Earthlike Mars? Options

[glennwsmith]

All, I know this isn't the right place for this post, but I've looked around and can't find an appropriate, current UMSF forum (Doug, perhaps you could give me some guidance on establishing such) -- so here goes: I think a [the] new paradigm for Martian geology is rapidly coalescing, namely, that Mars is very much like the Earth in terms of the preponderance of water -- except that it is all frozen, and covered under a thin layer of dust/regolith! See, for example, this article:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/41995902.html

Hence the "seepages" found in crater walls; hence the evidence of catastophic flooding -- the result of volcanism melting huge pockets of ice. And I am going to add my own wrinkle (probably not original): that the differentiation of Mars into a rougher southern hemisphere and smoother northern hemsphere represents something like Earth's Pangea stage, ie, the northern hemisphere is a vast frozen sea covered with a thin layer of ice.

[Doc]

As I understand it we can explain the evidence of water using brines and impact phenomena at the average temperatures we see today, so why do we need to invoke some unknown force to warm the planet up?

That is the big problem with in our exploration of Mars. I myself took part in the 'great debate' with Professor Dburt and even though the idea that Mars was probably warm and wet in the past looked ok, I couldn't help but feel that maybe we are on the loosing side

For example, I used to wonder; if Mars was indeed warm in the past, how do we consider the fact that the solar output at that time was probably significantly less than now and probably we should be talking about a tundra Mars instead of an Earthly paradise. The announcement of a cold and wet Mars model ushers in yet another and seemingly more accurate way of how we view the martian geological record.

As for the locked topics; it was probably for the best (we would just be going in circles anyway )