Life on Mars by atlantic

One of the reasons I love astronomy is that it doesn’t flinch from the big questions. And one of the biggest is: are we alone?

Another reason I love astronomy: it has a good shot at answering this question.

Even a few decades ago hard-headed realists pooh-poohed the idea of aliens. But times change, and so does science. We’ve accumulated enough data that makes the question less far-fetched than it once was, and I’m starting to think that the question isn’t "Will we find life?" but rather "Which method will find it first?"

There are three methods that, to me, are the front-runners for finding life on other worlds. And I have an idea as to which one may find it first.The first method follows the principle that when you’re looking for something, it’s best to start close to home.

We know of one planet that has life: Earth. So it makes sense to look for other places with Earth-like conditions: that is, liquid water, oxygen in the air, nutrients for growth, and so on.

The most obvious place to look is Mars. At first glance it appears dry, cold and dead. But if you can see past that, things start to look up. The polar caps, for example, have lots of frozen water, and we’ve directly seen ice at lower latitudes on the Red Planet as well – meteorite impacts have left behind shiny craters, digging up fresh ice from below the surface.

Several Mars rovers and landers have uncovered tantalising evidence that liquid water might flow just beneath the surface, but we still lack any conclusive evidence. However, if you broaden your timescale a bit, there is excellent evidence that in the past – perhaps a billion years or so ago – our neighbouring planet had oceans of liquid water and thicker air. In fact, conditions were pretty good to develop life as we know it even before it popped up here on Earth.It’s entirely possible that life got a toehold (or pseudopod hold) there long ago, and died out. If that’s the case, we may yet find fossils in the Martian rocks. Again, there’s no conclusive evidence yet, but we’ve literally barely scratched the surface there. Now that it has successfully landed on Mars, we have the exciting possibility that the plutonium-powered, car-sized Curiosity rover will soon use its on-board laser and other tools to crack open and examine rocks in the Gale Crater, which were laid down billions of years ago in the presence of liquid water.

And Mars isn’t the only possibility in our solar system. Liquid water exists inside Saturn’s moon Enceladus, where geysers of liquid water erupt from deep canyons at its south pole. Energised by the gravitational tug of the giant ringed planet itself, the interior of Enceladus may be a vast ocean of liquid water even while the surface is frozen over. That doesn’t guarantee we’ll ever find alien fish swimming that moon’s seas, of course. But it’s an interesting place to look.

Europa, a moon of Jupiter, almost certainly has an undersurface ocean as well. If you relax your constraints even more, Saturn’s moon Titan has lakes of liquid methane and ethane on its surface, too. The chemistry for life would be different there – it’s a rather chilly -180C on the surface – but it’s not impossible to suppose life might arise there too.

japs

arab cavalry

I think that the Arabian & Saharan desert nomad cavalry were also among the most effective cavalry, though somewhat underrated. In contrast to the Central Asian steppe nomads who were usually light cavalry archers, the Arabian/Saharan desert nomads were usually light cavalry lancers (though they later became light cavalry archers in medieval times), thus they lacked the range of cavalry archers. However, the desert nomad cavalry made up for it with their greater mobility, due to being unarmoured or extremely lightly-armoured  and also due to apparently having faster horses (the ancestors of the modern Arabian horse now used across the world).I know The French Foreign Legion is famous for fighting against such incredible odds that victory or defeat are practically after thoughts.The late 19th century abounds with such examples, typically speaking as long as a european army was in a decent defensive position with the ability to concentrate its fire and an abundance of ammunition it was all but impossible to overwhelm. On the other hand if the "native" army could catch the Europeans on the march, or isolate each section of the army one by one it would almost always sweep over them. British experiences in the Zulu war especially show plenty of examples of this.
A common pattern of colonial warfare was in fact to send out a well equiped armed column with lots of fire-power, machineguns for preference (the Brits really cottoned on to their Swedish Nordenfelt machineguns prior to the advent of the Maxim), and then wait for the natives to turn up. It usually worked.

As for entrenched positions, it's been claimed that what the British did at Roarke's Drift during the Zulu war was commonplace along the North West Frontier in India. It was politics that ensured it got such massive attention following upon Isandlwhana as it did.

It supposedly occurred in 1882 when 300 Legionaries escorting a surveying team near the Morocco/Algeria border met 8,000 Arab cavalry. After 7 hours of fighting in a blinding sandstorm the Arabs retreat, having suffered 2,000 casualties. Legionnaire losses where 42 killed and 31 wounded. Typically the commander survived despite 9 gunshot wounds and 7 sword cuts. Cool story, but is it true? I'm sure the wounds were various levels of superficial .The Italian troops in the italo turk war were outfought by superb Arab cavalry. The effectiveness of the Arabian/Saharan light cavalry lancers can be seen in the Punic Wars where Hannibal's Numidian Berber cavalry outflanked the Roman cavalry, and the Arab Muslim conquests where Khalid ibn al-Walid's Rashidun Arab cavalry outflanked both the Sassanid light cavalry archers and the Sassanid & Byzantine Cataphracts/Knights. Early organized Arab mounted forces under the Rashidun caliphate comprised a light cavalry armed with lance and sword. Its main role was to attack the enemy flanks and rear. These relatively lightly armored horsemen formed the most effective element of the Muslim armies during the later stages of the Islamic conquest of the Levant. The best use of this lightly armed fast moving cavalry was revealed at the Battle of Yarmouk (636 AD) in which Khalid ibn Walid, knowing the skills of his horsemen, used them to turn the tables at every critical instance of the battle with their ability to engage, disengage, then turn back and attack again from the flank or rear. A strong cavalry regiment was formed by Khalid ibn Walid which included the veterans of the campaign of Iraq and Syria. Early Muslim historians have given it the name Mutaharrik tulai'a( متحرك طليعة ), or the Mobile guard. This was used as an advance guard and a strong striking force to route the opposing armies with its greater mobility that give it an upper hand when maneuvering against any Byzantine army. With this mobile striking force, the conquest of Syria was made easy.

A Mamluk cavalryman

The Battle of Talas in 751 CE was a conflict between the Arab Abbasid Caliphate and the Chinese Tang Dynasty over the control of Central Asia. Chinese infantry were routed by Arab cavalry near the bank of the River Talas.
Later Mamluks were trained as cavalry soldiers. Mamluks were to follow the dictates of al-furusiyya, a code of conduct that included values like courage and generosity but also doctrine of cavalry tactics, horsemanship, archery and treatment of wounds.

bikes in the military

sven hassel

Hassel claimed that he was born as Sven Pedersen at Frederiksborg, Zealand, Denmark, and later adopted his mother's maiden name, Hassel. At the age of 14 he joined the merchant navy as a cabin boy and worked on ships until his military service in 1936. In 1937, to escape the Great Depression, the unemployed Hassel moved to Germany to join the army. In an interview in 1990, he said, "Germany happened to be closer than England, I went to a Wehrmacht recruiting office to enlist, but it wasn't as easy as I had thought. Only German citizens could serve. After six months of trying to join up, the Seventh Cavalry Regiment finally accepted me on the condition that I became a naturalized German."
Hassel served with the 2nd Panzer Division stationed at Eisenach and in 1939 was a tank driver during the invasion of Poland.A year later he attempted to escape. He served with the 2nd Cavalry Regiment and later the 11th and 27th Panzer Regiments (6th Panzer Division) on all fronts except North Africa and was wounded several times. Eventually he reached the rank of lieutenant and received an Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class. He surrendered to Soviet troops in Berlin in 1945 and spent the following years in various POW camps. He began to write his first book, Legion of the Damned while he was interned.
He was released in 1949 and was planning to join the French Foreign Legion when he met Dorthe Jensen, whom he married in 1951. He went to work in a car factory, but his wife encouraged him to continue to write about his experiences. Legion of the Damned was published in 1953. In 1957 Hassel suffered from an attack of a sickness caught during the war and was paralyzed for almost two years. After recovery, he began to write more books. In 1964 he moved to Barcelona, Spain, where he lived until his death. In total he published 14 novels which have been translated into 18 languages. In 1987 his book Wheels of Terror was made into a film titled The Misfit Brigade.

Hassel's books are written in the first person, with Hassel himself as a character, though not necessarily the lead character. The books describe the exploits of a 27th (Penal) Panzer Regiment composed of expendable soldiers - sentenced criminals, court-martialed soldiers and political undesirables. In addition to Sven, they include Alfred Kalb, "Legionnaire" (ex-member of French Foreign Legion); Wolfgang Creutzfeldt, a giant of a man ironically named Tiny (variously Little John in some of the books); barracks fixer and shrewd thief Joseph Porta; older sergeant Willie Beier, "Old Un" or "Old Man"; Julius Heide, an ex-Waffen SS officer and Nazi fanatic, Barcelona Blom, a veteran of both sides of the Spanish Civil War, Gregor Martin, who was a removals man before the war, Chief Mechanic Wolf, and Staff Sergeant Hoffman, a typical German NCO of the period. They serve on most fronts from Northern Finland to the Russian Front (more than once), Italy (Monte Cassino), Greece (The Bloody Road to Death) and the Balkans, and to Normandy (Liquidate Paris) during the Normandy Invasion. Whilst most of the action appears to occur in Russia, a quick chronological analysis of the activities described in the books appears to show that the regiment depicted in the books fought in several places, hundreds of miles apart, at the same time. In some of the books the 27th Regiment does guard duty for the Gestapo in Hamburg (Assignment Gestapo) and also at the military prison at Torgau (March Battalion). Hassel states that the characters are based on real people and events are related to historical events.

Hassel's view of war is brutal.In his books, soldiers fight only to survive, the Geneva Convention being a dead letter to all sides. People are killed by chance or with very little reason. Occasional pleasant events and peaceful meetings are brutally cut short. Unsympathetic Prussian officers constantly threaten their men with courts-martial and execute them with little provocation. Disgruntled soldiers occasionally kill their own officers to get rid of them. By graphically portraying war as violent and hopeless in such manner, Sven Hassel's books have been said to contain an anti-war message. His first book Legion of the Damned has been compared to a much grislier, darker more terrifying version of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front.

The Danish writer Erik Haaest has been disputing Hassel's claims for many years.Haaest writes that Sven Hassel is actually Børge Villy Redsted Pedersen, a Danish Nazi who never served on the Russian front. According to Haaest, the author spent the majority of World War II in occupied Denmark and his knowledge of warfare comes second-hand from Danish Waffen-SS veterans whom he met after the end of the war. Haaest also alleges that Hassel's first novel was ghostwritten and when it became a success, he employed his wife to write the rest of his books. Haaest claims that during the war period, Pedersen/Hassel, was in fact a member of the HIPO Corps or Hilfspolizei, an auxiliary Danish police force created by the Gestapo, consisting of collaborators. According to Haaest, Pedersen aka Hassel was actually put on trial in Denmark, but avoided a death sentence – a fate that many HIPO members faced. However, Haaest himself became a subject of controversy. In 2007, the Danish Arts Council was criticized for providing funding to Haaest for research into Danes who served in the SS, on the grounds that Haaest had stated that the concentration camp gas chambers never existed and that the Diary of Anne Frank was a forgery.
While Haaest has been instrumental in casting public doubt on Sven Hassel's stories, they were never taken seriously by military or history professionals to begin with. For example, there was a 27th Panzer Regiment (a part of the 19th Panzer Division), but it was not penal. Tiger I tanks were in short supply, and were organized in special battalions, directly under Corps command, but attached to a few elite divisions; they certainly were not given to any penal formation as shown in Hassel's books.
In 1988 a humorous book called The Book of Revelations (Mark Leigh and Mike Lepine) printed a parody of both Beatrix Potter and Sven Hassel entitled Peter Rabbit - Tank Killer, lampooning the fashion of the period for unscrupulous publishers and literary estates to draft in famous authors to pen "continuations" of their most successful characters and series.

the battle of the rosebud

The Battle of the Rosebud (also known the Battle of the Rosebud Creek) occurred June 17, 1876, in the Montana Territory between the United States Army and a force of Lakota Native Americans during the Black Hills War. The Cheyenne called it the Battle Where the Girl Saved Her Brother, because of an incident during the fight involving Buffalo Calf Road Woman.
General George Crook commanded a mixed force of some 970 cavalry and mule-mounted infantry, 80 civilian teamsters and miners, and 260 Crow (or Absaroke) and Shoshone Indian scouts, traditional foes of the Lakota. The expedition was part of a three-pronged campaign by some 2,400 soldiers to force roughly between 600 and 1,700 Lakota and Cheyenne warriors, and thousands of family noncombatants, to return to their reservations.
Crook had made a previous attempt in March to corner the Lakota. When his force got within a hundred miles of the Yellowstone River, it was struck by a blizzard, forcing him to abandon his supply train and resulting in numerous frostbite casualties. When the force managed to locate a track of horses, Crook sent three companies of the 2nd Cavalry under its commander, Colonel J. J. Reynolds, to continue the search.
Reynolds discovered a village of Cheyenne which was in use as a staging area, containing 800-1500 ponies as well as large stores of guns, ammunition, food and other supplies. Ordering a pistol charge by a single company under his command, Reynolds took the Cheyenne by surprise and drove their warriors from the immediate area, but failed to support his attack with the rest of his force. When resistance on the outskirts of the village stiffened, Reynolds ordered the Cheyenne supplies destroyed and left with great haste, leaving several soldiers behind and exhausting his force in attempting to reunite with Crook thereafter. Guards posted that night to watch the ponies which had been seized were so tired they fell unconscious, and the ponies were liberated by Cheyenne trailing Reynolds' force.
For failing to follow through on the initial attack with his full detachment, and for destroying rather than holding the Cheyenne supplies, Reynolds was later court-martialed.

On 17 June 1876, Crook's column marched northward along the south fork of Rosebud Creek. The holiday atmosphere that prevailed since the arrival of the Indian scouts on 15 June was suddenly absent. The Crow and Shoshone scouts did not sense their enemies' presence. The soldiers, particularly the mule-riding infantry, were fatigued from the previous day's 35 miles (56 km) march and the early morning reveille at 3:00 am.bama
At 8 a.m., Crook stopped to rest his men and animals. Although deep in hostile territory, Crook made no special dispositions for defense. His troops halted in their marching order. The Crow and Shoshone scouts remained alert while the soldiers rested. Soldiers in camp began to hear gunfire coming from the bluffs to the north, where the scouts were positioned. As the intensity of fire increased, a scout rushed into the camp shouting, "Lakota, Lakota!" By 8:30 am, the Sioux and Cheyenne had hotly engaged Crook's Indian allies on the high ground north of the main body. Heavily outnumbered, the Crow and Shoshone scouts fell back toward the camp, but their fighting withdrawal gave Crook time to deploy his forces.
Crook directed his forces to seize the high ground north and south of the Rosebud Creek. He ordered Captain Van Vliet, with two troops of the 3d Cavalry, to occupy the high bluffs to the south. In the north, the commands of Major Chambers with two companies of the 4th Infantry and three companies of the 9th Infantry, and Captain Noyes with three troops of the 2d Cavalry, formed a dismounted skirmish line and advanced toward the Sioux. Their progress was slow due to flanking fire from Indians occupying the high ground to the northeast.
To accelerate the advance, Crook ordered Captain Anson Mills, commanding six troops of the 3d Cavalry, to charge the Sioux. Mills' mounted charge unnerved the Indians and they withdrew along the ridgeline, not stopping until they reached the next crest. Mills quickly re-formed three troops and led another charge, driving the Indians northwest again to the next hill. Preparing to drive the Indians from there, Mills received orders from Crook to cease the advance and assume a defensive posture. Chambers and Noyes led their forces forward in support and, within minutes, joined Mills on top of the ridge. The bulk of Crook's command, joined by the packers and miners, occupied Crook's Ridge. Establishing his headquarters there at approximately 9:30 am, Crook considered his next move.
At the west end of the field, Lieutenant Colonel William Royall, Crook's second in command, pursued the Indians' attacking the rear of Crook's camp. Leading Captain Henry's three troops of the 3d Cavalry and two troops borrowed from Mills' command, Royall advanced rapidly along the ridgeline to the northwest, finally halting his advance near the head of Kollmar Creek. Royall's detachment was a mile from the main body and in danger of being cut off and destroyed. Sensing this vulnerability, the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors shifted their main effort to the west and concentrated their attacks on Royall. Seeing the danger, Crooks sent orders to Royall to withdraw to Crooks Ridge. Royall sent only one troop to join Crook, claiming later his forces had been too hotly engaged.
Crook's initial charges secured key terrain but did little to damage the Indian forces. Assaults scattered the Indians but they did not quit the field. After falling back, the Sioux and Cheyenne kept firing from a distance and attacked several times in small parties. When counterattacked by the soldiers, the warriors sped away on their swift horses. Crook realized his charges were ineffective.
Crook returned to his battle plan. Believing the Sioux and Cheyennes' fighting tenacity was based on defense of families in a nearby village, Crook ordered Mills and Noyes to withdraw their cavalry from the high ground and follow the Rosebud north to find the suspected village. He recalled Van Vliet's battalion from the south side of the Rosebud.
Only 1 mile (1.6 km) away, Royall's situation was deteriorating. He tried to withdraw across Kollmar Creek but found the Indians' fire too heavy. Next he began to withdraw southeast along the ridgeline. A large group of Sioux and Cheyenne broke off from the fight against Crooks' main forces and charged boldly down the valley of Kollmar Creek, advancing all the way to the Rosebud. The arrival of Van Vliet's command checked the warriors' advance. Crook ordered the Crow and Shoshone scouts to charge into the withdrawing warriors' flank.
Mills' advance up the Rosebud left Crook without sufficient force to aid Royall and his hard-pressed battalion. While Mills made his way up the Rosebud, searching for a village that did not exist, Royall's situation grew worse.
At approximately 1130, Royall withdrew to the southeast and assumed a new defensive position. He hoped to lead his command across Kollmar Creek and rendezvous with Crook. Meanwhile, the Sioux and Cheyenne attacked him from three sides. From his headquarters, Crook realized that Royall needed help to get out of the situation, help only Mills' force could provide. Crook sent orders to Mills redirecting him to turn west and attack the rear of the Indians' pressing Royall.
At approximately 1230, Royall decided against further waiting and withdrew his troops into the Kollmar ravine to remount their horses. From there, they would have to ride through gunfire to reach the relative safety of Crook's main position. As the US cavalry began their dash, the Crow and Shoshone scouts countercharged the pursuing enemy and relieved much of the pressure on Royall's men. Two companies of infantry left the main position to provide covering fire from the northeast side of the ravine. Royall's command still suffered grievous casualties.
Mills arrived too late to assist Royall's withdrawal, but his unexpected appearance on the Indians' flank caused the Sioux and Cheyenne to break contact and retreat. Concentrating his mounted units, Crook now led them up the Rosebud in search of the non-existent Indian village. The advance came upon a narrow ravine which the scouts warned was an excellent spot for an ambush. Crook halted his advance. The battle of Rosebud was over. By the standards of Indian warfare, it had been an extremely long and bloody engagement. Never before had the Plains Indians fought with such ferocity, and never before had they shown such a willingness to accept casualties. Nor was their sacrifice in vain. Concerned for his wounded, short on supplies, and perhaps still shaken by the Indians' ferocity, Crook returned to his camp on Goose Creek and stayed there for seven weeks awaiting reinforcements. Unlike his enemies, Crook's command would play no role in the momentous events at The Little Bighorn.
The hard fought battle lasted for six hours. Hard fighting by Crook's Indian allies during the early stages saved his command from a likely devastating surprise attack. The gallantry of the Crow and Shoshone scouts throughout the battle was crucial to Crook's averting disaster.

Historian Joseph Marshall III argues that the Lakota would have won the battle had it not been for the fact that they were fighting after riding all night to arrive at the battle. Crook reported a loss of 32 dead and 21 wounded and 13 of the Lakota dead. Although Crook's force was left in possession of the battlefield and he claimed a victory, the battle caused Crook to return to his base camp at Goose Creek and halted his advance which prevented him from joining up with the 7th Cavalry under George Armstrong Custer.

Crook withdrew to a position on Big Goose Creek, near present-day Sheridan, Wyoming, and waited 7 weeks for reinforcements from the 9th Infantry and 5th Cavalry before resuming the campaign on August 5.

The battlesite is preserved at the Rosebud Battlefield State Park in Big Horn County, Montana. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and was further designated a National Historic Landmark in 2008.