r/interesting • u/SwimmerLeather5333 • 15h ago

NATURE NASA released the the clearest images of Mars

NASA's Perseverance rover has sent back its latest images from the Martian surface, giving us another incredibly detailed look at the rocks, terrain and landscape of a world millions of miles away. The rover continues to explore Mars while sending new images and science back to Earth.

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u/ginamon 14h ago

I'm not sure why I expected it to look totally different, but I did. It looks like places on earth. We have Earth at home, and it has its own oxygen.

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u/Thaetos 11h ago

It looks a lot like earth, because it probably once was.

Idk the full story but there’s a theory that Mars had oceans that dried up. I believe it had some kind of atmosphere too that prevented the water from escaping, but don’t quote me on that.

But yea it’s basically a dead version of our planet. Or what’s waiting for us.

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u/GreasyChains 11h ago

"Mars  had some kind of atmosphere too that prevented the water from escaping."

  • Thaetos

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u/Thaetos 11h ago

Dammit. Now it’s a fact.

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u/NoodlesAreAwesome 10h ago

The core of Mars used to be liquid. When it cooled the magnetic field that protected it vastly away around 4 billion years ago.

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14846/

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u/Thaetos 9h ago

So not the surface?

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u/GoodMerlinpeen 9h ago

I believe they mean that the molten core induced a magnetic field which protected the atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar winds, and when the core solidifed the magnetic field went away and the solar winds... well, they went to town. The atmosphere had allowed energy to be trapped, providing heat enough for the water to remain liquid

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u/OConnah 8h ago

I want to work for nasa and make shit up for a living, even carbon dating on earth is a joke

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u/unicodemonkey 8h ago

I don't even know what kind of disaster has to happen to make Earth less survivable than Mars

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u/buscoamigos 6h ago

The disaster will be time.

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u/cowboy_dude_6 7h ago

You can Google things to make sure they’re right before posting them instead of going ahead and saying them anyway even though you don’t know whether you’re wrong or not.

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u/CaptainCFloyd 6h ago

It still has an atmosphere, obviously, otherwise the sky would be black in the pictures. It's just very thin.

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u/Bitter-Disk-3514 5h ago

I think I read somewhere that a planet suitable to host life, but on which life doesn’t evolve, it’s doomed. Something about the atmosphere I think

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u/HighDefinitionCat 8h ago

Yeah, it is an amazing technological and scientific feat, but deep down I'm always a bit disappointed that everywhere we look in our system there is nothing but rocks, some ice here and there and a useless atmosphere (if any at all).

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u/Excellent_jun91 12h ago

me: can we have earth?

mom: we have earth at home.

earth at home:

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u/gk98s 12h ago

The reason we want to colonise mars is for extra resources

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u/NoodlesAreAwesome 10h ago

For who? It’s not feasible to get them back. It would only be to support a mission there.

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u/gk98s 10h ago

It's not feasible to get them back YET. Once we figure out how to use fission or fusion for rockets space travel will become significantly cheaper. Also if we could make living conditions on mars somewhat alright it would be extra land for extra population growth.

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u/WolvReigns222016 6h ago

Fusion isn't ever going to help a relatively close distance trip. The only way we can travel this distance in a vacuum is pushing stuff out the back of the ship.

Ion thrusters can use electricity to create acceleration however it is very slow and would be used for things like leaving the solar system because you can still speed up while not having to carry massive amounts of fuel out of orbit.

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u/Pineapple-legion 10h ago

Probably color-corrected to Earth-like atmosphere.