Beware the Mars Hoax.

Update: Even nasa approve the mars hoax http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/07jul_marshoax.htm

Yes Its a Hoax every year this email spread on internet claming that red planet is coming near to earth and visible as big as moon.. this hoax email started in 2004.Yesterday  This lady ask me do you know in coming august something gonna happned on 27th august 2009.  i said i dont know. respected  lady  said you must know that mars is coming near to earth and its as big as moon. i got some doubt regarding the red planet, how planet mars break the orbital belt and come closer to earth.this question landed up in a investigation of the hoax email. and after talking to my friends in the nasa Research labs i got some useful right information.

lets talk about the truth behind Red planet comeing near to earth.

Mars as big as the moon on August 27? Email hoax claims August 27 will bring the closest encounter between Mars and Earth in recorded history. Unfortunately, this ‘once in a lifetime event’ already came and went in 6 years ago in August 2003.

Disappointed? Don’t be. If Mars did come close enough to rival the Moon, its gravity would alter Earth’s orbit and raise terrible tides.

Sixty-nine million km is good. At that distance, Mars shines brighter than anything else in the sky except the Sun, the Moon and Venus. The visual magnitude of Mars on Oct. 30, 2005, will be -2.3. Even inattentive sky watchers will notice it, rising at sundown and soaring overhead at midnight.

You might remember another encounter with Mars, about Seven years ago, on August 27, 2003. That was the closest in recorded history, by a whisker, and millions of people watched as the distance between Mars and Earth shrunk to 56 million km. This October’s encounter, at 69 million km, is similar. To casual observers, Mars will seem about as bright and beautiful in 2005 as it was in 2003.

Although closest approach is still months away, Mars is already conspicuous in the early morning. Before the sun comes up, it’s the brightest object in the eastern sky, really eye-catching. If you have a telescope, even a small one, point it at Mars. You can see the bright icy South Polar Cap and strange dark markings on the planet’s surface.
Above: Painted green by a flashlight, astronomer Dennis Mammana of California points out Mars to onlookers on Aug. 26, 2003, the last time Mars was so close to Earth. One day people will walk among those dark markings, exploring and prospecting, possibly mining ice from the polar caps to supply their settlements. It’s a key goal of NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration: to return to the Moon, to visit Mars and to go beyond.

Every day the view improves. Mars is coming–and that’s no hoax.

June 6, 2005: By the time you finish reading this sentence, you’ll be 25 miles closer to the planet Mars.

Earth is racing toward Mars at a speed of 23,500 mph, which means the red planet is getting bigger and brighter by the minute. In October, when the two planets are closest together, Mars will outshine everything in the night sky except Venus and the Moon. (You’re another 50 miles closer: keep reading!)

It’s only June, now, but Mars is already eye-catching. You can see it early in the morning, rising before the sun in the eastern sky, shining almost twice as bright as a 1st-magnitude star. A sky map, below, shows where to find Mars on Wednesday morning, June 29th, when it appears pleasingly close to the crescent Moon.

Why are we rushing toward Mars? It’s simple orbital mechanics. Think of Earth and Mars as two runners on a circular race track, with lanes corresponding to planetary orbits. Earth, running fast on the inside lane, circles the course in 12 months. Mars, plodding along an outside lane, takes twice as long to go around. Every two years, approximately, Earth catches Mars from behind and laps it.

That’s where we are now, approaching Mars from behind. Relative speed: 23,500 mph.

We won’t actually lap Mars until autumn, October 30th at 0319 Universal Time, to be exact. Only 43 million miles (69 million km) will separate us from Mars, then, compared to an average distance of about 140 million miles (225 million kilometers). It’s a great time to send spacecraft there.

Mindful of that, NASA Already launch the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on August 10th, 2005. Because it takes 6+ months to reach Mars, the best time to start the trip is a month or so before closest approach–thus, August. MRO will arrive in March 2006, enter orbit, and begin a 2-year mission to map the red planet in greater detail than ever before.

The spacecraft’s high-resolution cameras will be able to discern objects, such as rocks and rovers and crashed Mars landers, less than 1 meter across. A radar sounder will probe for underground water while spectrometers map the distribution of surface minerals. Other instruments will monitor the atmosphere, teaching researchers back on Earth how to forecast martian weather. These are key elements in NASA’s plan to eventually send humans to Mars
Above: The HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has 5-times better resolution than cameras on other Mars orbiters and might be able to take pictures of the lost Mars Polar Lander.
The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity are already there. They arrived in January 2004 on the heels of another Earth-Mars close encounter in 2003. (Remember, this happens every two years.) The two robots were supposed to stop working months after they landed, worn down by wind, stuck in sand, or exhausted by too little solar power. Spirit and Opportunity are still rolling and, if they hold true to form, they’ll be “alive” to see Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter when it gets there, a tiny point of light in the martian night sky, mapping the red planet for explorers of the future.
Back on Earth people are going to enjoy watching Mars swell and brighten in the months ahead. By mid-summer, amateur astronomers with backyard telescopes will be able to spot polar ice caps and dust storms and strange dark markings. By autumn, even the least attentive of your neighbors will be remarking on “that bright red thing in the sky.”

Mark October 30th as the best day of all: Mars will rise at sunset, hang overhead at midnight, and “blaze forth against the dark background of space with a splendor that outshines Sirius and rivals the giant Jupiter himself.” That’s how astronomer Percival Lowell described a similar close encounter in the 19th century.

Can’t wait? Don’t. You can see Mars any clear morning this summer. We recommend Wednesday morning, June 29th. Mars and the fat crescent Moon are going to have a pleasing close encounter in the dawn sky. Look for them rising in the east around 4:30 AM; the sight will absolutely wake you up.

More good news: you’re now 1000 miles closer to the planet Mars.

The Truth of Mars

The Red Planet is Not a Dead Planet

Mars today is a world of cold and lonely deserts, apparently without life of any kind, at least on the surface. Indeed it looks like Mars has been cold and dry for billions of years, with an atmosphere so thin, any liquid water on the surface quickly boils away while the sun’s ultraviolet radiation scorches the ground.

The situation sounds bleak, but research published today in Science Express reveals new hope for the Red Planet. The first definitive detection of methane in the atmosphere of Mars indicates that Mars is still alive, in either a biologic or geologic sense, according to a team of NASA and university scientists.

“Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas,” says lead author Michael Mumma of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “At northern mid-summer, methane is released at a rate comparable to that of the massive hydrocarbon seep at Coal Oil Point in Santa Barbara, Calif.”

Right: An artist’s concept of a possible geological source of Martian methane: subsurface water, carbon dioxide and the planet’s internal heat combine to release the gas.

Methane — four atoms of hydrogen bound to a carbon atom — is the main component of natural gas on Earth. It is of interest to astrobiologists because much of Earth’s methane come from living organisms digesting their nutrients. However, life is not required to produce the gas. Other purely geological processes, like oxidation of iron, also release methane. “Right now, we don’t have enough information to tell if biology or geology — or both — is producing the methane on Mars,” said Mumma. “But it does tell us that the planet is still alive, at least in a geologic sense. It’s as if Mars is challenging us, saying, hey, find out what this means.”

If microscopic Martian life is producing the methane, it likely resides far below the surface, where it’s still warm enough for liquid water to exist. Liquid water, as well as energy sources and a supply of carbon, are necessary for all known forms of life.

“On Earth, microorganisms thrive 2 to 3 kilometers (about 1.2 to 1.9 miles) beneath the Witwatersrand basin of South Africa, where natural radioactivity splits water molecules into molecular hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O). The organisms use the hydrogen for energy. It might be possible for similar organisms to survive for billions of years below the permafrost layer on Mars, where water is liquid, radiation supplies energy, and carbon dioxide provides carbon,” says Mumma.

“Gases, like methane, accumulated in such underground zones might be released into the atmosphere if pores or fissures open during the warm seasons, connecting the deep zones to the atmosphere at crater walls or canyons,” he says.

“Microbes that produced methane from hydrogen and carbon dioxide were one of the earliest forms of life on Earth,” notes Carl Pilcher, Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute which partially supported the research. “If life ever existed on Mars, it’s reasonable to think that its metabolism might have involved making methane from Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

Above: one way methane is destroyed in the Martian atmosphere: the molecules are rapidly broken apart by solar ultraviolet radiation. Because methane doesn’t last long in the martian environment, any methane found there must be recently produced. [animation]

However, it is possible a geologic process produced the Martian methane, either now or eons ago. On Earth, the conversion of iron oxide (rust) into the serpentine group of minerals creates methane, and on Mars this process could proceed using water, carbon dioxide, and the planet’s internal heat. Another possibility is vulcanism: Although there is no evidence of currently active Martian volcanoes, ancient methane trapped in ice “cages” called clathrates might now be released.

The team found methane in the atmosphere of Mars by carefully observing the planet over several Mars years (and all Martian seasons) using spectrometers attached to telescopes at NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility, run by the University of Hawaii, and the W. M. Keck telescope, both at Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

“We observed and mapped multiple plumes of methane on Mars, one of which released about 19,000 metric tons of methane,” says Geronimo Villanueva of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Villanueva is stationed at NASA Goddard and is co-author of the paper. “The plumes were emitted during the warmer seasons — spring and summer — perhaps because the permafrost blocking cracks and fissures vaporized, allowing methane to seep into the Martian air. Curiously, some plumes had water vapor while others did not,” he says.

Above: Methane plumes found in Mars’ atmosphere during the northern summer season. According to the team, the plumes were seen over areas that show evidence of ancient ground ice or flowing water. For example, plumes appeared over northern hemisphere regions such as east of Arabia Terra, the Nili Fossae region, and the south-east quadrant of Syrtis Major, an ancient volcano 1,200 kilometers (about 745 miles) across.

It will take future missions, like NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, to discover the origin of the Martian methane. One way to tell if life is the source of the gas is by measuring isotope ratios. Isotopes are heavier versions of an element; for example, deuterium is a heavier version of hydrogen. In molecules that contain hydrogen, like water and methane, the rare deuterium occasionally replaces a hydrogen atom. Since life prefers to use the lighter isotopes, if the methane has less deuterium than the water released with it on Mars, it’s a sign that life is producing the methane.

Whatever future research reveals–biology or geology–one thing is already clear: Mars is not so dead, after all.

by Rohit Sharma