Early Mars atmosphere 'oxygen-rich'

A bit of debate has broken out between scientists, following a suggestion by Dr Bernard Wood of Oxford University, (By a strange quirk of fate there is also a Prof. Bernard Wood of George Washington University who also is involved with early times on planet Earth!), that four billion years ago, before Earth had even started on its journey to life, the atmosphere on Mars may well have been rich in oxygen.

Comparing Martian rocks and Martian meteorites, which have different oxidisation, Dr Wood came to the conclusion that at one early time there was an oxygen rich atmosphere.

"Dr Bernard Wood said the idea fits with the picture of a planet that was once warm, wet and habitable."

Against Dr Woods' theory, is a Dr Francis McCubbin, from the University of New Mexico, .who.. told BBC News: "I did not reach the conclusion that their results imply an early oxygen-rich atmosphere on Mars, only that the upper mantle was more oxidised than the deep interior, which does not actually require any oxygen gas to accomplish."

So it is possible that Mars once had a habitable atmosphere?

I have no idea what this all means, and to be honest, I do not fully understand what is being said, so nobody go about screaming, "See told you so, there was life on Mars".

But if what is reported is a true hypothesis then there may well be scope for some interesting speculation.

The whole article is www.bbc.co.uk... and there is an explanation for the colour of Mars as well.

I now await Phage to explain where it all goes wrong, over to you Phage....

Im interested to say the least.

If mars had an atmo before then it could again via technological means.
While that may be out of modern mans scope for now, its still a fun thought.

reply to post by shaneslaughta


One thing does not follow the other, conditions may have existed that present technology (or in the near future can't just reverse). Terra-formation of Mars has already been conjectured as possible to a point in any case the conditions will never be the same as on Earth, just more Earth like...

reply to post by Panic2k11


Thats fine with me, the way things are going i want the first shuttle out of here.

IF there is frozen water still on mars, we could create a pseudo magnetic field to protect what little atmo we can create from the hydrogen present.

My guess is this.

It was inhabited by humans. When the atmosphere started to get too thin they knew they'd have to move and a few manged to get to earth.

We are martions

Prove me wrong

On an even greater note, if Mars had begun it's life cycle almost four billion years ago, it could have been home to several advanced civilizations, some of which would have migrated to earth when it became habitable. This might explain pyramids on Mars and Earth. Humans have only had this planet a short time in the scheme of things and look at how far we have come to be able to go there. What if we had been around for even a billion years? They may have been around for several billion years and long since left for greener pastures elsewhere in the galaxy.

Why is it i had the same kind of thought, but i didnt come out with it in my first post.

I have always thought that we came from mars, or the martians were our creators/genetic modifiers of the neanderthals that were here. their planet was dying and they left it and us here to thrive and evolve on our own.

reply to post by Fromabove

On an even greater note, if Mars had begun it's life cycle almost four billion years ago, it could have been home to several advanced civilizations, some of which would have migrated to earth when it became habitable.

Because it's smaller Mars would have cooled faster after its initial accretion than Earth but there was long period of time in the early solar system when Earth and the other planets were busy cleaning up the left over debris from planetary formation. The planets were getting heavily pounded with asteroids. So much that the entire surface of the planet would have been molten. Mars may have had a bit of a "head start" but not much.

On Earth bacteria showed up about 1.1 billion years after the formation of the planet. It took another 2.8 billion years for plants to show up. After that it was another 0.6 billion for us to arrive.

This might explain pyramids on Mars and Earth.

How old do you think the pyramids on Earth are?

Evidence shows that Mars "died" about 2-3 billion years ago.
So even with any head start it had, there wasn't much time for complex (much less intelligent) creatures to show up.

reply to post by shaneslaughta


Please wait sitting down, if something can be predicted is that during our lifetime the common citizen will never leave this rock...

I may wish to read/contribute to the WIkibooks Colonizing Outer Space: Human Expansion in the Space Age or Space Transport and Engineering Methods: An Introduction to Space Systems Engineering. At least you will help keep the dream alive for future generations...

reply to post by Phage


Thanks Phage, knew I was on a loser, was just not sure why.

I can now go to bed with a calm and easy mind.

You are sure there were no advanced civilizations that ran out of air and popped over to see what could be done on the new blue world they could see? Nah, OK.

Originally posted by VoidHawk
My guess is this.

It was inhabited by humans. When the atmosphere started to get too thin they knew they'd have to move and a few manged to get to earth.

We are martions

Prove me wrong

What happened to the vast technical knowledge required to get to Earth from Mars? Proved wrong.

Originally posted by shaneslaughta
Im interested to say the least.

If mars had an atmo before then it could again via technological means.
While that may be out of modern mans scope for now, its still a fun thought.

It has no magnetic field. It will be a very long time before we have the ability to create one. Without it, there can be no atmosphere.

reply to post by dowot



One question, Is it possible that all planets once had life upon them, but were one by one erased by direct CME Flares ????? With us at present awaiting a possible future finale ??? By the way, I simply mean perhaps plants, insects etc. yet were destroyed in a time when CME flares were a bit more regular, a bit more powerful.

The last bit of the article is the key here, I think.

"The principal way we would expect to get oxygen is through photolysis of water - water vapour in Mars' atmosphere interacting with radiation from the Sun breaks down to form hydrogen and oxygen.

"Most of that hydrogen and oxygen recombines back to water. But a small fraction of the hydrogen is energetic enough to escape from the planet. A small amount of hydrogen is lost leaving an oxygen excess.

"But the gravity on Mars is one third of that on Earth, so hydrogen would be lost more easily. So the oxygen build-up could be enhanced on Mars relative to Earth."

So the only ingredient here is water vapour in the martian atmosphere + solar radiation. We already know that liquid water had flown on Mars in the past, and that Mars had a thicker atmosphere and warmer climate. It's no biggie. Water vapour could have even come straight from sublimating ice, without the need for liquid water.

So even if Mars' early atmosphere was oxygen-rich, did it make Mars even more habitable than what our current knowledge tells us? Not necessarily. Remember that first life on Earth appeared in a primordial atmosphere, and it was only the photosynthesis that made our atmosphere oxygen-rich. For some primitive organisms, oxygen is toxic.

So while these new findings are interesting, and add to our knowledge, they don't necessarily affect our view of past life on Mars.

reply to post by VoidHawk

We are martions Prove me wrong

OK..you're wrong. Martians isn't spelled with an 'o'.

It's entirely possible that Humans made the trip from Mars to Earth in the remote past, had a hard time adjusting to the conditions (and creatures) present here, perhaps many didn't make it past the first phases of colonisation and habitation, the survivors gradually lost their knowledge of technology and their history over many thousands of years...i expect if this were fact, that only vague fragments of their (our) history would be preserved in myth and legends that speak of gods and angels coming to Earth from the skies in firey chariots, great upheavals and trials and so on.

Who knows, perhaps the original Earth colonists from the planet we today call Mars, actually called it 'Heaven' themselves, since the word Heaven comes from antiquity meaning planet, or moon. It also means 'sky'.

And the angels came to Earth from the kingdom of heaven (Mars was listed in ancient times as 'The 5th Heaven')...this could easily be a bastardisation of what actually happened.

The prevailing civilisation in our system may well once have developed in Heaven, or the 5th Heaven - Mars.

The destruction of which led to a massive effort to move to Earth and start afresh.

Upon arriving, those who came from Heaven may have discovered there was already a proto-Human, very primitive Homo form of life evolving here, and decided to engineer into them higher abilities and attributes...later to interbreed with the colonists from Heaven, who went on to teach them farming, sciences like astronomy, higher maths, written language, art and agriculture.

And here we are today...we've completely forgotten who or what came to Earth from Heaven and only remember vague snippets of our history through myth and legend that have collectively come to be known as religious belief.

Anything is possible.

Thanks all for your inputs.

I have to admit, what with the recent topic comparing some land-shapes of Earth and Mars, plus this idea there was a very much earlier civilization here on Earth, neither of which seem possible due to the understood development of our planet, that there might just be other explanations.

After all, if an advanced civilization did arrive, most of its technological knowledge would have to be thrown away, where was the aluminum, the plastics, the electronics that such a civilization depended on? They would have had to melt into the exsisting infrastructure and develop super power bows and arrows, or long range assegai! None of which has been recorded by archaeological investigation.

I suppose, more likely, is that some prototype cell developed on Mars and was then brought to planet Earth by meteor? Is that a possible scenario? A sort of missing link.

Regarding magnetic fields and atmosphere.(OccamsRazor04) I, with my limited understanding, assumed that by stating that Mars had an atmosphere, it either had/has a magnetic field or that it was not in fact needed? No doubt someone will improve my knowledge.

I see now that Buzz Aldrin has said we need a Mars colony. www.bbc.co.uk... Are we returning to our home? Ok, maybe not.

Originally posted by MysterX
reply to post by VoidHawk

 

We are martions Prove me wrong

posted by MysterX
OK..you're wrong. Martians isn't spelled with an 'o'.

Didn't spot that one

Nice reply
Although I made my post with tongue in cheek, it is an idea that I accept as being possible.
Our history on this earth is far from complete, and there are many historical records (as you state) that are more easily explained if we entertain the idea that we came from somewhere else.

Originally posted by OccamsRazor04

Originally posted by VoidHawk
My guess is this.

It was inhabited by humans. When the atmosphere started to get too thin they knew they'd have to move and a few manged to get to earth.

We are martions

Prove me wrong

What happened to the vast technical knowledge required to get to Earth from Mars? Proved wrong.

The loss of technical knowledge proves nothing!
Take 50 people out of any city in the world and place them on a habitable but otherwise empty planet. How long do you think it would take them to degenerate to not much more than a cave man.
How many generations would it take before they could create something as simple as a light bulb!
Most of the tech that we have in our modern world is way beyond the understanding of the average person, take the Car for example, we've had them for a century and the average man in the street hasn't got clue as to how they work.