Mars (Page 18)

This time when we try to go to Mars – When it comes to traveling to Mars, the moon may save us– again.

Solar radiation may make it impossible to establish a colony on Mars. But a team of UK scientists has discovered that a tiny magnet, no wider than your thumb, can deflect the charged particles in the solar wind, and thus protect space colonists from being bombarded by these deadly cosmic rays.The only reason that life can exist on Earth is because our planet’s core is a churning cauldron of molten iron which acts like a magnetic shield that deflects the solar wind. Without this, we would be bombarded by tiny particles that would enter our bodies and tear apart our cells.
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Practice, practice, practice – NASA’s Spirit Mars Rover has discovered strange blue rocks on the surface of Mars which contain high concentrations of carbonate–evidence that the planet once had a wet, non-acidic environment that may have been favorable for life. Meanwhile, an international crew has locked themselves away in a module with no windows and only e-mail contact with the outside world for 18 months, in preparation for a potential journey there so they can see if any life still exists there. They even have a room that simulates the surface of Mars, so they can practice leaving their ship!
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There are lots of strange things on Mars. For instance, NASA’s Opportunity rover has spotted strange coatings on rocks beside a young Martian crater. Is this some kind of conspiracy or just more high strangeness? The crater is about 30 feet in diameter, and has dark rays coming out of it. Astronomers have observed lots of peppercorn-sized, iron-rich, dark spheres in similar craters that resemble berries in a muffin, which they’ve nicknamed “blueberries.” PhysOrg.com quotes astronomer Steve Squyres as saying, “There’s dark, grayish material coating faces of the rocks and filling fractures in them. At least part of it is composed of ‘blueberries’ jammed together as close as you could pack them. We’ve never seen anything like this before.”
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Some unexplained images have been photographed on Mars. The latest is what appear to be “trees.” The images show what look like rows of dark trees sprouting from hills on the surface of the planet, but according to NASA, it’s an optical illusion: The sand dunes are coated with a thin layer of dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide), and are caused by trails of debris left by landslides as the ice melts in Mars’s spring.

In the January 13th edition of the Telegraph, Ben Leach quotes NASA’s Candy Hansen as saying, “The streaks are sand, dislodged as ice evaporates, which slide down the dune. At this time of the Martian year the whole scene is covered by CO2 frost.”
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