2015 Catch-All thread

[Kyyle23]

Balta, what is this big Mars news they are teasing?

[Brian]

Balta, what is this big Mars news they are teasing?

 

They saved Matt Damon

 

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/26/us/mars-disc...irpt/index.html

Edited September 27, 2015 by Brian

[Balta1701]

Balta, what is this big Mars news they are teasing?

A few years ago an undergraduate discovered that there were slopes on Mars that formed "streaks" every year when they were exposed to the sun. Most people's guess was that was frozen water melting in the spring, but no one could prove it because they couldn't actually detect the water. Running guess from most people is that the announcement will be "verifying that these things are actually flowing water".

 

This is also something of a running joke because it seems like NASA has several press conferences discovering water on Mars per year, if this is something along those lines. These press conferences also get more coverage than they really deserve after the 1996 "We may have found fossil life" press conference. So, a big enough detail scientifically to get a press conference could be something that is only moderately interesting and it gets way too much coverage as a consequence.

[Jose Abreu]

The moon was amazing tonight.

[Brian]

The moon was amazing tonight.

 

It was pretty cool. Took my dog out around 8:15 and saw the eclipse starting. Looked out the window every 5 mins and watched it. Looked fairly red.

[cabiness42]

The moon was amazing tonight.

 

f***ing clouds!

[Jose Abreu]

So, water on mars...

[Balta1701]

So, water on mars...

You want to chat about it, you've got someone pretty close to an official expert right here. Any Q's?

[Jose Abreu]

You want to chat about it, you've got someone pretty close to an official expert right here. Any Q's?

Not specifically about the water, but

 

1. Does this change beliefs on whether or not there is life of any kind on Mars?

 

2. Do you think a human being will walk on Mars in the next 20 years?

[Balta1701]

Not specifically about the water, but

 

1. Does this change beliefs on whether or not there is life of any kind on Mars?

 

2. Do you think a human being will walk on Mars in the next 20 years?

1. I think this was long suspected, so the likely answer is no. The Phoenix lander in 2007 observed water ice just below the surface of Mars at its landing site and we flew an instrument called a Gamma Ray spectrometer around Mars that was able to detect that there is significant water in some form within the upper 10s of centimeters across much of the planet. That water could be locked up in minerals or frozen as actual water ice, but it's not unexpected that there is water ice frozen near Mars's surface.

 

After the undergrad discovered these RSL features in 2011, I think most Mars scientists suspected their likelist cause was water. In fact, Mars researchers have been putting out papers for years analyzing the change in freezing point of water associated with expected common salts on Mars to try to understand which salts might be present in those flows if they were brine water. This paper verifies that it is.

 

However, this specific find doesn't change the full calculus for me - we thought there was water near the surface frozen as ice, we knew there were locations where it could become liquid, that's what needs to be present for there to be life, but this is so short-lived that it might not even be a habitable environment this year - it could freeze completely in the winter. Furthermore, the type of salts likely present are caustic to life as we know it, making it an extremely rough environment.

 

There remains a better chance of melted water at depth, warmed by the heat of the planet, representing a habitable environment, but I'm still skeptical of that because there's so little evidence of the kinds of ecological changes caused by life that we see on Earth today. Can't rule it out, but this doesn't change that assessment, at least to me.

 

Good science, but not unexpected is my short summary.

 

2. No I don't. I think we could but I don't think the money is there. We've spent 7-8 years now basically with the entire exploration program locked in a budget crisis and I don't see that changing any time soon. Unless that changes, we're still building a giant rocket with no where to go because the costs are so daunting. It will require a decade+ of substantial, sustained money committed well beyond what is being spent on NASA right now, and we can barely get robotic missions funded in this environment - we're launching at about 1/2 the pace we were a decade ago. I also don't see any private organization being able to come up with that level of funding either because it is so high and the potential return is so low.

[Jose Abreu]

1. I think this was long suspected, so the likely answer is no. The Phoenix lander in 2007 observed water ice just below the surface of Mars at its landing site and we flew an instrument called a Gamma Ray spectrometer around Mars that was able to detect that there is significant water in some form within the upper 10s of centimeters across much of the planet. That water could be locked up in minerals or frozen as actual water ice, but it's not unexpected that there is water ice frozen near Mars's surface.

 

After the undergrad discovered these RSL features in 2011, I think most Mars scientists suspected their likelist cause was water. In fact, Mars researchers have been putting out papers for years analyzing the change in freezing point of water associated with expected common salts on Mars to try to understand which salts might be present in those flows if they were brine water. This paper verifies that it is.

 

However, this specific find doesn't change the full calculus for me - we thought there was water near the surface frozen as ice, we knew there were locations where it could become liquid, that's what needs to be present for there to be life, but this is so short-lived that it might not even be a habitable environment this year - it could freeze completely in the winter. Furthermore, the type of salts likely present are caustic to life as we know it, making it an extremely rough environment.

 

There remains a better chance of melted water at depth, warmed by the heat of the planet, representing a habitable environment, but I'm still skeptical of that because there's so little evidence of the kinds of ecological changes caused by life that we see on Earth today. Can't rule it out, but this doesn't change that assessment, at least to me.

 

Good science, but not unexpected is my short summary.

 

2. No I don't. I think we could but I don't think the money is there. We've spent 7-8 years now basically with the entire exploration program locked in a budget crisis and I don't see that changing any time soon. Unless that changes, we're still building a giant rocket with no where to go because the costs are so daunting. It will require a decade+ of substantial, sustained money committed well beyond what is being spent on NASA right now, and we can barely get robotic missions funded in this environment - we're launching at about 1/2 the pace we were a decade ago. I also don't see any private organization being able to come up with that level of funding either because it is so high and the potential return is so low.

Thank you!

[shipps]

Balta, with all that being said it seems like it is pretty senseless to think there is going to be true advances from all that has been learned about Mars in recent years. There is not enough knowledge or funding that will actually change the way we live here or there from what we've learned. Its all been for s***s and giggles.

[Balta1701]

Balta, with all that being said it seems like it is pretty senseless to think there is going to be true advances from all that has been learned about Mars in recent years. There is not enough knowledge or funding that will actually change the way we live here or there from what we've learned. Its all been for s***s and giggles.

In the 1960s, we went to the moon for s***s and Giggles - it was basically to beat the Russians there.

 

Out of that effort, the amount of benefit this nation got was huge. Pull out your phone. Do you have the ability to access a GPS instrument? Those satellites grew out of the development of satellite launch and engineering facilities developed in the effort to go to the moon.

 

Early next week I'm likely to be hit by a tropical storm. We know that in part because we are able to launch satellites into high, stationary orbits around the Earth and they're capable of multi-spectral imaging at high resolutions - so you can see water vapor contents through the atmosphere. Those satellites last for years, one of them even survived an impact with a bit of space rock a few years ago & we managed to recover from it. Meanwhile, I'm watching television that was broadcast to me via satellites.

 

If you tried to predict any of that after the Moon landing, you'd never have come close to guessing where it would go.

 

Today, the main company that launches satellites from the US is the United Launch Alliance, a combination between Boeing and Lockheed. They aren't exactly companies that get into business in order to contribute to charity. They're now being competed with by other companies, including SpaceX and soon to be Jeff Bezos's company, because this is to them an obvious growth industry - spurred by original development from NASA.

 

You want some crazy ones? Have you or a family member ever had an MRI or an ultrasound? The imaging software that today allows us to do those was originally software developed 25 years ago when the Hubble Space Telescope's primary mirror was misground. The amount of economic benefit developed from this work long-term is extraordinary. I'm an asthmatic - i have vacuums and air filters built using NASA filtration technology. It makes my life better.

 

That's the thing with basic research - if you try to predict where it's going to go, you'll be wrong. In the 1970s, geoscientists and biologists studied "extreme" organisms that live above 50 degrees C. Why on Earth would anyone care about a bacterium that lives in a hot spring pool in Yellowstone? In the late 1980s, a research group realized that one of these bacteria had an enzyme that survived high temperatures and could be used to process DNA at higher temperatures than anyone else could. They extracted that enzyme and published their work - leading to the development of a technique called Polymerase Chain Reaction - PCR - for rapid DNA sequencing. The cost of sequencing DNA went down by a factor of several thousand and the time taken went down from years to days.

 

Because people investigated bacteria in a pool in Yellowstone in the 1970s, today we're talking about the fact that a rape kit came back showing Patrick Kane's DNA was not present within a few days after it is collected. That skill can save people's lives - we can sequence parts of genomes rapidly and determine "hey this person is at risk of breast cancer and should take aggressive action". Because of a bacterium living in a hot spring.

 

I can't tell you where a Mars program could lead. Heavy lift rockets like those needed to get to Mars could also reach the asteroid belt which has objects loaded with the elements we pay large amounts of money for today - gold, rare earth elements, silver, etc. Materials developed for those missions could be better building materials. We built an ion thruster engine to visit an asteroid. We developed imaging technology for Mars that can be adapted to Earth and weather forecasting. We might develop a type of fusion and realize we need a way to bring back lots of helium-3 and the Moon's surface is a good resource. But really, if I try to guess I'm going to fail. If you found a martian organism, it could be like that bacterium in a hot spring - who knows what it is adapted to.

 

But beyond that still, I would argue there is a point just to the search. Quite simply "is there other life in this universe" remains a fundamental question. That's one of those things that shapes the way we look at ourselves - how unique are we? If life evolved 5 times in our solar system, how do we view ourselves? It's even possible life evolved once on a place like Mars and then fed other sites in the solar system through meteorites - we could actually even be martians.

 

But even beyond that, there's one other level - NASA is quite simply the single most well respected brand the United States has in the world. People who have barely ever had internet access know about NASA. They imaged Pluto this year. They dropped a nuclear powered laser firing robot onto the surface of another planet (using thruster and parachute technology now being licensed elsewhere btw). They landed on the moon. They practically own social media - I got 500,000+ readers earlier this year for a story I wrote using one of their Pluto images. I've pointed out the ISS traveling overhead to about a dozen different students this year including a couple below 10. This very weekend a story about NASA is going to open as the likely number 1 movie in the world.

 

The people who built many of the companies we see today grew up watching humans walk on the moon. I can picture the Sojourner rover accidentally kicking up one of its wheels on a rock in 1996 - its just locked in my head. The people who built the internet grew up watching shuttle launches. We can put a price on how much money is earned from NASA developed technologies and its generally huge. We can't put a price on the best brand the country has. We can't put a price on a 10 year old dreaming about being an astronaut and what they do with their life. And that's what we're really losing when we don't explore.

[StrangeSox]

you forgot tang and velcro

[southsider2k5]

you forgot tang and velcro

 

I like tang.

[knightni]

I like tang.

I like Velcro - but it doesn't taste as good as Tang.

[southsider2k5]

I got a laugh out of this one

 

Mars: Come over

 

NASA: You're 33.9 million miles away

 

Mars: I'm wet

 

NASA: I'm coming over

[southsider2k5]

Pluto's moon Charon contains a canyon 4 times as long as the Grand Canyon, and other interesting features such as mountains.

 

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-s-big-mo...violent-history

[shipps]

In the 1960s, we went to the moon for s***s and Giggles - it was basically to beat the Russians there.

 

Out of that effort, the amount of benefit this nation got was huge. Pull out your phone. Do you have the ability to access a GPS instrument? Those satellites grew out of the development of satellite launch and engineering facilities developed in the effort to go to the moon.

 

Early next week I'm likely to be hit by a tropical storm. We know that in part because we are able to launch satellites into high, stationary orbits around the Earth and they're capable of multi-spectral imaging at high resolutions - so you can see water vapor contents through the atmosphere. Those satellites last for years, one of them even survived an impact with a bit of space rock a few years ago & we managed to recover from it. Meanwhile, I'm watching television that was broadcast to me via satellites.

 

If you tried to predict any of that after the Moon landing, you'd never have come close to guessing where it would go.

 

Today, the main company that launches satellites from the US is the United Launch Alliance, a combination between Boeing and Lockheed. They aren't exactly companies that get into business in order to contribute to charity. They're now being competed with by other companies, including SpaceX and soon to be Jeff Bezos's company, because this is to them an obvious growth industry - spurred by original development from NASA.

 

You want some crazy ones? Have you or a family member ever had an MRI or an ultrasound? The imaging software that today allows us to do those was originally software developed 25 years ago when the Hubble Space Telescope's primary mirror was misground. The amount of economic benefit developed from this work long-term is extraordinary. I'm an asthmatic - i have vacuums and air filters built using NASA filtration technology. It makes my life better.

 

That's the thing with basic research - if you try to predict where it's going to go, you'll be wrong. In the 1970s, geoscientists and biologists studied "extreme" organisms that live above 50 degrees C. Why on Earth would anyone care about a bacterium that lives in a hot spring pool in Yellowstone? In the late 1980s, a research group realized that one of these bacteria had an enzyme that survived high temperatures and could be used to process DNA at higher temperatures than anyone else could. They extracted that enzyme and published their work - leading to the development of a technique called Polymerase Chain Reaction - PCR - for rapid DNA sequencing. The cost of sequencing DNA went down by a factor of several thousand and the time taken went down from years to days.

 

Because people investigated bacteria in a pool in Yellowstone in the 1970s, today we're talking about the fact that a rape kit came back showing Patrick Kane's DNA was not present within a few days after it is collected. That skill can save people's lives - we can sequence parts of genomes rapidly and determine "hey this person is at risk of breast cancer and should take aggressive action". Because of a bacterium living in a hot spring.

 

I can't tell you where a Mars program could lead. Heavy lift rockets like those needed to get to Mars could also reach the asteroid belt which has objects loaded with the elements we pay large amounts of money for today - gold, rare earth elements, silver, etc. Materials developed for those missions could be better building materials. We built an ion thruster engine to visit an asteroid. We developed imaging technology for Mars that can be adapted to Earth and weather forecasting. We might develop a type of fusion and realize we need a way to bring back lots of helium-3 and the Moon's surface is a good resource. But really, if I try to guess I'm going to fail. If you found a martian organism, it could be like that bacterium in a hot spring - who knows what it is adapted to.

 

But beyond that still, I would argue there is a point just to the search. Quite simply "is there other life in this universe" remains a fundamental question. That's one of those things that shapes the way we look at ourselves - how unique are we? If life evolved 5 times in our solar system, how do we view ourselves? It's even possible life evolved once on a place like Mars and then fed other sites in the solar system through meteorites - we could actually even be martians.

 

But even beyond that, there's one other level - NASA is quite simply the single most well respected brand the United States has in the world. People who have barely ever had internet access know about NASA. They imaged Pluto this year. They dropped a nuclear powered laser firing robot onto the surface of another planet (using thruster and parachute technology now being licensed elsewhere btw). They landed on the moon. They practically own social media - I got 500,000+ readers earlier this year for a story I wrote using one of their Pluto images. I've pointed out the ISS traveling overhead to about a dozen different students this year including a couple below 10. This very weekend a story about NASA is going to open as the likely number 1 movie in the world.

 

The people who built many of the companies we see today grew up watching humans walk on the moon. I can picture the Sojourner rover accidentally kicking up one of its wheels on a rock in 1996 - its just locked in my head. The people who built the internet grew up watching shuttle launches. We can put a price on how much money is earned from NASA developed technologies and its generally huge. We can't put a price on the best brand the country has. We can't put a price on a 10 year old dreaming about being an astronaut and what they do with their life. And that's what we're really losing when we don't explore.

 

Definitely for more than s***s and giggles LOL

 

I really wasn't thinking of it quite like that.

[Jordan4life_2007]

Random question alert:

 

Are boiled eggs/egg whites good for you? I need to lose 20 pounds in 40 days.

[Rowand44]

Random question alert:

 

Are boiled eggs/egg whites good for you? I need to lose 20 pounds in 40 days.

Can't lose 20 lbs in 40 days in any healthy way. Why do you have to do that?

[Jordan4life_2007]

Can't lose 20 lbs in 40 days in any healthy way. Why do you have to do that?

 

Going to Vegas next month. Never been. I've got suits/clothes that I want to wear that don't fit me like they did a few years ago. I weigh about 190 at the moment. I want to get to 170 before I leave.

[bmags]

You probably don't need to lose 20 lbs for that. Just stick to 1800 calories, and do like T25 or P90 x or something. You'll lose inches and keep weight where you want it.

[LittleHurt05]

Download My Fitness Pal app. Set it for losing 2 to 3 pounds a week and track every single calorie going in and out.

 

If you want to jump start it, do a 3 day juice cleanse before. It helps you get on the healthy train and cuts some lbs in the process.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

You probably don't need to lose 20 lbs for that. Just stick to 1800 calories, and do like T25 or P90 x or something. You'll lose inches and keep weight where you want it.

 

That will melt pounds off pretty quickly