination to think of the things they have today.

Re: New findings point to an Earth-like environment on ancient Mars

#214

Post by vkou »

octopoc wrote: post #194
vkou wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The damage the V2s inflicted on London paled in comparison to the destruction of continental European and Russian and Japanese cities. The V2 killed more (enslaved) people who were building it than it did in its attacks. It was only 'successful' as a propaganda weapon. ...And by the standards of the Nuremberg trials, the heads of every allied airforce, and all of their immediate subordinates and sub-subordinates shou…

> And by the standards of the Nuremberg trials, the heads of every allied airforce, and all of their immediate subordinates and sub-subordinates should have been dancing the hemp fandango. That's a very good point, although the Nuremberg trials used torture to get confessions, so literally anybody could have been convicted.

Did they? Is that why so many walked? Were the ones that were hanged not actually intimately involved in orchestrating a war of aggression and the murder of human beings on a scale unprecedented in the history of the modern world?

Do you have any proof of this?

Re: New findings point to an Earth-like environment on ancient Mars

#215

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

psunavy03 wrote: post #83
adastra22 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would we know? It’s not like like we have a geologist over there with a rock hammer breaking open rocks to look for fossils.

Yet.

I think it’s actually pretty darn stupid that we aren’t running one way missions.

Re: New findings point to an Earth-like environment on ancient Mars

#217

Post by gmd63 »

caseyy wrote: post #74
ethbr1 wrote: post #52

It really was Earth all along...

I can just imagine Elorp Munk building a space company on Mars a billion years ago to colonize the frozen and inhospitable Earth. Bringing over some germs and then failing to establish a colony… that could make for some great sci-fi.

What if humanity oscillates between the two planets, and Elon and Elorp rise by design on each one.

Re: New findings point to an Earth-like environment on ancient Mars

#218

Post by bmitc »

jl6 wrote: post #69
adastra22 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mars had 3/4 billion more years to develop, compared with the Earth. Mars formed first, and cooled first due to its smaller size. One of the outstanding problems in astrobiology I mention is that the Earth was inhospitable until 3.8Gya, and the oldest fossils of presumably DNA based life (since it matches existing life we can study) was 3.7Gya. Mars was hospitable ~4.5Gya. So either life emerged IMMEDIATELY on Earth…

> Earth was inhospitable until 3.8Gya There is much uncertainty about this. The early Earth was a volatile place with a lot of raw materials and energy available, and a lot of chemistry happening. I wouldn't rule out that some part of Earth may have had the right conditions for life right from the beginning. Certainly if we expect life to be able to survive a ride on a piece of ejecta from Mars, it's plausible to ima…

I think generally speaking people refer to life arriving and then staying as the start of life on Earth. You're probably right that it could have been and likely was spontaneously popping up and then disappearing on Earth prior to the pretty massive window as when we believe life to have "began" on Earth.

Re: New findings point to an Earth-like environment on ancient Mars

#219

Post by mewpmewp2 »

dylan604 wrote: post #213
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really need sci fi in either direction to come up with those ideas? I don't read or consume sci fi, but considering the tech available, these just seem like natural things you would try to do.

> considering the tech available, Wow, you're doing some heavy caveating with that comment. Sure, someone today can say that a handheld device to show you the weather in any part of the world seems like a "duh" thing now, but in the 60s when Star Trek came to TV with a tricoder or really a handheld anything was pushing credibility. Computers at the time took up rooms in buildings. Of course zillenials never knowing t…

But how did Star Trek creators come up with this?

And how did people come up with things before the sci fi was available like it is now.

I just really think influence of sci fi is really overestimated here.

In fact people bruteforcing ideas for sci fi before the tech was available proves that you can think of those ideas even if you don't have the tech available. And if you do, it is much easier to come up with all of it. The tech came naturally in order as different types of tech became available irrespective of sci fi.

Re: New findings point to an Earth-like environment on ancient Mars

#220

Post by bmitc »

I dislike complaining about titles, but I really wish articles, especially a national laboratory, would be more honest about titles. This makes it sound like this is the new "smoking gun" that Mars was so-called Earth-like early on. However, it was my understanding that this was already known. The largest known waterfall was already previously known to be on Mars at one point, and it was already known that Mars had oceans and rivers. Again to my knowledge, I thought it was already basically understood that Mars was a little mini-Earth the first 400 million or so years of its life until its core cooled off.
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