Water oceans on mars?, Images of different water oceans on mars based on MGS MOLA instrument. Options

[RNeuhaus]

Also the images clearly show a one-time short event. A smaller flow working for a long time can form a large valley, but this valley shows meanders and a narrow bed (Like in France the lower Seine valley), not sand banks the width of the valley.

Thanks Richard for your reply:

That part has convinced me. The surge does not make meander rivers. That is a good hit. About the narrow bed at the bottom of the river, it is relative, since it might depends upon to the surface varying resistance to the erosion. About the sand bank, I agree about this, the sand bank is mostly correlated with the amount of flow water. The good examples are the comparision between the Amazon and Nilo deltas.

Rodolfo

[Bob Shaw]

So I still maintain that these formations were created by huge water surges, maybe muddy, or boiling with carbon dioxyd, but not by a continuous small river. This is the mystery.

Richard:

The 'scabland' erosion was, indeed, dramatic, and may well have been more-or-less one-off; but there *are* images showing clear evidence of repeated flows with classic river erosion structures, too. Granted, these are on a more 'normal' scale!

Bob Shaw

[tty]

I have just completed a fun little afternoon project. I have long been looking for what an ocean on mars would look like for different amounts of water - preferably with a movie for many different ocean heights. So after not finding it ever, I did it myself today:

http://magnus.infidyne.com/mars/water/

The actual surface of seas on Mars wouldn't be "flat" though. Here on Earth the sea surface varies almost 200 meters with respect to an ellipsoid (see: http://kiska.giseis.alaska.edu/input/west/...ace_and_geoid/)

On Mars the geoid (areoid) is even more irregular (ca 1000 meter), particularly around the the Tharsis bulge and the Hellas basin. To get a true map of shorelines you should drape the "water" over the areoid rather than the topography and then superimpose the result on a topographic map. Areoid maps are avalable from the PDS.

tty

[ljk4-1]

The Wikipedia section on Terraforming:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming

Has two artworks of Mars if it had oceans:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mars_Terra.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Terrafo...ars_3_stage.jpg