JayUtah

Galileo only in the sense that he was not a good salesman either and we both got whooped. He also made some bad decisions, I do that a lot. We both loved thinking. I think that is were the similarities end.

to quote a famous chef...
BAM!

THIS is a quotable quote. May we adopt it?

True. You are refusing the evidence that is right in front of your eyes Dfrank.

Why?

Ok I am starting to get the feeling that some of you think I have not taken the time to look at all the data available on surface conditions on Mars.

Is that the case? If it is I will put together my understanding of the dynamics of the Martian atmosphere for you guys to look at and ask questions.

If you would like that should I post it here of in another place. I would also need some time to put it together but I should have a lot done in a few hours.

Dfrank

Any comparison between you and Galileo elevates you and lessens him.

Which is why I imagine you are doing it.

But it's time to stop now...you are not Galileo...

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

I was not elected.

Then kindly don't attempt to represent them. You're trying to give your argument strength by extending it inappropriately to the entire American public, but you have no evidence that your views are shared by more than just a few people.

I have talked to a few that saw several water anomalies at the Opportunity site.

Do you speak for them? Are they able to provide more objective evidence than you? Why do you classify them as "water" anomalies when you can't prove that there's even a remote possibility they could actually be water? Aren't you jumping to conclusions?

In this thread it was the decision to drive away.

Instead of what? Your belief that any decision was made at all is based on your supposition that the feature in question was in any way anomalous and represented in any way something that experienced mission operators felt any need to investigate. Just because it's new and interesting to you doesn't mean it's objectively so.

Earlier you pointed out that people reach a level of understanding where a paradigm shift occurs and they conceptualize differently the things that they see and hear. You said it in the context of thermodynamic analysis and implied that you had reached this point. But you seem unwilling to believe that such a paradigm shift can occur in image interpretation, and that others may have reached it while you have not.

You simply have no evidence that NASA somehow consciously believed the same as you, and consciously chose to overlook that bird in the hand in search for another in the bush. You don't seem aware of the likely extent to which you're just making stuff up.

I guess anyone who makes a claim wants you to follow along, and yes that would make me the piper.

Then if you are no better in your attitude and approach than what you accuse NASA of, will you kindly stop trying to judge them hypocritically?

Uninformed speculation would be your opinion.

You have admitted to your interpretation being speculation. And you have declined to establish any sort of expertise that would make your speculation especially informed, hence we default to its being uninformed. (One is presumed uninformed until he substantiates differently.) Hence I argue that my opinion is well supported by fact, and that I am justified in characterizing your claims as uninformed speculation.

Since you have extolled the virtue of intuition alone, it's a fair bet that you may not even agree with the notion of informed judgment. If so, you will not get very far here.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Well my point by sharing the data was to point out how the presence of water in the photo is unlikely given the surface conditions.

Water would evaporate or freeze away given the conditions present on the surface.

The links were just so you could see for yourself and use the numbers given by the NASA data to verify it.

That was all

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Mission Control : "Please don't kick the robot Bill. "

That and I thought the first article was kinda nifty

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Mission Control : "Please don't kick the robot Bill. "

It is very much the case.

Please feel free to use any mathematics, statistics, links ( legitimate links not CT links), measurements, raw data, processed data and quotes from the guys at NASA and leading scientists as you require

Dfrank, what is your objective evidence that what is in the bottom of the trench is water?

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Don't be so humble- you were dead on

Ok I am going to get started on my Mars atmospheric thermal profiles, general weather patterns and such. I will post it here. Please hold any further questions until I have completed this.

Thank you,

Dfrank

I'm interested in Dfrank's (implicit) claim that Martian surface conditions might mediate the Martian atmospheric conditions enough to allow standing liquid (or frozen) water to persist.

I'd like to propose some areas for investigation of this claim. These questions should not be interpreted as demands for a response from Dfrank (though that would be nice) but as an invitation to general discussion of the point.

1) What is the surface temperature on Mars? What are the daily and seasonal variations of the surface temperature? (I'm referring to the actual surface soils, not the air temperature at the surface.)

2) What is the subsurface temperature profile (e.g. temperature with increasing depth) near the surface? How does this profile change on a daily and seasonal basis?

3) How does the surface temperature interact with the air temperature?

4) On the basis of the first three questions, is there any combination of air pressure/temperature and soil conditions that would provide an environment compatible with liquid water? If so, how long would these conditions last?

In other words, what is the likelihood that the feature in Dfrank's image was either a puddle of water at the time it was imaged, or was once a puddle at some earlier time?

I suspect that the answer is "extremely unlikely", but I really don't know where to dig up the data on soil temperatures that would settle the issue.

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Before you get all excited about misplaced rigor, let's understand clearly what you intend to prove. We're not interested in a comprehensive picture of Mars climate, 99.9% of which would be irrelevant to the problem at hand. We're looking for whether we can rule out liquid water at the time and place depicted in the photo.

If we can, there's no need for further speculation that the apparent pool is caused by standing water; that hypothesis will have been disproven according to the data.

If we cannot, that's still not a case for standing water there, nor even a case that NASA should have taken a closer look. Failing to eliminate the pooling-water hypothesis by one means does not mean it cannot be conclusively eliminated by other means, such as by optical properties or its sure identification as some other feature.

My oven is an unsuitable environment for ice cream because of observable and deductible thermal properties. My freezer is a suitable environment because of those same deductions, but that doesn't mean that there is actually ice cream in it. That determination would have to be based on observation. And I don't have to taste everything in the freezer to ascertain whether it's likely to be ice cream. I can tell visually from a distance that the block of frozen peas is not ice cream, so there's no need to investigate further.

The question is whether NASA has invited criticism by behaving improperly. Therefore your burden of proof is in the objective propriety of your notion of correct behavior. Don't lose track of that in your rush to write a dissertation on planetary climatology.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

JayUtah

I conceded some time ago. I was in the process of trying not to leave any questions unanswered. There is not enough data to prove it is or is not water. There is not enough evidence to prove NASA’s mind set or its rationale for not investigating.

You win, I lose.

Sense I do have an understanding of atmospheric properties and behavior and the hydro cycle and micro-climates of Mars I would like to present and discuss. Is there a place on this forum for such?

Dfrank

Well Im trying to find if there is any data on the Mars surface conditions for Jan 11 2005

Since this photo is from Oppurtunity on day 81

I just back tracked the link from the photo given to the original and that is the day the photo was taken

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Mission Control : "Please don't kick the robot Bill. "

We don't need that. We see from the available data that there are temperatures and pressures on Mars that at some times may combine to just the right conditions for liquid water to exist on the surface. This, I would say, is borne out by observations over the past few years from orbit such as:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/sc...pagewanted=all

What we are asking is:

Is there any evidence that conditions at the location in your picture were suitable for liquid water at the time the picture was taken?

Is there any reason to suppose that it actually is liquid water, beyond your interpretation that it looks a bit like it?

Given the number of press releases from NASA and ESA regarding evidence of water on Mars, is there any reason at all to suspect that in this instance they would bypass such a chance to confirm liquid surface water if they actually thought for a moment that it might be there?

A long dissertation on Mars's general climate won't answer the specific questions that are pertinent to your claim.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

This has been covered already. NASA's rational is not in question here...your rational is.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Finding the truth of the matter is not a "contest" to be won or lost.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Jason Thompson,

I conceded a while back. Do you still need to answer questions after your posted concession?

Dfrank

RAF,

My rationale was it looked like a target of interest and should have been investigated. I thought I made that clear. You may not like my rationale, but it is what it is.

For those interested in looking at and discussing the Mars atmosphere and hydro cycle, I thing we can go to general science discussion

Yes, ATM maybe
If you concede that there is no conspiracy to hide water on Mars by NASA.

No that was not you rational. Your rational was that it looked to YOU like a target of interest and so should have been investigated. That is a big difference.

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Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-boggingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.

The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams 1952 - 2001

The questions I asked are simply restatements of questions asked earlier in the thread. To my mind they have not been answered adequately, before or since your concession, so I would say they still require an answer.

You claimed that there was something that looked to you like liquid water in a Mars photo, and that NASA did not stop to look is somehow suspicious. When pressed for evidence that they behaved in a suspicious fashion you gave us a general discussion of the fact that conditions on Mars can allow standing liquid surface water, and that NASA should have gone and looked at it, but you were unable to provide any specific reason why this instance should be considered a special one other than you say it is. Your whole discussion is based on NASA passing it up for some suspicious reason that you are unable or unwilling to even speculate at. You appear not to consider that the people at NASA who make a living studying these images might be able to interpret them better than you, that they are not obliged to share your interpretation, or that they may have more data to base their decisions on than just a picture.

I would, therefore, like to see simple answers to the questions I posed. Please bear in mind, however, that I am not demanding facts and figures, or temperature data or anything like that. If you have it, provide it. If you do not, then say so. 'I do not have that information' and 'I do not know' are acceptable answers to questions. What gets us annoyed is the behaviour offered by many conspiracy theorists and ATM proponents whereby they evade or ignore the questions they do not have firm answers for.

So, do you have temperature and pressure data for the location and time of the picture that supports the possibility of standing liquid water? I would say you do not. Is that correct?

Given that, do you have any other evidence that it might be liquid water, beyond your purely visual interpretation that it looks like it might be and that conditions on Mars can occasionally combine such as to allow liquid water to sit on the surface? I would guess not. Is that correct?

And given that NASA and ESA have not been shy of publishing evidence of past and current water flow on Mars, can you provide a sensible reason that they would deliberately ignore water in a rover picture, rather than simply moving on because they identified it as something other than water? I would guess not. Is that correct?

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

Waspie,

To say it looked like to me would be more correct.

Neverfly,

I have conceded.

It's unclear to me if you are saying the sole purpose of the Phoenix Lander is to find past life, or if you are saying the astrobiology experimentation will only focus on past life, but it's wrong either way. What the article specifically says about this is

That doesn't say anything about looking only for past life. "Ever" indicates all times, including right now.

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I was just sitting here contemplating the immortal words of Socrates who said, "I drank what?"

"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot." --Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"

Well, you can start there, but if you are to talk about standing water on Mars, then it'll be moved to ATM.

emphasis mine.

Where exactly have you "conceded"?? You're saying the same thing you've always said, that NASA should have investigated.

You need to drop that before you can "concede" anything.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Jason Thompson,

“So, do you have temperature and pressure data for the location and time of the picture that supports the possibility of standing liquid water? I would say you do not. Is that correct?”

Temperature data is available, looks like a max Temperature of +3c. On sol 80 I would say yes it would support liquid water.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/spotlight/20070612.html

“Given that, do you have any other evidence that it might be liquid water, beyond your purely visual interpretation that it looks like it might be? I would guess not. Is that correct?”

Visible data is all that is available, and my interpretation is all that it was based on.


And given that NASA and ESA have not been shy of publishing evidence of past and current water flow on Mars, can you provide a sensible reason that they would deliberately ignore water in a rover picture, rather than simply moving on because they identified it as something other than water? I would guess not. Is that correct.

Depends on what you call sensible. If you believe that there are religious people who would like for earth to be the only place life exist and that they influence a lot of the budget of NASA then yes. If you do not believe that then the answer would be no.