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Thermonuclear war...on Mars? Thermonuclear war...on Mars?

11-24-2014 , 12:05 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by pig4bill
All you need for a nuclear explosion is a critical mass of fissionable material. It's not impossible that a sub-critical mass on the planet was hit by another sub-critical mass in a meteor or something, and kaboom. Extremely, extremely unlikely, but probably not impossible.

The atmosphere was removed by the solar wind when Mars lost it's magnetic field, probably because it's core solidified.
I wonder if an asteroid with sufficient fissionable material could compact itself enough on impact with a planet to self detonate? It seems like if Mars had enough laying around it would have had enough to keep it's core molten.
Thermonuclear war...on Mars? Quote
11-24-2014 , 01:20 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by LASJayhawk
masque: There is a certain "romance"to the idea that I love. But mostly I like that it's just another reason to continue our exploration of Mars and beyond.

And just because it's more science fiction than science fact, the value of striking the imagination can't be underestimated.

Look at Star Trek (a western set in space) It inspired a lot of people to go into the sciences and engineering that might not have otherwise. But not just that look at the SiFi technologies in it:

Communicators: an admitted inspiration for the cell phone
Replicators: 3D printing We've started with plastics and metal, but people are working on doing food as well.
Warp Drive: Impossible at the time, but thanks to the work of Alcubierre and White, might be doable in the future.
Computers playing music: We can check that off as done.
Sub-Space Communications: Not on the horizon, but Quantum Entanglement makes for interesting possibilities
The Padd: Check that off as done too (since I'm listening to music on the iPad as I type.
Phasers:: Lasers as weapons, well we're getting there. Northrup just announced a new generation of their laser based weapon system.
Cloaking Device: Some progress has been made on multiple fronts.
Transporters: Well that may not pan out so well, but IBM did release a research paper about 15 years ago that said they expected to have enough computer horsepower within 100 years to make it possible for small inert objects.

And I think I speak for myself and FoldnDark here, but if there are green Orion women out there, developing the technologies to get there should be a top priority.
WOW!, all this time I'd been thinking I was out on an island thinking you'd need incredible computing power/storage, etc. to do teleportation, and I talk about it, and most people, while not discounting it, mostly seem to be like, "Uh, sure. Cool. Next topic."

So, when I research the paper you're talking about (re:bolded) and find:

http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/res...up.php?id=2862

...I feel like it describes what I've been thinking for some time (although they thought it way before me obviously).

Excerpt:
Quote:
Teleportation is the name given by science fiction writers to the feat of making an object or person disintegrate in one place while a perfect replica appears somewhere else. How this is accomplished is usually not explained in detail, but the general idea seems to be that the original object is scanned in such a way as to extract all the information from it, then this information is transmitted to the receiving location and used to construct the replica, not necessarily from the actual material of the original, but perhaps from atoms of the same kinds, arranged in exactly the same pattern as the original. A teleportation machine would be like a fax machine, except that it would work on 3-dimensional objects as well as documents, it would produce an exact copy rather than an approximate facsimile, and it would destroy the original in the process of scanning it. A few science fiction writers consider teleporters that preserve the original, and the plot gets complicated when the original and teleported versions of the same person meet; but the more common kind of teleporter destroys the original, functioning as a super transportation device, not as a perfect replicator of souls and bodies.
Thermonuclear war...on Mars? Quote
11-24-2014 , 01:47 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by FoldnDark
So are you in the camp this was natural? Can a natural reactor produce such large explosions? I think it's interesting there are two spots. That would line up with two nations firing off hundreds of warheads at one another, leading to a global catastrophic event. I'm just wondering if there is evidence that disproves that scenario.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural...ission_reactor

I still need to see that paper . Why is it so hard to get a copy of it if its all so important to warrant a book and interviews. The guy is full of it likely precisely because he wanted to pursue that angle since mid 90s, well before any of the data he is now using was available. So it fits an "i want to prove aliens destroyed Mars" idea and make data fit to it. This is not science. But the data on isotopes can be science and i want to see it even if the interpretation is not right.

Also why cant indeed an asteroid strike an area with natural fissionable material and create conditions that start a reaction due to short term severe compression and temperatures?

Even if one took the alien angle its still more natural to assume they were testing weapons or living something behind to be traced rather than destroying an entire planet's civilization with only 2 strikes that didnt even morphologically alter the crust.

By the way we can use all weapons on the planet and still we wont destroy all life and all humans.

Last edited by masque de Z; 11-24-2014 at 02:01 PM.
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11-24-2014 , 02:13 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by masque de Z
By the way we can use all weapons on the planet and still we wont destroy all life and all humans.
I keep pointing that out, it would barely be a blip on the graph.

The problem with the hypothesis that there's no intelligent life out their because they don't survive the WMD stage is is such a small window of opportunity. The gap between WMD's that could destroy the species locality and the species being able to spread out of range can only be a small number of generations at most.
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11-24-2014 , 02:34 PM
Was wondering about that. I remember the "nuclear winter" scenario where I guess enough dust is raised to block out the sun, so those who survive the initial firestorm are dodging clouds of radiation and mass drought brought on by the weather and toxic environment. But this isn't enough to cause mass extinctions like a meteor? Barely a blip?
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11-24-2014 , 02:43 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by FoldnDark
Was wondering about that. I remember the "nuclear winter" scenario where I guess enough dust is raised to block out the sun, so those who survive the initial firestorm are dodging clouds of radiation and mass drought brought on by the weather and toxic environment. But this isn't enough to cause mass extinctions like a meteor? Barely a blip?
A very nasty blip. I wouldn't recommend it.

Give it a few centuries or even a millenia and then have a look at the population graph.
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11-24-2014 , 02:54 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezlaw
A very nasty blip. I wouldn't recommend it.

Give it a few centuries or even a millenia and then have a look at the population graph.
I'm thinking back to the iron age at very least.

Edit: Hmm, just did some reading, and not surprisingly, as a product of the 80's, I have the scale off by a few orders of magnitude. Though nothing close to a global killing meteor, it still looks like much of the world would starve to death from the ensuing climate change, largely depending on when and where the nukes all were dropped. I guess the powerful and most prepared doomsdayers would survive to put the things back together within a few decades or century maybe.

Last edited by FoldnDark; 11-24-2014 at 03:19 PM.
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11-24-2014 , 03:20 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by masque de Z
The guy is full of it likely precisely because he wanted to pursue that angle since mid 90s, well before any of the data he is now using was available. So it fits an "i want to prove aliens destroyed Mars" idea and make data fit to it. This is not science.
It seems to work for the CO2 is causing AGW crowd. Seemed to work for the R-12 is putting a hole in the ozone crowd.

At least this is fun to speculate about, even if it rubbish.
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11-24-2014 , 03:26 PM
If you had a dieing ecosystem with only a few small areas left suitable for life, it wouldn't take that much. So your civilization would either wind up in some Malthusian final solution (nuke ourselves) or try to find another planet and make it habitable. I seem to recall a thread in SMP about something like that
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11-24-2014 , 03:27 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by FoldnDark
I'm thinking back to the iron age at very least.
Ignoring the edit for the moment. Even so it would be the iron age with science and that's a mega difference.

Quote:
Edit: Hmm, just did some reading, and not surprisingly, as a product of the 80's, I have the scale off by a few orders of magnitude. Though nothing close to a global killing meteor, it still looks like much of the world would starve to death from the ensuing climate change, largely depending on when and where the nukes all were dropped. I guess the powerful and most prepared doomsdayers would survive to put the things back together within a few decades or century maybe.
Sounds more realistic but I don't really know. It wouldn't be greatly different to the Iron age with science anyway imo, I'd going to confidently make up 3.5 less generation to recover.
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11-25-2014 , 06:56 PM
I found the paper here:
http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC24/Brandenburg.pdf

Thoughts?
Thermonuclear war...on Mars? Quote
11-28-2014 , 07:31 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by LASJayhawk
I found the paper here:
http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC24/Brandenburg.pdf

Thoughts?
I've been blocked. Is it just me?
Quote:
Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /JOC24/Brandenburg.pdf on this server.

Apache Server at journalofcosmology.com Port 80
Thermonuclear war...on Mars? Quote
11-28-2014 , 11:19 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sloppy Joe
I've been blocked. Is it just me?
Nope. Me too.
Thermonuclear war...on Mars? Quote
11-29-2014 , 02:59 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by FoldnDark
I'm thinking back to the iron age at very least.

Edit: Hmm, just did some reading, and not surprisingly, as a product of the 80's, I have the scale off by a few orders of magnitude. Though nothing close to a global killing meteor, it still looks like much of the world would starve to death from the ensuing climate change, largely depending on when and where the nukes all were dropped. I guess the powerful and most prepared doomsdayers would survive to put the things back together within a few decades or century maybe.
It wouldn't take anywhere near a century unless only the stupidest or must uneducated people survived. Think of what was developed in the 20th century alone, and that was with people having to invent the stuff along the way. If you already know how the inventions work, and only have to build them, it goes much faster. Especially because, contrary to how the movies predict, all the cool crap is not going to vanish. There are still going to be computers around, electric generators around, gasoline around, chip fab equipment around, etc, etc. It's not going to be a "The Postman" scenario. That was a fun movie, but the underlying premise absurd.
Thermonuclear war...on Mars? Quote
11-29-2014 , 12:20 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sloppy Joe
I've been blocked. Is it just me?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shrike
Nope. Me too.
in the comments of the link posted earlier

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2...e-brandenburg/

The author actually enters into some discussion on his views (heh), and in it he says that the 403 is because their servers have crashed because of high demand for the paper, he then invited a commenter to email him for the preprint

"send me an email at spaceranger137@yahho.com and i can send you a pdf of the article preprint"
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11-29-2014 , 01:40 PM
Thanks Alobar.
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11-29-2014 , 02:43 PM
I have the pdf (thanks LASJayhawk for linking earlier) saved on HD because i wanted to be objective about it. It is 51 pages. I have only briefly seen major points of it and want to read it better. I dont know if it is legal to email it to you but if you think it is and the author had no problem with it i can email it if you pm me or maybe i can email it to LASJayhawk and he could post it on a file sharing legal website (any ideas what that can be? Yahoo briefcase is no longer available, Google drive maybe, what is a file equivalent for photobucket?).


My opinion on the paper is that its not at all proper science and the majority of the paper focuses on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia....22pyramids.22 which is complete fabrication by human imagination as more recent pictures show and unacceptable to be part of a paper about isotopes and to include on it also archaeological sites on earth like those on ancient aliens shows from history channel, basically http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken kind of material and correlations suggested with ancient Egyptian pyramids and assumed ones "seen" in Viking pics of Mars (he then even suggests similarities with US pentagon lol) . But then how on earth does it fit that he is talking about a 500 mil years ago event that destroyed a civilization that then appears with similarities in Egypt and elsewhere only 5k-10k years ago (that implies it wasnt destroyed completely and they waited 500 mil years lol to "contact" and now they are nowhere to be seen ok sure).


Proper isotope analysis requires to take a profile of isotopes on all planets studied or as result of supernova explosion models and then time evolve them (study all chains and present all known natural processes to the reader) and spot any inconsistencies that might indicate artificial creation (like eg with our case and plutonium but of course need something much longer in half life). As far as i have seen i am not convinced about this isotope presentation because not all data needed is properly presented or linked to independent databases with crystal clear evidence that no natural processes can create them.


Basically what i say is this. If i had to present such a theory i would make it my goal to teach all readers about all isotopes involved as much as i can and link all kinds of 3rd parties. I would make it my goal to remove any doubt it could be something else that created the ratios. And i would most certainly not spend 2/3 of the paper talking history channel material in a paper on isotopes and talking about how erosion changes the monuments on Mars to look altered and not perfect (ie requiring our imagination to see things), similar to how the Egyptian sculptures and architecture external looks evolved in time with erosion (give me a break 5k years with 500 mil? even on 1% the atmosphere its still 100000 bigger time frames and totally different systems and by the way why would a massive civilization have large stone structures for monuments and not something better and more mathematical/symbolic to remove any doubt).

Also the journal of cosmology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Cosmology is often questioned for its scientific integrity. (all you have to do is look at the articles posted there and you will see what i mean, its a mix of science, pseudo science and conspiracy theory material in my opinion and its not at all related to the other regular academic research journals, although it tries to look a lot better than the usual suspects lol, and i am not a person that will skip reading and consider only external details like who posted where and how etc. But it cant be completely ignored either and enhances skepticism because it does have a feel of outer limits kind of conspiratorial sci fi mentality.)

Last edited by masque de Z; 11-29-2014 at 03:12 PM.
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11-30-2014 , 12:10 AM
masque: I downloaded the pdf as well. By training I am not qualified in the least to verify the assertions in the paper. But my gut tells me that the premise is that the isotopes indicates Mars was nuked 1/2 a billion years ago, and then goes into the whole Mars was inhabited thing as a reason it was nuked in the first place.

But even if Mars was nuked way back when, is it possible that it was nothing more than a test range like the Nevada test site?

ETA: I'm now getting the 403 as well....
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11-30-2014 , 04:51 AM
There are additional problems. The kind of energy he assumes released in those attacks is billions of megatons. How can this then not destroy any face or pyramid (like those he is describing as evidence of civilization) and completely alter the geometry of the planet leaving massive structures/evidence of something violent (much more violent than the craters we see since then that were the result of far less significant strikes but still have prominent presence today).

Also why all the references to ancient astronaut claims and archaeological sites on earth if something like that happened 500 mil years ago and the human civilizations mentioned are only 10k or younger ie more like 5k or less. Why did they wait 500 mil years to leave some marks/interact on earth? And why nothing since then ie middle ages that we were better and still weak? What were they doing since then that made it impossible to move to our planet or fix mars back to what we will be doing (and better) there anyway within 100 years, no matter how hard the environment? A high enough civilization, capable to visit earth in the manners suggested by the ancient astronaut/Erich von Däniken crowd is also capable to alter its own planet to be thriving again no matter what strike it received especially if it were 500 mil years ago.

Frankly i need to study a lot more the isotope discussion because by its own nature (hundreds of isotopes to talk about if one wants) one can introduce all kinds of numbers to confuse even physicists that do not have access to exact database details or havent researched the topic on their own for years. It is very easy to throw arguments all over the place that appear scientific and full of data but are not really saying anything convincing yet can be gradually made to look they do.

Bottom line one needs to show that a big explosion creates a chain of fission products that cannot be reproduced in another natural manner or over time slowly. Also recognize that with fusion you do not need fission to be such a big part of the huge explosion (its far less economical to find so much fissionable material when you have deuterium and other isotopes to do the fusion instead). He needs to show that a chain of isotopes exists that has decayed to present day in such a manner that it points creation at some particular date and then find another chain using other isotopes that points to the exact same picture.

See what i mean? Using for example U238 and U235 we can find out that they both were created in a supernova around 6-6.5 bil years ago. The ratio they are found in nature today because of the fact they have different decay half lives shows that. (ie the matter that made out solar system was created over 6 bil years ago and it took 1-2 more bil years to start creating out solar system). If you then find other isotopes that prove the same pattern and agree on the date of creation we have substantial evidence that all this out there was created back then at that date. Now you need to go and find isotopes that are created in a fission event (but not eg that way in a supernova or by other natural processes) and perform the same analysis and find today something that doesnt make sense to have happened by a natural process. You then need to find another example and show that they both point to the same date independently. That then makes is very likely you are into something big. This is how you do it and you have no need to then talk about faces and pyramids on Mars etc. They should be irrelevant to your main study that is to establish a technological origin for isotopes found on Mars today. That in itself is massive to establish and you should not undermine it by additional potential fringe science topics included.


See also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-lead_dating

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubidium-strontium_dating

Last edited by masque de Z; 11-30-2014 at 05:20 AM.
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11-30-2014 , 02:41 PM
In the paper he calculates the large explosion at a yield of 10 Billion megatons and the small at 1 Billion. So one would assume any artifacts would have been leveled.

You have to admit the irony of the planet being destroyed in a war, I mean we did name the planet after the god of war after all.
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11-30-2014 , 08:21 PM
So a big civilization had artifacts in only 2 regions of the planet? Nothing else? Nothing on the satellites? Nothing below the surface, the poles, equator? And locally the explosions werent enough to produce surface distortions much more significant in size than the impact craters we see that were millions of times less energetic strikes? Where are these severe distortions?

Also civilization on Mars is a super ridiculous claim really. First of all it would require life to evolve there for millions of years. It would cover the planet and it doesnt necessarily have to look like human in its final most intelligent version. Also the craters of Mars are like 3-4 bil years old. Look how well they are preserved! The surface of Mars is an ancient surface. Look how fast craters on earth are removed by life and erosion. Any civilization that is significant enough leaves traces in the craters like roads, lines, removes material from them, builds around them etc. Life itself would have interacted with them to alter their geometry a lot. We see none of that.
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11-30-2014 , 10:28 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by masque de Z
Also the craters of Mars are like 3-4 bil years old. Look how well they are preserved! The surface of Mars is an ancient surface. Look how fast craters on earth are removed by life and erosion.
We have plate tectonics on Earth, nothing on the surface is going to last >100 Million years. On Mars???

The sum of what we know is still < what we don't know. I believe that the past, present, and future are all a part of the same piece of cloth.

Or look at this way. Explain creation from pre-big bang to humanity. But do it in a way that I could understand if my idea of high technology was fire.

Now, a few paragraphs are out of order, but Genesis is about as good as can be done. You don't have to believe in a Deity, just look at it and understand that 5,000+ years ago, someone started to grasp the construction of the universe.
I mean look at this:

There was nothing a void
then there was light
then there was land (planets forming?)
then there was life (plant life no less...)
then higher forms of life (pidgins and pigs and people no doubt)

Honestly think you could do better?
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12-07-2014 , 02:46 PM
Fitting Genesis to big bang cosmology is a bit of a stretch.
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12-07-2014 , 08:43 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by TimM
Fitting Genesis to big bang cosmology is a bit of a stretch screech.
I agree with your point but would have stated it as above.
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12-08-2014 , 12:20 PM
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