Podcaster: Dr. Al Grauer
Title: Travelers in the Night 299E & 300E: Caves of Mars & Lost and Found
Organization: Travelers in The Night
Link : Travelers in the Night ; @Nmcanopus
Description: Today’s two stroy:
- Presently the surface of Mars is very dry and any liquid water that reaches it quickly boils away since the martian atmospheric pressure is what you could experience in your space suit 30 to 50 miles above the Earth’s surface. However, since the martian gravity is about 1/3 that of the Earth, its crust is less dense and more porous than what we find on our home planet.
- When asteroid hunters follow an object in the night sky for a few hours or a couple of days they are only able to observe a snippet or tracklet of the object’s hundreds to thousands of days long path around the Sun. If we only have a short sample of an orbit we loose precision to locate the object as the length of time since the last observation increases. It is thus possible to lose the knowledge of where to find a particular asteroid. to be a coating of water ice or hydroxyl on the surface! A mission may go to Psyche in 2020, and arrive in 2026.
Bio: Dr. Al Grauer is currently an observing member of the Catalina Sky Survey Team at the University of Arizona. This group has discovered nearly half of the Earth approaching objects known to exist. He received a PhD in Physics in 1971 and has been an observational Astronomer for 43 years. He retired as a University Professor after 39 years of interacting with students. He has conducted research projects using telescopes in Arizona, Chile, Australia, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Georgia with funding from NSF and NASA.
He is noted as Co-discoverer of comet P/2010 TO20 Linear-Grauer, Discoverer of comet C/2009 U5 Grauer and has asteroid 18871 Grauer named for him.
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Transcript:
299E – Caves of Mars
Presently the surface of Mars is very dry and any liquid water that reaches it quickly boils away since the martian atmospheric pressure is what you could experience in your space suit 30 to 50 miles above the Earth’s surface. However, since the martian gravity is about 1/3 that of the Earth, it’s crust is less dense and more porous than what we find on our home planet. This situation leads Dr. Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory to state “I consider it likely that there are deep pockets of water in the martian crust not yet detected”.
Letting our imaginations run wild, if there are deposits of liquid water miles underground perhaps there might be subterranean lakes fed by volcanic tubes. Lava tube environments could be warmed by geothermal sources, have trapped, enclosed, pockets of liquid water, and be replenished by water flows up from the martian mantle. Even today these deep martian caves are theoretically likely to contain warm mineral rich liquid water in contact with a thermal energy source. It is intriguing to consider that deep inside Mars all of the necessary ingredients for life may be present together. On Earth we find this type of environment near hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor to have rich biological diversity of living organisms.
Perhaps there are martian organisms in deep underground aquifers that migrated there from the surface as conditions changed or maybe that has always been their home. The only way to know if any parts of this fantasy are true is to find and explore the deep caves of Mars.
300E – Lost and Found
When asteroid hunters follow an object in the night sky for a few hours or a couple of days they are only able to observe a snippet or tracklet of the object’s hundreds to thousands of days long path around the Sun. If we only have a short sample of an orbit we loose precision to locate the object as the length of time since the last observation increases. It is thus possible to lose the knowledge of where to find a particular asteroid.
Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski came across a moving point of light in the night sky which initially the Minor Planet Center classified as an unknown object . For the next 70 hours telescopes in New Mexico, Arizona, Italy, England, France, South Africa, Chile, New Zealand, Germany, and Pennsylvania measured the object’s position in the sky and sent their observations to the Minor Planet Center. These data enabled scientists there to link to an object which had been discovered 15 years earlier, 2001 WF49.
In this way asteroid hunters were able to recover the ability to accurately predict the position of 2001 WF49, a 426 foot diameter object which orbits the Sun every 238 days on a path that has brought it near Earth nearly 50 times since 1900. 2001 WF49 comes much closer to Mercury than it does to Earth and must be made of rocky or metallic stuff to survive it’s relatively close approaches to the Sun. This might make 2001 WF9 a candidate for mining in the future as space colonists look for resources to build their homes and factories.
365 Days of Astronomy
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As we wrap up today’s episode, we are looking forward to unravel more stories from the Universe. With every new discovery from ground-based and space-based observatories, and each milestone in space exploration, we come closer to understanding the cosmos and our place within it.
Until next time let the stars guide your curiosity