Talk:Water on Mars/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2

Removal of statement

Reserves of water on Mars may dramatically lower the need of water supplies for any human exploration of Mars.[citation needed] -

I think it's kinda obvious why I removed it.

Black Sea is not a lake (it is connected with Mediterranean Sea through Bosporus, Sea of Marmara and Dardanelles). Please rephrase or remove this statement.--Κλειδοκράτωρ (talk) 16:01, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Major rewrite

This translated stub is OK as a holding page, but I'm putting together a new page based on content in other pages on Wikipedia. I've collated all the info I can find on a subpage of my user page here: [1]. Now it needs to be woven together. Fences and windows (talk) 01:16, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

What garbage. This article is terrible. Where is the geological history? It seems to have been cobbled together in bits and pieces with no internal continuity. I only found one sentence indicating where the water that Mars supposedly had has gone. One sentence! This article needs a major rewrite. It is best characterized as a "regurgitation", not an article. And I am fascinated by the mental processes that allowed somebody to claim that satellite evidence PROVES that colonists can collect water. Absolute garbage. (And of course it is mentioned that water is made of hydrogen which fueled the Shuttle!)216.96.77.42 (talk) 22:06, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes. WP:SOFIXIT? This has been on my to-do list for ages, but it's so daunting. It needs total dismantling and putting back together - probably a few days work. Maybe I'll do this at Christmas, if no-one else beats me to it. DanHobley (talk) 18:20, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Czech version

The translation here is a stub, compared to a more extension version on Czech wiki. See this Google Translation: http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fcs.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FVoda_na_Marsu&sl=cs&tl=en&history_state0=. Fences and windows (talk) 22:00, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

If this article is from a translation, it shows. Article needs much editing.Schaffman (talk) 03:53, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Two new BBC News articles

  • Rincon, Paul (23 March 2009). "Q&A: Liquid water on Mars". BBC News. Retrieved 2009-04-02. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

BatteryIncluded (talk) 03:38, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Ta! Fences and windows (talk) 11:56, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Framework for the new article

Fences and windows (talk) 11:56, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Exceptionally long article

I've noticed on a read through that this article is incredibly long. I think it's in need of a major trimming down; there's no other article on WP as long as this, or at least that I've seen. Mouse Nightshirt | talk 00:31, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it is quite long. It contains far too many images in my opinion, seem to be more than hundred. I'd suggest removing at least half of them, if not more. Article should be dominated by text, not by images. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 21:09, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Not only is it a bit lengthy, but it has very unusual organization for a wikipedia page... perhaps inappropriately so. Also, in some places it isn't written with proper encyclopedic style. For example, the section "Does Mars have enough water for life?".
I hate to merely be a critic, but I'm not nearly qualified enough to attempt rewriting or reorganizing this article. :)
The2crowrox (talk) 00:58, 5 November 2010 (UTC)


While it is a fairly long article, I think that it, unlike most articles, can (and does) answer every question you could possibly have without needing to use the references (at least if you don't want to). Also, the "Does Mars have enough water for Life?" Section, while it contains several questions, also has the answers for them, like the way some encyclopedia articles have questions before answers, so people wouldn't have to ask those questions in the future.75.206.239.221 (talk) 14:31, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

The problem at hand has more to do with layout and the lack of summary style. I'm exploring options on how to clean this up, but the current article is unreadable. Viriditas (talk) 07:19, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Image about frost next to Viking Lander

There is an image which shows frost next to Viking, it seems to be made out as a real image but the sky is blueish...Is this faked or merely an artist's conception misplased? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.105.244.104 (talk) 17:06, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I checked the image and it seem to be real yet modified, nothing in the description explains anything about the sky other than perhaps " near true color " . —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.105.244.104 (talk) 17:10, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

You might want to check File talk:Mars Viking 21i093.png and the links posted there, and I recommend Phil Plait's detailed explanation in particular – the use of colour comparison tabs would seem to rule out the possibility of tampering to cover up some major conspiracy going on at NASA. On Wikipedia itself, we have Extraterrestrial skies#The color of the Martian sky and Astronomy on Mars#The color of the sky. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 09:55, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Age of Mars

I think this section should be removed. I have an updated version at Geology of Mars. Schaffman (talk) 03:30, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Mariner 9

The photos shown are clearly not Mariner 9 images; the level of detail is much too high. These are Mars Gobal Suveyor MOC images.Schaffman (talk) 03:39, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Reference for "much less water ice than on Earth"?

Is there a reference for the first sentence of the article, which claims that "Water on Mars is much less abundant than it is on Earth, in all three states of matter"? For the liquid and gaseous state, this is obvious, but I'm not at all sure about the solid state: Water ice might well be more abundant on Mars then on Earth, depending on how much subterraneous water ice Mars has. The article already mentions the possibility of "all holes in the soil [being] filled by water, this would correspond to a global layer of water 0.5 to 1.5 km deep." This would result in more water ice on Mars than on Earth... --Roentgenium111 (talk) 15:08, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Any reason for question marks?

I'm not sure that question marks are necessary in this article. An encyclopedia would never contain any question marks unless there is information that needs to be verified. I think that these question marks should be removed and re-done into something more acceptable. --SpaceChimp1992 14:01, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

On this subject...I found these quite odd. It seems like the section (at least) "Possibility of Mars having enough water to support life" is copied from another article...it just has that blog-y feeling about it... JguyTalkDone 20:25, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Cleanup

Length, layout, and other structural problems make this unreadable. It will be easier to take a modular approach rather than to fix everything at once. This also has the benefit of letting the pieces fall into place instead of forcing the layout to fit a predetermined structure. I'll start with the lead:

  1. Lead section
    1. Does not properly summarize an article of this length. Recommend doubling the size. This may sound strange because we already have size issues to deal with, but it will be shown that subsequent sections can be trimmed and summarized.
    2. Need to summarize age, findings, sources and evidence of water, geography, MOH, and open questions about life.

More to come. Viriditas (talk) 07:25, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Strongly agree with this sentiment. I'll pitch in if helpful. This could quite easily be an excellent article if sharpened to a cutting point. DanHobley (talk) 14:54, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
OK... for a start, I'm just going to delete the timescales section. It's been tagged as straying from topic (quite rightly) for a while, and is a really bad way to start IMO. We can change the rest of the text to deal with the absence of this text... I'll go for it if no-one registers strong opinion against in the near future. DanHobley (talk) 02:06, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Cleanup - the plan???

Hi all.

OK - reading through the comments on this talk page in the recent past, it's clear we have a consensus that this article needs "dealing with". The key problems already raised by others are:

1. Irrelevant timeline section up front.
->Clearly, it's foolish to have the very first section in an article about water on Mars that doesn't even mention water on Mars. I've just gone ahead and excised this section. Turns out in the whole of the rest of the article the relevant Epoch names were only used twice too (which is its own problem - see below), but where I found these I just hyperlinked them to the proper timeline pages. Might want a change of approach later, but let's say that'll do for now.
2. Waaaaaaay too long
3. Unencyclopedic style
4. "Unreadable" - It is to me as well, and I'd say that's mainly a function of its length. All the juicy information is way down the page.

I would say that pts 2,3, and 4 pretty much demand a restructuring. Cosmetic changes just aren't going to cut it. A lot of the text is fine, but it needs to be thoroughly reorganised, and I would say good chunks of it moved into subarticles.

I'd like to propose a new structure, as below. Will gladly take recommendations on the best order for the main 4 sections. I can envision equally good cases for putting exploration history before evidence (many other articles are stuctured like this), and also for the general "story" section earlier too! But that puts the evidence last, which seems equally wrong. Hmmm.

1. Intro.
Nice clean, tight summary. It's actually not bad as is, but as Veriditas notes, more would be better.
2. Theory.
The stuff about the theoretical impossibility of pure liquid water at the surface today. Bit of stuff about mixing in salts to make it work. Then the palaeoclimate modelling, and disputes over whether you can ever persuade Mars to get warm enough to host a permanent hydrosphere. This should give context for what comes after. Should be short!
3. "Evidence for water on Mars"
This is IMO the backbone of the article. A lot of it is already there, but it lurks over halfway down the present article. I would say it subdivides as follows, with the rationale being decreasing level of obviousness!
a. Atmospheric water
(i.e., Atmospheric vapour. Clouds. High altitude snow seen by Phoenix. Probably some other stuff) These are direct, unarguable measurements of H2O. Emphasis goes on this fact up front!
b. Surface, near-surface and subsurface ice
Again, direct observations up front. Icecaps, and all that goes with them. Pheonix's little hole with the evaporating ice. The white stuff blasted out of craters. etc etc *Then* inferences of subsurface "Cryosphere", emphasising this is quite theoretical (or does that mean it's better suited to section 4?).
d. Surface and near-surface water
Emphasise there's no direct evidence of this today (this month's Nature paper partially excepted!). But loads of circumstantial evidence for past water flow (outburst floods and valley networks chief among them, plus wet meteorites), and a fair bit for transient modern flow (e.g., gullies, Nature paper).
4. "Water through Mars history"
Probably need to attempt some sort of synthesis of all this disparate information. Need to emphasise that the Martian water cycle is one cohesive whole, just like on Earth. And, vitally, that it has likely changed strongly through time. This information is almost totally absent from the article at the moment, at least in any usable fashion. This is a major oversight! I might recommend these sections-
a. A Martian water cycle, changing through time. (A very short intro!)
b. Noachian Mars. (Age of the valley networks. Lakes. wet???) Wet N-H transition as a separate section?
c. Hesperian Mars (Oceans. Outburst floods. Sporadic alluvial fans and deltas (lakes again). A time of drying???)
d. Amazonian Mars (Age of ice?)
e. Modern Mars.
5. "Discovery of water on Mars"
This is essentially the current first half of the article. BUT it needs very strongly thinning out - both images and text. I would say this whole section goes in bulk into a new article, "Evidence for water on Mars, by mission"or something, then the highlights come into this article, trying not to repeat too much from above. Probably consists of a paragraph introduction, then broken down by mission (as now). I strongly favour having this at the back, as I don't think the casual visitor to a site about water on Mars really wants a history of exploration. They surely want to know whether there any, and where it is, and when in Martian history it was! When we happened to realise it was there is much less significant, IMO.

6. The (already a bit controversial??) "Is there enough water for life on Mars?" section.


Comments please! I'm going to start sandboxing a revision in the very near future. I'll post a link to the draft once the bare bones are there.

DanHobley (talk) 02:48, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Way too many images, which need to be pared back significantly. I'll watch out for the link to draft. Ben MacDui 18:05, 3 September 2011 (UTC)


I'm starting to revise and edit article. One problem is that we know have a great deal of good data to deal with on this topic. Also, the pictures from Mars keep getting better and better. For starters, I've set up a new link on Mars glaciers and greatly cut the section in this article. I've been busy with moves around country; I will slowly be reducing the size and complexity of the article. Note, that there is a lot of good material to deal with. I just reduced the size of a large section of the article, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Nex, I'll try to address some of the other observations people have made.Jimmarsmars (talk) 21:00, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Agree that the modern images are nice, but we must be more selective then! i.e., I guess we go on a pre-MSL purge and replace them with the modern stuff. And very much agree that the way to cut length is to hive off material, though we need to be careful about duplication? (I was surprised there wasn't a page about martian glaciation already, but clearly not! I should add to that...) I've already made timeline of discoveries of water on Mars myself, but haven't yet incorporated it as it needs quite a lot of reduction work on the main page first. Just to re-emphasise, I also think the whole article needs inverting as well to get evidence not missions up front. Don't be surprised if this happens at some point, but if I go for it I'll conserve your changes. DanHobley (talk) 21:44, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I hate to throw anything away, but there is a great deal of good stuff coming in and probably will for some time. I would lean to splitting off the sections on the probes into separate while leaving summaries behind. Perhaps, a history of the search for water would be a good separate article. It seems the whole article started with descriptions of what each mission discovered. That was probably an excellent way to go at the time, but there has been an explosion of knowledge in the past year or so. I would guess that most people who visit this article just want to know what the current opinion is about the amount of water on Mars. Another point that should be made is that Wikipedia is probably the only update source of information for the non scientist. The usual outlets of information can't keep up.```` I just edited and shortened the section on Mars Odyssey. Jimmars````

Exactly! DanHobley (talk) 02:31, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Others have suggested changes in the intro. I've started a revision. I'm going under the impression that most readers just want a short summary of what most scientists beleive today. Few will want all the details, but the details should be available someplace. There is a great deal of material to use to explain the topic. Going through the discoveries of each mission is one good way. Another is to go with various topics such as glaciers, rivers, lakes--but this approach can get complicated. ```` I just added an new intro to this article. It gives a general summary of what is thought about water on Mars today. It is very heavy on references to back up statements. It also says more details are in the sections describing the various spacecraft.JimmarsmarsJimmarsmars (talk) 16:24, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

In anticipation of an upswing of water-on-Mars-related enquiries in the wake of today's successful Curiosity launch, I have finally begun a reorganisation of this page. I'm sandboxing at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DanHobley/Water_on_Mars. Clearly this is totally not ready yet (give me... errr... I dread to think!), but thought I'd at least give notice of my intent. To reiterate, basically I'm 1. inverting the structure with water types first (present then past) then missions later, and 2. thinning out the length (there's a whole bunch of duplication). DanHobley (talk) 04:05, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Mid-Importance - really???

I've just noticed the article is only rated as mid-importance on the solar-system scale. Shurely some mistake? This is "high" to me, and I would like to think NASA's current "follow the water" policy for space exploration agrees with me. e.g., http://www.hq.nasa.gov/mars/presentations/FTW/index. And especially given Curiosity is now on its way to Mars to do just that. Thoughts? Am I just allowed to crank this setting up myself? I've not messed with the project banners before. DanHobley (talk) 04:10, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

As far as I know you are free to change it. Generally I avoid doing this unless I am a member of the project in question - although you are also free to join of course. The alternative is to drop a note to them requesting a re-assessment. Ben MacDui 12:19, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

5000 years of water?

Although I'm skeptical against their interpretations of 0.1% clay ==> 0.1% time, the researchers use Phoenix information to claim that their sites claylike material demonstrates at most 5000 years of floating water exposure. (Personally I would rather imagine a system of counteracting decay and buildup processes of clay qualities where a linear formula is plain wrong). Their statements could perhaps be mentioned. Rursus dixit. (mbork3!) 09:02, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Reorganization and re-write

Within the next day or two, I will begin a reorganization of this article. Most of it is due to lots of repetition; for example, there are multiple sections on liquid water, ice, gullies, deltas, etc. Unless duplicated, I will try to avoid deletions, and will retain nearly all references. Also, I will try to separate the information that describes the past water environment from the present one. I will welcome feedback. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 22:10, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

The re-write is done. Here are some of my thoughts of this overhaul:
  1. I created a logical and more compact format, and then collected all related information in each section.
  2. This article contained several repeated sections on the same subjects. Deletion of duplications was massive.
  3. There were whole sections that already have a parent article somewhere else in Wikipedia, so now those sections show a summary and link to their parent article (per WP:MOS).
  4. Some statements were repeated throughout the article, so I condensed them and placed them in the most pertinent sections. In the case of statements of habitability/life, it has a new section linked to its parent article.
  5. Images were...I think we all agree: excessive. Few representative images from each parent article or section are enough. A modest gallery is at the bottom of the article now.
  6. I introduced the 'multiple citation format' when a reference is cited used more than once. That alone cut the number of bits immensely. I have tried to preserve all the references.
  7. Ran it through a spell checker.

Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 05:37, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of section on Possibility of Mars having enough water to support life

I'd like to point out that BatteryIncluded has deleted this section. I won't try to argue with him because I have had a fruitless argument on the "life on Mars" page on this very topic. He is convinced that the cosmic ray arguments that make dormant life impossible over hundreds of thousands of years periods in the surface of Mars also make it impossible for life to survive even if reproducing every year (although cosmic radiation levels on the surface are comparable to the interior of the ISS). I gave up arguing the point with him.

However I'd like to point out that there has been a major conference earlier this year in February (with 38 scientists presenting the results of their researches) [The Present-Day Habitability of Mars 2013 - Program]

You can watch the video presentations and decide for yourself if the current prevailing scientific opinion is that the surface of Mars is potentially habitable or uninhabitable. It is true that before the Phoenix lander possible salty brine observations in 2008 the prevailing view was that life on the surface of Mars is impossible. But that is no longer the consensus and it would be hard to find a single researcher in the field who holds that opinion today. I have put a copy of the section into my user space as I frequently use it for reference and found it a useful resource. Please note I did not write this section myself, only added a couple of sentences to it. User:Robertinventor/possibility_of_Mars_having_enough_water_to_support_life I strongly recommend that it be reinstated. Robert Walker (talk) 01:42, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

The article re-write is in process and will go live soon. The deletion Walker's assay was dealt with elsewhere, where he was shown to 1) contradict the scientific references, and 2) openly admitted to introducing POV and Synthesis. That case is now closed. His assay is being replaced by an encyclopedic and verifiable section that will be entitled "Assessment of habitability". Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 02:23, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
My replies on the Life on Mars page were only OR and SYNTHESIS because none of the papers I have found in the recent published research mention the effect of cosmic radiation on life on Mars. They discuss other limiting factors such as UV and temperature and presence of liquid water but do not mention cosmic radiation, which they surely would do if it was still considered significant.
The new "habitability assessment" section is equally OR and SYNTHESIS in its argument leading to the opposite conclusion.
There is no recent paper to my knowledge published since 2008 that makes this argument. The habitable environments on the surface, if they exist, would be continuously habitable for all the billions of years of the Mars geological history. As the axial tilt changes, the latitudes of habitable zones change but many of them are always present. So, life does not need to be dormant over long timescales.
One example: wherever there are suitable salts on the surface, such as concentrations of Magnesium Sulfate, they have been shown to deliquesce in the Martian atmosphere. This happens briefly at times when the humidity of the atmosphere is high in early morning and late evening. Once the liquid phase forms, it is metastable and on cooling remains liquid below the eutectic limit.
Another example: at the same times of day, when atmospheric conditions of high humidity prevail and the evening and morning frosts occur on Mars, any lichen on Mars if such organisms exist could take in moisture directly from the air (as they do in cold regions on Earth) and a series of experiments in Germany have shown that they would be continually viable on the surface metabolizing and photosynthesizing in partly shaded areas of the rocks, can cope with the ultra violet radiation in these conditions. Anyone who listens and watches the conference videos above will know this.
The scientific papers he cite in this section themselves state opposite conclusions to the ones he hold himself e.g. in this 2006 paper which he cites in support of his view that there are no surface habitats for life

In summary, within the upper five meters most of Mars is either too cold or too dry to support the propagation of terrestrial life. However, there are regions that are in disequilibrium, naturally or induced, that could be classified as “special” or enough uncertainty exists to be unable to declare the regions as “non-special.”

It says "most of Mars is either too cold or too dry" not "all of mars is either too cold or too dry". There "special" means potentially habitable surface environments on Mars. So already back in 2006 they considered the possibility of such regions. The recent research has expanded this and the suggested regions are now widespread over much of the surface of Mars.
In this paper which he cites, cosmic radiation was specifically excluded from the list of biocidal factors to be considered:

Solar particle events and galactic cosmic rays

were considered external factors that occur infrequently or at low

dosage, respectively.

There is no way to get from that to the paraphrase in the new section:

The two current ecological approaches for predicting the potential habitability of the Martian surface use 19 or 20 environmental factors, with emphasis on water availability, temperature, presence of nutrients, an energy source, and protection from Solar ultraviolet and galactic cosmic radiation.[221][222] In particular, the damaging effect of ionising radiation on cellular structure is one of the prime limiting factors on the survival of life in potential astrobiological habitats Batteryincluded's paraphrase citing the article quoted above and earlier pre 2008 research

The discussion section makes it clear that the soils were only mildly biocidal and could support life.

Results from

the current study support our conclusion that the geochemistries of Mars regolith will not be overtly biocidal to terrestrial microorganisms, and will likely be similar to terrestrial soils of similar

geochemistries

This quote

"There can be no life on the surface of Mars because it is bathed in radiation and it's completely frozen. However, life in the subsurface would be protected from that"

Does support his view, and is indeed recent. However it directly contradicts the modern research of the habitability conference. It is a quote from an article in the Telegraph and popular articles sometimes get these things wrong, leaving out qualifications that the original scientists make, so that I suspect is the reason for it. Just about every paper in the February conference describes possible micro-habitats on the surface or in the first couple of cms of the soil above the permafrost layer.
Batteryinclded won the debate on the Life on Mars talk page by continually insulting me and not answering questions until I gave up. He shows no knowledge or awareness of these recent results. Is this "Case closed"? Life on Mars discussion
I will label this new section as OR, SYNTHESIS and cherry picking and strongly recommend to other editors that this new section is deleted and the old section restored. Is there anyone here who actually researches into life on present day Mars, or who is up to date with the research over the last five or six years?
I recommend that keen editors with an interest in this subject watch through the videos in the February conference: The Present-Day Habitability of Mars 2013 - Program. It is a couple of days of viewing if you watch all the talks, but it is a fascinating conference for anyone interested in the subject. At the end of it you will be reasonably up to date on this topic.
These two presentations I've already mentioned: Metabolic Activity of Microorganisms During and After Simulated Mars-like Conditions – What Do We Learn about the Habitability of the Red Planet? - the lichen survivability on surface of Mars talk and Experimental Formation and Persistence of Metastable Aqueous Salt Solutions on Mars which is the presentation I just mentioned about salts that if present at sufficient concentrations on the Mars surface would support liquid brine more or less continuously throughout the year at the Phoenix landing site lattitude. There are many more, just about every presentation in the conference supported habitability or presence of liquid brines on or near the surface (within the top couple of cms of soil above the permafrost layer) as high probability.
None of these have yet been confirmed on the ground, but as micro-climates they would be almost impossible to spot from orbit. Some features seen from orbit may be indirect indications of presence of micro-climates as discussed in the conference but need confirmation.
There is a contamination issue that needs to be sorted out first before landers can be sent to study them. A lander to study them would need to be sterilized to at least Viking levels and that is technically hard to do with modern electronics which is sensitive to heat treatment. Current missions are therefore sent to targets on Mars thought unlikely to have present day martian life, though future missions should be able to target these locations on Mars.Robert Walker (talk) 08:59, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
I'd also like to point out that the section "Possibility of Mars having enough water to support life" has been deleted without discussion, and without a mention on this talk page that he planned to delete it, and not reinstated. Are there any other editors here who contributed to this section? It was a long section already, several paragraphs, when I first found it and must have had previous editors. All I did is add a couple of sentences to it. What do you think about deletion of this section? Robert Walker (talk) 10:04, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of the WP:SYNTHESIS tag

Batteryincluded has removed this tag from the section: Water_on_Mars#Habitability_assessment. What do other editors of this page think about this action?

His reason for doing it, as given in his edit comment, is that he labelled it as "retaliatory tagging". But I was not retaliating to anything.

All I did is label research that I consider to be synthesis and OR with an appropriate tag.

He has not yet provided any recent research to back up his synthesis. As you see in the section above, then the papers he do cite actually support the opposite conclusion from the one he draws in the paragraph, a clear case of OR and synthesis. Robert Walker (talk) 14:39, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

References removed by BatteryIncluded

Most of the references in this section have been removed from the article without comment or discussion. I have made a copy in my own user space : User:Robertinventor/possibility_of_Mars_having_enough_water_to_support_life The article now has no mention of the many microhabitats for life proposed by extensive reasearch over the last five or six years.

The article as it is now ignores an entire area of the subject of water on Mars (in form of potential microhabitats) which is under active research by many researchers, 38 of them in the February conference earlier this year. All that is left of this entire subject is a brief discussion of seasonal flows. Robert Walker (talk) 14:49, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Please note, I didn't write this section. I have merely put it in my user space in order to be able to reference it until the matter is cleared up. Does anyone edit this article who actively researches on these topics? What I say here is not at all fringe or eccentric. It is the current prevailing view on the subject, as of the last five or six years. Robert Walker (talk) 14:52, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Is it right that an area of research that is subject of a major conference and numerous papers in the peer approved journals should be "banned" from wikipedia due to actions of a single editor? Perhaps it needs its separate page, I don't know, but the The Present-Day Habitability of Mars 2013 - Program material and all the proposed liquid brine microhabitats on Mars for sure need to be covered somewhere in wikipedia. (BTW though not mentioned in the title, nearly all the talks were on habitability of the surface of Mars and the top few cms.) That one editor thinks that the subject of the conference can't even exist is no reason for banning it. Robert Walker (talk) 09:27, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I am aware that I am feeding the troll, but for the benefit of any unsuspecting and inquiring editor:

There is already an article dealing with the assessment of Life on Mars and its habitability, past and present. So only a summary of the parent article can be shown.  Done

As I said above, all info related to water on Mars were placed in its corresponding section along with its references. That took care of about 95% of Walker's assay. Duplicated information was deleted.  Done

Regarding the habitability assessment in particular, I examined every statement against the cited source:

  1. Water is NOT the only factor to determine habitability; I included plenty of references to that effect.  Done
  2. Extremophile's relevance here, is their search in sub-surface environments ( Done) and in forward contamination , which is also included in the parent article: Life on Mars.  Done
  3. Most statements regarding current life/habitability were POV, not supported by the reference, or taken completely out of context; the most used trick was to quote past habitability papers as if they were current conditions. Deleting POV, misquotes, synthesis.  Done
  4. Regarding the 2013 habitability conference talks:
  • First 12 talks focused on salty water/brine. German Martinez proposes deep sub-surface liquid brines. Brines included in this article,  Done
  • Ashwin Vasavada talked about the Mars Science Laboratory mission; he advanced no hypotheses on Martian life or current habitability.
  • The next 6 talks also addressed the possibility of surface water with salts (brine) and perchlorates. Brines & perchlorate included in this article  Done
  • Paul O. Hayne was the only exception, he mentions that gully activity may be associated with discharge from underground aquifers as supposed as melting surface ice. (He Made no mention if of pure water or brine, and made no hypotheses on habitability.) Gullies and groundwater included in this article  Done

I will be happy to discuss this article overhaul and astrobiology literature with any editor interested in improving Wikipedia. That excludes Robert Walker, as he has shown a complete disregard to the introduction of his POV and Synthesis. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 21:42, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Am not going to reply point by point, especially has he as explicitly excluded me from the discussion but for anyone else reading this, please watch, for instance: Metabolic Activity of Microorganisms During and After Simulated Mars-like Conditions – What Do We Learn about the Habitability of the Red Planet?, as you see the author asserts that some arctic lichens could survive on the surface of Mars right now and he has tested them in space as well. In Assessing Habitability: Lessons from the Phoenix Mission the presentor at 12.07 puts forward the POV that we are more likely to find evidence of present day life on Mars than past life.
In Growth and Ultrastructure of Bacteria in 7 mbar, 0° C, and CO2-enriched Anoxic Atmospheres: Implications for the Forward Contamination of Mars Andrew C. Schuerger, one of the authors of the paper BatteryIncluded cites, Dry deposition of analog soils on microbial colonies and survival under Martian conditions - the one with the 14 biocidal or inhibatory factors mentioned in his new section on habitability assessment - he talks there about those 14 factors and has cosmic radiation as 10th in importance, and he talks about his concerns about forward contamination of the Mars surface, totally clear that he can't consider cosmic radiation to be major biocidal factor for the Mars surface, rather just a minor inhibitory factor.
Only a couple of sentences of the deleted section was by me. The sources I checked in the deleted material are about present day life on Mars, I haven't checked every source in the deleted section, just the ones that interested me and of course the ones I added myself. It might need some checking and tidying up for sure, but not wholesale deletion of the entire section and total removal from ~"Water on Mars" and "Life on Mars" of all recent research that suggests or proposes present day habitability of the Mars surface. Robert Walker (talk) 21:56, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Also please note I have always treated BatteryIncluded with respect and civility and have never insulted him or behaved in a trolling fashion. Robert Walker (talk) 08:13, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion for new article: The Present-Day Habitability of Mars

The article would include the deleted material from the section "Possibility of Mars having enough water to support life" as archived in my user space here: User:Robertinventor/possibility of Mars having enough water to support life. I would work through the citations in that section to make sure they are all about present day life and not past life and work it up into a proper article.

It would also cover the conference The Present-Day Habitability of Mars 2013 - Program and other recent research on the topic.

The idea is - that there is enough material for a separate article rather than as a section in "water on Mars". Also the "life on Mars" article is already long and is focused on issues of past life on Mars with only a brief discussion of present day life possiblities. Also it is a field of research that has numerous papers published every year in notable science journals by many different authors. So there is no difficulty establishing notability of the subject for Wikipedia.

It would cover all present day habitability suggestions so including deep below the surface, but the main focus would be on surface habitability because recent research in the last five or six years focuses on surface habitability far more than deep down habitability.

It could describe all the biocidal and bioinhibitory factors in that 14 point list, and so mention cosmic radiation as the tenth in the list, in its appropriate place as a bioinhibitory factor. In a separate article on the subject it would be appropriate to go into that level of detail which is not possible as a section of a larger article.

What does anyone else think? Robert Walker (talk) 09:50, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Sounds promising to me, but I'm surprised that an article along those lines doesn't already exist. Sounds WP:NOTABLE to me. Make sure you have a good long look around before you start a new one. DanHobley (talk) 17:53, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Rightio will do so. I've just done a search for DLR + Lichen on the grounds that the DLR lichen experiments where the lichen was found to metabolize and photosynthesize in simulations of the Mars surface would surely be mentioned, as surely one of the best known (series of) experiments in this field in the last few years, and turned up Interplanetary_contamination, Lichen, Terraforming_of_Mars and Astrobiology but those are all brief mentions and not extended treatment of present day habitability of Mars. Will do a few more searches. Anyway, so am planning to go ahead with this and see what happens, will be a while before I start on this page, maybe next week, just possibly end of this week, and do it in my user space first. That is of course, assuming that I don't turn up anything on it already. Robert Walker (talk) 10:03, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
Probably won't do this in immediate future as another article I wrote has just been confirmed for deletion. I think there is a lot of prejudice in some quarters against the recent ideas that the surface of Mars might be habitable for Earth life due to the implications for forward contamination of any human mission to the planet and backwards contamination of Earth from Mars if these micro-habitats are confirmed to exist and have either Martian lifeforms in them or potential for Earth lifeforms. But if it is true that these habitats exist, then they will be conclusively confirmed at some point or another, you can't change facts by ignoring them, so will just see what happens. Might give this article a go some time but spent probably in total a week of full time work on the other article trying to save it! Will be some time before I have the energy to attempt another new article on a related topic here I think. Instead I will write this article for my column at science20.com Robert Walker (talk) 04:18, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

B class

The article meets the six B-Class criteria:

  1. The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations where necessary. It has reliable sources, and any important or controversial material which is likely to be challenged is cited.
  2. The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. It contains a large proportion of the material necessary for an A-Class article, although some sections may need expansion, and some less important topics may be missing.
  3. The article has a defined structure. Content should be organized into groups of related material, including a lead section and all the sections that can reasonably be included in an article of its kind.
  4. The article is reasonably well-written. The prose contains no major grammatical errors and flows sensibly, but it certainly need not be "brilliant". The Manual of Style need not be followed rigorously.
  5. The article contains supporting materials where appropriate. Illustrations are encouraged, though not required. Diagrams and an infobox etc. should be included where they are relevant and useful to the content.
  6. The article presents its content in an appropriately understandable way. It is written with as broad an audience in mind as possible. Although Wikipedia is more than just a general encyclopedia, the article should not assume unnecessary technical background and technical terms should be explained or avoided where possible.

Entire talk page with many open sections has just been archived by BatteryIncluded

Just want to point out to other editors that this has happened. I believe he did this in response to a recent comment of mine in the sction where I mention an idea for a new article on the habitability of present day Mars, the subject of numerous published papers over the last six years and a major conference in February of this year.

I commented that although I had received a response from another editor suggesting I do it as clearly notable, I don't feel able to do it right now as I am pretty sure it would be immediately nominated for deletion.

He archived the page by the next day after I posted that comment. I assume good faith and don't accuse him of vandalism or anything of that sort, just suspect there may be some element of bias involved in his decision that this entire talk page needs to be archived at this moment of time. Robert Walker (talk) 16:26, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

You said your goodbyes in your last post. Besides we care little on what are your plans for your blog. THIS IS NOT A FORUM. BI

Recommendation, new article on the Present-Day Habitability of Mars

I highly recommend that Wikipedia should have an article on this subject.

This is the conference on the subject "The Present-Day Habitability of Mars 2013".

Paige is planning to create a new journal solely devoted to this subject. See UCLA holds Mars habitability conference:

At the end of the conference, Paige said he intends to publish a special journal focusing on the present-day habitability of Mars and hopes to reconvene the conference within the next five years

This is the old section from this page on habitability of the Mars surface User:Robertinventor/possibility of Mars having enough water to support life.

There are many papers on it every year by researchers in the US, UK, and Germany, and including scientists from JPL, DLR in Germany, and the NASA Ames Research Center. It has been a major subject in the literature since 2008 and undoubtedly passes WP:NOTABLE.

If another editor feels as strongly as I do that creation of this new page is a good idea, please let me know via my talk page. With two main editors involved in its creation, I feel it would easily survive AfD and be well protected from edit warring. Robert Walker (talk) 06:42, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

There is no need for a separate article just for you to spread your spam. Already existing articles suffice to discuss habitability. The above disingenuous attempt to recruit naïve meat puppets not yet aware of your project to act out your doomsday fantasies on Wikipedia will not work. Warren Platts (talk) 14:47, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
No need to be so nasty, personal attacks do not help make a point. @OP Life on Mars is a closely related article and it already has some content on habitability, if you or anyone else can add more content relating to this, I would suggest expanding that section first rather than starting an entirely new article. If there is no question of notability it could be split of at some later date anyway. Reatlas (talk) 05:38, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
I second all of Reatlas' comments here. DanHobley (talk) 15:47, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
Sadly I can't do that. One of the editors of that page also considers me to be a fanatic and deleted a fair bit of material on present day habitability of Mars here and on that page by various contributors (not just me, there was a long section on it already and I just added a few sentences to it). As I understand it, he considers that present day life on Mars is impossible and that therefore the material in the "The Present-Day Habitability of Mars 2013" conference and other recent work suggesting possibilities of habitability of Mars should be ignored, when I tried to mention them in the talk pages.
But there was nothing fringe or fanatical about this research. It was a main stream conference. These scientists are not saying there is evidence for present day life on Mars. Not even that there are habitats on Mars, as that's not yet confirmed. They just presented various lines of evidence suggesting possibilities for present day habitats on Mars. But that was enough to make it too controversial to be included here, so I was told. I've given up on this for now. Robert Walker (talk) 01:42, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
Just to say, I gave it a go, not editing the article itself as I knew any edits would be reverted immediately, but added a suggestion to the talk page as a new section just saying that since 2008 ionizing radiation is no longer considered an issue for life on the surface of Mars, and mentioning a few other things + corrections. All of this is totally mainstream now and non controversial.
The editor concerned first posted saying that everything I said was nonsense, no discussion or mention of anything I said, just a string of insults. Then after I replied to that, he deleted the whole section from the talk page - see: this diff.
I've restored that section on the talk page and asked him not to delete it again, will see what happens. Whether or not, is seems, right now anyway, unlikely that he will permit any editing of the page itself to include this material from the 2013 Habitability of Present Day Mars conference. Robert Walker (talk) 16:49, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Research published in January 2014 of data collected by the RAD instrument, revealed that the actual absorbed dose measured is 76 mGy/year at the surface, and that "ionizing radiation strongly influences chemical compositions and structures, especially for water, salts, and redox-sensitive components such as organic matter." Regardless of the source of Martian organic matter (meteoritic, geological, or biological), its carbon bonds are susceptible to breaking and reconfiguration with surrounding elements by ionizing charged particle radiation. The report concludes that the in situ "surface measurements —and subsurface estimates— constrain the preservation window for Martian organic matter following exhumation and exposure to ionizing radiation in the top few meters of the Martian surface." Paper: Hassler, Donald M. (24 January 2014). "Mars' Surface Radiation Environment Measured with the Mars ScienceLaboratory's Curiosity Rover" (PDF). Science. 343 (6169). doi:10.1126/science.1244797. Retrieved 2014-01-27. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) So, Robert Walker, kindly limit your denialist-pseudo-BS to your own blog. Sincerely, --BatteryIncluded (talk) 19:00, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

That's for past life, not present day life. There is almost no chance of present day life where Curiosity is, as the ground is dry not just on the surface but probably for hundreds of meters below the surface. Evidence of past life would also be destroyed, and they suspect that this area of organics must have been uncovered relatively recently - where recently means geologically recently like in the last few hundred thousand or millions of years - because if it was exposed for billions of years there would be no organics left or nowhere near the amounts they measured. That's what that quote is about Robert Walker (talk) 19:25, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
Another WP:CHEESE entry from the troll. What's new? BatteryIncluded (talk) 23:18, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
More on this, just wanted to update on the figures I gave for how long ago those deposits were uncovered. New results just in show that the organics uncovered by Curiosity were probably uncovered between 30 million and 110 million years ago. See New Results Send Mars Rover on a Quest for Ancient Life Robert Walker (talk) 15:19, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Nonsensical sentence in lead

"More than five million square kilometers of ice has been identified on the surface of modern Mars, which is enough to cover the whole planet to a depth of 35 meters."

That would be an impossible calculation, since it would be attempting to derive a volume from an area. --El Ingles (talk) 23:30, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Good catch. The units were entered incorrectly. Original source (Christensen, 2006) gives >5 million cubic km of ice. This should be corrected. Schaffman (talk) 11:02, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Article does not mention water in hydated minerals and as hydroxyl

Water on Mars is also present as hydroxyl, in water of hydration, and in the form of other bound water in rocks and minerals. I think this water reservoir should at least be discussed briefly because it probably makes up a significant portion of Mars' total water inventory. Do others here agree? Schaffman (talk) 19:47, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Sure! BatteryIncluded (talk) 22:35, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
Yup. DanHobley (talk) 14:53, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Notes on Recent Activity on Article

You all will notice I've been dabbling with this article, making some minor editing changes here and there, mainly in the intro section. Most of the tinkering has been with the references. IMO, there are too many. Some are inappropriately located and redundant. Also, I think that when citing books, page (or at least chapter) numbers should be given. For example, Mike Carr's Surface of Mars is a great reference, but covers a lot of water-related topics by chapter. To just cite the book as a reference doesn't help much. I also have mixed feeling about the abundant use of tertiary references (press releases, newspaper articles, etc.). I prefer using primary or good secondary references exclusively, but realize that these are not always accessible to general reader. So I don't know.

In short, I think the references need to be culled and better arranged. Not a sexy task, I know, but necessary to allow easier editing to improve the article. Any thoughts? Schaffman (talk) 08:27, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

BTW: Carr has written a whole book with the same title as this article. Though a little dated now, it's still a good resource. I've added it to the bibliography and recommended reading list. Schaffman (talk) 09:31, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello. Yes the references need to be culled. Some history: up to a few months ago, this article was extremely long with multiple redundant sections and references of all qualities. I performed a major cleanup and reformatted the article in June 16, 2013. I made an effort to keep all references for future cleanup (see my notes under "Reorganization and re-write".) User:DanHobley did considerable work following mine but a lot of redundant/outdated references remain. Please feel free to continue your high-quality edits, as I for one, appreciate the input from experts like you and Dan Hobley. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 14:08, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks much for your comments. I know how these articles can get cluttered over time and how much thankless work is involved cleaning them up. Seems a never-ending task. Glad you and others are out there interested in this subject. BTW: Dan's the real expert. I'm just a dabbler, but thanks anyway :) Cheers. Schaffman (talk) 17:02, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
I have a copy of The Surface of Mars sitting a few feet from me right now! Most of the refs to the Carr are mine, so I can probably (slowly?) add some more detail. Pages probably shouldn't be too terrible to put in. And thanks again for all the effort on this article guys - it's just so so much better than it was before BI's epic efforts in June. I feel like we could get this thing really very nice if we put in just a bit more effort, and it is a fairly important topic for WP.
Agree we should probably try to strip back refs too, though to some extent a big list is inevitable for a big topic like this. I also would agree we can remove some of the tertiary stuff, though I've also run into editors elsewhere in the science articles who actively prefer them because of access. I guess I also am unsure. Is there recommended policy we can follow here? DanHobley (talk) 18:05, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Dan. And ditto on you and BI's great efforts here. I hadn't seen this article until recently. I'm sure it is infinitely better than before with your guys worked on it. I think the policy is to prefer primary and secondary references...but I'm not totally sure either. Hope the Surface of Mars comment did not come across as disparaging. Not my intent at all. I just may have a different preference than others. Best regards, as always. Schaffman (talk) 19:55, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Oh, and I also know how these references can multiply. I added a few myself...D'oh. Schaffman (talk) 20:07, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
In a science article like this one, most primary references will be from papers published in peer-reviewed journals, which lately, are accessible for a fee. Wikipedia favors free access sources. I think a balance can be reached by quoting the papers' abstract, books, and deleting redundant references from news media. We could also delete older (outdated) references. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 14:14, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
I spent some time reviewed all the references for their reliability. They all are of high quality and found nothing outdated that grants deletion. Of particular interest is the Habitability section, which displays long strings of references. Mea culpa; It developed from an edit war between me and a fanatical user convinced of a impending and fatal Martian microbe invasion. I could trim them but in my experience with that user, he might get a second wind, and his contradicting 10 peer-reviewedpapers is harder than one. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 15:48, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
BI, the OR part of that section is when you say that life on the surface is likely dormant. Many well known scientists such as Nilton Remmo have become optimistic for prospects of life on the surface of Mars very recently, over the last few years (from 2008 onwards) as a result of models, experiments replicating Mars conditions on the Earth, and observations that all point towards the possibility of liquid water that forms on the surface of Mars occasionally. Just a few droplets of cold salty water on ice salt interfaces, or cold brine flows just a mm or so thick, but that's enough for microbial life. As Nilton Remmo said about his team's experiments that created droplets of water in Mars analogue conditions, a tiny droplet of water is like a swimming pool for a microbe.
Life that revives from time to tine - if radioresistant, can repair all DNA damage for up to several hundred thousand years of dormancy in a few hours. The level of cosmic radiation on the surface of Mars is similar to the interior of the ISS and does not prevent life if it revives occasionally.
For more on this, see User:Robertinventor/Present_day_habitability_of_Mars_dispute, which includes some of the more notable material I posted to the Life on Mars talk page about this over the last year or so. I know that you keep hiding this material from the talk page as forum / soapbox / spam - but it isn't, it is mainstream science. Do take a look at it again and read it more carefully!
They are talking here about sparse populations similar to the microbes that are able to survive in the hyperarid core of the Atacama desert - even with an extensive search it is hard to find it, but if you look, for instance in the micropores of certain salt pillars you find small populations of a few microbes, slowly metabolizing. Similarly in the Antarctic dry valleys - look just below the surface of some rocks, and if you are lucky, you find patches of microbes which may have lifetimes measured in thousands of years, they metabolize so slowly. If these postulated habitats on Mars exist, then Mars life may be like that.
I am not a troll and have always edited wikipedia according to the guidelines and in good faith edits, followed BRD, and never been a disruptive editor. Have said a bit more about this below, collapsed it as most readers of this talk page surely won't be interested in the details:
Extended content
The most you could say is that I wrote overmuch on the talk pages when I tried to defend the content when a couple of other editors deleted just about everything I'd ever contributed to the Mars section, in multiple articles, over a period of a few days without prior discussion and without giving me any opportunity to rewrite and fix any issues they had with it. I know that I wrote pages and pages of talk page text to try to persuade editors to reverse those edits and to preserve some material on planetary protection in the colonization articles, and to preserve the sections on habitability of present day Mars surface. It might have worked better if I had written less. But I think it should at least be understandable, that someone would try hard to defend their content in a situation like that. And that is the only thing I did wrong, and that is not enough to label me a troll.
And I never said that a microbe invasion of Earth is inevitable. Those were allegations by an editor who was opposed to me, not things I said myself. Carl Sagan was perhaps the first to raise public awareness of this issue and he wrote about this, that "The likelihood that such pathogens exist is probably small, but we cannot take even a small risk with a billion lives." There is a lot of published material on this topic, for instance see ESF report: Mars Sample Return backward contamination – Strategic advice and requirements for instance. Just about everyone, with the exception of Robert Zubrin, thinks that at least some precautions are needed, and this is also mandated by the OST.
In the article that got deleted, on contamination issues for a Mars Sample Return - the aim was to cover some of the research from the many papers and reports on the subject and to present all the views on the matter, as there are many POVs on the extent of the precautions that are needed. The opposing editor in that debate made many allegations about me and my motives for editing wikipedia which other editors believed, but his allegations were untrue. What I contributed were mainstream edits, not fringe, and all good faith edits done with the aim to improve wikipedia. I never presented my own views in that article.
And incidentally my own view, for what it is worth, is similar to that of Carl Sagan - that it might be possible to return a sample to Earth safely, but I would want to be very sure indeed that the precautions were adequate first. And in situ exploration seems a less expensive way of doing the same thing, more effective, and also with, obviously, no risk of back contamination at all. But the article didn't say that, or come to any conclusions, just presented some of the many different ideas and views that have been put forward in the published literature on the subject - presenting their various POVs in a way faithful to the authors of the papers cited. It wasn't possible to get a clear idea of the article during the deletion debate as the opposing editor had totally rewritten it and for the first few days of the debate did not permit me to edit the article, blocking me by edit warring, so what was deleted was, essentially, the opposing editor's slant on the whole thing, with most of the substantial content removed. When he finally let me edit the article I had just a few days to get it back into shape and was still editing it, trying to get it back in shape, when the deletion debate concluded.
Robert Walker (talk) 18:41, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Proposed new wording for Third Paragraph in Intro

Guys, I planned to rework the third paragraph beginning "There are a number of direct and indirect proofs of water presence..." But wanted to get your take first. The new version would read:

Many lines of evidence indicate that water is abundant on Mars and has played a significant role in the planet’s geologic history. The present-day inventory of water on Mars can be estimated from spacecraft imagery, remote sensing techniques (spectroscopic measurements, radar, etc.), in situ investigations from landers and rovers, analysis of Martian meteorites, and theoretical models. Geologic evidence of past water includes enormous outflow channels carved by floods; ancient river valley networks, deltas, and lake beds; and the detection of rocks and minerals on the surface that could only have formed in liquid water. Numerous geomorphic features suggest the presence of ground ice {permafrost) and the movement of ice in glaciers, both past and present. Gullies and slope lineae along cliffs and crater walls indicate that flowing water continues to shape the surface of Mars, although to a far lesser degree than in the ancient past.

The difficulty is what to do with the existing references, most of which are very good. That was the dilemma that prompted my original comment about the references. Thanks for any input. Schaffman (talk) 22:56, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Looks good. BatteryIncluded (talk) 14:05, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, BI. And thanks for the beer too ;-) Schaffman (talk) 14:37, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Good stuff. Only thing is you might want to hedge a bit more in the final sentence. Modern water is still pretty controversial, so you probably want to go for "suggest" rather than "indicate". But the rest is ideal. For the refs, I say stage 1 is to go through and cull any obvious direct duplication - i.e., where we have both peer reviewed lit and 3ary sources discussing the same thing, purge the 3ary source. Though there will still be LOADS of stuff afterwards, I fear. DanHobley (talk) 19:33, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, Dan. Great suggestions. I'll make recommended change. Don't know how much time I'll have to spend on article. Looks like gov't shutdown is set to end and it's back to paid work. Cheers, Schaffman (talk) 20:30, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Silver linings, I guess! Glad you're looking employed again. :-) I'm also going to be really tight on time for a bit, but I'll try to get some effort in. DanHobley (talk) 01:14, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Proposed History Section

While off work, I drafted a fairly brief (5-paragraph) section on the history of Mars research regarding water. It's nontechnical, covering telescopic observations from Cassini to pre-space-age spectrographic findings and Mariner 4. However, I'm hesitant to add more length to article if subject doesn't add enough to make it worth while. It would also (alas) add some more references. I was thinking about placing it right after the introductory section. I may just go ahead and place it, letting you guys have at it. If you think it's too much material or otherwise needs reworking, let me know. I won't be offended. Schaffman (talk) 16:22, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for adding images to section, BI. Looks good Schaffman (talk) 22:26, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Section looks great, but maybe we should rename it for clarity. This is the history of discoveries, not a history of water on Mars, so it's a little ambiguous. However, I'm failing to come up with a succinct alternative right now. Anyone else? DanHobley (talk) 16:03, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Adding to rocks and minerals section

I'm adding quite a bit of new material to the Evidence from Rocks and Minerals section because the section did not discuss the presence of water bound in hydrated minerals, which is an important part of Mars' water inventory. This is per the comment I made above. Schaffman (talk) 21:47, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi User:Schaffman, that's nice stuff. But do you think it would be possible to either thin the text back a bit, or failing that, to introduce a subheading or two within the section? That's a big block of uninterrupted text to sit so high in the article. Maybe a picture or two would also help (maybe a nice CRISM image of some hydrated minerals, or something). I can have a go at subdividing into sections if you'd like, but probably not for a while (crazy busy right now...) DanHobley (talk) 16:01, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, Dan I totally agree. Both ideas are very good. Realized the text was too long after I inserted it. I'll try some of your suggestion when I get time. Thanks a bunch for the feedback--Tom-- Schaffman (talk) 21:06, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
Looks way better now! DanHobley (talk) 01:51, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Thoughts on article organization

I’ve been putzing around with article this weekend making minor editorial fixes. I’d be interested in getting some feedback on my thoughts about organization and other items.

1. Could we change the title of the Ancient Water Bodies section to “Geomorphic evidence” and move it above the Evidence from Rocks and Minerals section? Fluvial features such as outflow channels, valley networks are easily recognizable and understood by the layperson, and this new placement also follows the rough chronological sequence of discovery (Mariner 9, Viking, etc.) as laid out in the Historical Background section.

2. I don’t understand why inverted stream topography has a paragraph of its own in the current ancient water bodies section. These features are certainly very common on Mars but also IMO tangential to the main focus of the section. Perhaps the discussion should be moved down to another section. Maybe I’m wrong here. Any other thoughts?

3. Somewhere the article needs to have a brief discussion (1-2 paragraphs) on the Clifford (1993) model of the shallow martian crust consisting of a variably thick cryosphere underlain by liquid groundwater. I believe some form of this model is still the prevailing hydrological paradigm for Mars. Maybe this could be included in the groundwater section.

4. Organizing the article by spacecraft missions (probes) in the last part seems to add to article length and repetition. Could the info in these sections be weaved into the other sections?

Thanks for any thoughts/suggestions Schaffman (talk) 16:10, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello. Last year when I did the article cleanup/overhaul (aka: (WP:Blow it up and start over), I addressed mostly the duplication of info and format. I also separated the research on past vs. current water. The current format is not the normal evolution of a Wikipedia science article, but the product of what I thought was a logical organization. I have only a basic education on planetary geology (3 elective courses only), so please feel free to modify the article format and info; I am glad whenever an expert addresses the actual scientific content of the article.
Regarding point #1, yes, "Geomorphic evidence" seems a most appropriate section title.
Point #2, inverted stream topography had a section before, I think it was created so a bunch of example images could be loaded in that section. I have no preference on your moving/expanding or reducing the related information; but if the feature is unique to Mars, I think that some info should remain.
Point #3: Go for it!
Pont #4: I was not sure what to do with it, so I just cleaned it up and placed it at the end; yes, that meant I did not address the redundancy in that section but I thought some readers wanted (and created) it as a alternative way of "classifying" or visualizing the same research on the subject. Lets discuss whether we and other interested editors want it deleted, changed or weaved into the existing info. BatteryIncluded (talk) 15:41, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Stream water speed

@RJaumann: NASA's report ([3]) states that the water speed in that particular stream was about 3 ft/s (3.3 m/s). The German team apparently has been making improved calculations factoring Mars' weaker gravity, and I am all for including it, but not by replacing the current cited velocity. The abstract you bring forward does not display the calculated speed you keep entering, and the main research paper does not seem available online, which hampers being WP:verifiable. If you can find it, let's quote both estimates, OK? Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 14:24, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Robertinventor, you should not alter the action of BatteryIncluded, you have to convince him that how your message is still important. I would rather suggest that you should make your message shorter. Bladesmulti (talk) 01:35, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
I have just removed all my content from this page, which I think I can do as nobody has replied to it yet - and am working on a draft for a new version of my post in my user space. It is based on discussion of issues with my original post with User:Ca2james on my talk page, see User_talk:Robertinventor#Ideas_for_shortening_my_talk_page_comments. Will post the new post here soon. Robert Walker (talk) 11:25, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for talkpage-restrictions for Robert Walker

I've made a concrete proposal for talkpage-restrictions for Robert Walker: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Proposal: max 1,500 bytes a day for Robert Walker. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:40, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Result was no outcome and I've developed some Work arounds for lengthy talk page comments which should help in the future. Robert Walker (talk) 20:05, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Proposed changes in the Habitability assessment section

Please note, I have taken great care to make this post concise, and to keep it to the point. It is a good faith post, and the best I can do right now. Please don't just hide it immediately. If you still have issues with it please explain so I can learn how to present it better. Thanks! Robert Walker (talk) 13:30, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

To remove dormancy statement and add statement about possibility of present day life

Proposal is to remove: "Even at a depth of 2 meters beneath the surface, any microbes would likely be dormant", as this is out of date.

and to add "Some scientists such as Nilton Renno think that there is an excellent chance of discovering present day life in surface or near surface micro habitats that may form briefly for a few hours per day or year".

This is a similar statement to the one in Encyclopedia Britannica:

"Alternatively, it could be argued that the best strategy is to look for present-day life in niches, such as warm volcanic regions or the intermittent flows of what may be briny water, in the hope that life, if it ever started on Mars, would survive where conditions were hospitable."

Nilton Renno is an excellent cite here as he led the team that discovered a new potential habitat on salt / ice boundaries last year. He is also expert on surface conditions on Mars including cosmic radiation measurements - amongst other things, he is responsible for managing the REMS weather station on Curiosity.

For this and other citations and material to support the suggested new sentence, see User:Robertinventor/OR_In_Water_on_Mars_Habitability_Assessment.

Robert Walker (talk) 13:30, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

To restore section covering research into possible present day life on Mars and their biochemical pathways

Additionally I propose that we restore this article's section from 2011 Possibility of Mars having enough water to support life, and update it with more recent research on the topics.

The material was deleted from this article by BI originally as a personal decision, with no RfC or other consensus based decision making process, indeed in face of protest. The section was written by many editors - I contributed just a couple of sentences to it myself.

There are many papers published on this subject every year, covering topics such as potential habitats for this life, and possible biochemical pathways that could be utilized by present day surface life on Mars (see for instance Redox Potentials for Martian Life). There was a major three days long conference on it in 2013 The Present-Day Habitability of Mars 2013.

Robert Walker (talk) 13:30, 13 January 2015 (UTC)


Don't feed the troll. He lives on WP:CHEESE. Thx, BatteryIncluded (talk) 00:50, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Please assume good faith. And the citations are of the highest quality. Robert Walker (talk) 11:25, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
As [your current ANI] shows, You exhausted that assumption on dozens of editors years ago. No cheese here for you. BatteryIncluded (talk) 16:18, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
The ANI was about length of my posts, not their content. Taken against me by my opponents in a content dispute. And the result was no outcome, and I've taken measures to keep my posts short in the future. I assure you I have never done any trolling. My posts are in good faith, to improve wikipedia. And the citations are good. Nilton Renno is one of the top scientists in this field, and there are many other researchers studying the present day habitability of the Mars surface, in top universities and research institutions. Discussion should focus on the content of my proposal. Robert Walker (talk) 14:54, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I've started a draft of the proposed article in my user space here: User:Robertinventor/Present_day_habitability_of_Mars, so you can get a rough idea of what I had in mind. In skeleton form at present - not yet added citations, and many sections still to be written. Robert Walker (talk) 11:33, 21 January 2015 (UTC)


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