So while we’re busy knocking ourselves out about the release of CO2 into our atmosphere and the Mars atmosphere is full of the stuff, and it’s never done the Martians any harm has it…
Perhaps the Martians polluted the planet and killed it off by global warming before travelling to Earth to kill this planet using the same tactics? ;-)
Good theory Judd, but I think Mars is too far away from the sun for it to have ever sustained life as we know it…And it’s a bit short of water…
Except that Mars’ orbit is 50million km further from the sun than Earth (that 50 million km is not right but of the right order of Earths closest approach to Mars - my memory used to be pretty good but not that good)
However Martians are known to have been watching us, I read about it in a book which I keep on my bookshelf.
"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.
The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence. "
See?
Indeed Bruce, Mars is in fact 50% further away from the Sun than we are. The average temperature at the moment is minus 63 degrees C. The atmosphere is made up mainly of CO2, so that kicks the theory of global warming into touch. In fact, if it wasn’t for the greenhouse effect here on Earth, we would not be able to survive.
There has never been any Volcanic activity on Mars, or at least not that we have recorded. So a boiling hot bubbling mass of lava is unlikely to be situated at the core of Mars, and Ice ages have been observed in the past. The average temperature at the poles is minus 187 degrees C…This would be the Earth without the greenhouse effect…So be careful what you wish for…
I fear that is a bit of a very unscientific leap, perhaps it would be even colder were it not for the CO2 - remember the inverse square law for radiation/heat etc. Considering the thin atmosphere and the distance -63’C doesn’t seem that much difference to Earth
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/system/resources/detail_files/681_ptemp.jpg
Thanks Bruce, …But there is far more CO2 in the Mars atmosphere than in our own, plus a greater concentration of Methane (so the greenhouse effect should be more severe) so wouldn’t that cancel out any discrepancy you might have found? I still maintain that without the greenhouse effect humans would not survive on earth.
Love the thermometer by the way…
Enjoying the comments very much…
To add to the discussion, Mars once had significant volcanic activity and very probably a runaway greenhouse event.
It’s theorized that the most significant reason for any significant greenhouse effect, despite the high presence of CO2 and some CH4, is the very thin atmosphere and the weak magnetosphere that prevents radiation from depleting the atmosphere. (There was probably an impact by an asteroid long ago that knocked down the dynamo or rapid cooling). As a result, the solar wind continues to knock that atmosphere away.
…With all due respect, obviously…
Wiki says:-
Scientists have never recorded an active volcano eruption on the surface of Mars; moreover, searches for thermal signatures and surface changes within the last decade have not yielded any positive evidence for active volcanism.
They are talking about recent, active volcanos, OGF. There were plenty in the planet’s early days. Olympus Mons comes to mind. It is roughly the size of Greece.
https://i.ibb.co/SrZcd8f/Screen-Shot-2021-04-21-at-2-24-01-PM.png
That’s impressive Surfermom, how long ago were those ‘early days’?
Have those tracks top left been made by 4 X 4’s…?..:shock:
https://i.ibb.co/SrZcd8f/Screen-Shot-2021-04-21-at-2-24-01-PM.png
First Evidence Of A Recently Active Volcano On Mars
Nov 24, 2020 5:00 PM
The tallest mountain on any of the Solar System’s planets is Olympus Mons, a giant extinct volcano on Mars that is some 14 miles (or 21.9 kilometers) high. That’s about two and a half times the height of Mount Everest. This behemoth formed some 3 billion years ago when the Red Planet was peppered with volcanoes spewing vast quantities of magma across the Martian planes.
Since then, Mars has cooled and become much less active. Indeed, a common view among planetary geologists is that today there are no active volcanoes on Mars.
Now that view may have to change thanks to the work of David Horvath at the University of Arizona in Tucson and colleagues. This team has analyzed a region of Mars called Elysium Planitia which is pockmarked by a set of semi-parallel fissures called Cerberus Fossae. The team says that one of these fissures appears to be less than 200,000 years old — and possibly as young as 50,000 years old.
First, some background. Planetary geologists have long thought that the Cerberus Fossae fissures must have formed in lava plains as they cooled and deformed. They can determine a rough age for these plains by counting the number of impact craters, which suggests the region is between 500,000 and 2.5 million years old — relatively young in Martian terms.
But the team has found an even younger part of this region near a fissure known as the Cerberus Fossae mantling unit, which is a few tens of kilometers long. The team studied this region using visible light images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and thermal infrared images from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft.
Fascinating … :shock:
I find that very interesting, Surfermom.
Just think, years ago in our school years, we would never have thought we would discover this such news about other planets. Amazing!
Thanks Omah, that’s brilliant and very informative.
It’s a real asset to the forum to have someone who knows where to look for the information, and has the time to do it…
It is very interesting Mags, and has fascinated me since I was a child, but one thing we must remember about all of this long range study. The data we receive from these remote exploration vehicles is limited, and we must join up the dots to reveal what we think might have happened. Filling in the gaps so to speak. So this is why we sometimes get conflicting information. 
NASA extracts breathable oxygen from thin Martian air
NASA has logged another extraterrestrial first on its latest mission to Mars: converting carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere into pure, breathable oxygen, the U.S. space agency said on Wednesday. The unprecedented extraction of oxygen, literally out of thin air on Mars, was achieved Tuesday by an experimental device aboard Perseverance, a six-wheeled science rover that landed on the Red Planet on Feb. 18 after a seven-month journey from Earth.
The first step in terraforming … :?:
I completely agree - and not just on this thread, but many others! Thank you!
I’ve got to ask the question Omah, if we can convert CO2 to pure oxygen, why aren’t we doing it here and solve all the planets problems?
Probably because it’s new technology and would need massive investment to scale up:
The oxygen generation was performed by a toaster-sized unit in the rover called Moxie - the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment.
It made 5 grams of the gas - equivalent to what an astronaut at Mars would need to breathe for roughly 10 minutes.