Questions tagged [mars]
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Terraforming and maintaining a habitable atmosphere on Mars
Since Mars core does not function like Earths does, would a planetary core "kick-starting and maintaining" device be needed in order to produce a magnetosphere required to preserve the ...
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What oxidised the soil on Mars?
What exactly was it in the ancient Martian atmosphere that made it red? Was it water, molecular oxygen or something else?
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Do any spike-like "cemented fillings of ancient fractures in a sedimentary rock", remotely similar to this one on Mars, occur on Earth?
The SETI Institute recently tweeted the image below, with the text:
#PPOD: Here is another cool rock at Gale crater on Mars! The spikes are most likely the cemented fillings of ancient fractures in a ...
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How well can they localize the sources of these marsquakes using only a single seismometer? Does being in the shadow zone of the core help or hinder?
Phys.org's April 23, 2022 Two largest marsquakes to date recorded from planet's far side links to The Far Side of Mars: Two Distant Marsquakes Detected by InSight which contains the image below.
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Air pressure on Mars below ground
As I understand, in deep mines on Earth the air pressure increases with depth. At what depth on Mars would the air pressure reach 14psi (97 kPa)?
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How large were Mars' ocean tides and to what extent could they keep the oceans mixing and tend to keep salinity uniform? Has this been modeled?
This answer to Salinity of Martian water 3.5 Billion years ago in Astronomy says that most estimates of Mars' ocean's salinity are pretty high;
The article "Water Activity and the Challenge for ...
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Blueberries, cauliflower, chert, concretions, accretions and diagenetic crystal clusters on Mars, can you help me sort these all out?
Curiosity has actually seen these types of features before, which are called diagenetic crystal clusters. Diagenetic means the recombination or rearrangement of minerals, and these features consist of ...
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Why is the delta part of Jezero crater higher than the surroundings?
In images of Jezero crater on Mars, it looks like the delta fan is higher than the surrounding crater floor.
This indeed seems to be the case with closer-up images from the Perseverance rover taken ...
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Is there really precipitation on Mars? Does frost count?
The NASA Goddard science education page answer to Reading about Mars, I noticed that it has .03% of water vapor in it's atmosphere, and my question was if it has water vapor why doesn't it have ...
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Why is Olympus Mons the largest volcano in the whole solar system?
Why is it that the volcanoes found in the Tharsis Montes region near the Martian equator, (one of which is Olympus Mons) so much larger than those found on Earth. In comparison, Hawaii's Mauna Loa, ...
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How could the solar wind cause strange magnetic pulses on Mars at midnight?
24-Feb-2020 NASA News item A Year of Surprising Science From NASA's InSight Mars Mission says:
A new understanding of Mars is beginning to emerge, thanks to the first year of NASA's InSight lander ...
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Mars' strange magnetic pulses at midnight; besides the solar wind what are other possible causes?
24-Feb-2020 NASA News item A Year of Surprising Science From NASA's InSight Mars Mission says:
A new understanding of Mars is beginning to emerge, thanks to the first year of NASA's InSight lander ...
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How to make Martian soil [duplicate]
My son wants to replicate some experiments and try to grow plants in Martian soil for his A-level science project. I know NASA have managed to produce soil that mimics Martian soil, however I also ...
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How to make Martian soil
My son wants to replicate some experiments and try to grow plants in Martian soil for his A-level science project. I know NASA have managed to produce soil that mimics Martian soil, however I also ...
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Considering the thin piece of material on the surface of Mars in the image below, is there anything like it on Earth?
The above is a magnified part of the original image below captured by the Curiosity rover on Mars on sol 1729 (June 17, 2017).
From the added information with that raw image it can be estimated that ...
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Thickening Mars's Atmosphere
if we were to send a mission to mars (unlimited budget WE WISH!) to explore different methods that would enable us to thicken the martian atmosphere, what different types of data should this mission ...
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Possible and probable source of Curiosity Rover's $\small\sf{CH_4}$ detection on Mars
Past week, NASA announced Curiosity Rover measured 21 ppbv of $\small\sf{CH_4}$ on Mars.
This week, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover found a surprising result: the largest amount of methane ever ...
user12525
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What could be causing microseisms on Mars?
The anouncement published in Science Mini tremors detected on Mars for first time says that the Mars lander InSight is detecting microseisms on Mars after various vibrations produced by the lander and ...
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What do the little flags on these martian wind speed data points mean?
According to this answer the weather at the InSight lander on Mars can now be seen online at https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/weather/ This includes the wind speed and I believe the direction (if that's ...
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Formation of Hematite on Mars via Perchlorates as an Oxidizer
Hematite on Mars is generally thought to have formed either in pools of water or from volcanic activity.
A comment to the answer to the question: How do hematite and magnetite form? states that ...
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Carbon Isotopic Ratio of Methane on Mars
I was wondering, if we measured the carbon isotopic ratio of methane on Mars and found that it was very negative (i.e. it contained more carbon-12 than carbon-13), would this provide definitive proof ...
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Methane Reservoir
Analysis from the Curiosity Rover on Mars has detected tiny amounts of methane in the atmosphere. It is possible the origin of this detected methane is from methanogens deep below the subsurface.
My ...
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Methane in Martian Soil
Measurements taken by the Curiosity rover have detected minute amounts of methane in the Martian atmosphere.
I was wondering, is it possible that greater amounts of methane are present beneath the ...
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Water on Mars and Earth
If water on Earth came from meteorites, why doesn't Mars have substantial water? What made it more highly probable on Earth than on Mars?
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What are Ordovican trace fossils, and what do they look like?
There are some unusual structures in recent images from the Mars Curiosity Rover's MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager) shown in the Space.com article Curiosity Rover Spots Weird Tube-Like Structures on Mars....
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What is serpentinization, in the context of disappearance of surface water on Mars?
The recent paper in Nature The divergent fates of primitive hydrospheric water on Earth and Mars (Nature 552, 391–394 (21 December 2017)
doi:10.1038/nature25031) has been linked by many recent news ...
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What are the most similar Earth analogues to Mars' seasonally recurring slope linea?
Recurring Slope Lineae (RSL) on Mars are suggested to be water that seasonally melts from underground ice and sublimates through the sand and dust to darken the surface. Slowly flowing downhill to ...
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Carbon dioxide on Mars, Venus and Earth
Earth's atmosphere is 0.038% carbon dioxide. Mars's atmosphere is 95.3% carbon dioxide. Venus's atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide.
If Earth's climate is controlled by CO2, then why is Mars so cold ...
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Composition of Martian Crust
Does the composition of the crust of Mars roughly correspond to that of the crust of Earth. That is, is the elemental abundance in decreasing order silicon, oxygen, aluminum, etc.?
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Strange circular structures found on a photo from Mars rover Curiosity at Dingo Gap
What are all these gaps / circular structures found on a photo taken by Mars rover Curiosity at Dingo Gap? Have a look at the image I made to see what gaps I mean.
(I know the quick paint job looks ...
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How long would it take for Mars to cool after asteroid impact? [closed]
As someone interested in terraforming, the main obstacle to colonizing Mars is the lack of a magnetosphere and Atmosphere. To create a magnetosphere of sufficient magnitude the Martian core must be ...
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Can miniature shells be seen in Earth's sand at this resolution?
Most of sand on Earth when inspected at close range reveal tiny shells as in sea shells.
Here is a picture of the Martian sand at a close distance:
Can Earth's tiny shells be seen in sand at ...
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How are natural specimens, such as ‘Moqui Marbles’, distinguished from man-made artifacts?
If a particular type of rock specimen is found throughout Earth and is made entirely of natural minerals, but the individual specimens differ minutely from another in size and shape and look to be ...
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How long would it take for earth's core to cool down and solidify?
Would earth go the same way as Mars by first losing its magnetic field followed by its atmosphere as its core solidifies and cools down ?
At what rate is the earth's core cooling down?.
Is it slow ...
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What is this strange feature on Mars in Valles Marineris
While I was browsing Mars on Google Earth, I stumbled upon an interesting feature on one of the slopes of Valles Marineris. The feature seems unique in the sense that I couldn't find any similar ...
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Why does Mars' experience an 'ice age' at high axis obliquity, when Earth experiences an ice age at low axis obliquity
This paper here goes into some detail about how Mars' experiences its own form of 'ice ages' on a quasi periodic basis driven by the wobbling of its axis. The main mechanism outlined is that the ...
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Is Mars' mantle homogeneous or heterogeneous and what might this say about mantle convection?
A supervisor of mine made an off-hand comment about the fact that Mars used to have plate tectonics, and there is evidence that Mars used to have plate tectonics, however now it does not. The theory ...
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