Mars, planet

Treiman AH, Gleason JD, Bogard DD (2000) The SNC meteorites are from Mars. Planet Space Sci 48 1213-1230... 

Interference from the Earth s atmosphere has always been a problem for optical astronomers, especially when attempting to view surface details on the terrestrial planets such as Mercury or Mars. Planets with dense atmospheres such as Venus also present a problem for astronomers because their thick cloud layers prevent direct surface observations. To overcome this difficulty, in the 1950 s, astronomers developed a technique using radar imaging to reveal surface features. Radar signals can easily penetrate clouds and are reflected back by items they hit. By... 

When considering how the evolution of life could have come about, the seeding of terrestrial life by extraterrestrial bacterial spores traveling through space (panspermia) deserves mention. Much is said about the possibility of some form of life on other planets, including Mars or more distant celestial bodies. Is it possible for some remnants of bacterial life, enclosed in a protective coat of rock dust, to have traveled enormous distances, staying dormant at the extremely low temperature of space and even surviving deadly radiation The spore may be neither alive nor completely dead, and even after billions of years it could have an infinitesimal chance to reach a planet where liquid water could restart its life. Is this science fiction or a real possibility We don t know. Around the turn of the twentieth century Svante Arrhenius (Nobel Prize in chemistry 1903) developed this theory in more detail. There was much recent excitement about claimed fossil bacterial remains in a Martian meteorite recovered from Antarctica (not since... 

Our solar system consists of the Sun, the planets and their moon satellites, asteroids (small planets), comets, and meteorites. The planets are generally divided into two categories Earth-like (terrestrial) planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars and Giant planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Little is known about Pluto, the most remote planet from Earth. 

The ordinary balance, on the other hand, with suitable adjustment of its parts, gives a measure of the mass of a body, in terms of an arbitrarily selected standard, which depends only on the particular body the same measure would be found if the balance were transported to any part of the earth s surface, or even to another planet, such as Mars or Jupiter. Such a measure may be called absolute. ... 

A collision with a Mars-sized object may have resulted in the formation of the Earth s moon. Our moon is by no means the largest satellite in the solar system, but it is unusual in that it and the moon of Pluto are the largest moons relative the mass of the planets they orbit. Geochemical studies of returned lunar samples have shown that close similarities exist between the bulk composition of the moon and the Earth s mantle. In particular, the abimdances of sidero-... 

After planetary accretion was complete there remained two groups of surviving planetesimals, the comets and asteroids. These populations still exist and play an important role in the Earth s history. Asteroids from the belt between Mars and Jupiter and comets from reservoirs beyond the outer planets are stochastically perturbed into Earth-crossing orbits and they have collided with Earth throughout its entire history. The impact rate for 1 km diameter bodies is approximately three per million years and impacts of 10 km size bodies occur on a... 

A drop of water contains an unimaginable number of molecules, as our molecular inset shows. Water is essential to life as we know it. The simple yet unusual fact that solid water (ice) floats atop liquid water allows life to exist on our planet. Just as important is the fact that water dissolves an immense range of chemical compounds Water is the solvent of life. In fact, water is so important to our perspective of life that the search for water is a key feature of our quest to discover life in other quarters of the galaxy. The inset photo of the surface of Mars, for example, shows no sign of water at present, but some erosional features appear to have been caused by flowing water in the past. 

Speculation about life on other planets probably began when humans discovered that the Earth Is not unique. We know that several other planets of the solar system bear at least some resemblance to our own. Why, then, should there not be life on Mars, or Venus, or perhaps on undiscovered Earthlike planets orbiting some other star ... 

How can scientists collect experimental evidence about possible life on another planet Sending astronauts to see for themselves is impractical at our current level of technology. Nevertheless, it is possible to search for life on other worlds without sending humans into space. In the late 1970s, NASA s Viking spacecraft lander collected a sample of dirt from Mars, the planet in our solar system most like Earth. The sample showed no signs of life. Nevertheless, speculation continues about Martian life. 

The photo below, taken by the Ttl/ng spacecraft, shows that the surface of Mars has been eroded, apparently by liquid water. More recent photos transmitted by Spirit and Opportunity convince scientists that this was the case. Apparently, Mars was once much warmer than it is today. Planetary scientists speculate that at one time the atmosphere of Mars may have contained large amounts of carbon dioxide, setting up a greenhouse effect that made the surface of that planet warmer and wetter. Might there, then, have been life on Mars at some earlier time Molecular stmctures found in meteorites thought to come from Mars have been interpreted to show that there was once life there, but these results are controversial. 

Meteorites on Mars. Meridiani Planum is the first Iron meteorite discovered on the surface of another planet, at the landing site of the Mars Exploration rover Opportunity [359]. Its maximum dimension is 30 cm (Fig. 8.38). Meteorites on the surface of solar system bodies can provide natural experiments for monitoring weathering processes. On Mars, aqueous alteration processes and physical alteration by Aeolian abrasion, for example, may have shaped the surface of the meteorite, which therefore has been investigated intensively by the MER instruments. Observations at mid-infrared wavelengths with the Mini-TES... 

The miniaturized Mossbauer instruments have proven as part of the NASA Mars Exploration Rover 2003 mission that Mossbauer spectroscopy is a powerful tool for planetary exploration, including our planet Earth. For the advanced model of MIMOS II, the new detector technologies and electronic components increase sensitivity and performance significantly. In combination with the high-energy resolution of the SDD, it will be possible to perform XRF analysis in parallel to Mossbauer spectroscopy. In addition to the Fe-mineralogy, information on the sample s elemental composition will be obtained. 

In about 4 billion years our sun will also develop into a red giant. The diameter will then reach the orbit of Mars, and the inner planets will cease to exist. 

In the region of the terrestrial planets, there may have been several thousand planetesimals of up to several hundred kilometres in diameter. During about ten million years, these united to form the four planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars—which are close to the sun. Far outside the orbit of the planet Mars, the heavier planets were formed, in particular Jupiter and Saturn, the huge masses of which attracted all the hydrogen and helium around them. Apart from their cores, these planets have a similar composition to that of the sun. Between the planets Mars and Jupiter, there is a large zone which should really contain another planet. It... 

Of the two models, homogeneous accretion is generally favoured. H. Wancke from the Max Planck Institute in Mainz (1986) described a variant of this model, in which the terrestrial planets were formed from two different components. Component A was highly reduced, containing elements with metallic character (such as Fe, Co, Ni, W) but poor in volatile and partially volatile elements. Component B was completely oxidized and contained elements with metallic character as their oxides, as well as a relatively high proportion of volatile elements and water. For the Earth, the ratio A B is calculated to be 85 15, while for Mars it is 60 40. According to this model, component B (and thus water) only arrived on Earth towards the end of the accretion phase, i.e., after the formation of the core. This means that only some of the water was able to react with the metallic fraction. 

A vital event in the further development of the Earth was its collision with a smaller planet, possibly as big as Mars. It is assumed that this gigantic collision took place between four and four and a half billion years ago (Sleep et al., 2001), and that it also resulted in the birth of our moon (Luna), which was formed from partially vaporized matter from the Earth. It is likely that not all of the proto-Earth was melted by the energy set free in the collision, but that sections of it remained in their original form. However, more exact information is not yet available. 

The special position of the Earth among the terrestrial planets is also shown by the availability of free water. On Venus and Mars, it has not until now been possible to detect any free water there is, however, geological and atmospheric evidence that both planets were either partially or completely covered with water during their formation phase. This can be deduced from certain characteristics of their surfaces and from the composition of their atmospheres. The ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (D/H) is particularly important here both Mars and Venus have a higher D/H ratio than that of the Earth. For Mars, the enrichment factor is around 5, and in the case of Venus, 100 (deBergh, 1993). 

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