*** The Official Astronomy & Universe Thread ***

mrk

mrk

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The same place the entire atmosphere went. An event ripped it off Mars a long time ago. Could have been volcanic event on the ground or an impact from an asteroid.
 

mrk

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Mars once had a magnetic field yeah but as it faded away for whatever reason or event that took place, so did the atmosphere.
 
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Soldato
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Mars once had a majestic field yeah but as it faded away for whatever reason or event that took place, so did the atmosphere.

Very majestic :p

The reason the magnetic field died off was most likely because the core became solid, and so no longer generated the magnetic field and so the solar wind could literally just blow away the atmosphere from the planet
 

mrk

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Yeah the question is why did the core suddenly change because by all counts now it once had a stable atmosphere with evidence of flowing surface water, something caused that to happen but what is what needs to be found :p
 
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Yeah the question is why did the core suddenly change because by all counts now it once had a stable atmosphere with evidence of flowing surface water, something caused that to happen but what is what needs to be found :p

I think the main answer to that is due to Mars size, it's smaller than Earth and so its core lost heat a lot quicker!
 
Soldato
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But on the flip side, smaller planet has smaller surface area, so would lose heat slower?

Obviously further away from the sun too though ;)

Yes, but the smaller the planet the smaller SA to Volume ratio, other things like less starting heat/gravitational energy from formation as there was less matter forming Mars etc
 
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I have so many books piled on my desk that I need to start reading before I have to go back to school... But I don't know where to start!

Cosmos, Contact, The Selfish Gene and The Elegant Universe to name a few...

AND I just noticed I have the whole of Wonders of the Universe and Contact on Blu-ray to watch! :D
 
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mrk

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I was reading this and have to say I agree with the comments by Bob Greenwade and yaz.

It's pretty sound to consider that anyone out there intelligent enough to find the meti messages sent by the population would be intelligently evolved enough to at the very least be on our own level but most likely a lot more advanced. If they are space bound then they're in orders of magnitude more advanced and will be exactly as yaz puts it:

advanced civilizations may have become advanced with wisdom as a forced side effect and a booster to go forward at the same time; if science wins (hand in hand with religion or not) then visitors might see us as funny little social things to study and let evolve in peace :)
 
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Indeed, but anyway I highly doubt even if anything else ever picks up any of our signals, I think we will be long gone by then... Our first radio signals have got literally nowhere, and they've been travelling for 200 years.

RqrdNPH.jpg
 
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