What Would Mars Truely Look Like With Water!

[Don. Edwards]

Well I said I would try and post a few pictures that I had seen of someones render of what Mars would probably truely look like with water. I couldn't find the pictures so I took a little time to through it together myself. So here is what Mars would most likely look like if it had water on its surface. The water wouldn't be blue but probably muddy brown because of all the dust and the color of the atmosphere. It may not be very pretty but its probably as real as we will get in our lifetimes.

The image is rather rough right now but it will get better as I work on it.
I may roll this into the various steps of terraformed Mars or I amy take this in a totaly diferent direction.

[billybob884]

just 4 words: in-cred-a-ble!

[timcrews]

That is a beautiful image. I just love Mars, in all its forms, real and imaginary. I can't wait for it to come nearer over the next several months -- I have the telescope all ready to point in that direction.

I know it wouldn't look nearly as exciting, but I still claim (as in a previous mars terraforming thread) that there no way this water would exist in liquid form -- it would be frozen when exposed to the temperatures/pressures present on the surface of Mars. I conclude that it would also be white, or some shade very near white.

I don't know if we are trying to be "scientific" though. Also, since I have never volunteered to produce the "white mars" texture, I can't complain too much.

Tim Crews

[selden]

Tim,

Apparently some people have concluded that an early Martian atmosphere of CO2 could have had a pressure of 1.5 Bars or more, in which case liquid surface water would have been possible. (See http://humbabe.arc.nasa.gov/mgcm/faq/wetmars.html, for example, although it doesn't provide any references.) I'll admit that it isn't obvious to me what it would have looked like from space, though.

Some other theories suggest fine particle erosion might be another possible cause, at least in some locations. See http://www.aas.org/publications/baas/v32n3/dps2000/212.htm

[Jango Fett]

Very nice!

There's also one think someone should think about. What about theory that Mars' atmosphere isn't red, but blue?

Here: http://www.chez.com/lesovnis/htm/marscol.htm

[Don. Edwards]

I took Atmospheric color into consideration when doing this. The reason the atmosphere as far as we now wouldn't be blue is for the very thing that makes Earth's Atmosphere blue. That’s Nitrogen. Early Mars probably didn’t have a very high amount of it so in all likelihood the atmosphere would be more of a yellow beige do to a denser concentration of CO2 over any other gas. CO2 is the one gas that if Mars had a thick enough atmosphere to support surface water in none frozen form would have definitely bin there. For the simple fact that volcanism on the planet would have put it there. It was probably that volcanic activity that supported and sustained the atmosphere in the first place. When the volcanic activity started to shut down the atmosphere was no longer being supplied with the necessary gas output to maintain atmospheric density from the bleed of into space because of the lower gravity and having no magnetic field the atmosphere was doubly attacked by solar subatomic particles and radiation.
That which didn't get lost to space either froze in the poles and or froze into permafrost under the surface, where some scientists think the water went as well.
Mars isn’t made up of the same rocky material the Earth is made from. Its density compared to size should make it much heavier if it were constructed like Earth. But it appears most of Mars mantle is made up of porous rock, like cooled lava flows which are not a very dense rock.
The material being porous it has the ability to hold great amounts of water. Theoretically of course. If we could start the warming of Mars we would start the greatest geologic upheaval ever seen. Stop and give a thought to what happens to the permafrost here on Earth when it melts. It raises the ground and it bulges out all over the ground and can almost seem explosive. If all the permafrost and underground water sources that were frozen were defrosted, the surface of Mars would change so drastically we probably wouldn't even recognize the planet as Mars except for the big volcanoes and the more solid land surfaces. Even my renders can't come close to the changes we would see.
In Kim Stanley Red, Blue, and Green Mars books he touched a little on what the effects would be. I think he took a much more simplified view from what would really happen. I know one thing. I would not want to be on surface when these things started to happen. It would be like having major earthquakes all the time and massive flashfloods all over the planet. Probably the only safe place would be on the sides of the big volcanoes and even there you might not be safe. As water start subliming into the atmosphere clouds and rain would start to fall and you would have mass erosion on the slops of those volcanoes. So if we ever start to terraform Mars I think it would be in our best interests to do it from a safe place like on Phobos and Deimos. That way we can keep out of the natural disasters that we would be creating.
I guess you can say I have done just a little research into this idea of Mars terraformation. It wouldn’t be easy on the planet or on those people doing the job. We would probably loose people in the process and it would cost a hell of a lot of money. In the long run I can’t see putting out the time or money for it. It looks great on paper and it warms the heart of Sci-Fi writers and readers. But I just don’t think there is enough of a push to ever get this off the ground. Not for one hundred years at least. Maybe way off in the future our grandchildren’s children may start to walk on the surface of Mars and start the foundation work for this whole thing. But for now its all a beautiful pipe dream and fantasy.

But we can still have fun making textures to emulate what it might look like in the end.
That’s why I keep making them.
Don.

P.S.
Jango Fett,
I think you are alluding to some of the Mars conspiracy theorists out there.
They point to the fact that the very first pictures taken from the Viking lander showed blue sky instead of a salmon color sky we see and believe is there today. Those first picture were supposedly showed blue sky because of a photographic filter was used.
Mars does not have enough Nitrogen gas in the atmosphere to generate any blue light. The main components are Co2 and Argon gases witch give the sky a white to pale beige color. The salmon color comes from iron oxide dust held high aloft in the atmosphere scattering the light into the colors that have a kind of salmon color. It is as simple as that. If there were enough nitrogen up there Mars would indeed have a blue sky but simple science proves that theory wrong. Sorry no blue sky on Mars for now. But maybe way off in the future.

[granthutchison]

They point to the fact that the very first pictures taken from the Viking lander showed blue sky instead of a salmon color sky we see and believe is there today. Those first picture were supposedly showed blue sky because of a photographic filter was used.

I seem to recall that the Viking team tweaked the colour balance in the wrong direction because they expected a blue sky, and only got things right a couple of days/weeks later. But I may be misremembering.
One thing that has always struck me as unnatural in Blue Mars maps is the lack of lakes at higher elevation - shouldn't Mars be brimming over with lake water in all those craters, leaving a rather shallower sea in the northern hemisphere and Hellas?

Grant

[selden]

A quick web search reveals that the calibration of the Viking image colors was mostly guesswork. They had to compensate both for the bandpass of the filters and for the color of the light that actually was reaching the ground through the dust in the atmosphere at the time. The redness was due to dust, not to the atmosphere being mostly CO2.

See http://www.msss.com/mars/pictures/viking_lander/viking_lander.html for one brief discussion of the issues. An artist's evaluation by Don Davis, including more optical details, is at http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/MARSCLRS.html. His page about colors in the solar system is fascinating. http://www.donaldedavis.com/2002_addons/SSYCOLRS.html

[Don. Edwards]

granthutchison,
Water has a tendency to flow to the lowest point and always finds a way to get there. As I stated, if Mars warmed enough for water to remain on the surface then most of those craters you speak of will probably be eroded away pretty quickly. Since water always flows to the lowest points. The fact that most of the rock strata on Mars is porous the water would probably percolated through the walls of these craters and continue its travels to the lowland seas. The Martian soil also contains a great deal of chemicals that locked in because of temperature and atmospheric conditions. As the temperature would warm and water come into contact with the soil one of the chemicals that would be made would be chlorine. Chlorine as everybody knows is pretty reactive and corrosive. So again you would have water breaking down the rock strata in its journey downhill. Sure there would be a lot of upland lakes but would they all remain circular because of craters or would they form many different shapes. Erosion is a very powerful landscaper. Just look at the Earth and how it changes over time. Mars structure being lighter and more porous would erode at the rate you find on volcanic islands here on Earth. Very quickly indeed. I would suspect that within just a few years of water being there we wouldn’t even recognize it the same planet.
I may toy with the texture some more to give it a real eroded look an we can see then what it could look like. The guys at Space-Graphics could technically input the data for erosion into there Terragen modeling that created the BlueMars texture and they could do this as well. I suppose anyone with the data could do it just as easily. But I do believe that somewhere I read that it took them a long time to generate the texture we see.
I also found one of the sites that had renders that I believe are the foruners to the BlueMars texture. If you take a look at the images here http://www.space4case.com/mars/mars6/mars_6.html you can see were they got the idea and how a really highres texture of BlueMars could be made.
Don.

[granthutchison]

Don, is your cloud map correctly orientated? That sworl of cloud out over the ocean to the east looks like it should be sitting on Olympus Mons, over the horizon to the west. I'm wondering if the cloudmap is out by 180 degrees because of the recent switch in centre longitude for Mars textures.

Grant

[Don. Edwards]

Yes it is off center but not for the reasons you suspect. I pluged the cloudmap in as a last minute idea and simply didn't turm off the clouds rotation in the .ssc. Normaly this would be a more Earth like coludmap on one of my terraformed Mars textures. Just switched for the picture.

[Guest]

Ah, the near-180 rotation fooled me into thinking I knew what had happened.
This is my favourite Blue Mars variant, so far.

Grant

[Jango Fett]

Don, I totally agree with you about Mars' atmosphere.

Mars atmosphere is red and yellow partialy because of dust and sand lifted high with strong winds on Mars' surface. We must take in consideration that Mars has weaker gravitational force than earth, so all processes caused by winds lift dust and sand much higher.

I was thinking about color of water again, and I tried to remeber why is Earth's oceans blue. Is it because they reflects atmospheric color, right?

So, Mars' oceans should be red and yellow, because they reflect sky. Even with all the mud and dirt combined with water, it would eventually fall down to the bottom, like on earth, so I think it would't have much influence...

[Don. Edwards]

Jango Fett,
It is true that most of the blue color of Earth’s oceans are from reflected sky, but of course not 100%. The surface water can difuse light somewhat and this helps to impart a little color to the whole as well. Mars would of course develop similar conditions. Most of the mud and silt would sink to the sea beds. But the water it self would be stained like tea with a rusty-brown color. The water would be transparent but it would be casting a great deal of its own color into the mix. Earths ocean water isn't really stained, as it gets filtered by allot of things including living organisms. The most Earth sea water color is a very, very pale blue-green and that’s from the algae. Mars atmospheric color being a pale beige-pink wouldn't in fact give the seas a red color but impart a reflection of that same beige-pink tone on top of what ever color the water was. As in my picture the water is fairly clear just stained a brown color and of course we are seeing the color of the mud and silts at the bottom of the seas. If you look close to the secular reflection of the sky on the water its what should be seen from orbit as I reset all the atmospheric colors to default Mars ones. So technically what you see is going to be pretty close to what it might really look like. Saying that we have no real way to know for sure unless we did put water all over the surface. And alas we don't have a spare water world to take the water from and dump it there to find out. And if it would only be that easy.
Don.

[Jango Fett]

Jango Fett,
It is true that most of the blue color of Earth’s oceans are from reflected sky, but of course not 100%. The surface water can difuse light somewhat and this helps to impart a little color to the whole as well. Mars would of course develop similar conditions.
... Earths ocean water isn't really stained, as it gets filtered by allot of things including living organisms.

Of course, I know it very well. Our Adriatic sea is known as one with smallest amount of living organisms like algae and plancton, and that's why it's one of the bluest and most transparent. But the Northern sea, for instance, is much less transparent and its color is dark green and grey, as it is known to have much more living microorganisms. So I conclude that the "real" color, without living organisms, would be like our Adriatic sea, very blue, as it reflects sky. When rain clouds cover the sky, water becomes grey...
I suppose that shallow areas on Mars, near the coast would be much more filthy and mixed with dirt than open sea. That kind of difference we could see on Earth's oceans as well...

[Don. Edwards]

Jango Fett,
Here is another monkey wrentch to through into the mix. The seas and oceans that would form on Mars would at first be................ Carbonated. That right the water would be bubly and that would definetly mix that mud and silt around in the early stages. But as salts leached out of the regolith (martian soil) it would get tranported to the seas and oceans and the salts would take over. Also small sea creatures would be introduced at this time and they would start locking all that corbon up in the exoskeletons. So for a brief time Mars would have muddy frothly waves and because a the lower gravity the waves would get much taller than on the Earth. The surfers would have found heaven if they can live with the mudd and silt that is.

[Don. Edwards]

Well I have done some major tweaking to the Wet Mars texture as I am calling it. I had a great deal of junk in the texture that needed to be cleaned up. If you look real close to the fist picture you might see some of the offending stuff around the edges of the waterline. I did some futher color adjusting and I added a snow and ice to the big volcanoes and a light frost across most of the higher elevations. Its a very subtle effect but it makes things a little more realistic. So here are some pictures for your viewing.
First we have a global view without clouds.


Here is what it looks like with some clouds.


Now here we are over Marinares Valley/Sea without clouds.


And here we se it with some clouds.


So there it is. All coments welcome and if there is enough interest in the texture I will start making it in various sizes for everyone to use.
Don.
P.S.
BTW the textue above is an 8k.dds with specmap plugged in already.

[granthutchison]

... if there is enough interest in the texture I will start making it in various sizes for everyone to use.

Me-me-me-me! I'm interested!

Grant

[fsgregs]

Don, me too. Please make this available as a download ASAP. I am working on a lesson plan for a terraformed Mars and this is IDEAL. Please!!

Frank G

[Don. Edwards]

Well thats 2 requests. I was surprised not to see more.
So what sizes and formats do you guys want?
The main texture is an 8k.dds. I can scale it down to 4k and 2k.
I can also make it in both .dds and .png.
Let me know what you want.
Don.