DescentBB

Robo, this theory sounds good to me. Tearing is very apparent and the cause should be obviously a global event or process. I think mars was resurfaced by these catastrophic events, covered by thick layers of dust and debris. Asteroid belt could be remnant of collisions.

Not literal evenings and mornings

edit

What I want to know is (regardless of what caused a huge mostly straight rip):

1. If we can observe water erosion evidence from earth using telescopes you can buy for your personal use at a supermarket... Why do we spend billions of dollars to send stuff to Mars to "prove it" ??
2. Just how big would something have to be to cause a gash that size and still go on to wherever it went?

If an area that large and that deep was eroded away - where is it? And what about the 3km of crust on the northern hemisphere? What about that?

Nowhere to be found

Robo - you got some good ideas there man - and you diagram almost makes sense!

It's fairly widely accepted (I think!) that the northern hemisphere has been resurfaced less than a billion years ago IIRC, according to the accepted meteor rate.

I find it impossible to accept VM is anything less than a billion (or so) years old, as you simply couldn't turn fracture/impact lines into the well-worn features we see now. That's assuming there hasn't been any significant surface flooding in the last half billion years. The atmosphere is 1% as dense as Earth's - so you could stand in a 300 km/h wind, and you would barely be able to feel it. We know Mars gets stormy, but I doubt any of them generate wind speeds of several thousand km/h - enough to place any siginificant erosive force on the terrain.

As to Robo's theory of a huge southern impact, well it has merits, but plenty of holes too:

1) A southern impact by a planetoid is incredibly unlikely, as solar system debris travels in the orbital plane of the sun, there are very few objects which travel outside the plane - hell, even Pluto only deviates a few degrees from it. So, any southern impact would be from a non-Solar body, and therefore astronomically unlikely.

2) If you smack a small planetoid into Mars, it just makes a bigger Mars. The whole planet would have to have been liquid Magma in order for much of it to get smacked off the back of the planet and put into orbit (In the same way the Earth spawned the Moon when a Mars size object colided with an infant Earth). It appears Deimos and Phobos are captured asteroids and not made from the same stuff as the surface of Mars.

3) If a huge suothern impact *did* occur, then it wouldn't knock anything off the surface of Mars, because of the dampening effect of the molten core, and even if it DID, 99% of it would fall back to the surface, and create a huge bunch of craters - all roughly the same age - something we don't see on Mars.

I can't see any object being able to create a scar on Mars the size of VM. It'd have impacted the entire planet, and not just grazed it - although Mars *DOES* have a very strange wobble, and tips quite radically on it's back every now and then.

PERHAPS, an impact did cause this wobble, and PERHAPS when mars rolls on it's back, the Northern (or Southern) ice caps melt due to the increased sun exposure. If they do ever melt, then you can imagine there's a LOT of water released over a period of tens-of-thosands of years. Releasing that much water must thicken the atmosphere quite dramatically, increasing the greenhouse effect and thereby raising the surface (and air!) temperature a fair amount.

IF the water which is stored in the soil of Mars (And it's now commonly thought that a bucket of mars soil - over siginificant portions of the planet - will return half a bucket of water when melted) and the atmosphere warms up and melts that water, then it's gonna follow the path of least resistance, to find the lowest lying area.

Now, if Mars froze BEFORE the VM was formed then simpyl stupendous amounts of water might have been frozen in place. In this scenario, I'm counting on the techtonic action of Mars still being active, as evidenced by the resurfacing of the northern hemisphere. If this is true, then whole continents worth of lifting and lowering are possible while the ice remains frozen, and not really forming much of anything in the way of glaciers because of the low gravity, and the low relative differences in elevation.

However, try this for an idea: Frozen Mars, Techtonic action creating a crack where the VM is, repeated wobbles causing Mars to warm cyclically, and massive oceans of water held back by ice dams. raise the temperature a tad more, and the ice dams break, letting something the size of the Great Lakes x 10 loose into a small crack (The young VM) when it can drain to a lower level.

This event, and several similar events in later eons, would eventually drain most of the water from the high areas (southern hemisphere - which WERE lower before the continuing Techtonic action and Mars Freezing) into the lower areas (Northern hemisphere) and in the meantime, carry away simply stupid amounts fo terrain - forming the VM. The torrents of mud would hold a very high amount of soil and rock, and this stuff would be swept with the water, into the northern hemisphere, thus creating the flat plains we see today, and would also explain the high water content of the northern plains also.

Perhaps the area ABOVE VM is now totally drained of the water that froze in place when Mars "died", but it's possible there is still more to come.

Maybe, when mars pitches over on its back again, we'll see a repeat of this activity, but on a smaller scale. It'd be kinda fun to watch petaliters of water scour Mars again - provided you watched from orbit.


How's that sound?

Fusion pimp wrote:Not to turn this into a Biblical debate, but I suggest you keep reading, Lobber. The Bible says ".. and the evening and the morning were the X day" signifying a 24 hour time period.

B-

Lobber is right, day isn't to be taken literally, more like a period of time. Blame translation, or the fact that the bible has existed so long that obviously it is not perfect.

There are also scriptures that say a day to God is a thousand years to us. Have a crack at that

Fusion pimp wrote:Not to turn this into a Biblical debate, but I suggest you keep reading, Lobber. The Bible says ".. and the evening and the morning were the X day" signifying a 24 hour time period.

B-

Word Barry. As in.."The Word" you could say "The LITERAL Word" [of GOD even]

...Isn't it a shame when born-again missionary types can't even follow their own fundamentalist doctrine? <smirk> More insanity below

Xamindar wrote:Lobber is right, day isn't to be taken literally, more like a period of time. Blame translation, or the fact that the bible has existed so long that obviously it is not perfect.

There are also scriptures that say a day to God is a thousand years to us. Have a crack at that

See above...Whatever happened to "The literal word of God?" How does the fundamentalist crowd reconcile "the literal word of god" with all of the contradictions in the bible?

Please, make a separate post and explore that topic there. It's fascinating. Really!

Objects cannot "graze" or "scratch" planets. There is an invisible boundary around planets (equivalent in size to about the surface of the planet to the core. One radius away.) This is called the 'Roche Limit' Large ojects which enter this are simply torn apart by gravity.

It's all a big guessing game

not even mars can escape... THE CLAW!!

that was a great diagram robo, you should try your hand at drawing planets as art eh.

this roche limit thing is very interesting.
but what if the large object approached at great speed, before it had a chance to break apart.
so the object is all set to give mars a VERY near miss (a scrape), lets say it's a water-ice comet. it comes in VERY quickly. as the breaking of the Roche limit starts to take effect on the comet: variously sized pieces of the comet are breaking off, getting slowed down by mars' atmosphere and pummeling the surface, at an EXTREME ANGLE (the comet came very fast remember), not so much pummeling the surface, as scraping it. this happens for a very small amount of time (think, a few hours) before the comet slingshots away from mars again, mostly still intact i assume (not like it matters).
so in this time the comet has not physically touched mars, so as to scrape it. but it has come close and bits have broken off in a stream which DID go down and hit/scrape mars at an extreme angle. in a form of carpet bombing run.
but the comet was still mostly intact (not being affected by Roche's effect for long), and slingshotted itself outof there just as fast as it came.



a twist to the theory:
the comet was trapped in an unstable orbit, just stradling the Roche limit, except for the area above VM where it strayed a little closer (or perhaps the area that we now know as VM stuck out a bit back then, as a bulge). the comet orbits for a while, gradually getting fucked more and more everytime it goes over VM, for some reason, leaving debris which for some reason does not orbit as rings, but just goes straight down and scrapes at the surface.


it could also be, that at one time mars' atmosphere was more dense. and this enabled un-earthly winds to cut that valley out (as has already been said, atm the wind does not have enough force).

I thought the Roche limit is where pieces woulnd't coalesce, not where something would break apart.

Religious stuff

Moon dust, anyone?

Given that all religions are created by human minds, and the bible was written by humans, very little of it can be accepted as anything other than oral myth - particularly relating to the old testament.

The new testament, while containing some history, is equally unreliable.

The bible has been edited so many times, had large portions removed, and added - and HEY, GUESS WHAT? Human beings did THAT too.

This thread is NOT to do with religion, but with science - and there is NO COMMON ground between the two. If you subscribe to the oxymoron of "Creation Science" (A nonsense concept) please create a thread to address this issue.

Arguments about the age of ANYTHING can only be addressed by science. Let's stick to the topic at hand huh?

Ok, then take a gander at this:

Scientists decided that, based on the age of the moon by evolution, there would be a TON of dust on the moon. Thus, they created these HUGE feet for the first moon lander. They were worried sick about the astronauts sinking into the dust and getting stuck.

The mission lifted off, we landed on the moon, and we found dust a very few inches thick, denoting 6,000-8,000 years of pileup.

Ok, so who's going to give votes to science for dating things now?

Check http://www.answersingenesis.org/creatio ... /solar.asp for a lengthy argument on this source.

What about the moon's existence in the first place? We know that the moon is escaping the earth at the rate of 4 cm per year. If that rate was kept up over billions of years, we wouldn't have a moon right now, and thus the tides on earth would be nonexistent, killing many forms of life on the earth and causing massive damage to the planet's ecosystem. For those of you who speculate this is because the moon broke off the earth originally, the Roche limit would have shattered the moon before it reached its current orbit.

For a more mathematical explanation, go to http://www.answersingenesis.org/creatio ... 4/moon.asp .

Mount St. Helens eruption. It did in one explosive week what scientists thought took billions of years for natural processes to accomplish. Scientists carbon dated some of the rock formed from the lava. It came up at 1.12 billion years if I'm remembering right.

Just instills further confidence in scientists' dating methods doesn't it?

Check out http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/msh/ for pictures of the Mt. St. Helens eruption.

What about comets? Their very existence vouches for the young age of the earth. Comets lose mass as they fly. You'd think there wouldn't be many comets around by now if the earth was billions of years old.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creatio ... comets.asp for more.

Larger objects break up faster, and it would have actually had to pass EXTREMELY fast and the Roche limit takes its effect very quickly. It's not a slow process.

If the planet was bombarded by pieces of comet at this extreme angle - why is the VM so regular? Why isn't its surface a huge collection of craters? And why didn't the craters go all the way around the planet?

And also, if it *was* close enough to scrape it, the gravity would have been far greater at the surface so it would have been pulled into a full impact. The VM should also start off shallow then get deeper at one end if that is true.

Thanks for the opinions on the drawings by the way lads! I would have drew you a more artistic version, but I didn't quite have 4 hours to do that Sorry.

WarAdvocat wrote:

Fusion pimp wrote:Not to turn this into a Biblical debate, but I suggest you keep reading, Lobber. The Bible says ".. and the evening and the morning were the X day" signifying a 24 hour time period.

B-

Word Barry. As in.."The Word" you could say "The LITERAL Word" [of GOD even]

...Isn't it a shame when born-again missionary types can't even follow their own fundamentalist doctrine? <smirk> More insanity below

Xamindar wrote:Lobber is right, day isn't to be taken literally, more like a period of time. Blame translation, or the fact that the bible has existed so long that obviously it is not perfect.

There are also scriptures that say a day to God is a thousand years to us. Have a crack at that

See above...Whatever happened to "The literal word of God?" How does the fundamentalist crowd reconcile "the literal word of god" with all of the contradictions in the bible?

Please, make a separate post and explore that topic there. It's fascinating. Really!

LOL, that could be interesting. I'm not startin' it though.

Mobius wrote:Given that all religions are created by human minds, and the bible was written by humans, very little of it can be accepted as anything other than oral myth - particularly relating to the old testament.

Do not confuse theory with fact. You always know a bad scientist when he talks about a theory as if it is fact.

You mean like, the [spoiler]*COUGH*[/spoiler]Theory of Evolution?[spoiler]*COUGH*[/spoiler]

Hey religion. Thanks for sh*tting on the thread.

I think that proves that you cannot separate religion from Science.

Science asks the following questions:

What is that?
Where is that?
When is that?
How is that?

Religion follows up by asking the following question:

Why is that?

oops, I'm in trouble.

Back on topic: As far as I know the Grand Canyon was created by the river eroding away until we get the massive canyon we have today. But a river couldn't possibly make a straight line like on mars, could it? This is a good question. The foreign body clipping the side sounds like the best theory.

How about this? An alien spaceship shot it's laser cannon and accidentally brushed the side of Mars a few thousand or so years ago. Makes sence to me.

BTW, what happened to the bottom of the picture? Looks like something took a bite out of the planet.

I have a theory.

Some very large object passed very close to Mars, but didn't touch it, or break up within the limit. Instead, the local Tidal forces caused the Martian surface to break and crack along the stress lines as the surface tried to raise up towards the interloper. Then some of it did break off and fly away, and other parts sunk back down again further than before.

Not possible, sorry

You might also know that lunar tides also affect the land on Earth's surface.

But they don't affect it much. We're talking maybe 50 cm here at most.

Now, even if the object were a lot closer, and considering that gravitational attraction is inversely proportional to the square of distance, that would have quite an effect - that still wouldn't be enough to cause cracking on that large a scale unless it did pass within the Roche limit.

also, if we are talking about a really big object here. then there's always the possability that the crack on mars is caused by mars going momentarily within the Roche Limit of this object. ie: MARS was damaged by the gravity of the object, not the other way around.

just to spin the tables.

Interesting idea, but the only way I can see that happening is if Mars is itself a captured body.

Isn't the asteroid belt the remains of a planet? If so could a near miss with mars cause one planet to break up and result in the thrench on mars?

Bingo

Except there's one problem. Neither Mars, nor the orbit of the asteroids in the belt, cross.

Question: What if it was there in the first place?

Stryker: you mean, Valles Marineris existed before mars existed?

Er no, I'm meaning that the trench was created at the same time mars was.

yeah but how? that's what we're trying to figure out.
not when, but how.

You still don't get it? I'm saying God put the planet in its orbit with the trench already there!

Hey I was Shootin' away in Elysium just the other night, ... I saw no "bulges" tho...

... And, Oh no please, !.. No Biblical schlock, or creationism mumbo gumbo again !@ We're on Mars not Earth... !

Hm... what about if Mars was initially smaller than it is now? Then, perhaps, the pressure caused the core to heat up, and eventually expand, causing the surface to crack...

Sirius wrote:Hm... what about if Mars was initially smaller than it is now? Then, perhaps, the pressure caused the core to heat up, and eventually expand, causing the surface to crack...

Then there would be global cracking.

Hey, if the universe was created by God, it would seem that mars would have been created along with everything else. Get the sand outta your ears and try listening to facts.

stryker, i know where you are comming from. but please, we have been around the block a number of times. we have seen your line of questioning many many times before, it's predictable, non-original, and disruptive to discussion. what, do you think we've never seen a christian before?

i actually knew what point you were making from your first post, i am afterall a christian as well. i decided to have a little fun, thus my reply, giving you a chance. you missed it.

i'm a nice guy. but this post is hostile, because your last post was hostile. so i'm giving it to you straight: you didn't realise that we were ignoring you.

but! to be nice and try to milk whatever discussion there possibly is to be had from your latest comment:
why, and therefore how, would god create a scar on a planet like that?
you can't just say "god did it" and expect that to be a say all and end all of discussion.
we actually DO like discussing things , and don't want to stop just because you have stated your simplistic and unimaginitive opinion.

ffs, when your kids ask you "daddy why are the clouds fluffy?" do you tell them "because god made them that way" and leave it at that? there ARE scientific reasons for clouds' fluffyness, and it's not HERACY to say so.

Point taken Roid. But my line of thought is that you probably won't find an explanation for this particular phenomenon that will explain it. You're free to try all you want, I think you're just missing the simple solution.

Sorry if my last post sounded a little harsh, guess I shoulda used a smily or something in it. I wasn't meaning it to be harsh, and I'm sorry you took it it be harsh. Please forgive me.

Stryker wrote:Point taken Roid. But my line of thought is that you probably won't find an explanation for this particular phenomenon that will explain it...

well of course one will never find an answer with THAT attitude.

but we found an answer for why clouds are fluffy. we've found answers for plenty of other questions we had about the planets (ie: is the earth flat? is the earth the center of the universe? is there a man on the moon? is the moon made of cheese?) i'm sure we'll find a non-mystical answer for the mars scar, just as we found out why clouds are fluffy (ETC!).

...You're free to try all you want, I think you're just missing the simple solution.

Sorry if my last post sounded a little harsh, guess I shoulda used a smily or something in it. I wasn't meaning it to be harsh, and I'm sorry you took it it be harsh. Please forgive me.

yeah np. i'm just a firey person.