An entertaining hypothesis. Did someone nuke the Martians?

Link to story:
http://www.thescienceminute.com/newsfollow13.html

I hope so. Perhaps they even deserved it. Or they did it to themselves.

The validity of the conclusions I question; being an ancient skeptic. But I love the wackiness of it.

It would be worrying evidence for the hypothesis that we observe no aliens due to very few intelligent life forms living long post the discovery of nuclear weapons.

Couldn't they have just played a nice game of chess?

It's the Cylons.

"previously reported artifacts"? Perhaps a Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator?

I donna know. Seems like a good reason to go in person and check it out.

This is pretty nuts. Like, if it's confirmed are there any natural ways it could have occurred? Also, is there any way nuclear explosions this large could have eradicated ALL life from a planet, removed the atmosphere, etc.?

I like thinking about intelligent life on Mars 500 mil years ago. During the Cambrian period on Earth, most life would have been in the sea, but Martians would certainly have known this was a hospitable planet. They probably had similarly silly discussions as this one about escaping Mars. Did they? Did they send their seeds here in a last ditch effort to preserve life in the universe?

Possible on a dieing planet, 2 cultures trying to hang on and went the MAD route with nukes?

If there is even the most remote possibility there was a civilization on Mars at one time...

No not an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.
See more: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2...e-brandenburg/

I don't believe all this natural reactor mumbo jumbo, I like the alien attack hypothesis, or why couldn't they have just destroyed themselves? There was bound to be a trigger-happy martian president picking fights with some pussy commies back then.

Might have been the Borg. Or maybe the Romulans.

I don't think Dr. Brandenburg mentioned Star Trek, but he does cite Terminator and Star Wars:

Armed forums was the problem.

Someone said something that a mod thought might possibly be denying something, what else could any decent martian do?

LASJayhawk i suggest you focus more on real science rather than pseudo science in your studies.

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.

Back when I was a kid, just about the time dinosaurs roamed the earth, I made the same observation several generation of children had made. Science said it was not the case.


In the 80's I wanted a new electronic part, but I was told the physics were too hard and it would never happen and the only market was a high beam indicator for a car anyway.


Five hundred million years is a long time. The theory, while way out there, only requires that A) One or more civilizations existed back then B) That at least one had developed nuclear weapon technology and C) They got into a major pissing match. It might not be probable, but it is not impossible.

So I'm not willing to discount it out of hand. And it is the best reason yet we have to go walk about on Mars. Imagine the push for space exploration if we found a bit of refined metal or a synthesized compound on another planet.

It does date you. Even older than me and I remember when the brontosaurus existed.

Thermonuclear war on Mars, yet no other evidence of any kind of technology has been found on Mars...Surely, a bit of plastic would survive?

After all, that is why the earth spawned us in the first place. It couldn't create plastic by itself and it needed us in order to become a new paradigm: Earth+Plastic.....or at least according to George Carlin.

LASJayhawk, none of the earlier times things you suggested would even come close to pseudo science. They are reasonable questions that no serious scientist would say no to.


Now look at your link, it cant be accessed due to quota reached? Really? What is this?

Then this guy with his "papers" conveniently assumes that civilization is eliminated by 2 explosions that are not big enough to alter the morphology of the planet and there is no evidence of other technology remnants on Mars. Lets see what erosion and Martial geology have to say about 500 mil years period. Also if it were me at the titles and abstracts of the papers i would put my best evidence claims right away. Where are his papers? I want serious links that one can read them.

Where is this " Evidence of Massive Thermonuclear Explosions in Mars Past, The Cydonian Hypothesis, and Fermi's Paradox" on the web to read it?

(eg more than this kind of thing that offers no evidence really but it sure does a job for people that are not scientists to get excited as if that was the goal with a book coming also later come on now!)

http://www.inquisitr.com/1625693/phy...PqKiH4Jq0TU.99

http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/PSF14/Session/G1.3

As always extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence too. I dont see any numbers and until i see all isotopic analysis i have no opinion other than huge skepticism due to the other conveniently lacking evidence of prior civilizations and because its not enough to detonate 2 weapons however big to "kill" a planet.

Sure enough though it may be aliens doing exercises on an uninhabited ancient Mars with Earth just before the dinosaurs having lots of life (cambrian era). Sure its fancy to imagine something happened in the solar system 500 mil years ago (hinting alien technology presence) that is followed by Cambrian explosion or coincides with it. That may be a suggestion of aliens visiting our system and testing weapons on Mars (for who knows what reason or for leaving an easy trace of their presence for us to find in time) and then visiting earth and altering life there to give it a boost and then leaving. But good luck now offering real evidence for this "coincidence" other than that it makes a good sci fi movie plot with the "engineers" studying ways to boost life on earth while also testing weapons on Mars or other fancy plots involving them. But all this is of course extraordinary to claim and needs massive support with numbers and papers that are found in decent journals.

First of all a decent paper never claims aliens. A decent paper does this;

Offers all evidence in numbers and asks questions. Offers the aliens hypothesis as a completely rational question to entertain in combination with Cambrian explosion if the isotopic origin timing is accurate but absolutely never supports it as major claim, only demands people to eliminate it since all other such evidence is missing from observing the universe.

In other words i would introduce the idea as remote possibility but only after first doing a significant clean job in presenting the numbers and also examining many other possible explanations. The aliens angle would be only a small intriguing suggestion/question, not a major theme. I would then proceed to time the Cambrian explosion very accurately or ask people to do it for us.


As it is i still need to even convince myself that there is anything fancy going on with isotopes before we even go anywhere else.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian

500 Million years is a long time. Still there might be bits to be found if we look long enough. But even if there wasn't intelligent life is is possible plant life was there a billion or so years ago. If life did thrive there once, the way to tell is look for crude oil. Black gold, Texas tea.

There are other far easier things to test if life existed 500 mil years ago than "oil".

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.

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.

Yes but if you found a few billion barrels of crude there would be no doubt...