* how were earth, moon and the solar system formed
* how did the humans come to earth
* who built the face on mars and who does it represent
* what did they do on mars
* who built the pyramids and what are they
* what happened on earth before the deluge
* who were adam, eve, noah and god?

Concerning Mars:
Mars has been a way station on the way to the home planet called Niburu (read: neighbour). It has had a population of several hundreds to control the space stations.
The entrance of the large planet of niburu into our solar system and a course close to mars & earth caused both the wipe-out of the atmosphere of mars and earth's great flood (Eridu Genesis).

My point is: astronomists should become historicist, historicist should become readers of Sumerian and the rest of us should read Sitchin.

Due to solarsystem.nasa.gov the mass of Venus is about 4,868,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg and m_earth = 5,973,700,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg.

So the mass of Venus would be about 0.81 times the mass of the Earth.

Still the atmosphere of Venus is more than 90 times denser than that of our planet. So it is obvious that the lower mass of Mars can no simply be used to explain the relatively very low density of its atmosphere.

Evolution does not dictate that animals become smarter than they need to be for basic survival. The human condition could be one of the most unusual things to ever occur in this universe."

END QUOTE

Or perhaps as soon as intelligent life arises, it will quickly become dominant. The hardest part in survival of intelligent life might be that the first evolutionary steps must survive long enough.

Dear Marcellus,

you claim that the lower temperature on Titan allows a denser athmosphere. Why then does the much higher temperature on Venus allow a denser atmosphere, too? Your counterfactual reasoning is funny.

And don't tell us that Venus has a dense atmosphere, because it has nearly the mass of the Earth. It has not even the mass of the Earth (0.857), but the atmospheric mass is 93 times that of Earth's atmosphere! And that despite a much higher temperature. How come, when there is not "a much lower temperature than Mars"?

Compare mass and temperature of Earth, Venus, Mars and Titan! The facts don't support your simple assumption that the density of the atmosphere is due to the mass.

Dear Igor,

your argumentation is just funny. LOL

"as said by others as well".

Since when does parroting decide on the correctness of a statement? Use your own reason and to speak in your own person!

It probably has microbiologic life organisms on it, but that won't be determined until we have human missions reach the planet.

Titan can have a much thicker atmosphere because its gases can persist in a much lower temperature than Mars.

Now, the Hellas Basin area must have been hit by something pretty big. Might also be a good place for future landing, as it probably has the thickest atmosphere. Possibly also water, from the looks of some of the side-canyons.

Problematic!

Titan has much less mass than Mars but it's atmosphere is denser than that of Earth. Where do we go from here?

"I did it. Why? Because I wanted to."

Yes, GOD! That is what a good First Sergeant is characterized by.

If Mars ever had a molten core providing the planet with a magnetic field, we could surely tell this by looking to see if any geological activity at the time formed rocks that were magnetically aligned with its north and south pole.

A magnetic pole would only defend the planet's life forms from Solar radiation, which is pretty deadly to most lifeforms we know of.

Mars (as said by others as well) doesn't have the mass to hold on to a thick atmosphere.

I suspect at best it could make a research facility, pobbibly a small colony, but I can't imagine anyone walking about the surface of Mars anytime soon.

Unless we genetically modify humans to become super-inteligent-pan-dimensional beings (another reference to Douglas Adams), we might be in for a bit of a shock.

What if we're alone in the entire Universe! Eeek! Agraphobics run for the hills – er sorry run for the covers!

We might be able to fold space one day and travel billions on light years, only to find life in the form of a bunch of furry blobs. That would be embarrasing, as the eyes of the entire planet are watching and our intrepid traveller introduces himself to a blob that's totally unaware of his presence. doh!

I did it. Why? Because I wanted to.

Sue me.

"Mars has lost its atmosphere because its mass is tool low to hold its atmophere. Mars has only one tenth of the mass of the Earth. Shadowdancer is right with Venus. Venus has no magnetic field but a thick atmosphere, as the mass of Venus is about the same as the mass of Earth. Venus can hold its atmosphere, as does Earth."

Dear Sir,

after receiving the above message of yours I hoisted my sails and set out my ship for the shores of our neighbours in the habitable zone, to Venus and Mars, and then also out for the coasts of Saturn. And there for a while my Googleyzer observed that nearby island all in clouds and mist which we call Titan. It took me some time to come full circle. But now I am back and this is what I can say about it.

Yes, Venus has nearly the mass of the earth (0.902) but the pressure at the planet's surface is about 92 times that at Earth's surface which is in no relation to the instance that Venus is not even as heavy as our Earth. On Titan I found a Surface pressure of 146.7 kPa. That means that the Titanian atmosphere is denser than Earth's, with a surface pressure more than one and a half times that of our planet. But it has only 0.0225 of Earth's mass! So Mars has 0.107 of the Earth mass. That is much more than Titan has. So why is the atmosphere on Mars not much denser than on Titan? You see that there is no easy correlation between the mass of a body and the atmosphere it is covered by. You see that field workers are more inevitable than ever!

Sincerely,

Dollhopf

1. How do scientists estimate when an impact occurs on another planet or moon as referred to in this article?

2. Would it be possible to send a probe to drill or excavate down into Mars to geologically test/observe rocks to more closely date the changes in Mars magnetic field?

You might want to follow-up on observations of methane, too. I suppose, defenders of the status quo, that you have your reasons. I just don't understand what they are.

"the internal structure" What does that mean? I thought that the geomagnetic effect depends on the convection of molten inner layers or a molten core. What gigantic energy would be set free by the assumed impact being able to "penetrated the Martian crust so deep"? I guess that such an impact would not lower the temperature inside but increase it and thus contribute to the amount of molten. No cooling but heating up.

"a giant impact early in the planet's history could have disrupted the molten core, changing the circulation"

What do "disrupted the molten core" and "changing the circulation" mean? Decelerating the circulation to a complete halt? Why? It makes no sense to me.

Anyway, I agree with Skip Ryan and others that we really can't rule out life on *any* world until we have much better samples of it on whatever worlds we can get to . . . including the more forbidding parts of our own. We just don't know enough about life to do so, as Mr. Ryan's comments about how recent our (still superficial and nascent) understanding of the deep hot biosphere and the marine abysses of our own world really is. We're still learning, just as we are still learning about the cosmos and everything in it, and will be forever. The magnificent science-fiction writer Olaf Stapledon wrote of life in the form of flames, rocks, and other media which current biological science won't even look at as possible life-forms. He may turn out to have been a prophet — writers of his calibre often have, and will do so in the future (maybe even the cosmos of H. P. Lovecraft will turn out to conform to the reality of the universe we live in, may the Gods help us all! {G}). The one thing we can be sure of is that all life displays intentionality, i.e., in another word, will (the exercise of which with the intention of causing the universe to conform to one's goals, according to the early biological information scientist, Aleister Crowley, is Magick; but that's another story entirely, isn't it), All life displays will, i.e., goal-oriented behavior, one way or another: plants striving to put roots down to acquire nutrients and put out chemicals to cause other plants to refrain from intruding on its territory, to put leaves and the like out to capture sunlight; animals display the "Four
F's of biology" — Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, and,. uh, Romantic Involvements; and fungi, protoctists, microbes, and other life-forms do their respective things as well, all in the name of survival and eventual reproduction or, at least, promotion of their genes' survival through their siblings' and cousins' offspring. Corollary: If you see purposeful behavior in anything, it is in its way alive, no matter how weird it is, or else is an extension of some living things or groups of organisms, such as robots and computers (and who is to say *they* are not in their way alive? After all, scientifically speaking, telepathy is out of bounds, and since we won't try to read their minds, we can't know whether they have any intentions of their own or not). All we know about life or anything else is what we know *now*. The future may bring huge changes in that knowledge which, as Skip Ryan said, may in turn change all the basic assumptions behind one or another of our scientific disciplines. Maybe there is life on Mars after all, just in forms we don't yet have a mind-set allowing us to see, or at least allow for the possibility of their existence. Similarly, there could be strange — to us — life on every world and worldlet and piece of sand in the Solar System, perhaps even plasmoid life in and on the Sun. There is no reason to assume our search for life in the universe at large is ended before it has even begun. So let's go to Mars and start looking.