WATER ON MARS

WATER ON MARS

September 30, 2015

The world is seriously excited this week as NASA confirmed that there is water on planet Mars, even if only saltwater, and even if it happens only during summer when the ice caps on its tallest mountains melt. 

My initial reaction was, WOW, just like Earth, Mars is also undergoing warming sometimes, as in Mars-ial warming like our global warming.  I am not sure whether this is a new phenomenon though because Mars before was believed to be completely ice-covered due to a very thin atmosphere, or whether just discovered only now when the Probe and our satellite are at their closest to the planet for the first time ever.

If a new phenomenon, then that would mean that it is true that the Sun is still in midlife and is still undergoing an increase in temperature and intensity as a star, as opposed to its cooling when it starts to die.  That should ease up on all the pressure and blame the greenhouse gases get from environmentalists, when we realize that the warming Earth experiences is not only caused by an internal (within our atmosphere) factor, but outside too (the ever-increasing magnitude and strength of ultraviolet rays the Sun so graciously throws our way).

If just discovered only now, could it be possible that these waters be treated to be potable, like what the relief agencies did after Super-typhoon Haiyan when it treated the seawaters in Leyte in order to give drinking water rations to the survivors?  However, as compared to the millions of dollars spent for the seawater treatment equipment used in natural disasters here on earth, the cost to treat the seawaters in Mars could run in the trillions of trillions, naturally covering from materials, to construction and assembly, to logistics. Whew! Living in an ordinary city surely costs a lot, how much more living large within the solar system?

A friend asked if anybody could live there? I said practically no because of the lack of oxygen.  Sure, some oxygen is trapped in the ice but the one in the atmosphere is very small and could not support the quantity needed for normal living.  If we go by his dream of someday going to live there for good, he would bring huge containers of oxygen tanks, not to mention tons and tons of food and agricultural materials and implements, and all the necessary metallic elements in order to build a house-and-garden-bubble.  Science fiction at its most horrific scenario.

But as a Christian, I believe the Bible which says that all of GOD’s creation were made for HIS people.  And I truly believe that includes all the planets in all the solar systems within the Milky Way, Andromeda and all the trillions of galaxies within the expanding Universe.  This would be the real stuff of dreams, to be able to live somewhere in a wonderfully-better-than-Earth planet, in the farthest regions trillions of light years away within the ever-growing and expanding Universe.  As long as GOD is there and my loved ones will be there too, that will be true paradise.