Blue, Not Red: Did Ancient Mars Look Like This? Is that Earth? Nope! That’s Mars… well, it might’ve been Mars a couple of billion years ago when it had a thick atmosphere and oceans (yes, oceans). Although the inclusion of a Martian biosphere (the green bits) is a little, well, fanciful, software engineer Kevin Gill used real elevation data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Obiter (MRO) to render the planet and then added water and an atmosphere (and a touch of green for some hypothetical Martian vegetation).  “I am a software engineer by trade and certainly not a planetary scientist, so most of my assumptions were based on simply comparing the Mars terrain to similar features here on Earth (e.g. elevation, proximity to bodies of water, physical features, geographical position, etc) and then using the corresponding textures from the Blue Marble images,” Gill told Discovery News. To be honest Kevin, we think you did an awesome job.

Blue, Not Red: Did Ancient Mars Look Like This? Is that Earth? Nope! That’s Mars… well, it might’ve been Mars a couple of billion years ago when it had a thick atmosphere and oceans (yes, oceans). Although the inclusion of a Martian biosphere (the green bits) is a little, well, fanciful, software engineer Kevin Gill used real elevation data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Obiter (MRO) to render the planet and then added water and an atmosphere (and a touch of green for some hypothetical Martian vegetation). 

“I am a software engineer by trade and certainly not a planetary scientist, so most of my assumptions were based on simply comparing the Mars terrain to similar features here on Earth (e.g. elevation, proximity to bodies of water, physical features, geographical position, etc) and then using the corresponding textures from the Blue Marble images,” Gill told Discovery News.

To be honest Kevin, we think you did an awesome job.

Source: news.discovery.com

1,151 notesShowHide

  1. corishea reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  2. shroomley reblogged this from likeanunwindingcablecar
  3. earthandwater reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  4. david3913 reblogged this from allthingsspace
  5. allthingsspace reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  6. interminis reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  7. christ-off-waltz reblogged this from fronk-jaeger
  8. mschievousphinx reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  9. oliverthedragon reblogged this from discoverynews
  10. peaceblaster reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  11. fronk-jaeger reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  12. exuberantlypessimistic reblogged this from xen0phile
  13. brutal-flow reblogged this from gnar-box
  14. ofspaceandtime2c reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  15. ash2412 reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  16. xen0phile reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  17. thelovelymrfred reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  18. njeihanatyrkysovyzerua reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  19. slaymoe reblogged this from rebelyell101
  20. bleedinginkxiii reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  21. wanderingshootingstar reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  22. 672-percent-done reblogged this from stellar-indulgence and added:
    wow
  23. lonelystarseeds reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  24. gnar-box reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  25. surly-mermaid reblogged this from stellar-indulgence
  26. sailinginstars reblogged this from stellar-indulgence