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FAQs
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How is it possible that your car keys unlock only your car and not all the others? Is it theoretically possible that your key co
How is it possible that your car keys unlock only your car and not all the others? Is it theoretically possible that your key could unlock a second car somewhere on the world? With a digital key fob, you can use a number of combinations that effectively means your key fob will never open any other car. Each fob carries a serial number; if that serial number is, say, in the tens of billions, well, no car company has ever made seventy billion cars.With a physical key, there are only so many different combinations of high and low points in the key. The lock has a set number of tumblers, usually about five or so, and each tumbler can be set to one of a specific number of different heights.The physical locks Honda uses have a total of 3,500 possible combinations. That...
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Why are railguns often portrayed as a better way to intercept maneuvering hypersonic threats than interceptor missiles?
There are several factors that go into this, there are pros and cons to both systems, to a military planner the pros of the rail gun out weigh it’s cons. Only time will prove if they are right or not but I will try to explain.Defensive Vs Offensive load, There is only limited launcher space on any ship regardless of how many missiles it has in storage. So lets say you have 20 launchers in your ship, vertical launchers are becoming the norm. Even though you have 100 more missiles of whatever mix you want in the hold, your 20 launchers have what they have in them and it will take time to swap them out. (Hopefully some USN personnel on here who have served on a DDG or similar can let us know how long) I’m guessing at least an hour. Some missiles can be dual use like an anti-missile-Missile can be used in the anti aircraft role, but a Tomahawk or any land attack missile simply cannot. Every tube you have filled with a missile to perform your mission is a missile you cannot use for defense, every missile you have loaded for defense, can’t be used for your mission.The rail gun uses a solid mass of metal, you can use it to devastating effect against air, sea, or land targets without worrying about carrying different loads. I imagine a flechette round would be used against missiles and aircraft, but it doesn’t matter, you can switch ammo types in seconds.With railguns as point defense, you are free to have the majority of your missile tubes loaded for the mission and only a minimum with defensive (AA or AM) missiles.Immunity to counter measures: The railgun is a line of sight weapon, if you can see it, you can hit it. Once radar contact is made and the gun aligned, powerful optics will be used to line up the final shot. at 2.4 kilometers+ a second- nothing can really affect or stop the projectile. If the shot is lined up properly, the target is dead, no amount of chaff flares or ecm can do anything once the projectile leaves the rail.Cost. The Major cost of the system is in the gun and the guidance and aiming systems require only maintenance when bought, The Projectile is just a hunk of machined metal, I imagine the ship’s machine shop will have the ability to fabricate more in an emergency. No propellant needed (more on that later) A missile has to have a warhead, a motor, navigation and avionics which is all one time use, the launching and guidance on the ship are not cheap either so while the up front cost of the railgun will be higher, that changes quickly after a few shots.Safety. That warhead and rocket/jet fuel in a missile infinitely more deadly to you before you launch as it is to the enemy. Anything that touches off that magazine (accidents, malfunctions, enemy fire) will likely be catastrophic. The inert projectiles of a railgun are immune to that. The rail-gun itself if charged might pose a small danger if damaged while charged, but that will be like a transformer box blowing up outside during a storm (happened to me when I was a kid during a hurricane) While it was loud and scary to 11 year old me 20 meters from my house, it did zero damage to the house and didn’t even knockdown the telephone pole it was on, Had that been a modern AA-or AM missile 20 meters away, I and my house would likely not be here today.Close in defense: You can use the rail gun up to the point an enemy missile hits your ship. A vertically launched missile needs to clear the ship arc towards its target and fly towards it. This all takes time meaning that depending on the speed of the incoming missile, you have a radius where if you haven’t launched yet, there is nothing you can do. So let’s say you have a ship with a rail gun and one with only missiles. Both are engaged by missiles with a 4 second flight time. It takes 2 seconds to identify and track the target and come up with a firing solution(I have no idea how long it really takes but I’m pretty sure the human reaction time to authorize the launch of a $500,000 missile is more than that). the 2 seconds remaining are not enough, the missile will just be clear of it’s tubes and arcing when your ship gets hit. The rail gun ship still has time to get one or two shots off, Even if it hits the Missile right outside the hull, that is preferable to having it go off INSIDE your hull.Like I said before, having the rail gun doesn’t stop you from carrying defensive missiles for BVR/Over the Horizon, engagements.
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Why haven't we sent a robotic rock/soil sample return mission to Mars yet?
Money. Commitment. Confidence. Lack of those three.It is currently the highest priority planetary science objective, but it is expensive and risky. There have been plans since the 60's for a Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, as it's called, but nothing has launched. It got close by 1999 with an MSR project underway with planned launches in 2003 and 2005, but that incarnation was cancelled after the MCO and MPL failures in 1999. Those failures demolished our confidence in taking on the complexity of MSR. We have since rebuilt our capability and confidence in operations at Mars with several successful missions, so at least that part should not be standing in the way of MSR. What's left is the money and commitment. It's a lot of money, and NASA would have to remain committed to the objective over a few administrations.We may be on our way to clearing those hurdles. The first leg of MSR is now a pretty serious project, having just completed its Preliminary Design Review. It is called Mars 2020 (launching in 2020, hence the name). Mars 2020 will send a large Curiosity-class rover to select and acquire rock cores and soil samples for later return. Two follow-on missions in, hopefully, the 2020's will launch those samples into Mars orbit and then bring those samples from Mars orbit to Earth. If all goes well, we could have selected samples from Mars on Earth by the end of the next decade.
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Why does no one make a movie series based on Asimov's Foundation?
One cannot deny that putting Asimov's Foundation series up on the big screen presents a real challenge, between screenwriters, producers, and directors, to say nothing of the moguls who finance and greenlight the project only if they think it might make a profit.The easiest part to explain is the moguls. Experience often shows that if you aim high as to intelligence, the movie ends up as a small "indie" film, or about as successful as one, but if you aim low, there is little to no risk of losing money by insulting the intelligence of the audience. Even the very stupidest movies can become "cult classics" out of their sheer stupidity (think of "Food Fight" or "Garbage Pail Kids" or "Felix the Cat" or “Plan 9 From Outer Space”). Foundation does not scale down well in intelligence, so very little money will ever likely be put into it.Producers and directors want to put lots of explosions and space battles in it because they think this will make the movie more exciting to audiences, but this would so severely betray and violate the whole point and charm of a Foundation film. The temptation seems to be to use the title, and perhaps some of the characters and basic situations, and then throw a lot of name stars and useless special effects, love affairs and sex scenes, shootouts and chases, all with no connection to the story at it, and hope that makes it a hit. But it is the writers who have the biggest challenge.Dr. Asimov gives this account of his rereading of the original Foundation trilogy when preparing to begin its next novel, “Foundation’s Edge”: “… about the end of May, I picked up my own copy of The Foundation Trilogy and began reading. I had to. For one thing, I hadn't read the Trilogy in thirty years and while I remembered the general plot, I did not remember the details. Besides, before beginning a new Foundation novel I had to immerse myself in the style and atmosphere of the series. I read it with mounting uneasiness. I kept waiting for something to happen, and nothing ever did. All three volumes, all the nearly quarter of a million words, consisted of thoughts and of conversations. No action. No physical suspense. What was all the fuss about, then? Why did everyone want more of that stuff?—To be sure, I couldn't help but notice that I was turning the pages eagerly, and that I was upset when I finished the book, and that I wanted more, but I was the author, for goodness' sake.”One of the biggest criticisms of the work is that it seems to consist almost entirely of people talking in rooms. An attempt to turn those conversations into impressive space battles would invariably fall flat on its face. The complaint has also been made that there are no continuing characters in this series. Though a person might show up in a couple segments (e. g. Salvor Hardin), and of course, Hari Seldon’s influence in the form of the Seldon Plan runs throughout the whole series, unifying it, there are no characters who exist throughout the whole thing. There is always the question of what to leave out and what to keep in, and what might be added that an audience would want to see. Audiences are often hard to please, and probably hardest when dealing with going from a book to a movie where the book is so well-known that everyone watching the movie will quickly see what was changed, and generally comment unfavorably on that difference.Then there is the problem of what to do with the technology. Extrapolations of 1940’s technology pervade the series, and when putting it to film what should one do? The most common approach seems to update the technology to predictable extrapolations of whatever technology is current when the film is being shot. It is generally easier and can help present day audiences to feel we are dealing with a “future” when seeing technologies which seem so to us today. But such attempts rapidly become dated, and instead of portraying a time at least 12,000 years in the future it ends up instead portraying a time at least 20 years past. Think of how AOL-styled emails of “You’ve Got Mail” (1998) rapidly came to look ridiculous in comparison to the snail mail of “Shop Around the Corner” (1940) that still hold up. Or again, “The Puppet Masters” (1994), following the book so closely in some ways (especially in the first part) and in the casting of the three main leads, but then deviated in several ways (most notably from a technological standpoint) by introducing satellite heat signature recognition as a way of detecting who is infected and deleting the whole Titans subplot.The biggest problem in that area was the slow progress in computer technology in the Foundation series. Who could have believed in the 1940’s and 1950’s that computers would become so powerful and at the same time so microminiaturized within a scant 50 years, and yet at the same time Robotics (and especially the ability to create a functional humanoid robot, complete with at least apparent feelings, thoughts, creativity, problem-solving, and imagination, as to approximate human capabilities, coupled with machine-like perfection and speed, remains far behind the levels that Asimov expected for the same period in his Robot series. So here we are supposedly 12,000 or more years in the future and yet in the story shipboard computers are barely above the level of the surprisingly primitive computers of the Apollo Lunar Module. Since computing power does factor in on occasion, what do we do with that in such a movie?Granted, these are all serious challenges, far too great for the limited imaginations of our typical Hollywood types to work with (hence their proclivity to make dumb sequels and retreads, all because they just can’t think of anything else), so it really is quite possible that there may never be a Foundation movie, or just as bad, never a credible adaptation of it that retains anything much at all of what the series is truly all about. But is it really all that impossible? I think not.Let’s start with one of the easier things to deal with, namely the technology of so distant a future. There is a new and better approach that already has some precedent in the steampunk and retrofuturism movements, first glimpsed on film (that I know of) in “1984” (1984), in which the technology seen was not the mid-1980’s technology as it actually existed currently, but a reasonable projection of the future from what things were like in 1948 when George Orwell originally penned the novel. By 1984, real offices often had mainframe computers with (dumb) terminals in each office, and would email to transmit messages about, but in “1984” they are still using pneumatic tubes. It is as if someone with all the cinematography skills and techniques and experience we have today were to have existed back in 1948 and had been sufficiently funded to apply those skills as needed. With this approach, all of the technological anachronisms of Foundation cease to be a problem; we are simply telling the story as originally envisioned by the author, and as originally read by its first readers in it own original time. This could also be a good approach in connection with the men and women and how they relate to each other, no need to impose contemporary norms; anyway, Asimov has some truly good and strong female characters as written, albeit set in ways that seem out of sync with how people view things today. Just treat it like a period piece.Next, let’s look at how the problem of the moguls (and of funding) might also be solved, and best so “in the typewriter,” so to speak. The answer to this is largely staring us in the face already, namely the fact that so very much of the series is just people talking in rooms. How about simply forget trying to figure out portrayals of the things discussed and simply have the conversations as given in the series itself? That one thing alone would be a truly vast savings on production costs. Another big savings would be that for what few space battles are seen the technology that now exists has made the production of such scenes much easier and cheaper that it would have been in former years. CGI graphics today has come a long way, and even “last year’s technology” in that could still look quite excellent and sufficient for the needs of this series.People talking in rooms doesn’t sound very exciting, and hardly a basis for a movie, but then recall “My Dinner With Andre” (1981) which, despite being literally nothing but two guys having a conversation in a restaurant, actually manages to be quite captivating as a truly excellent film. Only, instead of discussing philosophies of life what we have here are power brokers discussing the direction the future should take, making all-important decisions, negotiations, and even outright takeovers. As Khan said (in the Star Trek episode, Space Seed), “It has been said that social occasions are only warfare concealed.” Or again, think of your average courtroom drama. What, after all, IS a “Courtroom Drama,” but “people talking in a room”? And for that matter, one early scene consists of Hari Seldon himself in some sort of actual “trial.” About 95% of the whole Foundation saga can properly be regarded as a “bottle show.” It is always the search for survival, as well as the truth about the Plan: How will Hari Seldon avoid having his group shut down by the Empire? How will the Foundation, now located on Terminus at the edge of the Galaxy, drive Anacreon from their soil? How can the Foundation religion be used to turn aside a subsequent attack from Anacreon? How will trade replace the religion as a much further means of expansion? How does the Foundation survive the last great attack of the declining old Empire? What recourse is there if history fails to unfold as planned? And so forth.Any film that rises even the tiniest bit above the mere shoot-em-up has to feature scenes of exposition, people talking and explaining what has been going on, or what scam the bad guy is trying to pull, or what the good guy is doing to fight it, or “whodunit?” and so forth. The Foundation series is almost pure exposition. So actually, it is mostly comprised of the most interesting part of most films. Where would Star Wars be without “No, Luke, I am your father”? All the swordplay that precedes and follows that iconic moment of exposition almost might as well be a mere arm-wrestle for all the interest it has in comparison.Science fiction writer and critic James Gunn said of the Foundation series, “Action and romance have little to do with the success of the Trilogy—virtually all the action takes place offstage, and the romance is almost invisible—but the stories provide a detective-story fascination with the permutations and reversals of ideas.” If any attempt to film Foundation is to prove credible, at the very least this detective-story fascination with permutations and reversals of ideas must feature at the center of it all. Yes, there can be room for some action or romance, but these things must take a back seat (if present at all). Think of Murder She Wrote, or Columbo, or Ellery Queen. It is not any (much) action or romance that drives the tale (though those things can enter in occasionally), but (in those cases) the seeking for the truth. This last of course points to something else about how to do it, namely as a television miniseries. Think of the different ways that a war is portrayed in films versus television shows: In a feature film one can have a “cast of thousands,” a veritable sea of soldiers fighting throughout a vast battlefield, but on television it makes far more sense to show merely a few single pairs of soldiers duking it out. Foundation is full of such “single pairs” and small groups “duking it out” with psychohistory, or with the mentalic powers of the Mule or of the Second Foundation.That leads to the last point, namely casting decisions. When making feature films one often tends to seek out known “name” talent, but in this case such “name” talent should only be permitted if their own interest in such a project would make them willing to accept a pay scale commensurate with that of new and (relatively) unknown and untried acting talent. It is amazing how people, especially those who understand how a future career in acting depends upon their performance here, can rise to the occasion in ways that surprise everyone including themselves. As for the lack of continuing characters throughout the series, even that need not be considered much of a problem. Making a series about, for example, the Bible, or even such a miniseries as Roots, certainly did not suffer from the lack of a single continuing character (unless you want to count God in the first case, or Racism (as like a “character”) in the second. And for that there is Psychohistory and the Seldon Plan.So, is it doable? Absolutely! Will it happen, and in a credible manner? Unfortunately those sorts of decisions extremely seldom fall to those capable of making them competently. Given enough time, almost anything, however unlikely, is practically bound to occur, eventually. Just don’t hold your breath waiting for it.ADDENDUM:Well, it looks like this could happen after all. Apple has greenlit a feasible effort which even includes Isaac Asimov's own daughter among the production staff. Perhaps previous attempts have failed due to attempts to compress such a vast saga into a single film instead of a series. For myself, I pictured a 4-part miniseries, each part (ranging from 90 to 120 minutes including credits) taking on about three "installments" per part:Part 1 (Founding the Foundation): The Psychohistorians, The Encyclopedists, The MayorsPart 2 (Facing the Empire): The Merchant Princes, The Traders, The General (I will get to the rationale for the order reversal, below)Part 3 (The Mule): The Mule (both parts, as published November and December 1945), Search by the MulePart 4 (The Two Foundations): Search by the Foundation (all three parts, as published November and December 1949 and January 1950)I had dreams of trying to write the screenplay myself (contract or no, just for my own interest), but that probably won't ever be realized, at least not in the immediately foreseeable future, but I do have some thoughts; they are truly mine, apart from their direct borrowing from Asimov's original work and also the existing stories authorized by the Asimov estate, and I offer them freely, hoping that other fans will pick up on these and say, "yes, these are good ideas" and hope the production will be positively influenced by them.One idea is to borrow a bit more from the original series as published in Astounding, which differs somewhat from the book versions. For example, the original published installment (now known as the Encyclopedists) had a short series of paragraphs portraying a meeting conducted by Hari Seldon which might be combined with the closing parts of the Psychohistorians, such that he says, not merely to Gaal Dornick one on one, but to his gathered Psychohistorians and Mathematicians at the close of the last meeting he is to preside at, "I am finished!"In that same vein of pointing to the original published stories, The Traders would be about an episode from the past life of Lathan Devers. It would be added after the part (in The General) that introduces Emperor Cleon II and Brodrig and before we return to Bel Riose and Ducem Barr. Sennet Forrell and his three cronies are again gathered, and Sennet is introducing his fellow members to this Trader who really is a real Trader (unlike the fake "Trader" Jaim Twer who was found out by Hober Mallow), loyal to the Foundation, a great spy, brilliantly clever, and extremely resourceful. To illustrate the point, the events of The Traders (or "The Wedge") are told as a backstory (in only 5-10 minutes of screen time - or 3-5 minutes if we are trying to squeeze it all into a one hour episode) so that audiences can better understand and appreciate who he is, and deepen his character with real Asimov Foundation material originally so intended.(For the books, it made sense to reverse the order of the two stories since to end the first volume on a relatively minor trading victory would have made a very weak ending for the book. The triumph of Hober Mallow and his successful navigation of a Seldon Crisis made for a strong and fitting climax to the first book. So the order was inverted, and as Lathan Devers could not have possibly lived long enough to precede Mallow and then yet still face the Empire, a new protagonist Limmar Ponyets was introduced, along with a few textual adjustments made to that story and Mallow's to make it seem as if their inverted order made sense. But as originally published, it was Lathan Devers who first sold nuclear gadgets to the Askonians, and that could be here reasonably restored. The only other alternative has been to omit The Traders altogether as does (for example) the BBC radio series production.)Now, Apple has greenlit a 10-part television series - how would that divvy up? What I had is effectively 12 parts, but with The Traders subsumed into The General, and the Search by the Foundation, originally published in three parts (but actually not quite as many words as the two parts of The Mule, anyway), could be reduced by producing it in two parts, which brings us down to 10.In point of fact, it appears that Dr. Asimov seems to have expected that his final Foundation novella would be cut into two parts as was his Mule novella, since there is what makes a great cliffhanger in the middle of the middle part, namely where young Arcadia, having just realized that Lady Callia is a Second Foundationer, has just been deposited in a vast and unfriendly space port. She sees signs lit up for ships going all sorts of places; one is even going to Terminus but she can only head-shake "no" openmouthed as she dare not go to the one place she most wishes to go. Doubtless the Second Foundation is setting a trap for her there. In blind fear and panic she spins, seemingly endlessly, in circles not knowing where to turn, where to go, who to trust (as in “a circle has no end”), and now realizing that she knows where the Second Foundation is, and that her life is forfeit should the Second Foundation capture her and learn of her guilty knowledge, she collapses in tears, feeling as lonely and frightened as an abandoned child, but with the weight of the entire future of Galactic civilization upon her shoulders. She looks up as if expecting some answer from a Deity, but all there is, is the camera looking down at her, pulling away as she gets smaller and as more and more of the surrounding crowd bustles around her, grey and altogether indifferent to her plight as the credits roll, until she seems to disappear, lost in the crowd.Narrator: Each segment should have as its narrator someone who is close to the events, but never the main character; Gaal Dornick makes a good narrator for The Psychohistorians, Yohan Lee for The Encyclopedists and The Mayors, Tinter (a lieutenant aboard Mallow's ship) and Ankor Jael (Mallow's trusted friend during his trial and the "War" with Korell), Ducem Barr for The General, Toran Darell (husband of Bayta) for The Mule, Hans Pritcher for Search by the Mule, Homir Munn and Mrs. Palver for Search by the Foundation. The bits of the Encyclopedia Galactica could be read by either the current narrator or by someone else (if someone else, then ideally Peter Jones or someone with a peter jonesey sort of voice as a sort of reference forward-back to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would be ultra-cool).Second Foundation anonymity: To keep the Second Foundation figures anonymous in their meetings on their home planet (because their identity has to be concealed during their interactions with ordinary people in ordinary places), all sorts of unusual perspectives could be used. Obviously, no faces can be shown, but very small portions of the actor's face can be shown in extreme close-up: the raising of an eyebrow, the furrowing of a forehead, the crooking of a finger (along with several other hand and arm gestures), the jutting of a chin, the curling of part of a lip, the appearance of a dimple, also figures seen from behind, at a distance, or as black silhouettes against a wall chock full of brightly glowing math equations. Electronically deepen their voices to borderline unrecognizability and add that echo effect to indicate that we are not hearing words conventionally spoken but thoughts intimated to each other through the tiny gestures seen in the various close-ups. Or think of all the ways the faces of the doctors and nurses were cleverly concealed during the twilight episode “Eye of the Beholder” until the reveal at the end.Attention to details from the books could also add greatly despite their seeming insignificance, for example when hologram Seldon puts down his book it disappears, or when the dowagers wonder who Prince Regent Wienis is walking up the stairs to his private room arm-in-arm (Hardin) they lift ornate but actual and recognizable lorgnettes to their faces (I hate the way recent printings of the book just say that the dowagers just "stared after them" - blah!), or Onum Barr finding a box of canned goods (and his passport, returned) in a box on his doorstep after Hober Mallow leaves his planet of Siwenna, showing volumes about Mallow’s character in about ten seconds of screen time, or an actual descending grid of glowing energy squares three meters on a side descending upon the spaceport crowd where Preem Palver is waiting and then bribes an official. And many people in the original series smoke. I know that smoking is frowned on these days, but who is to say that a cancer-free tobacco couldn't be invented in the next 12-50 thousand years? Anyway, the scene where Ebling Mis is sitting on the desk of an intimidated Mayor Indbur, warning him about an upcoming Seldon crisis, definitely loses something if he can't also be blowing cigar smoke into the Mayor's face, and the poor Mayor trying not to cough as he doesn't smoke.Other things to bring in would be details from the synopses from Astounding, for example that the original "Warlord of Kalgan" whom the Mule displaces and later installs over the conquered Terminus was not some Kalganian native acquiring hawkish tendencies, but one of many Empire Generals-turned-Warlords of various regions:"Meanwhile, the old Empire has fallen quite to pieces, with the various splinters under the shifting, incoherent control of successions of warlords, whose ephemeral military rule waxes and wanes chaotically. It is to these warlords that certain elements of the Independent Traders look for help against the Foundation. However, none of these warlords are at all anxious to tangle with a Foundation known to have defeated the Empire singlehanded and known to be invincible by the established laws of psychohistory. There is only 'The Mule." ... As the story opens, he has just captured the planet of Kalgan without a fight, though its former warlord was known to be a capable warrior, entirely ungiven to surrender." And Bail Channis is a military man, though he does not wear his uniform while on his expedition with Hans Pritcher.Other details could flow from the other approved Foundation books by others; perhaps some details, especially regarding Linge Chen, and other background characters drawn from Foundation and Chaos by Greg Bear, could be incorporated into The Psychohistorians segment, or slight wear and tear, missing ceiling portions, litter in the streets not picked up, as indicated in Forward the Foundation, despite the still-otherwise gleaming planet-city of Trantor. Or in giving a history leading up to The Mule (in a short opening narrative admittedly not in the book) brief mention (and glimpse scenes) of the Fall of Trantor as conquered by Gilmer and the preservation of the Imperial Library by the students (omitting all mention of the Second Foundation however), as drawn from Harry Turtledove's "Trantor Falls" from Foundation's Friends.It might also not hurt (though it is not clear what effect it would have on the series, beyond what Hari Seldon's image is saying during the Mule crisis) to have some idea what the Seldon crisis for that time would have been if there were no Mule. Perhaps the Empire-General-turned-Warlord of Kalgan hopes, if he cannot destroy or conquer the Foundation, at least "make off" with its Traders or a signNow percentage of them, and perhaps through them some of their technology that they sell as well. (Originally he hoped to provoke a war between the two foundations, but scanning the furthest regions of the galaxy in vain searching for it he concludes that it is of no account and no help.) So he then turns to creating a civil war within the Foundation - perhaps he can set the Traders at war with the corrupt oligarchy that rules them from Terminus, and many Trader worlds would have joined him, but the few that didn't along with a surprising strength from the Terminus Oligarchy side who have at their beck and call the entire Foundation technology - which the Traders understand far too little of to be of much benefit to the Kalgan Warlord - and so he fails and better relations (something kind of like a union) forms among the Traders to strengthen their bargaining position against the Oligarchy who then begin dealing with them more honestly. But for those third and fourth Seldon crises the end has the Seldon image explaining the Crisis, but as the camera pans around (during the closing credits) no one is in the room.A carefully worked out chronology, specifying how many years into the Foundation era each story is, would be easy to give at the outset of each segment or after any major duration within a segment.Now, can anyone tell me that all of this would not add up to "utterly cool" if only it could be so produced?
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Why has NASA not landed at the poles of Mars, or even sent the Curiosity rover there to sample the ice suspected to be there?
It is not lack of interest. The polar regions are of great interest, for instance the Martian dry ice geysers in Richardson crater, one of the most interesting dynamic processes on Mars and the polar regions also have astrobiological interest too. There are potential habitats there that might even have fresh liquid water within 20 cms of the surface of the ice - of all things to find on Mars with its near vacuum atmosphere.As far as I know the only suggested habitats that might have fresh water on Mars are in polar regions, a layer of fresh water only a few cms thick, 10 to 20 cms below the surface in transparent ice. Thin though that layer may be by Earth standards, it is of extraordinary interest on Mars where any fresh water on the surface would evaporate almost immediately. It is a process that happens beneath clear ice in Antarctica and models show it should happen in the Martian ice sheets too, so long as there is similarly clear ice there.The main potential habitats, which I’ll look at in detail in this answer, are:Flow like features in Richardson Crater that form after the Martian dry ice geysers have erupted (not the same as the ones in the northern hemisphere or the ones in Russell’s crater - there are three different similar looking features that form in different conditions - only the ones in Richardson Crater are of special interest for astrobiology)Liquid water forming around sun warmed grains in snow or icePerchlorate salts lying on layers of ice forms liquid water droplets in tens of minutesLiquid water can exist permanently below 600 meters of ice (100 meters of rock) kept warm by the heat of Mars itself, if it once forms, e.g. after an impactIce fumaroles can mask the heat signature of venting of hot moist gas and make good habitatsAnywhere there is clear ice in polar regions, then fresh liquid water can form at a depth of around 6.5 cms by the solid state greenhouse effect.So it’s exciting for astrobiology, also for geology too, but they are also habitats the Earth microbes could contaminate and by the Outer Space Treaty we have an obligation to prevent “harmful contamination” in the words of the treaty. It also just makes sense. If you are searching for native life on Mars, and most people agree that is one of our top science objectives there, the last thing you want to do is to just find life you brought there yourself.So, before we developed this modern understanding of the potential vulnerability of the polar regions to Earth microbes, NASA made two attempts, the Mars Polar Lander which crashed, and Phoenix which succeeded. However it was as a result of unexpected observations by Phoenix that scientists were lead to the realization that actually there could be habitats there for modern native Mars life - and so since then any landers sent there have to be sterilized to a high standard.We could not send Curiosity there, or a second copy of Phoenix either, because it is now not thought to be sterilized sufficiently. Hopefully it has not contaminated the region of Mars around it with Earth life, but I think the Phoenix landing site might be a great site to visit to get ground truth on how effective our planetary protection measures have been on Mars - but with an appropriately sterilized lander of course.WHY IT IS HARD TO STERILIZE TO THE LEVELS OF THE VIKING MISSIONS IN THE 1970SThe current “gold standard” for Mars is set by the Viking landers.Viking Lander being prepared for dry heat sterilization – this remains the "Gold standard" of present-day planetary protection.After preliminary cleaning similarly to the levels used for Curiosity, they were then heat-treated for 30 hours at 125 °CFive hours at 125 °C would be enough to reduce the population of microbes by ten, so this was enough for a millionfold reduction - that’s including enclosed parts of the spacecraft. It would still have a maximum of 30 spores and so several thousand dormant microbes as the spore count used undercounts the number present by a factor of a hundred or so. But in addition the numbers are reduced by the journey out there, the harsh conditions on Mars, and then a microbe would have to be pre-adapted to the conditions there to have a chance of surviving once there.They didn’t achieve certainty but to a high chance no microbe from Viking was able to replicate and spread on Mars.According to modern planetary protection rules then you could send a spacecraft sterilized like this to the Phoenix landing site.But the problem is that modern equipment is much more miniaturized than for Viking, and made up of thin layers only a few atoms thick and delicate materials including epoxy attachments. Even when space hardened, it tends to be more sensitive and so would not stand being baked in an oven for days like Viking. The components would come unglued and instruments also would go out of alignment.WE HAVE ALSO MADE GREAT PROGRESS IN HIGH TEMPERATURE INSTRUMENTS SINCE VIKINGIt’s not all bad news however, for heat sterilization. Since Viking, while commercial equipment for most purposes have got more sensitive to high temperatures, we have also had many advances in high temperature technology too. The commercial equipment is not built to withstand high temperatures not because it can’t be, but because it doesn’t need to be.High temperature electronics and instruments are used where they are needed and are more capable than in the 1970s. We have them for oil wells as they drill deeper to regions where the temperatures go above 200 C. For planes where they can reduce weight by putting sensors closer to the engines, and for electric cars for similar reasons.NASA has also been working for some time to develop a rover able to withstand Venus surface conditions and drive around and study the surface. With high temperatures, high pressures and sulfuric acid too. Very sterilizing for Earth life.In 2007 they developed a silicon chip capable of 17,000 hours of continuous operation at 500 °C.For their Venus rover, we need cameras to operate at high temperatures, we need mechanisms, we need instruments such as a Raman spectroscopy, we need communications and so on. In their 2010 study they thought all of those were possible for the future. Though they couldn’t build it yet, they saw a way to it as a future roadmap.If the aim is to signNow a high temperature for sterilization, the job may be easier to some extent, as the instruments don’t have to actually function at those high temperatures. They have to withstand being heated to high temperatures for a considerable period of time - but will then operate at normal temperatures.So, if you choose the right components for your lander / rover, we actually have the capability to go beyond what they could in the 1970s and I do think that if we went all out with a major program, as for the Venus rover - that we could design a 100% sterile lander in the near future. It would probably need to use RTGs for the power source - and perhaps also as the heat source for sterilization during the journey to Mars, as these have no problem working at high temperatures. Heat your lander at 500 C for six months on the voyage out to Mars and there would be no life left on it at all. Nothing viable. You can also use techniques like CO2 snow which could be done on the surface of Mars to remove even the dead organics from the outside of the lander.There is one plan already for a sterile probe to descend into the Europan ocean by Brian Wilcox.I think myself that designing a 100% sterile rover / lander should be a top priority. It would be expensive to start with, but well worth it.Once we have built the first one and developed the understanding we would have a basic design there that could be used to explore regions such as the subsurface oceans of Europa and Enceladus and the senstiive sites on Mars even if they have cms thick liquid water or more, and yet not have any concerns about introducing Earth life.The long term pay off would be huge.It would obviously take a lot of ingenuity for the astrobiologists, to redesign instruments to be able to be heat sterilized. They did however succeed for Viking, at the temperatures used there. With the Viking sterilization, tenfold reduction every 5 hours, at a dry heat of 125 °C, in theory you wouldn’t need to continue for that long to have pretty much 100% certainty that there is no life left at all.If anyone knows of any work on this apart from Brian Wilcox’s proposed mission, do say!CURRENT PLANETARY PROTECTION RULESAnyway the current rules are not as strict as that. But they do require a lander to be sterilized to Viking levels or higher if they target regions where there is ice within 5 meters of the surface. The reasoning is that a crash could end up melting the ice.So first here is a map of special regions as updated in 2016, but they also decided that even outside of those regions you need to do case by case studies before landing there.There Are Regions On Mars That It's Forbidden To ExplorePOTENTIAL FOR LIQUID WATER HABITATS IN THE POLAR REGIONS - CALCIUM PERCHLORATE SALTS IN LAYERS ON TOP OF ICEDespite what other answers say here, polar regions do have the potential for liquid water. Even fresh, not salty, water.First the Phoenix lander actually spotted droplets forming on its legs.Unfortunately, it wasn't equipped to analyse them but the leading theory is that these were droplets of salty water. They were observed to grow, merge, and then disappear, presumably as a result of falling off the legs.Nilton Renno, who was on the team for Phoenix and also runs the REM “weather station on Mars” for Curiosity was one of several who investigated various ways for thse droplets to form.He found that liquid water can form very quickly on salt / ice interfaces when the salt is on top of the ice. By “salt” there he means calcium perchlorate salts similar to the salts they found in the Phoenix site.Within a few tens of minutes this salt on top of ice formed droplets of liquid brines in Mars simulation experiments. This is striking as it could open large areas of Mars up as potential sites for microhabitats that life could exploit. The professor says"If we have ice, and then the salt on top of the ice, in a few tens of minutes liquid water forms. Our measurements clearly indicate that. And it's really a proof that liquid water forms at the conditions of the Phoenix landing site when this salt is in contact with the ice. "Based on the results of our experiment, we expect this soft ice that can liquefy perhaps a few days per year, perhaps a few hours a day, almost anywhere on Mars. So going from mid latitudes all the way to the polar regions." This is a small amount of liquid water. But for a bacteria, that would be a huge swimming pool - a little droplet of water is a huge amount of water for a bacteria. So, a small amount of water is enough for you to be able to create conditions for Mars to be habitable today'. And we believe this is possible in the shallow subsurface, and even the surface of the Mars polar region for a few hours per day during the spring."(transcript from 1:48 onwards)That's Nilton Renno, who lead the team of researchers. See also Martian salts must touch ice to make liquid water, study shows . He is a mainstream researcher in the field - a distinguished professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at Michigan University. For instance, amongst many honours, he received the 2013 NASA Group Achievement Award as member of the Curiosity Rover " for exceptional achievement defining the REMS scientific goals and requirements, developing the instrument suite and investigation, and operating REMS successfully on Mars" and has written many papers on topics such as possible habitats on the present day Mars surface.MOHLMANN’S FRESH WATER FORMING AROUND DUST GRAINS IN SNOW OR ICEThis is another suggested habitat for life in the Mars higher latitudes based on processes that happen in the Antarctic ice. Dust grains in the ice often produce tiny melt ponds around them in the heat of the summer sunshine. The dust grains absorb the heat (preferentially over the ice), and so heat up and melt the surrounding ice. Then this heat gets trapped because of the insulating effect of the solid state greenhouse effect, because ice traps heat radiation, so forming tiny melt ponds of a few millimeters thickness or more. This could happen on Mars too, so is another possible habitat with fresh water.It's just a few millimeters of fresh water, but that could be signNow on Mars. Another example of this process, then meteorites in Antarctica are often found associated with gypsum and other evaporates - minerals that can only form in the presence of liquid water and must have formed after they fell in Antarctica. Sometimes the researchers find capillary water, or thin films of water, and sometimes they even find evidence of a rather large meltwater pond which formed around the meteorite, or find the meteorites in depressions filled with refrozen ice.A similar process could be at work in the Martian icecaps too. This process could melt the ice for a few hours per day in the warmest days of summer, and melt a few mms of ice around each grain. Indeed, if I can venture a speculation of my own, perhaps just as in Antarctica, there could be larger melt ponds around meteorites embedded in the ice too - as Mars must have many meteorites embedded in the polar ice sheets.This could explain another puzzle. Particles of gypsum (the same material that is used to make plaster of paris) have been detected, first in the Olympia Undae dune fields that circle the northern polar ice cap of Mars, See this paper for details. Later on, they were detected in all areas where hydrated minerals have been detected, including sedimentary veneers over the North polar cap, dune fields within the polar ice cap, and the entire Circumpolar Dune Field. There's strong evidence that the gypsum originates from the interior of the ice cap. See this paper for details. Gypsum is a soft mineral that must have been formed close to where it has been discovered (or it would get eroded away by the winds) and as an evaporite mineral, it needs liquid water to form. Opportunity later found veins of gypsum in the equatorial regions, in 2011, a clear sign of flowing water on ancient Mars. But these polar deposits are more of a mystery because they are found in the dust dunes on Mars, so must be produced locally, but where?.Losiak, et al, modeled tiny micron scale dust grains of basalt (2-2 microns in diameter) exposed to full sunlight on the surface of the ice on the warmest days in summer, on the Northern polar ice cap. They found that these tiny dust grains were large enough to provide for five hours of melting which could melt six millimeters of ice below the grain. They say that with pressures close to the triple point, on windless days, you should get a signNow amount of melting. They speculate that this might possibly explain the deposits of gypsum in the polar regions. Could it have formed in a similar way to the gypsum that sometimes forms around Antarctic meteorites?Möhlmann did a similar calculation. This time he was looking at the possibility of liquid water forming inside snow on Mars. The snow would be exposed to the vacuum, but as the ice melted it would plug all the pores in the snow and eventually form a solid crust of ice on the snow, and so protect it from further evaporation. It would trap the heat as well and so encourage melting. This could happen anywhere between a few centimeters depth down to ten meters below the surface.THIN FILMS OF UNDERCOOLED WATER WRAPPED AROUND INDIVIDUAL MICROBESThis is an interesting suggestion by Möhlmann in an article in Cryobiology magazine, that life may be able to make use of thin film monolayers of the " ULI water" (Undercooled Liquid Interfacial water) wrapped around a microbe, even in tiny nanometer scale layers of liquid water only two monolayers thick."In view of Mars it should be mentioned, that there is water ice in the permanent polar caps. At mid- and low-latitudes, ice can form, at least temporarily, via adsorption and freezing in the soil. There, the adsorbed and frozen water overtakes the role of ice, as described above. So, ULI-water can be expected to, at least temporarily, exist also in martian mid- and low-latitudinal subsurface soil. A similar environment can be expected to exist in isolation heated parts of icy bodies in the asteroidal belt, and analogously in the internally heated icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn. It is thus a current and challenging question if ULI-water can act as supporting life in environments with temperatures clearly below 0 °C by delivering that water, which is necessary for metabolic processes, and by permitting transport processes of nutrients and waste. It is the aim of this paper to demonstrate the potential importance of ULI water in view of the possible biological relevance of nanometric undercooled liquid interfacial water."He cites research suggesting life can remain active in the presence of just two monolayers of water wrapped around a microbe.If there is just a small thermal gradient in the ice, of one degree centigrade per meter, then enough liquid water will form to fill a micrometer sized microbe once a month. Enough will form to fill it once a day if there is a locally steeper gradient of one degree centigrade per 10 cm. This can lead to a constant transport of fresh water to bring fresh nutrients to the microbe, and to remove wastes. The main question is whether this is a sufficient flow of water to sustain life. For more details of this intriguing idea, see his article.SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE FLOW-LIKE FEATURES - MAY INVOLVE FRESH WATER CMS THICK!There are two main types of these flow-like features. For a technical overview of them, see the Dune Dark Spots section in Nilton Renno's survey paper. These ones in the southern hemisphere which form in Richardson crater are particularly promising because all the current models involve liquid water in some form and what's more, in the models, these features start off as fresh water trapped under ice.The more interesting ones, for habitability, are in the south. The southern ice cap consists mainly of dry ice. It is colder, and higher up (at a higher altitude). It stretches as far as forty degrees from the pole in winter (so spanning over 4,700 km), but it reduces to just 300 km across in summer, Richardson's crater is 17.4 degrees from the south pole (that's over 1,000 km).So though the features resemble each other in appearance, the conditions in which they form are very different and not directly comparable. The southern hemisphere features from at much higher surface temperatures than the northern hemisphere features, and they appear late in spring, after the rapid disappearance of a vast and thick layer of dry ice that covered the entire southern polar region, and beyond. In the summer then surface temperatures at Richardson crater can actually get above the melting point of ice at times in daytime, as measured by the Thermal Emission Spectrometer on Mars Global Surveyor. (See figure 3 of this paper)..This map shows where the crater is. It is close to the south pole - this is an elevation map showing the location of Richardson crater in Google Mars, and I’ve trimmed it down to the southern hemisphere. You can see Olympus Mons as the obvious large mountain just right of middle, and Hellas Basin as the big depression middle left. Richardson crater is about half way between them and much further south.Here is a close up - see all those ripples of sand dunes on the crater floor?Link to this location on Google MarsWell it’s not the ripples themselves that are of special interest, Mars is covered in many sand dune fields like that planet wide. What interests us are some tiny dark spots that form on them which you can see if you look really closely from orbit.And, would you ever guess? Although it's one of the colder places on Mars, there's a possible habitat for life there in late spring? It is due to the "solid state greenhouse effect" which causes fresh water at 0°C to form below clear ice in Antarctica at a depth of up to a meter, even when surface conditions are bitterly cold.The Warm Seasonal Flows often hit the news (probable salty brines on sun facing slopes). But for some reason, the flow-like features in Richardson crater are only ever mentioned in papers by researchers who specialize in the study of possible habitats for life on Mars.I first learnt about them in the survey of potential habitats on Mars by Nilton Renno, who is an expert in surface conditions on Mars (amongst other things, he now runs the Curiosity weather station on Mars). You can read his survey paper here, Water and Brines on Mars: Current Evidence and Implications for MSL. The models I want to summarize here are described in his section 3.1.2 Dune Dark Spots and Flow-like Features under the sub heading "South Polar Region". But it's in techy language so let's unpack it and explain what it means. I will also go back to the papers he cited, and some later papers on the topic.In the case of Richardson's crater, both models involve liquid water in some form, and also potentially habitable liquid water. One of the two main models involves relatively thick layers of fresh water below optically clear water ice, up to tens of centimeters thick, and so is very promising for microhabitats. The other model involves microscopically thin layers of fresh water that join together to make a larger stream and pick up salts on the way out. That's very promising too. So let's now look at these two ideas in detail.First, early in the year, you get dry ice geysers - which we can’t image directly, but see the dark patches that form as a result and are pretty sure this is what happens:Geysers which erupt through thick sheets of dry ice on Mars. Clear dry ice acts as a solid version of the greenhouse effect, to warm layers at the bottom of the sheet. It is also insulating so helps keep the layers warm overnight. Dry ice of course at those pressures can't form a liquid, so it turns to a gas and then explosively erupts as a geyser. At least that's the generally accepted model to explain why dark spots suddenly form on the surface of sheets of dry ice near the poles in early spring on Mars.So that would be cool enough, to be able to observe them, video them and study them close up. I hope the rover would be equipped with the capability to take real time video. These geysers are widely known and many scientists would tell you how great it would be to look at them up close, and see them actually erupt.But most exciting is what happens later in the year, when it is getting too warm for the thick layers of dry ice needed for geysers. These layers of dry ice vanish rather quickly in spring. You would think that the dark spots that you get in the aftermath of the geysers would just sit there on the surface and gradually fade away ready to repeat the cycle next year. But no. Something very strange happens. Dark fingers being to form and creep down the surface as in this animation. Very quickly too (for Mars). I haven't been able to find a video for this, as the papers just use a sequence of stills, so I combined together some of the images myself into an animation to show the idea:Flow-like features on Dunes in Richardson Crater, Mars. - detail. This flow moves approximately 39 meters in 26 days between the last two frames in the sequenceAll the likely models for these features, to date, involve some form of water. Alternatives that one might try to use to model them might include a second ejection of material by the dry ice geyser, or dust deposition, but researchers think these are unlikely to produce the observed effects.SIMILAR LOOKING FEATURES NOT TO BE CONFUSEDThe Richardson crater flow-like features should not be confused with two rather similar looking features, the dark streaks in Russell crater, 55 degrees from the south pole (compared to 17.4 degrees for Richardson crater).These are braided, divide, recombine and cross each other's tracks. They flow down the slopes channeled by wind formed ridges in the dunes, and most distinctive of all, they are able to rush up over small features of up to two meters high and down the other side.These seem to be dry features associated with defrosting and small dust avalanches as they are episodic, moving rapidly at speeds of 2-4 meters per second like an avalanche. The authors call them "dark flows". For details see this paper.They also should not be confused with the Flow-like features in the Northern polar dunesThe two Martian ice caps are rather different. The northern cap is low lying, mainly ice, with a thin layer of dry ice that disappears in summer. The flow like features in the northern hemisphere form at 12.5 degrees from the pole at surface temperatures of about -90°C, which is low enough for dry ice to be stable on the surface. Their models involve either extremely cold salty brines or dry ice and sand. These features are far too cold to be habitable to Earth life and may not even involve liquid waterThey are easily confused because they are so similar in appearance, and because both are referred to as "flow like features".These are thought to form at much lower temperatures. Some of the models for these also involve liquid water but there are other hypotheses as well, some of them involving dust and ice slipping down the cliff faces.Perhaps one reason the Richardson crater flow-like features get so little attention is that it is easy to confuse them with these other features and assume they have been proved to be dust flows or to form at temperatures to low to be habitable.But they form in different conditions at different temperatures and the explanations used for these other features don’t work for them. Currently the only models for them involve fresh liquid water beneath the ice, either as layers cms thick, or as thin undercooled liquid water layers, then combining with salts to form the flows on the Martian surface.MORE ABOUT THESE FEATURES AND WHY THEY ARE SO INTERESTING FOR HABITABILITYSo, these southern hemisphere flow like features seem very promising. That’s not as surprising as you might think. The same thing happens in Antarctica - if you have clear ice, then you get a layer of pure water half a meter below the ice.The water is trapped by the ice so stays liquid. And what’s more, if they model it assuming clear ice like the ice in Antarctica they find that the ice there gets enough heat from the sun in the day to keep it liquid through the night to the next day so the layer can actually grow from one day to the next (ice is an excellent insulator). Also the Mars atmosphere is so thin that it doesn't matter at all that the air above the ice is very cold in these regions. The atmosphere is a near vacuum and works as a great insulator. Better in some ways than Antarctica.Inuit village, Ecoengineering, near Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island in the mid-19th century - ice and snow are very insulating on Earth or on Mars. Just as you can be snug and warm inside an igloo, a layer of fresh water can stay warm a few tens of cms below the surface, warmed by the sun every day beaming through th clear ice. The near vacuum of the Mars atmosphere helps if anything.Möhlmann's model is pretty clear (abstract here). If Mars has transparent ice like the ice in Antarctica, then it should have layers of liquid fresh water 5 - 10 cm below the surface and a couple of cm in vertical thickness in late spring to summer in this region. His model doesn't involve salt at all, so the water would be fresh water.The only question here is whether clear ice forms on Mars in Mars conditions and whether the ice is sufficiently insulating. We can’t tell that really from models, the only way is to go there and find out for ourselves.Blue wall of an Iceberg on Jökulsárlón, Iceland. On the Earth, Blue ice like this forms as a result of air bubbles squeezed out of glacier ice. This has the right optical and thermal properties to act as a solid state greenhouse, trapping a layer of liquid water that forms 0.1 to 1 meters below the surface. In Möhlmann's model, if ice with similar optical and thermal properties forms on Mars, it could form a layer of liquid water centimeters to decimeters thick, which would form 5 - 10 cm below the surface.In his model, first the ice forms a translucent layer - then as summer approaches, the solid state greenhouse effect raises the temperature of a layer below the surface to 0°C, so melting it.The melting layer is 5 to 10 cm below the surface. In the model, then the ice below the surface is first warmed up in the daytime sunshine, due to a greenhouse effect, the infrared radiation is trapped in the ice in much the same way that carbon dioxide traps heat to keep Earth warm. Then because the ice is so insulating, the heat is retained overnight, and the water remains liquid to the next day. To start with it would be only millimeters thick but over several days, gets to thicknesses of centimeters.He found that subsurface liquid water layers like this can form with surface temperatures as low as -56°C.CREATES POTENTIAL FOR FRESH LIQUID WATER FLOWING ON MARS!This should happen on Mars so long as it has ice with similar properties to Antarctic clear ice.If there is a layer of gravel or stone at just the right depth, the rock absorbs the infrared heat and that can speed up the process. In that case, a liquid layer can form within a single sol, and can evolve over several sols to be as much as several tens of centimeters in thickness. That is a huge amount of liquid water for the Mars surface.The fresh water of course can't flow across the surface of Mars in the near vacuum conditions, as it would either freeze back to ice, or evaporate into the atmosphere. But the idea is that as it spreads out, it then mixes with any salts also brought up by the geyser to produce salty brines which would then remain liquid at the much lower temperatures on the surface and flow beyond the edges to form the extending dark edges of the flow-like features.Later in the year, pressure can build up and cause formation of mini water geysers which may possibly explain the "white collars" that form around the flow-like features towards the end of the season - in their model this is the result of liquid water erupting in mini water geysers and then freezing as white pure water iceThis provides:A way for fresh water to be present on Mars at 0 °C, and to stay liquid under pressure, insulated from the surface conditions.5 to 10 cm below the surface, trapped by the ice above itDepending on conditions, the liquid layer is at least centimeters in thickness, and could be tens of centimeters in thickness.Initially of fresh water, at around 0°C.They mention a couple of caveats for their model, because the surface conditions on Mars at these locations is unknown. First it requires conditions for bare and optically transparent ice fields on Mars translucent to depths of several centimeters, and it's an open question whether this can happen, but there is nothing to rule it out either. Then, the other open question is whether their assumption of low thermal conductivity of the ice, preventing escape of the heat to the surface, is valid on Mars.The process works with blue ice on Earth - but we can't say yet what forms the ice actually takes in these Martian conditions. The authors don't go into any detail about this, but ordinary ice can take different forms even in near vacuum conditions. As an example of this, the ice at the poles of the Moon could be "fluffy ice""We do not know the physical characteristics of this ice—solid, dense ice, or “fairy castle”—snow-like ice would have similar radar properties. [then they give evidence that suggests fluffy ice is a possibility there] " (page 13 of Evidence for water ice on the moon: Results for anomalous polar)That's the main unknown in their model, whether the ice is blue ice like Antarctic ice, or takes some other form. The ice should at least be in the same hexagonal structure crystalline phase as ice is on Earth - Mars is close to the triple point in this ice phase diagramPhase diagram by Cmglee, wikipedia. Ice outside of Earth can be in many different phases. For instance in the outer solar system it is often so cold that it is in the very hard orthorhombic phase, where it behaves more like rock than what we think of as ice. However ice on Mars is likely to be in the Ih phase similar to Earth life. The Mars surface is close to the triple point of solid / liquid / vapour in this diagram. So, the ice is likely to be of the same type as the blue ice in Antarctica. Not likely to have bubbles of air in it. But it could still take a different forms. The model shows that Mars should have layers of liquid water ten to twenty centimeters below the surface if there are any areas of clear blue ice as in Antarctica.This solid state greenhouse effect process favours sun facing slopes (equator facing). Also, somewhat paradoxically, it favours higher latitudes, close to the poles, over lower latitudes, because it needs conditions where surface ice can form on Mars to thicknesses of tens of centimeters. (The examples at Richardson crater are at latitude -72°, longitude 179.4°, so only 18° from the south pole. There is no in situ data yet for these locations, of course, to test the hypothesis. Though some of the predictions for their model could be confirmed by satellite observations.ALTERNATIVE - THIN LAYERS OVER SURFACES MELTING AT WELL BELOW O CAnother model for these southern hemisphere features involves ULI water (Undercooled Liquid Interfacial water) which forms as a thin layer over surfaces and can melt at well below the usual melting point of ice. In Möhlmann's sandwich model, then the interfacial water layer forms on the surfaces of solar heated grains in the ice, which then flows together down the slope. Calculations of downward flow of water shows that several litres a day of water could be supplied to the seepage flows in this way.The idea then is that this ULI water would be the water source for liquid brines which then flow down the surface, mixing with dust, to form the features. That would still be interesting as you end up having flowing liquid water on Mars, several litres a day what’s more. Here is a paper from 2016 describing the idea.See also Möhlmann's paper The three types of liquid water in the surface of present MarsThose are the only two models so far. So it does seem very likely that there is liquid water here, and even with the interfacial liquid layers, the water starts off as fresh water beneath the ice, or possibly salty (in either model) if there are salt grains in the ice for the water to pick up. Either way the features start out as a flow of fresh water trapped beneath a layer of ice. This is one of the least publicized types of habitat on Mars, seldom mentioned outside the specialist literature. Yet in some ways it's one of the most interesting, if it exists, because of the potential for fresh water at 0 °C.This liquid water is hard to observe because the features are so small, beyond the resolution of CRISM. However, analysis of the larger spots, at around the spring equinox, produced a signal that just possibly could be liquid water, where the ice is in contact with the dark material of the dune spots." In the gray ring area the water ice 631 surrounds darker surface, where liquid interfacial water layer or brine (Möhlmann 2004, 632 2009, 2010) may form. We found no firm evidence for the presence of liquid water in near-IR 633 spectra, although linear unmixing results show that the data are not inconsistent with a 634 possible slight contribution (a few %) of liquid water in the dark core unit." page 26 of this paper.MORE WIDESPREAD LIQUID WATER AT DEPTH OF ABOUT 6.3 CM BELOW OPTICALLY CLEAR ICEMöhlmann has also suggested that his process could be a more widespread phenomenon in the Mars ice caps, not just associated with the geysers, as for Antarctica. Just more noticeable for the flow-like features because of the conditions in which it forms there.Liquid water could form at a depth of around 6.3 cm wherever there is optically clear ice on Mars in snow / ice packs, just as it does in Antarctica. In summer, it could form layers from centimeters to tens of centimeters in thickness.Results of Mohmann's modeling of the solid state greenhouse effect in clear ice on Mars. The plateaus show temperatures that get above the melting point of water regularly every Martian sol, at depths of about 6.3 cms. L here is 11.4 cm. Ice at this level will melt periodically, and especially in summer can stay liquid overnight, leading to subsurface liquid water in layers of from cms to tens of cms in thickness. This should happen on Mars not just in the flow-like Features of Richardson crater, but also, anywhere where there is optically clear ice.In another paper he writes "This liquid water can form in sufficient amounts to be relevant for macroscopic physical (rheology, erosion), for chemical, and eventually also for biological processes. "His models seem clear enough. The air temperature hardly matters, because the Mars air is so thin it's a near vacuum, insulating the ice, like a thermos flask. The only unknown here is whether Mars does have optically clear ice like this, which is common on Earth in cold conditions like this in Antarctica.Before I go on to the last couple of examples of possible habitats in the polar regions, let’s just revisit the Phoenix lander site. I think it would be a great place for a mission that’s both interesting for astrobiology and also for ground truth for planetary protection.LIFE IN ICE TOWERS HIDING VOLCANIC VENTSSo, this is another suggestion, that we could find habitats on Mars inside ice fumaroles. It's a nice idea, and perhaps ice fumaroles do form on Mars from time to time. So far we haven't found any on present day Mars. But it may well be worth keeping a look out for them, as it would be a very interesting habitat if we find one, or one of them starts to form, around a volcanic vent on Mars. If Mars does have any volcanic vents which vent water rich gases through a fumarole, they are likely to form ice towers like this, as happens in Antarctica.Let's look at the idea in some more detail. This photo shows an ice fumarole - an ice tower that forms around a vent of volcanic gases in the extremely cold conditions right near the top of Mount Erebus in Antarctica.+ One of the numerous Ice Fumaroles near the summit of Mount Erebus in Antarctica. If these also occur on Mars, they could provide a habitat for life, and would be extremely hard to spot from orbit due to the low external temperatures. Image credit Mount Erebus Volcano ObservatoryFor more photos of ice fumaroles see "Ice Towers and Caves of Mount Erebus",They were originally discovered by the Antarctic explorer Shackleton during his 1908 Nimrod expedition, when he and a few others set out to climb Mount Erebus.Photograph from Shackleton's Mount Erebus expedition with a fumarole in the backgroundHe described them like this."The ice fumaroles are specially remarkable. About fifty of these were visible to us on the track which we followed to and from the crater, and doubtless there were numbers that we did not see. These unique ice-mounds have resulted from the condensation of vapour around the orifices of the fumaroles. It is only under conditions of very low temperature that such structures could exist. No structures like them are known in any other part of the world."Ice caves form below the fumaroles, and these are especially interesting as a habitat for life.Entrance to Warren Cave on Mount Erebus. Credit Brian Hasebe. Volcanically heated, the temperatures inside their three study sites were 32, 52 and 64 degrees Fahrenheit (2,11 and 18 degrees Celsius), far warmer than the surroundings.These ice caves on Erebus are of especial interest for astrobiology, as analogues for habitats outside of Earth, because they are so biologically isolated. Most surface caves are influenced by human activities, or by organics from the surface brought in by animals (e.g. bats) or ground water. These caves at Erebus. are high altitude, yet accessible for study. There is almost no chance of them being affected by photosynthetic based organics, or of animals in a food chain based on photosynthetic life. Also there is no overlying soil to wash down into them.As described in this paper, these ice towers eventually collapse and then rebuild themselves, but though temporary features, they persist for decades. The air inside has 80% to 100% humidity, and up to 3% CO2, and some CO and H2, but almost no CH4 or H2S. Many of the caves are completely dark, so can't support photosynthesis. Organics can only come from the atmosphere, or from ice algae that grow on the surface in summer, which may eventually find their way into the caves through burial and melting. As a result most micro-organisms there are chemolithoautotrophic i.e. microbes that get all of their energy from chemical reactions with the rocks. They don't depend on any other lifeforms to survive. They survive using CO2 fixation and some may use CO oxidization for their metabolism. The main types of microbe found there are Chloroflexi and Acidobacteria.This makes them very interesting as an analogue for Mars habitats. If Mars is currently geologically active, then in such cold conditions, it may well have ice fumaroles around its vents, and if so they would be only a few degrees higher in temperature than the surrounding landscape and hard to spot from orbit. We haven't found these yet. The closest we have got so far is that the silica deposits in Home Plate which Spirit found, might have been formed by ancient fumaroles on Mars, (not necessarily ice fumaroles) though they could also have been formed by hot springs or geysers.This article Martian Hot Spots in NASA's Astrobiology magazine presents Hoffman's ideas. He explains that ice fumaroles on Mars could be up to 30 meters tall in its lower gravity and 10 to 30 meters in diameter, circular or oval in shape. So, potentially these things could grow to be huge on Mars, as high as a nine story high skyscraper, and potentially some of them could be as wide as they are high.He suggests searching for them on Mars from orbit, and he wondered if some temperature anomalies in Hellas Basin could be ice fumaroles. They wouldn't need to be in polar regions because the fumaroles themselves would bring large quantities of water vapour to the surface to keep replenishing the ice towers as they sublime away in the thing Mars atmosphere. They might be quite easy to spot as white circles or ovals, probably in permanently shadowed regions, and they would be slightly warmer than their surroundings. This shows one of his candidates.Daytime infrared from Odyssey IRAnomalous warmth in infrared at night as well on all nine infrared bands, so not a chemical signature.That candidate is in Hellas Planitia and is from 2003. Despite a search of high resolution visual images they were unable to find anything visual corresponding to them, they were only visible in infrared. But it shows the sort of thing they would be looking for. Lots of small dots around 10-30 meters in diameter each, clustered around a potential fracture. For details see their paper.The idea is that just as on Earth, volcanic action could bring water vapour and other gases from below. The water vapour, as in Antarctica, would freeze out to form these ice towers. If these environments do occur on Mars, they would provide a warm environment, high water vapor saturation, and some UV shielding. The ones we have on Earth don't have signNow amounts of liquid water. However, as they have close to 100% humidity inside, that doesn't matter. They sustain microbial communities of oligotrophs, i.e. micro-organisms that survive in environments that are very poor in nutrients. The same could be true of Mars.Though we haven't found ice fumaroles on Mars yet, we have found recently formed rootless cones, which are the results of explosive contact of lava with water or ice. This shows that ice (or water) and lava were in close proximity as recently as around ten million years ago.This shows rootless cones on Mars (to the left) and in Iceland. They are the locations of small explosions of steam, when lava surges over the surface over water or ice. These rootless cones on Mars formed around ten million years ago which shows that Mars has had ice and lava in close proximity very recently. They range in diameter from 20 meters to 300 meters.So, could there be other ways that volcanic processes on Mars produce habitats by interacting with ice, such as the ice fumaroles? From this 2007 paper:Hoffman and Kyle suggested the ice towers of Mt. Erebus as analogues of biological refuges on Mars. They combined the idea of still existing near surface ice deposits with the assumption that there is still some localized volcanic activity on Mars today.There are several examples from Mars that show a direct interaction between lava and ice in the geological history of Mars. The most obvious cases are the rootless cones seen in the northern lowlands. HRSC images show direct and violent interaction in the relatively recent geological history, for example at the scarps of Olympus Mons. Mars today is in relatively dormant phase, and any interactions which might be occurring today are presumably on a much less dynamic scale. Nevertheless, they may be driving local hydrothermal systems. Studying the geothermal processes in the first few tens to hundreds of meters below the surface of Mars today might thus uncover a wide variety of new habitats where biological activity may survive on this cold and dry planet.For more about this topic see Volcano-Ice Interaction as a Microbial Habitat on Earth and Mars. These ice fumaroles would be of great interest, but of course, being open to the surface, would easily be contaminated by Earth life from surface explorers or brought in to them through dust from the Martian storms.So far we've been looking at habitats deep below the surface of Mars, though perhaps connected to the surface. But what about habitats on the surface itself? They would make planetary protection even more of an issue, so it's important to look at the possibility. First we need to look at the question, is surface life possible there at all. Just a decade ago, most scientists (with the exception of Gilbert Levin) would have answered with a resounding "No". But that's all changed.There might also be habitats for native Mars life below the surface similar to lake Vostok in Antarctica - well within signNow of drilling. Searches so far have turned up a blank but they could still be there if the lakes are small up ot a few kilometers in size. They could be as close to the surface as only 100 meters deep below rock, or 600 meters deep below ice and remain liquid indefinitelyICE COVERED LAKES HABITABLE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS AFTER LARGE IMPACTS - OR INDEFINITELYWhen comet Siding Spring was discovered in 2013, before they knew its trajectory well, there was a small chance that it could hit Mars. Calculations showed it could create a crater of many kilometers in diameter and perhaps a couple of kilometers deep. If a comet like that hit the martian polar regions or higher latitudes, away from the equator, it would create a temporary lake, which life could survive in.Artist's impression of Mars as seen from comet Siding Spring approaching the planet on 9th October 2014. It missed, by less than half the distance to our Moon. But sometimes comets will hit the Mars ice caps or higher latitudes. If that happens, it will create lakes and hydrothermal systems that last for thousands of years.These lakes can last for a surprisingly long time, insulated by the ice and heated from below by the rock. The models suggest that large craters of 100 - 200 km in diameter in the early solar system would have made lakes that stayed liquid for as long as one to ten million years. This happens even in cold conditions, so it is not limited to early Mars. A present day comet a few kilometers in diameter could form a crater 30 - 50 km in diameter and an underground hydrothermal system that remains liquid for thousands of years. The lake is kept heated by the melted rock from the initial impact in hydrothermal systems fed by water from deep underground.Also, there's another way to keep water liquid. Any ice deep enough below the surface, only 100 meters deep, can actually stay liquid indefinitely if covered by an insulating layer of gravel. There'd be enough heat from below, just from the heat of Mars itself and enough insulation above from the gravel, to keep the water permanently liquid. See section 2.2.3 of Niton Renno's article. This is also one theory for the Martian "dry gullies" that they formed through liquid water suddenly flowing out of a subsurface aquifer like this. This was the most popular theory for them at one point, though there are other explanations for them now.It's much harder to keep water liquid below ice, since rock is much more insulating than ice. It's especially hard for water to form below an ice sheet. If the ice cap was four to six kilometers deep, then you'd expect the base of it to be liquid water, melted from below just through the heat of Mars itself. Though Mars does have ice at both poles, its ice sheets aren't quite as deep as that. But it could still have liquid water at the base of its ice sheets, if there's localized geothermal heating from below.Also, if a lake formed, originally by geothermal melting or a meteorite impact, it's much easier to keep the lake liquid than it was to melt the water in the first place. In one model, then if a lake forms at a depth of over 600 meters below the ice (originally open to the surface) then it can remain liquid indefinitely from the heat flux from below, even without local geothermal heating.We'd be able to detect this water using ground penetrating radar because of the high radar contrast between water and ice or rock. MARSIS, the ground penetrating radar on ESA's Mars Express is our best instrument for the job. After several searches, it hasn't found anything yet. See page 191 of this paper. Their resolution isn't that great, however, around a kilometer.From the searches done to date, we can say with reasonable certainty that Mars doesn't seem to have an equivalent of our Lake Vostok (250 km by 50 km by 0.43 km deep) beneath its ice caps at present. It could however still have small subglacial lakes of up to a kilometer or so in diameter. They were looking for water liquid through geothermal heating, but their search would surely have found impact lakes too.So, Mars doesn't seem to have any large lakes created from impacts just now. Nor does it have any major lakes formed through geothermal activity below glaciers or ice caps, though it could have smaller lakes.So in short there are lots of exciting prospects to explore in the polar regions for astrobiologySo far we haven’t even made a start at looking for life there. Or anywhere on Mars except briefly in the 1970s with the Viking landers which produced ambiguous results and have never been followed up.See also myIs This Why We Haven't Found Life On Mars Yet? Value Of Actually LookingLet's Make Sure Astronauts Won't Extinguish Native Mars Life - To Jupiter's Callisto, Saturn's Titan And Beyond - Op EdModern Mars habitability - WikipediaTouch Mars? (book, around 2,000 pages, in a single web page, give it time to load) - this article is based mainly on sections of this bookRemoved section of this answer about the idea of using the Phoenix lander site to test planetary protection ideas - it was long enough anyway and that made it rather long :)
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Has anything ever been returned from Mars?
Yes, we get meteorites from Mars, but no samples returned by our spacecraft.Natural sample returnYou can imagine, it must be a pretty huge impact on Mars to send rocks all the way to Earth. With a small impact all the material stays on Mars, and for a big impact too, most of the material returns to Mars. But if the impactor is more than one kilometer across, creating a crater more than ten kilometers across, some surface rocks can signNow escape velocity. They end up in a similar orbit to Mars, but after some fly-bys of the planet, a few of them can get diverted to impact on Earth.So, though most are never recovered there are at least several meteorites land on Earth every year from Mars. But, they all come from a small number of impacts, as you would expect, You can tell that by measuring the time spent exposed to cosmic radiation, which confirms the conclusions of the model, Measured ages so far are (time since the meteorite was ejected from Mars) are 20, 15, 11, 4.5, 3, 1.3 and 0.7 million years.(see Martian Meteorites - Cosmic Ray Exposure Ages and Figure 9 of scholarly paper)Life on Earth could have originated on MarsThere was a lot more exchange of material in the early solar system, and one theory of the origin of life is that it could have started on Mars and been brought to Earth by meteorites. It's possible because Mars, further from the sun, cooled down sooner, and was habitable at an earlier stage than Earth. Also had no Moon forming giant impact to disturb it early on. It had oceans, for a few hundred million years, then massive flooding for another few hundred million years. Perhaps that was enough time for life to arise, as it seems to have got off to a very early start on Earth. Some rocks could get from Mars to Earth within a century, and some micro-organisms are hardy enough to survive that, modern ones anyway.Our meteorite samples are limitedWe do have a reasonable spread of ages, the radiometric ages(age since formation) range from 4.5 billion years for Allan Hills 84001 to a few hundred million years in the case of the younger meteorites. However, most are igneous rocks. Our rovers and satellites have found many other rock types on Mars and these haven't been found yet on Earth as a Martian meteorite.Spacecraft sample return ideas:So there is a lot of interest in sample return from Mars to Earth, to take a closer look at whats there. But there are environmental issues. The problem is, the most interesting samples would be ones with life in them, past or present. But if there is present day life in the sample, maybe it could have some harmful impact on Earth?Also some exobiologists say we don't know enough yet to return biologically interesting samples to Earth.The idea has been suggested many times dating back to the 1970s, this is from a 1978 study:The problem is that the sample has to be carefully contained. First, you have to keep Earth micro-organisms out of it. A single Earth microbe or virus, even a single amino acid from Earth would be enough to invalidate modern sensitive analysis of the sample. If you find amino acids in the sample for instance, you have to be sure they are from Mars and not contamination from Earth?But the main issue is protection of the Earth. The thing is, we have no idea if there is life on Mars or not, and what the nature of it is if there is. Actually since Phoenix there's been new interest in the possibility of life on Mars. These would be micro-organisms living on the edge, in a desert like landscape, like the dry valleys in Antarctica. They could live on drops of water melting briefly around a grain of sand in the snow. Or might be like arctic lichens able to live just off the humidity in the air which is close to 100% on Mars when the sparse frosts form in the morning and evening. Or below the surface of rocks. Or they could live in millimeters thin layers of water that probably form when certain salts deliquesce. See my Might there be Microbes on the Surface of Mars?If there is life in the sample, then until we can study it, there is no way to know if it is safe to return it, for sure. The experts are generally agreed that it is almost certainly going to be of no harm at all to Earth. But the worst case, thought to be very low probability scenario is severe in the extreme, leaving quite a dilemma as to what to do. Carl Sagan wrote in his book Cosmic Connection:…Precisely because Mars is an environment of great potential biological interest, it is possible that on Mars there are pathogens, organisms which, if transported to the terrestrial environment, might do enormous biological damage - a Martian plague, the twist in the plot of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, but in reverse. This is an extremely grave point. On the one hand, we can argue that Martian organisms cannot cause any serious problems to terrestrial organisms, because there has been no biological contact for 4.5 billion years between Martian and terrestrial organisms. On the other hand, we can argue equally well that terrestrial organisms have evolved no defenses against potential Martian pathogens, precisely because there has been no such contact for 4.5 billion years. The chance of such an infection may be very small, but the hazards, if it occurs, are certainly very high.All the official studies since then have agreed with Carl Sagan's conclusion, that it is necessary to take precautions against that possibility. I've found it hard to talk about this with some folk, because there is a tendency to assume it is about some weird Andromeda Strain type alien, But as you see, Carl Sagan's concern was about something much more prosaic. A disease like Legionaires disease perhaps, but one we aren't adapted to. Or, a virus that attacks micro-organisms (because of possibly shared ancestry way back). Or a micro-organism that out competes our native life - a bit like the way that rabbits out compete marsupials in Australia. Or maybe it damages our crops, or puts natural cycles and ecosystems out of balance. Or it's spores irritate our lungs, or some other type of an allergen.Does the natural sample return make it safe to return a sample to Earth?The idea of life transferred to Earth on the Martian meteorites is new since Carl Sagan's day. Perhaps life might occasionally transfer from Mars to Earth via meteorite. If so - does that mean that any sample we return from Mars is harmless? Robert Zubrin thought so as have a few others since then. But his is a minority view on this topic. Exobiologists particularly don't agree with his views on it.The thing is - any transfers of life are going to be rare. Impacts on Mars are only every few million years or soLife most likely to make the transition on meteorites that signNow Earth soon after the impactImpacts mostly on igneous rockNo direct evidence of life on meteorites from MarsSo, if there were any extinction events or obvious changes in our environment caused by transfer of life from Mars, they would be rare, so hard to spot. There have been many extinction events in the past not fully understood.The National Research Council looked into this and concluded that though there have been no large scale effects on Earth likely to be caused by life on meteorites in recent times, the possibility can't be ruled out further in the past.They also noted that there are many forms of life that wouldn't be able to make the transition on a meteorite, but able to get here in the carefully preserved environment of a return capsule.Also the meteorite has to hit a habitat on Mars containing life - if this is a micro-habitat consisting of a thin patch of salty brine in the sub surface soil, would this survive a meteorite impact and would the life be sent unchanged all the way to Earth? In a sample return canister, the samples would be carefully selected, and carefully preserved for the journey.Present day suggested precautionsThis is a more modern version of the official precautions, we have moved forward a long way since Antares. Recent ideas suggest return to Earth itself, and e.g. this particular version has robotic handlers:It is an expensive to build building - and the first ever facility of it's type so will probably have "teething difficulties". It requires you to combine the clean room technologies, which use positive air pressure to keep micro-organisms out, with the biohazard technologies that use negative air pressure to keep them in. Most proposals end up with a triple walled structure to handle both of those at once. The official studies did estimates of the time needed to get it designed, built, and up and ready with staff familiar and able to operate it without incident, they came up with figures of over a decade before it is ready to receive a sample return.Needs to contain unknown biohazards of unknown sizeThen you have to contain an unknown biohazard, so you don't know how small they are. This is different from the usual situation, to contain known biohazards.To be as safe as possible you design it to contain micro-organisms half the size of the smallest known ultramicrobacteria. The size of confirmed ultramicrobacteria has gone down to 0.2 microns and may go down further. So their recommendation was that any release of a particle larger than 0.05 microns is unacceptable.Then there is the possibility of the even smaller Gene Transfer agents to think about. These are as small as 0.01 microns across, and could transfer DNA between micro-organisms if the life on Mars uses the same DNA mechanisms as Earth life does. In one experiment, then GTAs left overnight in a sample of sea water transferred DNA to half the micro-organisms in the sample. So - this is quite hard to guard against.Of course you can contain it if that is all you want to do. The problem is, how can you do experiments on the sample, cut sections off it, move bits around in the facility, and at the same time make it impossible for sub micron particles to ever encounter the Earth environment, or any Earth DNA or amino acids etc. to ever encounter the sample?Then, if it is based on a completely different biochemistry the whole thing is basically guesses about what size it is, and what effects it could have.Return sterile samples onlyOne solution of course is to simply sterilize the samples before you return them to Earth. Then there is nothing to worry about. The problem is of course, that that also destroys most of the interest of the samples.Another idea is to return samples of past life only, not go anywhere near regions on Mars that might have present day life. But there you have the issue that first, some micro-organisms may be able to remain viable for millennia on Mars, as they do on Earth, and the global dust storms spread material from all over Mars .So the dust could have viable spores and other dormant life hidden in cracks, protected from UV by the iron oxides in the dust.Also there are some ideas for life able to survive even in the driest regions of Mars, around deliquescing salts, in the "advancing dunes bioreactor" model.Need for public debate and legislation changes for potential of environmental disruptionThis possibility also means that in the low probability worst case scenario, the nations affected by the sample return could include any of the nations on the Earth and not just the nation responsible for launching the mission. So apart from any legal requirements, morally, any nation that does a MSR should involve other nations in the debate. It's not right for one nation to unilaterally take this risk however small it might be.This also makes it a major legislative tangle. Things were much simpler legally in the Apollo days. NASA released its quarantine proposals for Apollo 11 on the same day as the launch leaving no time for public appraisal of them. That would not be tolerated today. The Apollo era quarantine rules were rescinded so can't be used as is.Also many of the modern environmental laws didn't exist in those days.Today there would be many domestic US hurdles (if it was a NASA mission), which would take many years to work through. Also,it would be subject to international agreements, and domestic policies of other nations.So, there would need to be a big multi-nation process of new legislation before a MSR could be approved. Margaret Race of the SETI institution went into this in detail, I summarize her findings here:Legal Issues and Need for International Public DebateWhat if the samples are biologically uninteresting?Some exobiologists put forward this argument strongly.The thing is - that what we are most interested in is evidence of life on Mars. But the evidence so far suggests that life on Mars, if it exists,is going to be hard to find.Present day life on Mars might exist in micro-habitats, just a few mms in thickness, and maybe only exist for part of the day or year. Over the entire surface of Mars maybe some of these habitats have life and some don't. For instance it might depend on a delicate balance of salts, and then the life has to find the habitat to colonize it.They may also have low quantities of life, just a few micro-organisms metabolizing really slowly and occasionally reproducing, perhaps even only reproducing every thousand years or so as happens for some extreme environments on Earth.That's because of the low temperatures and low levels of essential materials. It's probably similar to present day extreme desert and Antarctic dry valleys habitats on Earth, but may have even lower populations. This could be beyond detection capabilities of anything except the most sensitive instruments, beyond anything sent to Mars to date. So we wouldn't know if there is life until the sample is returned.Or life on Mars could be deep underground, hard to signNow. Same issue applies to past lifeAncient life, to be well preserved long term, needs special conditions. Salt or clay deposits are best, and at least several meters below the surface (because it gets degraded over geological timescales by cosmic radiation). These samples would be hard to signNow, and quite possibly only some of the apparently suitable samples actually include any life signatures in them. You would be lucky to find evidence of life in your first deep drill sample on Mars.Results likely to be inconclusiveSo whether there is present day life, or was life in the past, or no life, whatever the situation, seems unlikely a MSR at this stage would do all that much to help settle the question, unless you get really lucky and happen to return a sample that has life in it.A Mars sample return could easily end up returning biologically uninteresting samples, at great cost. Since the search for life is the main reason given for attempting a MSR it seems there is at least quite probable that it ends up as an expensive mission that does little to help increase our understanding of its main objective.Better in situ instrumentsSeems a better approach to investigate it on the surface first with more sensitive instruments. There are many proposals for new life detection instruments of very high sensitivity small enough and light enough to fly to Mars. E.g. the "astrobionibler" sensitive to presence of a single aminio acid in a gram of sample, also scanning electron microscopes, DNA sequencers and the like, all under development.Alternative, teleroboticsThis is what I favour myself at present.Rovers on the Mars surface operated by telepresence by humans in orbit.Time delay issues from EarthThe problem for exploration from Earth is the time delay of many minutes. No-one can drive the rovers in real time so they have to proceed extremely slowly. They have feeble motors that can only drive slowly but that is mainly because there is no incentive for them to be faster.Human mission to Mars orbit for telepresence operationFor the same cost as a sample return to Earth, bearing in mind all the expenses of the entire mission including receiving facility on Earth etc, you could probably send a human mission to Mars capture orbit. This is an elongated orbit, not the low orbit which is expensive to signNow in terms of fuel. It swoops in to Mars, passes close by, and then swoops out again. Turns out to be a good orbit for telepresence operation In terms of delta v, it is as easy as a Moon landing.At the same time, you land lots of rovers on Mars, operated by the humans in orbit around the planet via telepresence..Have sensitive life detection instruments on those rovers. In a day the humans in orbit with their telerobots could do as much as we now do in years. In a mission lasting a year or so we would advance our understanding of Mars immeasurably.At that point we could start to think about whether a Mars sample return is a good idea. We would know a lot about Mars by then, know which samples are biologically interesting, know exactly why we want to return it, and have a good idea of whether it is likely to be biohazardous and what is the best way to contain any hazards. I would do biohazard testing in orbit around Mars too at that point, e.g. in greenhouse type hab, small satellite orbiting separately from the human mission to test effect on environment of the samples in a preliminary way (especially if any biosignatures are found) - why not take as many precautions as you can.That's my opinion on it, for discussion.Ideas of telerobotic explorationThis idea has been suggested many times, including HERRO, and Robert Zubrin with his Athena double flyby, also a Russian proposal and one by Lockhead Martin.Maybe it's time has come though. Last year there was a major telerobotics conference supported by NASA that went into this and they concluded that if there is a human mission to Mars orbit, it would be a case of missing a major opportunity if they don';t explore it via telerobotics.I go a bit further and say we should keep to telerobotics only in the near future, no human landing until we know what the surface is like, what is the hurry?Also, I simply wouldn't bother about a sample return until we have done a fair bit of telerobotics.Bearing in mind the arguments of the exobiologists, there doesn't seem to be much point to do it now - not enough to justify the huge cost of the missionChances are that it is totally safe, but why take any risk at all? As Carl Sagan said in Cosmos“ If we wish on Earth to examine samples of Martian soil for microbes, we must, of course, not sterilize the samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then? Might Martian microorganisms returned to Earth pose a public health hazard? The Martians of H. G. Wells and Orson Welles, preoccupied with the suppression of Bournemouth and Jersey City, never noticed until too late that their immunological defenses were unavailing against the microbes of Earth. Is the converse possible? This is a serious and difficult issue. There may be no micromartians. If they exist, perhaps we can eat a kilogram of them with no ill effects. But we are not sure, and the stakes are high. If we wish to return unsterilized Martian samples to Earth, we must have a containment procedure that is stupefyingly reliable. There are nations that develop and stockpile bacteriological weapons. They seem to have an occasional accident, but they have not yet, so far as I know, produced global pandemics. Perhaps Martian samples can be safely returned to Earth. But I would want to be very sure before considering a returned-sample mission.”So, maybe it can be done safely with modern technology with great expense and care. But my view is, why such a rush? Let's do what we can "in situ" first.Find out moreCan Human Explorers Keep Mars Clean, For Science?How Valuable is Pristine Mars for HumanityMight there be Microbes on the Surface of Mars?Need For Caution For An Early Mars Sample Return - Opinion PieceMars Sample Receiving Facility and sample containmentLegal Issues and Need for International Public Debate
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How do you build stamina for working long hours?
Before I answer this question, I want to start by pointing one thing out…You’re not supposed to work long hours!According to all of the best research, after 35 hours of work, your weekly productivity will begin to declineThis means that if you were working at a level 8–10 for the first 35 hours of the week, you’ll be working at a level 5 or below for hours 35+.While there are many people like Gary Vaynerchuk who seem to be able to bend reality to their will and work insane hours for extended periods of time, the simple fact of the matter is this:You only have so much mental energy to expend in a week.You cannot be operating at 100% for 60, 70, or 80 hours a week. It’s just not possible.And if you try… Then you are going to wear yourself out and lower the quality of the other hours that you work.It’s far better to work 35 or fewer hours per week where you are hyper focused and productive than it is to work 60 where you are burnt out and frustrated.But I digress…If you’re anything like I was 2–3 years ago, you’re going to read this and completely ignore it, and that’s fine. Most people have to experience things firsthand before they will really believe them.So with that disclaimer out of the way, here are a few tips and tricks for increasing your energy, focus, and productivity so that you can work long hours effectively.(Note: Some of this content is pulled from my Ultimate Guide to Limitless Productivity where I share the most scientifically validated ways to increase your productivity and get more done in less time)1. Sleep at Least 7.5 Hours Each NightIf you want to have the stamina to work long hours, then you need to make sure that your body and mind are fully rested and equipped to handle an arduous work load.According to Medical Daily, 40.6 million Americans, more than 30% of the workforce, are chronically sleep deprived.Now, at first glance, you might think, “C’mon Andrew, who gives a crap? You can sleep when you’re dead, these people just need to work more!”But when you consider that sleep deprivation has been linked to:DepressionDeliriumHallucinationsImpaired Cognition and an Increased Risk of Preventable AccidentsNot to mention, an increased risk of infections, cancer, and overall mortality.You begin to realize that sleep deprivation is a big deal.Like a really big deal.I know that most young people love the #hustle mentality and believe that there is something noble or productive in sleep deprivation.But nothing could be further from the truth.Unless you have the rare genetic mutation, DEC2, (present in less than 5% of the population) sleeping less than 6 hours a night is literally killing you.And the worst part?You aren’t even aware that it’s happening.Now, let’s consider the positive effects that studies have shown to be present when an individual gets sufficient sleep.Improved memoryLower systemic inflammationImproved immune functionElevated moodLearning and problem-solving abilities improvedI don’t know about you, but I personally believe that having a better memory, experiencing less illness, feeling happier, learning faster, and solving problems more rapidly all strongly correlate to being more productive.This isn’t just my opinion either. In fact, some of the world’s top performers report sleeping more than 8.5 hours a night.Podcast Guest, Neil Patel sleeps 9.25 hours a night while running three multi-million dollar businesses.Arianna Huffington, Co-founder of the Huffington Post and multimillionaire claims that sleeping 8 hours a night was partially responsible for her success.James Altucher, multi-millionaire investor, and hedge fund manager includes “Sleeping 8 Hours” as one of the keys to his financial successAt this point, it should be clear that getting more sleep is, indeed, one of the quickest ways to boost your productivity.But the question still remains, “How much sleep do I need, and how can I get better quality sleep?”According to the National Sleep Foundation, adults need 7-9 hours in order to prevent the effects of sleep deprivation from affecting your life and productivity. (slightly more if you’re an avid athlete)As for increasing the quality of your sleep, it’s actually pretty simple.Go to bed before 11 p.m.Wake up at the same time each daySleep in a completely dark and cold room (research shows that 65-67 F is ideal for sleep)Exercise dailyTurn off all electronics 60 minutes before bed.I know that this particular section was a little bit long-winded, but this point is so important that I couldn’t simply breeze through it.If you want to be more productive, you need to sleep. Period.Until you are getting 7.5-9 hours of sleep on a consistent basis, the other tactics included in this guide will simply fan the flames of burnout until, eventually, you collapse in a stressed out, sleep deprived panic attack.Take it from me (and thousands of scholarly studies), quit trying to join the sleepless elite and get your 7 hours. M’kay?2. Sweat for At Least 20 Minutes a DayStudy after study after study has illustrated the tremendous importance of daily exercise.From:Decreased depressionElevated mood, reduced stress, and less anxietyImproved blood flow to the brainThe production of new brain cellsImproves memoryImproved discipline, impulse control, and decision makingIn fact, there are SO many benefits to exercise, that the Harvard Business Review has stated that regular exercise should be a mandatory part of any job description.Luckily, studies have shown that you don’t have to exercise for hours every day to reap these benefits.In fact, just 150 minutes of weekly exercise (that’s 30 minutes every weekday) is more than sufficient to improve your productivity, mood, and general well being.If you are exercising exclusively for increased productivity, studies have shown that 2-3 moderately intense sessions of aerobic exercise each week will have the most dramatic impact on your ability to focus and concentrate.However, this does not mean that you should exclusively train your aerobic capacity.Further research has indicated that combining regular aerobic conditioning with an intelligent weightlifting regimen (I recommend this one) and regular yoga will have the greatest impact on your ability to be more productive and stay focused throughout the day.3. Eat Clean Burning Foods and Reduce Your Carb Load Early in the DayMost people underestimate the effect that your diet has on cognitive performance and general productivity.Think about it this way…Your brain is the center of all productivity.Although that tiny little supercomputer takes up only 2-3% of the total mass of your body, it burns more than 20% of the calories that you consume!In and of itself, this should clearly illustrate the link between food and productivity.Studies from the Harvard Business Review have shown an inextricable link between the calories that you consume and the ability for your brain to focus and achieve long-lasting concentration.I won’t bore you with all of the science, but I will suffice it to say that what you eat matters… A lot.If you want to be as productive as possible, you will want to clean up your diet.Here are a few guidelines to get you started.Eliminate as many processed foods as possibleConsume slow burning foods such as raw vegetables and fibrous carbohydrates throughout the day to properly regulate glucose levels in the brainConsume your biggest and highest carb meal after your workout or at dinnerSkip breakfast and opt for coconut oil coffee or eat a very protein and fat rich breakfast (no carbs!)Although you can dive much much deeper into the world of productivity and focus through dieting, simply eliminating processed foods, increasing the number of vegetables you eat, and waiting until later in the day to consume carbs will dramatically improve your productivity almost overnight.If you are interested in learning more about how your dietary choices and productivity are related, check out this awesome infographic from Hubspot.4. Bring the JoyAlthough it might seem like common sense, happy and excited people are more productive.How much more productive?Well, according to a study compiled by Professor Andrew Oswald, Dr. Eugenio Proto and Dr. Daniel Sgroi from the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick, happy employees are 12% more productive than their unhappy peers!I don’t have time to dive into all of the amazing research that has been compiled in recent years that details what determines human happiness, (you should check out the Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor if you’re interested in this), I want to share a quick tactic I picked up from Brendon Burchard.The tactic, called “Bring the Joy” is simple enough, but the results you will experience are profound.All I want you to do is to set 3 alarm on your phone titled Bring the Joy.Set them to go off at different times throughout the day and, when you see the notification pop up on your screen, I want you to ask yourself three questions.What level of joy and presence am I bringing to this present moment?What am I grateful for today?How can I bring more joy and excitement into my current interactions and activities?Like I said, simple right?I challenge you to try this tactic for the next 30 days and genuinely pause and become aware of your state every time your alarm goes off.You will be amazed at how much more productive and joyful your life will become.5. Meditate for at Least 10 Minutes a DayAlthough the scientific community needs to further evaluated the direct link between meditation and productivity, several studies like this one, conducted at a Fortune 100 company, show a very clear link between a regular meditation practice and increased productivity at work.The reason for this is simple.Meditation is proven to help: (source)Lower blood pressureAlleviate symptoms of insomniaReduce depression and anxietyReduce painReduce symptoms of IBSAid in smoking cessationOh, did I mention that it has also been shown to rebuild grey matter?As I’ve already discussed, happiness and productivity are inextricably linked and it should be pretty clear that any practice which decreases depression, anxiety, and sleeplessness will, by default, improve your productive output.I challenge you to take up a meditation practice for the next 30 days and record how you feel.Arnold Schwarzenegger, the infamous bodybuilder, real estate tycoon, and “Governator” of California stated that his one year of intense TM (Transcendental Meditation) practice has created results that6. Take Strategic Breaks Throughout the Day to Maintain Your Energy and EnthusiasmOne of the most surprising ways to increase your energy and boost productivity is actually to work less and take breaks more frequently.Study after study has shown that the human brain cannot focus (effectively) for more than 90 minutes.Eventually, your brain needs a break from any given task to consolidate and process information, renew our focus, and ensure that our tasks are ultimately congruent with our goals.Later in this article, I’ll discuss the Pomodoro method which helps cement these findings into your daily workflow.But for now, I simply want to encourage you to start taking a 45-60 minute break in the middle of every workday.During these breaks, I recommend that you:Practice meditationWalk outsideEat a light snackDo some calisthenicsReadTalk with friendsTest out different methods of recharging yourself and renewing your focus throughout the day and it will pay dividends in the long run.7. Eliminate Email as Much as PossibleNothing will drain your focus and stamina more than wasting nearly 30% of your work week responding to emails!In the United States alone, the average employee spends more than 28% of their time or 13 hours a week responding to emails.That’s more than 650 hours a year wasted on largely unproductive, reactive, and unnecessary correspondence!Over the average employee’s lifespan (45 working years) that equates to more than 29250 hours wasted on email.For those of you who are quick with a calculator, this means that the average employee will spend 3 years of their life responding to and clearing out emails!That’s a jaw-dropping amount of time to spend on such an insignNow and largely unimportant task as email.So what in the hell are we going to do about it?Although entire books have been written on the topic of reducing email overload and reclaiming your inbox (and your life) I will keep things simple.I recommend that you:Check email only twice a day (I do it at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.)“Touch it once”. Either respond to, archive or delete an email. Never leave it in your inboxStop using email folders and simply search for emails when you need themKeep your emails to 5 sentences or less and inform people of this policy in your signature (shoutout to Chris Bailey for this one)Go on an email vacation and let co-workers know you won’t be responding to email until you are done with your biggest project (they will survive I promise)If you do nothing other than implementing these five tips your productivity will skyrocket.Imagine if you could reduce the amount of time you spend on email to only one hour a week.How much more could you accomplish with 12 extra hours in your work week?How much income could you create? How many promotions could you secure?The more you think about it, the more you will realize that email is the scourge of productivity and, although it is a necessary evil, it is an evil nonetheless.8. Embrace the Power of “No”The most powerful word in the entire English language is composed of only two letters.“No”The word “No” has started wars, ended wars, overthrown oppressive governments, and, as it pertains to our conversation, revolutionized personal productivity and fulfillment for people all over the world.Just think about it for a moment.How much pain, discomfort, and genuine wasted time have you experienced in your life because you said “Yes” when you should have said “No”?How many times have you spent an afternoon with people that you didn’t like, in a setting that made you uncomfortable, for a purpose you couldn’t ascertain simply because you didn’t have the courage to say “No”?If you are anything like me, the answer is probably “A lot”.I know from first-hand experience that implementing the power of “No” into your life can be very challenging.For years, I was a chronic people pleaser.I would go to parties I didn’t want to attend, stay late at work, go on dates with people I didn’t care for, and generally lived my life for the approval of others instead of my own personal satisfaction.Until one day, I had enough.I was burnt out, stressed out, wallowing in unfinished projects, unmet personal expectations, and general angst about my existence.So I decided to say “No” more often.I said no:When family members wanted to hang out during my workdaysWhen audience members asked to take me to lunch (I love you guys but I literally cannot meet with 30,000+ men 1-on-1)When friends wanted to go out and I didn’tWhen people made unfair requests of me and my timeWhen people asked for unwarranted favors because they were “My friend”I said “No” to the bad and even the good so that I could say “Yes” to the great.And if you want to be as productive as possible and create a truly prolific life, then you must learn to do the same.9. Use the Pomodoro TechniqueRemember how we talked about the importance of taking breaks way back in Path #1 (yeah, I know this is a long ass article)?Well, it turns out that taking breaks every 50-90 minutes can be just as effective at increasing your productivity and focus throughout the day as the 45-minute renewal exercise we already discussed.The reason for this lies in something called the Ultradian Rhythm.Effectively our brain waves are cyclical and go through peaks and troughs roughly every 90 minutes.In the same way that your brain cycles through different wavelengths during a 90-minute sleep cycle, so too does your brain cycle through wavelengths in a “basic rest-activity cycle”.If you are interested in learning more about the science, you can check out this article from Tony Schwartz.Knowing that cognitive output is cyclical, meaning that you physically cannot sustain high levels of concentration without intermittent periods of rest, changes the entire approach to productivity and focus.This is where the Pomodoro technique comes in handy.Instead of fighting against your Ultradian Rhythm, the Pomodoro technique works with it.Here’s what you do.Instead of simply sitting down at your desk to work, you are going to pick one of your most important tasks of the day (which I will talk about in the next point) and focus on it for a definite length of time between 25 and 90 minutes.Then, you are going to set a timer, eliminate all distractions, and get to work on that project with single-focus until the timer goes off.When the timer buzzes, you are going to take a break anywhere from 5-22 minutes (depending on the length of your work session) before sitting back down to begin the process all over again.All you need to complete the Pomodoro Technique is:A physical or online timerSomething to work onYour brainIt really is that simple.I’ve tested this tactic out for myself and have noticed that I am consistently more productive, more efficient, and more happy with my output when I use the Pomodoro technique on a regular basis.10. Create Locational Anchors to Build Productive StatesAn underground tactic that I’ve found to be immensely effective in recent months is the use of locational anchors.This concept was first introduced to me when I listened to an excellent podcast with Jairek Robbins.Jairek discussed the concept of locational anchors by explaining that the brain works through the power of association and that, the more associations we can build for a specific task, the easier it will be to accomplish it.This is why doctors tell you to only use your bed for sleep and sex.You want to make sure that when it’s time to unwind or *ahem* perform, that your body and brain associate your bed with those activities.This is also why it’s so much easier to have an awesome workout at your local gym than it is with an Iron Gym in your living room.However, Jairek took things a step further and recommended that you actually develop locational anchors for ALL major tasks that you must complete throughout the day.For example:Check email at the kitchen tableTake conference calls at your local cafeWrite at your desk while looking out the windowDesign sales funnels at your desk with your back to the windowComplete all administrative work at a specific nook in your houseThe list goes on and on.Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any direct research to back up this particular hack, however, after experiencing its effectiveness first hand, I couldn’t leave it off this list.Give it a go for 90 days and I promise you will get more done than you ever believed possible.Final Thoughts: Take it Easy on Yourself!Before I leave you to take on the big bad world of getting sh*t done and becoming a productivity machine, I wanted to leave you with one final tip.Take it easy on yourself.The most unproductive thing you can do is to berate and belittle yourself because you haven’t been as successful or productive as you want.Yes, it’s important that you are honest with yourself and your clients and don’t sugarcoat the reality of your current capacity.However, you must remember that you were never taught this in school. You weren’t born with the knowledge of how to be massively productive.You’ve simply been operating on whatever systems you picked up from the people around you and, hopefully, you now have better systems to test and implement.Productivity and focus are both acquired skillsets.You aren’t born productive and it’s not something that is determined by your genetics. It’s a matter of principles and systems, testing, failing, and figuring out what works for you.So take it easy on yourself as you strive to get more done.The journey will take time, but it will be worth it.Good luck!Closeout this article and go get some shit done!
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