Jacklin Kwan, 16 November 2022.

Excerpt:

>Martin Bizzarro at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and his colleagues have analysed the concentration of a rare chromium isotope, known as chromium-54, in samples of meteorites that have come to Earth from Mars to estimate how much water was deposited on the Red Planet by asteroids.

>“It’s a bit like DNA,” says Bizzarro. “Carbonaceous-type asteroids have a very distinct chromium isotope composition relative to the inner solar system.”

> 

>If the original bombarding asteroids were just 10 per cent water, the lower limit for C-type meteorites, they would have deposited enough of the molecule to create a global ocean, say the researchers. If spread out over the whole planet, the water would form a layer 300 metres deep.

>“I think this is the first time where we have a smoking gun,” says Bizzarro, and we can finally say with certainty that water-rich asteroids hit Mars’s surface.

>C-type asteroids also contain elements that are essential to life.

>This means that two of the most important ingredients necessary to life – organic molecules and water – were present on Mars during a time before Earth’s moon even formed, say the researchers.

Science Advances, DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abp8415

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"Martin Bizzarro" is a supervillain name if I've ever heard one.

>mechadracula

>"Martin Bizzarro" is a supervillain name if I've ever heard one.

Further reading:

>Martin Bizzarro

>Professor

>Centre for Star and Planet Formation

>My research is focused on understanding the earliest evolution of our solar system through the use of high-precision isotope ratio measurements in extraterrestrial materials. I am currently director of the Center for Star and Planet Formation (www.starplan.dk), a multidisciplinary centre of excellence for research in cosmochemistry, astrophysics and astronomy located at the Natural National History Museum of Denmark.

Source: https://globe.ku.dk/staff-list/?pure=en/persons/283253

Does Mars simply not have enough gravity to maintain that water to create an atmosphere? I mean, that's a lot of water.

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Oh no, more money funding space research what will we ever do, throw more money at wars on earth?

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If it means more money, yeah

It doesn't have the mass or magnetosphere to maintain its atmosphere. The lack of mass makes it easier for the atmosphere to evaporate and be lost to space, while the lack of magnetosphere made the solar wind blow much of the atmosphere away. When Mars lost its atmosphere, it lost its water.

Crawl back in your hole please.

There's a pretty funny article in that same issue about the drawbacks of feeding cows hemp high in THC. Apparently it makes them yawn, stand in one place for an abnormal amount of time, lean on each other or the fence, and they excrete delta-9 THC in their milk.

It's worth the chuckle.

Cheers

Mars still has enough water (ice) to fill an ocean. It's just cold so it's frozen.

If its poles melted today, it would have an atmosphere and oceans for millions of years, as the air slowly blows away in the solar wind.

So what?

But without a magnetic field it was impossible go sustain

Attention: Mars has an atmosphere. That is all.

That study was a hot mess of terrible methodologies, and was run by an australian ultra right-wing anti-drug organization.

FYI, take all of those findings with a massive pile of salt.

Actually, no. NASA did the matu based on current estimates, & if all the water & other greenhouse gases on Mars were melted & vaporized, it'd only supply about 6% of Earth's current thickness. Not nearly enough for sustaining life.

Then there's the hydrate problem.

Current estimates. We really don’t know much at all about mars still and we won’t know for sure until we go there.

Not true. We know quite a bit, actually. We know chemical composition, age, geologic conditions, tectonic patterns, solar saturation, mean temperature & radiological conditions.

And all point to Mars being a cold, dry, inhospitable deathtrap for humans. The famous red dust contains poisonous chlorate compounds, while just under a thin topsoil of hydrate minerals lurk hydrate precursors. Substances ready to take any available liquid water they encounter, & irreversibly transform it into stone.

Why is it irreversible, & why not crack the existing hydrates for their trapped water? Because it'd be extremely energy intensive, & Mars doesn't get very much energy. With roughly half the luminance, Mars gets about a quarter of the solar energy input that we'd get on Earth. While the amount of water we'd get is, again, insufficient to bulk out a breathable atmosphere, much less sustain a science outpost or Martian agriculture.

Mars has no tectonic plates so its geological history is pristine. Am I understanding this correctly? So if this is true, we could solve if water came from meteorites.

You're right, it's not enough to sustain life. It's not an Earth-like atmosphere. But it is enough pressure to allow liquid water on the surface and protect from micrometeorites and cosmic rays. It's enough moisture in the air to allow rain and distribute water to the entire surface.

You would still need habitats, but they would be simpler to build. Simple plastic-wrapped greenhouses would become viable. You could go outside with just full-body compression socks and an oxygen supply. Atmospheric CO2 and temperature would be high enough for lichen to grow on the surface.

We need to smash more comets into Mars.

It's kinda disheartening that Mars failed as a habitable world. Imagine sending missions out there and being sent back data & images of extraterrestrial flora and possibly advanced fauna, given we didn't screw it all up via contamination.

Nothing is growing on Mars due to the chemical realities of the planet. At least not for long.

I maintain faith in the adaptability of biochemistry. It has surmounted impossible chemical realities many times before.

... You don't know how evolution works. Noted.

Evolution is no longer limited to how it has worked in the past. We're now an active part of the process, thinking purposefully rather than simply reacting. GMO crops are the first step. GMO ecosystems will colonize Mars.

You also don't know how biochemistry works, either. Nor are you informed about the current findings of prevailing Martian geochemistry.

You're not going to grow lichen on rocks that chemically bind water into different types of rock. You are not going to GMO plants into utilizing them, either.

Every terrestrial macroscale life form known isn't a modular organism. It's a complex, messy, interconnected thing supported & simultaneously under assault by a billions year old ecology. This ecology will never exist on Mars within the timespan of the human species, regardless of any genetic jiggery-pokery we do.