Monica Groover from California interviews Dr. Raj Baldev on Mars on December 21, 2007 -  

Monica Groover: “ Dr. Raj Baldev, what do you say about Mars, why the people are so much interested in this planet even though it creates fearing results in astrology. May,you being well known and well versed cosmo theorist, like to say something about the probable physical conditions of Mars, whether it is possible for humans to settle over there and what about its astrological fear being a violent planet?
 
Dr. Raj Baldev : “Mars has become a great attraction and one of the most discussed objects today. If we talk of Moon, we cannot miss to discuss about Mars. These are only two most important objects being talked about and scientists’ future plan is how to settle over there.

“As regards the settlement of human beings in Moon, the land is being sold for establishing colonies over there, and some agencies are active in this regard and canvassing the rich people to buy land on the Moon.

“It is being done even in Bangalore, India. In America and other countries it started much before the craze of land purchase on the Moon came to India. In fact, the race has already started among all important countries.”

Monica Groover: Dr. Raj Baldev, please say something about Mars?

Dr. Raj Baldev : “If you walk on Mars, the planet shall not only freeze but also suffocate you at the same time because of its minimal air pressure and inexorable radiation from the space. It is not possible to have a friendly, moderate and acceptable temperature in Mars even in millions of years.

"Things are not practical to settle on Mars, as being anticipated by the scientists, it may take million of years to have friendly atmosphere fit for human life. In short, you can’t form colonies on Mars even after a million years.

Dr. Raj Baldev continued: It is interesting to feel that millions of years ago, Mars was extremely warmer and the liquid water used to flow on its surface, and there are definite signs of canals, rivers, big reservoirs of water or small sized irregular sea like reservoirs, big lakes and basins before everything dried up and disappeared except their traces. In my opinion, there never were oceans or regular seas on  Mars, though water is there and life is there in some form or the other.”

 “However, if we admit for a moment that there were once oceans on Mars, we could only opt sulfur dioxide; the Martian oceans could only be much more acidic than Earth's oceans, if at all those existed. 

“Scientists even admit to the extent that there might have been periods on Earth when our atmosphere was similar to that of Mars, and there could be similar periods when sulfur kept us warm too, however, I feel to differ. The temperatures of Earth and Mars could never have been identical or near about at any stage except the first stage of its original cloud of gases,” Dr. Raj Baldev said.

Monica Groover: What are the temperature differences between the Earth and Mars?

Dr. Raj Baldev: As regards temperatures on the Earth as you asked, these are maintained by the carbon cycle. Scientists are of the opinion that sulfur dioxide (SO2) maintains the temperatures on Mars. This is the hypothesis put forward by Harvard and MIT researchers, published this month in the Science journal.

“For many million years, the climate on the Earth has been regularly controlled by the carbon cycle. The accepted procedure is that when carbon dioxide is released from volcanoes, the chemical reactions with silicate rocks on the Earth's surface remove it back out of the atmosphere and turn it into limestone.

“This is the reason that there are vast deposits of limestone on the Earth but no limestone of any kind found on Mars.  If the planet remained warm, the limestone should necessarily be there. Now the scientists feel that possibly another greenhouse gas, sulfur dioxide, released in vast quantities from volcanoes might have kept the atmosphere warmer.

“So far Earth is concerned, sulfur dioxide is removed quickly from the atmosphere, since it's even more reactive with silicate rocks than carbon dioxide. As per Italy Halevy, the first author of the report, “The presence of even a small amount of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere would contribute to the warming of climate and also prevent limestone deposits from forming.”

“So if this is true, that sulfur minerals, and not limestone, should have formed in bodies of water, this may help to explain the surprising discovery the rovers have made that sulfur minerals are in abundant component of Martian soils.”

Dr. Raj Baldev continued: The similarities and differences between the Earth and Mars are due to their temperatures and distances from the Sun. Since their distances vary from the Sun, the differences shall naturally vary in the temperatures of each other.

Even otherwise, almost all rocky planets have some similarities or the other with the Earth. Venus too has similarities with the Earth but a vast difference in temperatures, all due to its distance between the planet and the Sun.

“Scientists have an undetermined opinion about the Earth and its differences with other rocky planets. Sometimes they feel Venus was Earth’s part, sometime Mars, as part of the Earth and something Moon as part of the Earth.  In fact, I feel that none of them was the part of the Earth at any stage of their formations.

In a non scientific language it can be explained that a big cloud scattered and formed their own regional shapes,in their respective areas, and became Mars, Venus, Mercury, Moon and so on.

To be continued…

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