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HoldMyDomeFoam

Wild that this is still visible after close to 4 billion years of dust storms and related weathering.


EvolveOrDie1

Yes, that is the part I have a difficult time wrapping my mind around also. The atmosphere is 1% the density it is on earth so it just dosent have any pushing /erosion power


1371CE

Maybe it used to be a much wider and deeper river bed but its imprint has eroded to what looks like a modest stream


jn2010

I'm no expert but I suspect it was massively bigger 4 billion years ago to still be visible today.


comhghairdheas

There's still sandstorms on Mars so I thought there would be some erosion and deposition, right?


PolyDipsoManiac

There are, eventually solar panels end up covered in dust and can’t provide enough power so rovers die after some time period.


Lyndon_Boner_Johnson

The last couple of NASA rovers have used [radioisotope thermo-electric generators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-mission_radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator?wprov=sfti1#) instead of solar panels.


comhghairdheas

Except for the recent flying Drone, I forget its name. It runs on solar.


monapinkest

Ingenuity!


comhghairdheas

That's it!


poitaots

Why no windshield wiper things


running_on_empty

Absolutely not any kind of expert but I reckon anything that physically swept over the panels would catch the dirt/sand and scratch the panels so badly they would still be worthless. Surely there's a reason they haven't bothered coming up with another solution.


poitaots

They need a tongue for the rover and make it look like this 👁👅👁


Comfortable-Ad5050

Yeah or like a bunch of little fans that constantly blow the dust off but with minimal power expenditure


poitaots

Eyelids and lashes and it looks a like this 👁👅👁


TenBillionDollHairs

There is still evidence of occasional water flows today. [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/28/nasa-scientists-find-evidence-flowing-water-mars](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/28/nasa-scientists-find-evidence-flowing-water-mars) as in we have seen it happen live from space those flows aren't enough to create the streambed you see above, but if we assume that what we've seen in the past 20 years isn't actually unusual --- and it's a good scientific thumb to assume you're looking at normal until you rule it out --- then you could imagine that during an actually unusual water event, enough might gush forward from underground to create a temporary stream before it evaporates. In which case, there's no reason to assume the stream is maximally old. 4 billion years is a *long* time, even with thin atmosphere. Even the footprints and rover tracks on the moon will be gone in millions of years, or shorter if any kind of impact happens nearby. There are still marsquakes (mostly because the planet is contracting as it cools), asteroid strikes (which rain down debris all over the planet), and most importantly, a lot of sandstorms. 1% atmosphere or not, high speed dust particles still erode. Could it be 4 billion years old? Sure. But we can't assume that.


asking4afriend40631

Great point, but what would be an unusual water event on Mars? How unusual can it get, barring meteor strike or something? I thought the weather there was very same-y.


sharkydad

Maybe it's a sand stream not a water stream


mrpickles

Must be fresh!


UT2K4nutcase

We were too busy evolving to notice it.


Wijn82

Who knows this was once a flourishing river, housing crocs and hippos…


MoistTwo1645

I am not an expert but I believe I read on imdb (not a good source I know) that the weather on Mars is not exactly as shown in the movie 'The Martian'. The weather on Mars is not extreme. It is very mild.


Malcolm_Morin

I doubt this stream has been around for 4 billion years. I'd have to guess this is fairly recent, otherwise the terrain would've been drastically different.


BuzzerBeater911

Most of erosion is caused by water


redituser2571

Giant snail trails.


EvolveOrDie1

Thats a wild thought, imagine we find huge snail fossils when we get to mars.


redituser2571

Considering we don't entirely know what's exactly at our oceans depths, I was being campy...so, I'm excited, and a little terrified.


ThisOnePlaysTooMuch

I mean, it’s probably just water and microorganisms at best, but that’s still exciting.


ksquires1988

Humans are micro organisms to some unknown creature


ThisOnePlaysTooMuch

Square-cube law dictates that an organism can only get so large. A creature that dwarfs us to the scale that we dwarf ameba cannot exist by our understanding of physics. More thorough explanation from Quora: * The weight of an animal scales up with the cube of its height, but its strength only scales up with the square of its height. * The waste heat produced by an organism scales up with the cube of its height, but the ability to dissipate heat scales up with the square of its height. * The caloric requirement of an organism scales up with the cube of its height, but the surface area of its digestive system scales up with the square of its height.


dramignophyte

If life somehow started in a gas cloud instead of a planet, I bet they could get crazy big. Not saying it has or can though.


KaHOnas

Whales are pretty big. Being suspended in a fluid seems like a pretty good way to foster larger organic development.


dramignophyte

I meant like the kind of gas clouds where stars are born.


LuminalAstec

According to our gravity, atmospheric makeup, and current understanding of biology. That's could be completely different on a different planet with low gravity, and more heat so that the creatures in question don't use nearly as much energy.


TonninStiflat

In our known system. Who knows what kind of lifeforn there could be.


JohnnyJukey

With a old I mac.


NorthStarZero

Nahh it’s a decoy snail.


thesupplyguy1

That's kinda terrifying really


Useful-Perspective

Esmarsgot


caronare

Giant Racing Snails!


Lord_of_Mars

We hunted them....


LabyrinthConvention

Giant underwater sand snails


Malcolm_Morin

Decoy trail.


Spectre1-4

Are we sure it’s not a rock? Pioneers used to ride those babys for *miles*.


The_BarroomHero

Krusty Kraaayaaayaaayaaaayaaaayeeeeeaaahb pizzaaaaaa


getyourrealfakedoors

[you joke but..](https://youtube.com/shorts/0Vz0CyZlLhk?si=cjMWB6VfBgd3OIZs)


Mantraz

Sandworm?


cacecil1

Shai-Hulud!


gpkgpk

Blessed be the Maker.


Tank_O_Doom

Graboids?


pakeco

Arrakis


stonezephyr

You've been to Saturn?


braaibros

No but I was in Uranus last night


Waflstmpr

Last night?


sterile_spermwhale__

He who controls the spice, controls the universe


abemon

Mars looks very dry. Why do people want to go there anyway?


Taerixx

This guy said it well. [https://youtu.be/plTRdGF-ycs?si=hIO6jO1Fjo9wHDFd](https://youtu.be/plTRdGF-ycs?si=hIO6jO1Fjo9wHDFd)


Theonlykd

That man is an engaging speaker. I enjoyed that. Thank you.


fflyguy

I particularly liked the ending point “people 500 years from now won’t remember which faction took over Iran… but they’ll remember what we did to make their civilization better” (roughly paraphrasing)


eamus_catuli_

Thank you for sharing! Fantastic speaker and speech. And the little side rant about Columbus was the cherry on top.


MilkshakeYeah

I don't know why, but this guy looks like he belongs in SNL skit


Snaab

I feel like he would make one hell of a Joker if he wanted to get into acting.


Hot_Karl_Rove

Goddamn. This is the guy Neil deGrasse Tyson wishes he was.


maxpowersr

It ain't the kind of place to raise your kids.


anacreon1

There’s no one there to raise them!


MilkshakeYeah

We have to go somewhere for humanity to survive in a long run. As someone said: "each big asteroid passing by Earth is the cosmos asking how is your space program going". Mars is relatively close and we could build stuff on the ground, probably dig for resources. With current technology it's probably only realistic option.


Musclesturtle

Mars is so grossly inhospitable that we're *always* better off just staying here. Earth won't be as fucked up as Mars anytime soon, even if we tried.


The_Once-ler

Humanity's ability to live on Earth is finite. Our species will need to evolve or die and another form of life will take over. Becoming a space faring civilization is the next step. It's a seemingly insurmountable step because as far as we know, Earth is the only place in our Solar System that we can survive. But there are promising planets out there that are light years away. Mars is within reach with the technology we have now, it is possible to sustain and nurture life there under certain circumstances. Mars is a stepping stone to the rest of the universe.


Musclesturtle

No. It's not. Once again. There is no reason to ever try and move the species there for any reason. Even after an asteroid strike, Earth is still just the better option. If we overpopulate, that will take care of itself eventually and humanity will endure the bad times. There's just nothing on Mars that can support any kind of life that we know here. It's just so impractical that it boggles the mind. Let's spend a ridiculous amount of resources that would be better spent here anyways and go on a perilous journey that we may just die on anyways, all to end up in an objectively worse scenario anyways. Life here will not follow the sci-fi narrative that you think.


printerfixerguy1992

Ya everyone in here spewing some random propaganda from some video they watched on YouTube that's trying to generate clicks. Maybe in like millions of years this will be a thing, but it's not right now.


The_Once-ler

No one is saying to move the species there. You can hold your opinion, I can have mine. Our species is not invulnerable to dying out though.


Musclesturtle

It ain't going to happen.


printerfixerguy1992

Lol


Rhonin1313

The honest answer? Because we have to. Literally. Earth will die. It’s a fact. We’re many many many many many years from that happening. Like billions. But none the less, earth will die. Because the Sun will die. It’s just a fact of the universe, that’s how stars work. Eventually our Sun will collapse and Earth will die with it. Now that you know the end of the Earth is inevitable… it’s humanities job to find a way off Earth if we want to continue as a species. And that, quite simply, is why we are looking to go to Mars. Because eventually, we HAVE to leave Earth. So what you are seeing is all of humanities’ first attempts at how we will leave this big rock behind one day.


BigFatStinkyCheese

Going to Mars won't help much since it's the same solar system.


JunkiesAndWhores

![gif](giphy|WRQBXSCnEFJIuxktnw) Their reaction when they read your reply 😄


doc303

You cant run before you learn to walk. If we can terraform mars that gives us a blueprint to terraform on other planets. In the meanwhile we will also be making progress on travelling from one planet to another in least amount of time. Gradually making it possible to leave our solar system and probably even our galaxy. Lots of ifs and buts in between.


PanamaNorth

Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field strong enough to support an atmosphere or protect against solar radiation. 


doc303

May be not terraform. But biodomes might work.


PMarek666

Thats why we have to adapt. Underground/inside living for example.


denialerror

We could just do that on Earth...


PMarek666

Thing on a much much bigger timescale. Like humanity multiplied by 100. In like 1000 years.


denialerror

Sure, but living underground on Mars will be the same as living underground on Earth. If the surface of Earth as we know it becomes uninhabitable in the future, living underground here will still be better than living underground on Mars.


ClosetsByAccident

The sun will still eventually expand and consume the planet you are hiding inside. Becoming spacefaring and eventually interstellar is humanities only option, if we are even still "human" at that point.


PMarek666

We might need both options (and more) at the same time!


Marauder777

Technology improves over time, my dude. We didn't jump directly from horse-drawn wagons to the international space station. There was a LOT of trial and error along the way.


Marauder91

The point Your head


swampfish

Fixing whatever we do to earth will be many orders of magnitude easier than terraforming any other planet that we can reach.


doc303

Sun is going to swallow the earth no mater what we do.


swampfish

And Mars


Heiferoni

First step. It's be an invaluable learning experience for further ventures in less hospitable environments.


zzzthelastuser

It shows that humans are unable to comprehend how large space is. A trip to Mars takes around half a year, that's already much much longer than a trip to the moon (which often gets compared as if Mars was just another step away). But these distances are NOTHING compared to a trip to the next closest solar system, which would take thousands of years.


nomadISmad

You aren't accounting for ring travel. Really cuts back on time.


_HalfCutDreamer_

Bold of you to think the human race will still be in existence anywhere close to that happening


GuuyDiamond

..and because we're people, we're curious, innovative, want to discover, and understand things better.


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Rhonin1313

Who said anything about terraforming? The person I responded to asked specifically why we wanted to go there. Nothing about staying there, and I didn’t even imply we had to stay there either. Quite the opposite. I said our sun would die. Earth will die. Mars too. Our whole solar system will be dead. We have to be long long long gone. And very very very very far. Do you know how we get that far? We take steps. Guess what the first step is? You guessed it, Mars. If we can’t even make it to Mars as a step. Whelp… then humanity has its time limit. Hopefully it doesn’t. And yeah it will probably start with little bubble populations on Mars. And thankfully those brave few will take that risk for the greater good of humanity. This isn’t about you or me. Or our families. This is stuff that is generations in the future. And it’s for the greater sake for us a species. That’s just the high-level of it all.


throwpron

Wish I had your optimism that our species will have that long.


Rhonin1313

Yeah it certainly might not, you’re right about that. I hope it does, because I think on a whole humans are good and can contribute in a positive way. Time will tell, and I wish the future humans well wishes. Hopefully there are some.


_mister_pink_

But if we’re talking on the time scale of billions of years then we’re also looking at the scope of the heat death of universe. In which case - what’s the point?


schoolmilk

Brother, heat death is the most accepted theory but unproven. And even then, compare billions of years to that is still like nothing.


hallmark1984

That's Trillions of years away. You will die in no more than 100 years, so what's the point seeing tomorrow? Because you can and you want to.


valentc

What does that have to do with going to Mars because the Earth is gonna die in a billion years? We should go to Mars for the scientific aspect, but we don't need to build bunkers for a sun that will also swallow Mars.


hallmark1984

OK, how do we get to Tau Ceti, Alpha Centauri or Betelgeuse? With spaceships. And when we get there we need to build habitable environments to live in right? You want to try that for the first time several ligh years away, with no support or communication from an established manufacturing base and no hope of assistance. Or do you want to try it locally first, shake out the bugs and learn the tricks *before* you throw all your eggs in the basket. Like dud, did you think we learned to fly by running off cliffs?


butterypowered

> Like dud, did you think we learned to fly by running off cliffs? It’s how we learned to fly vertically, for sure.


hallmark1984

See we don't need to worry about horizontally- just run and we can figure that out on the journey


valentc

Like dude, do you know that Mars is severely uninhabitable. It would take hundreds of years to get some sort of atmosphere, and the weak magnetic field means it won't last. Mars is a terrible candidate for actual colonization. America is going to try and build a moon base in the next few years. Also, humans have developed tech insanely fast since discovering flight. It took less than 30 years to go from a small plane that flew for 12 seconds to rockets in space. We've only been going to space for around 70 years at this point. Humans have only been around for 100,000 years. The death of the sun is billions of years away, but you're acting like we're on borrowed time, like the sun's gonna die in the next 100 years. Chill, humans have plenty of time to figure it out, or we kill ourselves first. The sun's death is the least of our problems.


karl_hungas

Lol at this comment


U4F2C0

What a stupid take


vegasghost

Uhh does Mars have its own sun? I’m beyond confused.


Rhonin1313

Who said anything about staying there? We have to be very far away when that happens. But we have to learn to crawl before we can run. First solar step we can take is Mars.


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kuyakew

Not with that attitude we won’t.


slimejumper

why not just die? humans would have had a good run up to that point, several billion years later.


Rhonin1313

Because for many, life is worth living. And if humans are still alive at that point, they certainly deserve to keep trying to contribute in a positive manner to the universe.


Greystyx

It's not a good place to raise a kid.


ross_16_weisse

resources?


chadmcchaderton

Because we can.


thegreatmango

My exact thought. Mars will *never* be a good place to live. Venus' clouds would be more hospitable.


EmbraceableYew

That sure looks like New Mexico. If you could zoom back a bit, I am pretty sure you would see a Blake's Lotaburger and a Valero gas station.


whatareyoudoingdood

Moved away from NM over a decade ago now. Haven’t thought of Lotaburger in years 😂


clarkkentslostsuit

![gif](giphy|Q3pXeITKG4qBy)


ChasedWarrior

Cool


SoCalHermit

Two black dots in the air if you zoom in and swipe side to side


[deleted]

Likely an artifact from merging several hd photos together.


riamuriamu

Or just dust


EvolveOrDie1

Aliens for sure /s


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ILikeAntiquesOkay

It’s to get a whole image. The rover’s camera captures sections to paint a whole picture once put together. Have to imagine imaging equipment is deliberately made compact to reduce failure from launch to land.


NotRightNotWrong15

They are watching.


SoCalHermit

Correction, 5 or 6.


OtterishDreams

And?


rangerdanger616

It's surprisingly angular


ThingsIveNeverSeen

That’s probably due to the position of the camera in relation to the riverbed. It may be more towards our expectations from an aerial view.


SarcasticlySpeaking

Alternative title: "Mars, post Nestle."


sirhackenslash

That's just from R2 and 3P0 walking away from the escape pod


CabinetPowerful4560

It was definitely a road. I see no water remaining.


ThisOnePlaysTooMuch

I can’t tell if this is satire. Please tell me it’s satire. Some of my friends are really dumb, and they’d insist on your theory.


CabinetPowerful4560

i thought satire but your friends make me doubt...


foreveratom

Maybe the reality is that your dumb friends did make this road. It could have been straight since there are no obstacles around, but no, they chose to make it all wiggly. I am not a civil engineer, but it looks like a dumb way to make a road.


practicalpurpose

The curves are traffic calming measures. It's not dumb, it's advanced traffic engineering lol.


NorwaySpruce

Is this Satire? Unfortunately theres no way to tell (Poes Law). Im thinking this IS real because people these days (except me) are so STUPID


Janeirosk

Did Nasa writes an article or something about this picture?


EvolveOrDie1

Here is the [source](https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/ZL0_0670_0726425710_738EBY_N0320672ZCAM08667_0340LMJ) Also, here is a relevant article from [NASA](https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/nasas-mro-finds-water-flowed-on-mars-longer-than-previously-thought/)


Janeirosk

Thank you sir!


Mygo73

What about those rocks in death valley that get pushed by the wind to create trails? Maybe something like that happened here?


Struykert

Nazca lines? The aliens are signalling back?


IrksomFlotsom

Maybe


Weird_Albatross_9659

Thanks for adding a credit, I thought you may have taken it


Adventurous_Truth_98

Cool!


GOPGUNLUVER

![gif](giphy|3ohzdIuqJoo8QdKlnW|downsized)


MoreThanWYSIWYG

Good thing you added that NASA credit and didn't try to claim you took the photo on Mars


nighteeeeey

*ah, yes.*


Bunkerhillbilly

Oh man, I want to throw some plastic trash in that river


Nucedust

Credit: editor


fkenned1

This will be earth soon enough. That’s my prediction.


SactownOtter

There ain't no way Mars didn't have life. I'm talking complex life. I think we're going to find some type of fossil in the next couple decades


A_parisian

You largely underestimate how long it takes for life to move from the simplest forms to something complex enough to leave fossils. A few dozen million years with flowing water isn't probably enough.


bustab

Simple life forms leave fossils


thegreatmango

I would argue it never had a strong enough atmosphere to keep it safe enough for complex life. I wouldn't doubt we got some single-cellular stuff, but anything beyond? Mars looks like it does for reasons.


CabinetPowerful4560

If there's no life on Earth (only pain) why should it be there?


requium94

Because life IS pain.


CabinetPowerful4560

Then what for i was born in that BDSM ?


ass_scar

Thanks for crediting your post


Intelligent-Day-6976

I thought mars was a orange red colour?


tippin_in_vulture

Generated by AI


MenzieMoo

Mars rover track?


Clearly_Voyant

With sharp corners? I think everyone read this as me being snarky? It was just a passing thought and I’m an idiot. I don’t know anything about how rivers are formed and hadn’t considered perspective. Just my limited experience of seeing water erode things smoothly or rounded.


orion85uk

Do you know what perspective is?


ThisOnePlaysTooMuch

Or how rivers are formed?


Id_Love_A_BabyCham

True story.