Dr. John Brandenburg, a NASA scientist, claims there is evidence of a nuclear war on the surface of Mars in the form of radioactive isotopes of xenon there. According to him there is no natural way these isotopes could have formed. Personally I think the guy is nuts.
[url] https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/745738/Life-on-Mars-wiped-out-nuclear-war-Dr-John-Brandenburg[/url]

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Hehe:)
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/John_Brandenburg

John E. Brandenburg is a plasma physicist who went somewhat off the rails in 2012 and started proclaiming that he saw clear evidence of a thermonuclear war on Mars in the distant past. This off-beat idea attracted the attention of woo-peddlars and gave a mighty boost to sales of his books—both the non-fiction books and the science fiction books that he wrote using the nom de plume Victor Norgarde.
In his 2015 book, Brandenburg declared himself a devout Pentecostal Christian.

OK not a science channel piece but of the same sort of colloquial explanation of science.

when I was a kid around 7 I spent time in my school library.

I selected a book about science and the future.

Great pictures.

I distinctly remember it talking about our genetic development as humans.

It said by 2020 humans would become taller, we would be living on Mars and we would start loosing our hair.

(Interestingly the pictures of what we might look like were similar to how we see some aliens looking now. Tall, slim, oval heads and no hair..)

I guess we only have less than a year guys n gals and then baldness will be our way. ;/

It was one of those mythical science ideas that permeate.

That book stuck with me eidetically.

Media like school books and Science Channel have a lot to answer for in feeding misunderstanding sometimes..

So, is there a logical explanation for the presence of the xenon isotope in the Martian soil? Ur was it falsely identified to start with?

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Mars has much more of xenon-129 in the atmosphere than Earth has. So far he is right.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6631

Overall, the analysis agreed with earlier studies, but some isotope ratios were a bit different than expected. When working on an explanation for those subtle but important differences, the researchers realized that neutrons might have gotten transferred from one chemical element to another within the surface material on Mars. The process is called neutron capture, and it would explain why a few selected isotopes were more abundant than previously thought possible.

But Brandenburg also think that there are evidences of an ancient civilization on Mars some million years ago that built pyramids and monuments that looked like faces. And then aggressive aliens came there and used thermonuclear bombs to wipe it out...
Thats why Mars has so much xenon-129...
He says “I have chosed the simplest hypothesis to explain the totality of the data, given the phenomena I am aware of.”

So, is there a logical explanation for the presence of the xenon isotope in the Martian soil? Ur was it falsely identified to start with?

I'm going with cosmic rays... as the most powerful ones discovered thus far have the energy of a pitched baseball in a single particle, they could certainly account for this. As these isotopes would have formed by cosmic rays striking precursor isotopes on the Martian surface (precursors aren't found to any degree in the atmosphere) the ratios of these isotopes would be expected to be higher than on Earth, where cosmic rays are both deflected by our magnetic field and intercepted/vastly reduced in strength by our hundred-times-denser atmosphere.

Edit: Seems I'm in agreement with NASA.

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So, is there a logical explanation for the presence of the xenon isotope in the Martian soil? Ur was it falsely identified to start with?

There is evidence of Natural Fission Reactors on Earth so it is possible when Mars had water that it also experienced Natural Fission Reactors.

"Two billion years ago— eons before humans developed the first commercial nuclear power plants in the 1950s— seventeen natural nuclear fission reactors operated in what is today known as Gabon in Western Africa" https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/natures-nuclear-reactors-the-2-billion-year-old-natural-fission-reactors-in-gabon-western-africa/

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ᴡᴇ ᴅᴀʀᴇsᴀʏ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴀsᴛ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɪᴛ ɪs ғɪɴɪᴛᴇ ʏᴇᴛ ᴡᴇ ᴅᴀʀᴇ ɴᴏᴛ ʙᴇʟɪᴇᴠᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ғᴜᴛᴜʀᴇ ɪs.

Link made clicakble:-

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/natures-nuclear-reactors-the-2-billion-year-old-natural-fission-reactors-in-gabon-western-africa/

Interesting review of the natural reactors in the Gabon Uranium deposits. I remember discussing these, and a few others year ago while writing up some of my PG research work - off-topic for my thesis, but an interesting diversion the question I was battling with at the time.....

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?