Mars once covered in water, space agency says

I read this one book by Doctor Courtney Brown on the subject of remote-viewing. The book was called "Cosmic Voyage". In the book he recounts his remote-viewing sessions of Mars.

According to the book it says there was indeed life on Mars. In fact there STILL IS life on Mars but they mostly live underground now.

I remember reading somewhere else in a different book (if I remember the name and author I'll come back and give it to you) about a Russian rocket-scientist who fled the Soviet Union and defected to United States.

And he brought with him a batch of photos taken by a probe that was sent to Mars by the Soviets. I don't recall precisely at what point in time the probe was launched and when it reached Mars. Although I want to say it was launched around the mid-60's and it reached Mars by about the early 80's. More or less. Don't quote me on it.

Anyways; the photos were in COLOR! And in the photos there showed crumbling ruins of buildings and highways dotting the Martian landscape. Buildings and highways, etc, much like what you would see in any modern-day city on Earth.

The Soviets tried to keep the photos hidden because they didn't want the world to know they how much more advanced in technology they were than they initially let on.

EDIT: I just remembered the book. I think it was "64 Secrets Ahead Of Us" by Jonathan Gray.

[edit on 6/26/10 by Marked One]

reply to post by fieryjaguarpaw

You determine the age of a rock by comparing the ratios of radioactive isotopes contained in it. It isn't perfect but it's pretty darned good.

Science is no good at imagining something interesting....sure. Nothing interesting about black holes. Nothing interesting about supernovas.

Nothing interesting about the possibility of life on Mars.

Evidence of life on Mars lurks beneath surface of meteorite, Nasa experts claim

www.timesonline.co.uk...

Nothing interesting about the possibility of life on Europa.

Antarctic discovery supports possibility of life on Europa.

astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov...

I mean why not just say "Yes! it's possible! Who knows? Now let's find out!"

What rock have you been living under? It one of the main things that scientists are interested in finding out. Those are only a couple of examples which demonstrate that.





[edit on 6/26/2010 by Phage]

reply to post by Phage


My only issue is that in space, radiation levels are like a gaziliondy times worse than on our fair world. So that ruins anything.

What I do know is that Mars' winds are not that strong. And that its gravity is low. This means that Mars has looked like it does for quite some long time.

I have no doubt that Mars once held life. It's too near the Goldilocks zone not to. It had water, an atmosphere, and probably everything Earth does. I'd imagine it to be a coniferous jungle sorta world. A cold jungle, if you will.


If you want an idea of what this ancient Mars once looked like, I have a few videos of species that would likely be in low G.

If you look at a good map of Mars, you can actually see where water (oceans etc) should have been at one time. As far as proving life existed once may be somewhat of a problem though. It has been so long sense water in large masses existed upon Mars that the evidence proving life may be all blown away by storms and crumbled into bits of sandy powder. I still have hope that they will find something one day. (keeping fingers crossed) Great post by the way.

reply to post by Entropie


I've seen some better ones, but these are epic too.

reply to post by Phage


I think you are missing the point of what I was trying to say. The first post you made in this thread is an excellent example of what I'm talking about. You listed a bunch of reasons life couldn't have ever been on Mars. A series of "no"s. You might as well have said "Move along. Nothing to see here." Your post is typical of the scientific community, but it is also only one side of a possible story. Isn't it much more scientific to say "yes it is very much possible... NOW LET'S GO FIND OUT."

See the difference? My comments are positive and encourage more study, your comments are negative and discourage looking further.

reply to post by fieryjaguarpaw

I posted nothing disallowing the possibility that life could have existed on Mars. I was replying to this statement in by the OP.

And if life did in what respect? Was it primitive or will we one day discover that there was once an advanced civilization on Mars?

And I stand by what I posted. If life ever did exist on Mars, there is little chance that it could have evolved beyond a very primitive level. That is not negative, it is realistic.

But the discovery of incontrovertible evidence of even very primitive life on another planet would be monumental. I, and the scientific community, do say, "Let's go look for it!" That is what they are doing. The problem is, it is not that easy to do. You don't just up and send a spacecraft to Mars and go look for some kind of life we have never seen before. Where exactly do you look? What exactly do you look for? How exactly do you go about it? These are all questions that need to be asked, answered, and agreement reached before anything happens. Maybe you don't like it, but that is the reality of it. Maybe you know more about it than the scientists who have devoted their lives to it. Maybe you should have spent the time and effort to put yourself in their positions.

I'm not missing your point. You are missing mine. We should be, and are, looking for life elsewhere.

reply to post by Phage


If Mars had a better atmosphere and better radiation protection, what would hinder life to go beyond a primitive level?

There is quite heavy evidence that Mars had a lot more water once, as the ice does not seem to have enough mass to fill the current rivers and seas.

I'd say not beyond basic Permian level life. Reason being is that Mars has a lot less evidential continental drift than Earth. This is peculiar, as the carved out rocks from water indicate long term water presence, but the current conditions would not allow that. IE, there was once more atmosphere. Only way that would remain is with a stronger core. or more appropriately, an actual core (as right now it is pretty much dead).

All this would seem to indicate life at levels near the Permian-like conditions.

I heard they were going to terraform the planet to try and to make oxygen.

Link : en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by Gorman91

Evidence shows that the magnetic field, thus most of the atmosphere, thus liquid water, disappeared about 4 billion years ago. So even given that Mars may have been suitable for life before Earth was, there was not much time for life to develop.

It took .45 billion years for the first life to show up on Earth (4 billion years ago). 2.4 billion years more for blue-green algae (photosynthesis) to show up, by that time Mars was pretty much as it is now. So Mars could have made the very first steps before its seas disappeared. Would that life have been able to survive? Could it have continued to evolve? Could it have reached the stage of animal life without liquid water on the surface (or without an energy source beneath the surface)? Good questions.

[edit on 6/26/2010 by Phage]

reply to post by ShadowRamesses


It is humanity's goal to terraform every single world to its desired level of green. At least until the natives tell us "WTF?"


reply to post by Phage



I had heard that Mars died around the era of the dinosaurs. I am not going to pretend I know for sure. But those mountains and caverns and valleys and canyons are all pretty damn well preserved for being billions of years old. Are you sure?

reply to post by Gorman91

According to the article in the OP the evidence found of Martian seas is more than 4 billion years old.

"We can now say that the planet was altered on a global scale by liquid water more than 4 billion years ago," said the report's lead author, John Carter of the University of Paris.

news.blogs.cnn.com...

But how long ago were the seas there? The Hellas and Argyre impact basins lack magnetic fields. This indicates that they formed after the global magnetic field of Mars had disappeared, otherwise the molten material which was created by the impacts would have acquired the magnetic signature of the global field. The impact basins are dated at 4 billion years.
www.lpi.usra.edu...
www.es.ucsc.edu...

Without a magnetic field, the solar wind stripped the atmosphere, reducing pressure, making the presence of liquid water on the surface impossible. It's been dry for a very, very long time. A couple of billion years at least, 4 billion at most, not millions. With a dry, thin atmosphere, erosion does not proceed at the same rate that it does on Earth so you can't really make a very good comparison. But there is evidence that liquid water may sometimes reach the surface. If it does, it may scour out a gully but it soon evaporates.

[edit on 6/26/2010 by Phage]

reply to post by Phage


Oh Ok. Well, who knows. The death of a magnetic sphere must take quite some time. And what causes it anyway? We know the sun has many poles, so much that it messes up everything on its surface. We know that Mars had major major volcanic activity, as evident by its massive volcanoes. So really it is interesting.

None the less, we were put behind by, like, a billion years because our moon collided with us. The planet had to start all over again. So that's a pretty large time period. If Mars was already ahead of us in the hotter, younger solar system, it could easily been having life a full billion or two years before we did. In which case anything is up for grabs.

reply to post by Gorman91


I'm aware of the "head start" that Mars had and I've addressed it. We weren't "put behind" by a billion years. The Earth and Mars formed at about the same time as the rest of the solar system, about 4.6 billion years ago. The giant collision which formed the Moon occurred about 50 million years after that and it took about 150 million years for the crust to form. So that's 200 million years after the formation of Mars. But it took a while for the crust of Mars to form too, call it 75 million years, so that leaves a "head start" of 125 million years, not a billion.

reply to post by Phage


oops. My bad. too true. Well. All I can honestly say is that Mars does not look like Earth 4 billion years ago. Earth was a very big soup can essentially. mars already had fully formed canyons and rivers and massive volcanoes?

But as is science. I have no proof. So I cannot answer my own observation. And I have no hypothesis for it either. Can you help?

reply to post by Gorman91

100 million years is plenty of time for the geological features we see on Mars to have formed. The Grand Canyon is 17 million years old. The Himalayas are 70 million years old. Mauna Loa (the closest thing we have to Olympus Mons) is not even 1 million years old.

reply to post by Phage


But is that possible with 1/3 gravity? Not likely it had much air pressure even with an atmosphere, because of this gravity. So would it be enough for such a world?

reply to post by Gorman91

The air pressure was high enough for liquid water to exist on the surface. We know that because, well, there was liquid water on the surface (pretty sure about that).

I'm not sure what you're asking. What does gravity or the density of the atmosphere have to do with canyons carved by liquid water or the formation of volcanoes? Even slow moving rivers cause erosion. Even in low gravity water will move quickly down a steep slope. If anything, lower gravity may lead to taller volcanoes.

reply to post by Phage


K. I agree with you then. Thanks for the chat!

reply to post by Gorman91



If the polar caps on Mars are melting maybe things would just start growing by themselves?