A
New user-friendly website now exists on my new University server
Evidence for (recent) flowing water on Mars
A new flurry of excitement about water on Mars has been triggered by a recent batch of press releases centred around a new Science Journal Article (you may need to sign up for a free subscription to see the abstract) showing recent channels on Mars. Full text PDF available here for a limited time! Unfortunately for the authors, the places where this occurs are not the warmer, wetter bits near the equator but on poleward facing shadowed slopes. Interestingly, this is exactly where CO2 permafrost will be developed. I suggest that this is continued evidence for small-scale cryoclastic flows occurring on Mars under the present surface conditions.
Here is an outline
of my ideas about Mars. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, there
is nothing here about Cydonia or little green aliens. I'm a geophysicist,
which is basically a geologist who plays with computers. I used to
work in the oil exploration industry, but I've always been interested in
planetary science and nearly did a Ph.D. on vulcanism on the Moon. In the
end, I did one on Mantle Convection in the Earth, but it was a close run
thing. In the last year I have left the oil industry and moved to the Earth
Science department of La Trobe
University in Melbourne, Australia where I research
into structural geology, oil exploration, and the planet
Mars.
Background
I began to suspect that there was something
wrong with the standard
model of Mars a couple of years ago when excitement was building over
the Pathfinder mission to Mars. The existence of an excellent photoarchive
of Viking era orbital images of Mars facilitated my study of the planet,
and I brought in a few threads of seabed studies from my own work, and
vulcanology, inspired by the repeated rumblings of the Soufriere hills
volcano on Martinique. This is a research endeavour facilitated and inspired
by the Web, allowing me in Australia to look at the latest NASA images
of Mars and piece together a new story of water, or lack of it, on Mars.
Implications
The new model for a permanently frozen, water-free
Mars, dominated by CO2 seriously changes how we view Mars. I'm sorry to
all those whose research it will disrupt, or whose plans for Mars will
need to be changed, but better we catch up with this now rather than later
when too much energy and money has been spent pursuing the wrong targets.
It doesn't end the story of water on Mars, but it certainly makes some
things harder to do. On the other hand, some things get easier, so there's
a trade-off...
Abstracts prepared for 5th International Mars Conference, July 18-23rd, 1999 - Pasadena, California.
Note that they are necessarily brief, due to space limitation.
My intention was to give a set-piece presentation of the whole White Mars paradigm, based on this outline, but I was unable to get more than a single 10-minute slot to talk. However, all the abstracts have been put on NASA's web server.
For those who are interested in what might have been, this is my overview:-
White Mars: A New Model for Mars’ surface and atmosphere based on CO2
I also include local links to a set of 8 linked short contributions that gets the story across. These were not presented orally, but I did manage a poster session that summarised the key elements.
Part 1 VOLATILES
AND ICES ON MARS.
Part 2 PRESSURE
AND TEMPERATURE EVOLUTION OF MARS’ SURFACE.
Part 3 ICE
AND LAYERING ON EARLY AND MODERN MARS.
Part 4 THE
COLLAPSE ORIGIN OF DENSITY FLOWS ON MARS.
Part 5 FLUID-SUPPORTED
DENSITY FLOWS ON EARTH AND MARS 1: TURBIDITE ANALOGS.
part 6 FLUID-SUPPORTED
DENSITY FLOWS ON EARTH AND MARS 2: PYROCLASTIC ANALOGS.
Part 7 THE
WHITE ROCK ON MARS COMPARED TO TERRESTRIAL SALT DIAPIRS AND GLACIERS.
Part 8 EARTH,
VENUS, AND MARS: A TRINITY RE-UNITED.
Any Queries, or feedback - email me