When was mars found

While no one knows who first discovered Mars, we do know who made many of the discoveries about the planet. It is known that Tycho Brahe, a Danish astronomer made accurate calculations of the position of Mars as early as Johannes Kepler theorized that the orbit of Mars was elliptical in contradiction to what astronomers believed at the time. He soon expanded that theory to encompass all planets. In , Christian Huygens, a Dutch astronomer drew Mars with the observations he made using a telescope he designed himself.

Mars also has the largest volcanoes in the solar system, Olympus Mons being one of them. The massive volcano, which is about miles km in diameter, is wide enough to cover the state of New Mexico. Olympus Mons is a shield volcano, with slopes that rise gradually like those of Hawaiian volcanoes, and was created by eruptions of lava that flowed for long distances before solidifying.

Mars also has many other kinds of volcanic landforms, from small, steep-sided cones to enormous plains coated in hardened lava. Some minor eruptions might still occur on the planet today. Channels, valleys and gullies are found all over Mars, and suggest that liquid water might have flowed across the planet's surface in recent times.

Some channels can be 60 miles km wide and 1, miles 2, km long. Water may still lie in cracks and pores in underground rock. A study by scientists in suggested that salty water below the Martian surface could hold a considerable amount of oxygen, which could support microbial life. However, the amount of oxygen depends on temperature and pressure; temperature changes on Mars from time to time as the tilt of its rotation axis shifts. Many regions of Mars are flat, low-lying plains.

The lowest of the northern plains are among the flattest, smoothest places in the solar system, potentially created by water that once flowed across the Martian surface. The northern hemisphere mostly lies at a lower elevation than the southern hemisphere, suggesting the crust may be thinner in the north than in the south.

This difference between the north and south might be due to a very large impact shortly after the birth of Mars. The number of craters on Mars varies dramatically from place to place, depending on how old the surface is. Much of the surface of the southern hemisphere is extremely old, and so has many craters — including the planet's largest, 1,mile-wide 2, km Hellas Planitia — while that of northern hemisphere is younger and so has fewer craters. Some volcanoes also have just a few craters, which suggests they erupted recently, with the resulting lava covering up any old craters.

Some craters have unusual-looking deposits of debris around them resembling solidified mudflows, potentially indicating that the impactor hit underground water or ice. In , the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft detected what could be a slurry of water and grains underneath icy Planum Australe. Some reports describe it as a "lake," but it's unclear how much regolith is inside the water. This body of water is said to be about Its underground location is reminiscent of similar underground lakes in Antarctica, which have been found to host microbes.

Vast deposits of what appear to be finely layered stacks of water ice and dust extend from the poles to latitudes of about 80 degrees in both Martian hemispheres. These were probably deposited by the atmosphere over long spans of time. On top of much of these layered deposits in both hemispheres are caps of water ice that remain frozen year-round.

Additional seasonal caps of frost appear in the wintertime. These are made of solid carbon dioxide, also known as "dry ice," which has condensed from carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere. In the deepest part of the winter, this frost can extend from the poles to latitudes as low as 45 degrees, or halfway to the equator.

The dry ice layer appears to have a fluffy texture, like freshly fallen snow, according to a report in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets. Mars is much colder than Earth, in large part due to its greater distance from the sun. The average temperature is about minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit minus 60 degrees Celsius , although it can vary from minus F minus C near the poles during the winter to as much as 70 F 20 C at midday near the equator.

The carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere of Mars is also about times less dense than Earth's on average, but it is nevertheless thick enough to support weather, clouds and winds. The density of the atmosphere varies seasonally, as winter forces carbon dioxide to freeze out of the Martian air. In the ancient past, the atmosphere was likely significantly thicker and able to support water flowing on the planet's surface.

Over time, lighter molecules in the Martian atmosphere escaped under pressure from the solar wind, which affected the atmosphere because Mars does not have a global magnetic field. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter found the first definitive detections of carbon-dioxide snow clouds , making Mars the only body in the solar system known to host such unusual winter weather. The Red Planet also causes water-ice snow to fall from the clouds.

The dust storms on Mars are the largest in the solar system, capable of blanketing the entire Red Planet and lasting for months. One theory as to why dust storms can grow so big on Mars is because the airborne dust particles absorb sunlight, warming the Martian atmosphere in their vicinity. Warm pockets of air then flow toward colder regions, generating winds. Life on Mars seemed a long shot.

On the other hand, it would take a near miracle for Mars to be sterile. A tiny fraction of this material eventually lands on the other planet, perhaps infecting it with microbiological hitch-hikers.

That some Earth microbial species could survive the Martian environment has been demonstrated in many laboratories. There are even reports of the survival of microorganisms exposed to naked space outside the International Space Station ISS. He allowed microbes to contaminate a hay-infusion broth, after which bubbles of their expired gas appeared.

Prior to containing living microorganisms, no bubbles appeared. Pasteur had earlier determinted that heating, or pasteurizing, such a substance would kill the microbes.

Billions of people are thus protected against microbial pathogens. This standard test, in essence, was the LR test on Mars, modified by the addition of several nutrients thought to broaden the prospects for success with alien organisms, and the tagging of the nutrients with radioactive carbon. These enhancements made the LR sensitive to the very low microbial populations postulated for Mars, should any be there, and reduced the time for detection of terrestrial microorganisms to about one hour.

But on Mars, each LR experiment continued for seven days. The Viking LR sought to detect and monitor ongoing metabolism, a very simple and fail-proof indicator of living microorganisms. Several thousand runs were made, both before and after Viking, with terrestrial soils and microbial cultures, both in the laboratory and in extreme natural environments.

No false positive or false negative result was ever obtained. Until then, the classical belief held that a circle was perfect, and therefore all orbits must be circular.

He records a large, dark spot on Mars, probably Syrtis Major. He notices that the spot returns to the same position at the same time the next day, and calculates that Mars has a 24 hour period. This is one of the first published expositions of extraterrestrial life. The Trial of Galileo.