I like the mention, too, of a “strongly saline or acidic solution.” A collection of Death Valley’s alkali pools comes to mind. Nasty business. Do not drink.

Type more, and often.

Cheers back at’chas.

An update of sorts. Was at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science the other day for a talk by Larry Crumpler, project scientist for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, still very much involved in the exploration of Mars. He showed the image sequence below as an example of the changing surface features that may be due to current water — or some other volatile — flow. Larry mentioned that though “water” is the more or less generally accepted surface volatile, there are alternative ideas out there, one of them being CO2 flows. I thought that was very interesting, because Nick’s ideas about CO2 surface flows seemed to be shot down long ago, and yet Crumpler seemed to be giving credence to the idea as an alternative possibility.

As many have said, the “water” hypothesis for Mars is problematical for all kinds of reasons. Doesn’t mean there isn’t or hasn’t been water at the surface, but there are plenty of signs that what we think of as “water” — a slightly saline solution at worst — is not what has been available at the surface of Mars; more likely it’s a strongly saline or acidic solution, quite nasty by terrestrial standards.

And the question of petroleum — or something like it — on Mars is still intriguing. At least at this point carbonates are quite certain, and carbon compounds including organics are not being automatically excluded from consideration as they once were.

Cheers,

BR

“As many people have said (including Kim Stanley Robinson, whose Mars Trilogy I am re-reading at the moment), “you can never go back”. Habitable Zone was a fun and important time of my life and I enjoyed most of what was said and done on the site, but I grew out of it. It was taking too much of my time – albeit at a stage in my life when I had a lot of time to fill. These days, I am far more busy, and don’t really have the time for any internet forums.

I will return to the scientific challenges of a frozen Mars at some time – I’ve still got a couple of things to chase-down or work-up, but in many ways the last decade of Mars science has vindicated many of my theories about modern Mars being frozen, but has also revealed a wide range of data about how, at times and places in the past, there does appear to have been significant amounts of liquid water – although in many cases it was more like battery acid than potable water.”

While he had adequate information for his hypothesis, it was not foolish or crackpot, he may have been embarrassed. And maybe not.

He also was dealing with cancer either in himself or a family member and I think he got remarried. I may have those issues wrong or in the wrong time period.

I suppose I could send him an e-mail, let him know we are still here and miss his company.