Suitors back away from Dell bids amid PC slump

Buyout specialist Blackstone Group LP is dropping its effort to acquire Dell, and billionaire investor Carl Icahn is reportedly unlikely to follow through on his preliminary acquisition offer, as suitors digest studies showing a staggering decline in PC sales.

The Wall Street Journal said Icahn will now likely wait to see if shareholders approve a February deal for the company to be taken private by a group that includes founder and CEO Michael Dell for $24.4 billion. The newspaper, citing an unnamed person familiar with Icahn's thinking, said that if the deal is rejected, Icahn may pursue a hostile takeover.

The news came after the company said in a securities filing Friday that Blackstone was withdrawing from the bidding process.

Blackstone and its partners said that because of the latest PC market figures, which surfaced after their bid was submitted last month, they have dropped a plan to buy most of Dell's outstanding stock for $14.25 per share. A letter from the group to a special committee of Dell board members was dated Thursday and disclosed Friday.

Blackstone's withdrawal and Icahn's new wait-and-see approach leaves Dell with the February offer from Michael Dell's group, which has offered $13.65 per share in a deal that would take the company private.

Icahn's preliminary proposal had been to acquire 58 percent of Dell stock for $15 per share while keeping it publicly traded.

PC sales have been declining as people delay replacing desktop and laptop computers and spend money instead on smartphones and tablet computers. Worldwide PC shipments plunged by 14 percent in the first three months of the year, according to IDC. That's the steepest quarterly decline during the 19 years that the research firm has been tracking the market. Dell, the world's third largest maker of desktop and laptop computers, saw PC sales fall 11 percent during the first quarter. Another research firm, Gartner, also reported large declines in PC sales.

Michael Dell believes he can turn around the company by diversifying into more profitable niches such as business software, data storage and consulting. It could be a wrenching process, something that Michael Dell believes he will be able to do if he doesn't have to worry about Wall Street's fixation on short-term results. But major shareholders have been unhappy with his group's offer, and competing bids emerged.

The Blackstone letter said that while the bidders still believe Dell is "a leading global company with strong market positions," it also cited Dell's "rapidly eroding financial profile." It noted that Dell has lowered its operating income forecast for this year to $3 billion, from $3.7 billion. That $3.7 billion, in turn, had been lowered this year from a $5.6 billion figure that Dell had circulated internally in July, according to regulatory filings.

Shares of Dell fell 55 cents, or 3.9 percent, to close at $13.40 on Friday and slipped to $13.37 in after-hours trading. It's the first time since Feb. 11 that the price has dropped below the Michael Dell group's offer price, indicating that investors no longer believe a higher bid will emerge.

When asked about Blackstone's characterization of Dell's financial profile, spokesman David Frink said in an email that the company remains focused on its customers and "providing innovative products."

A spokeswoman for New York-based Blackstone declined any additional comment on the decision. A message left for Icahn seeking comment was not immediately returned.

Initially valued at $85 million in its 1988 initial public offering, Dell went on a growth tear that turned the company into a stock market star. At the height of the dot-com boom in 2000, Dell was the world's largest PC maker, with a market value of more than $150 billion.

But Dell began to falter as other PC makers were able to lower their costs. At the same time, Hewlett-Packard Co. and other rivals forged relationships with stores that gave them the advantage of being able to showcase their machines. By 2006, HP had supplanted Dell as the world's largest PC maker. With its revenue slipping, Dell's market value had fallen to $19 billion just before the Michael Dell bid emerged.

In a show of confidence in his plan, Michael Dell is contributing $4.5 billion of his cash and stock to the proposed buyout, which is led by investment firm Silver Lake Partners. Loans would provide most of the rest of the financing. Microsoft Corp., which counts Dell among its biggest customers, is backing the deal by lending $2 billion to the buyers.

The board special committee had said it believed Blackstone's proposal could have been more lucrative than that deal. But the committee wanted to review the formal terms of Blackstone's bid before making a final assessment.

Dell has agreed to cover up to $25 million in expenses that Blackstone incurred while exploring its bid. Dell isn't reimbursing Icahn for his expenses because he refused to agree to a company demand that would have prevented him from pursuing a hostile takeover attempt.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-04-19-US-Dell-Acquisition/id-eb383b87aea34619ad3beddf79e2a4ad

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Sen. Lindsey Graham Says We Should Deny Bombing Suspect's Constitutional Rights (Little green footballs)

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Make Home Improvement Jobs Easy With These Tips

Your home needs repairing; however, you simply are not sure where to start. Does this sound like you? You are not alone. Hopefully, the following article can help you get your home up to date.

Before summer starts and outdoor barbecues begin, take a good look at your deck. Be on the lookout for holes or rotten wood, and quickly fix any areas that are problematic. This will help you get prepared for summer.

Are you having trouble growing grass in certain areas of your yard? If this is the case, purchase a bag of grass seed and try to restore your lawn to its original beauty. A lawn that looks even can truly improve your yard. Revitalize your lawn today.

If you want to do a project yourself, first write out everything you will have to accomplish. Ask someone who knows what they are doing to check it and make sure you didn?t forget anything. If you overlook an important step during the planning phase, it can result in work that is subpar or a renovation that is more expensive than what you budgeted for.

Take a sponge to your drywall! A sponge works as an effective tool to replace sanding. It will take some practice to learn listings by remax here -sutton realty north vancouver this new technique, but you?ll get it. Sponging holds an advantage over sanding ? no dust.

If you?re embarking on a huge kitchen renovation, set up a makeshift kitchen you can use while yours is unavailable. Your kitchen might not be useable for a couple of weeks so have a microwave and a refrigerator elsewhere in the house so you can store food and make easy meals.

If you want a quick way to add value to your home, considering refinishing your wood floors. While a large project, refinishing isn?t hard. If you don?t know how to do this, you can take classes at a hardware store. In addition, you can rent all the equipment you need at this store. This project will save you a lot of money in the long run.

Don?t select a busy upholstery pattern when you?re buying new furniture. Bold geometrics, loud florals and colorful patterns will limit your decorating choices. Purchase furniture in solid colors like black, brown, blue or green, and use accessories to highlight the furniture. Throw pillows and blankets will allow you to add any patterns or design you choose but won?t let the patterns take over your room.

Home improvement is a great way to make your ideas come to life. Consult a professional designer if you are unsure about doing a home improvement project. They know about overall layout, design and color scheme, and they can give you one on one assistance with your project.

In conclusion, anyone can do home improvements. If you don?t have any experience, all you have to do is learn the information. This article was intended to provide you a good starting knowledge in the realm of home improvement. Keep in mind, you can complete the project yourself if you follow this advice.

Source: http://canadianland.biz/329-make-home-improvement-jobs-easy-with-these-tips

Marcus Lattimore

A Small-Business Office Is Accused of Advocating for Big Business ...

The Agenda

How small-business issues are shaping politics and policy.

For decades, the Office of Advocacy, a bureau within the Small Business Administration, has worked behind the scenes to soften the impact of federal regulations on small companies. It is charged with, among other responsibilities, representing ?the views and interests of small businesses before other federal agencies.? To learn how regulatory policies might affect small businesses, the office regularly convenes round-table discussions with its constituents.

But before one such forum on labor safety in January 2011, an Office of Advocacy official invited a lobbyist for General Electric to participate, according to e-mails obtained by an organization known as the Center for Effective Government. ?You are welcome to attend as long as you maintain a small business perspective!? the official wrote, adding the well-known emoticon to suggest winking irony. Then he wrote, ?Seriously, we would very much appreciate your input and expertise!?

To some critics, the participation of G.E., one of the biggest corporations in America, in a meeting ostensibly about small-business concerns is one example of a larger concern about the Office of Advocacy. These critics suggest that ? just as other divisions of the S.B.A. have come in for criticism about looking the other way as big companies get government contracts or increased access to government-guaranteed loans ? the office has provided big businesses with a back door into the government?s rule-making deliberations.

With a staff of 47 and a budget of $9 million ? and its own appropriation, separate from the rest of the S.B.A. ? the office is tasked with making sure that other agencies consider the impact of their regulations on small businesses under procedures set by federal laws, particularly the Regulatory Flexibility Act, and prods those agencies to find alternatives to minimize that impact.

Not surprisingly, that kind of prodding has its fans. ?The Office of Advocacy continues to be the only voice within the federal government actively advocating to alleviate that burden,? Susan Eckerly, senior vice president for public policy at the National Federation of Independent Business, said in a statement. The N.F.I.B. is a conservative trade association that generally takes little interest in the activities of the S.B.A., but it came to the Office of Advocacy?s defense recently after two organizations separately published critical reports on the office. ?In our many years of working with the Office of Advocacy,??Ms. Eckerly said, ?we have found them to take great pains to ensure they are representing the views of small businesses that otherwise would have no voice in the rule-making process.?

The office claims to have saved small businesses more than $88 billion in just the first-year costs of complying with new regulations since 2002. For example, in 2011 the Justice Department adopted a proposal from the office to allow companies to avoid having to comply with new standards under the Americans With Disabilities Act ? a change the office has claimed saved small businesses $8.3 billion. In this example and others, however, it is impossible to know whether the impetus for the rule change came from the Office of Advocacy or elsewhere.

Some critics of the Office of Advocacy maintain it goes beyond its mandate and exhibits a general hostility toward regulation. They blame the office and the Regulatory Flexibility Act for delaying regulations by months, or even years, and for weakening the final policies. And in their reports, the Center for Effective Government and the Center for Progressive Reform claim the office works too closely with large corporations and the trade associations that represent them.

For example, in 2010 and 2011 the Office of Advocacy criticized efforts at other agencies to lay the groundwork for regulating three hazardous chemicals, citing the concerns of small businesses. But based on e-mails and other documents obtained from the office through Freedom of Information Act requests, the Center for Effective Government concluded that the office entered into these three scientific debates at the behest of trade groups, principally the American Chemistry Council, and relied on them extensively ? if not exclusively ? to frame its line of attack.

?No small businesses objected to the scientific assessments or asked the Office of Advocacy to intervene in the cancer assessments,? Randy Rabinowitz, the center?s director of regulatory policy, wrote in the report. ?The Office of Advocacy made no effort to determine whether the positions it took represented small-business views and interests.?

Moreover, according to the Center for Progressive Reform report, the S.B.A. office ?commonly seeks to weaken the requirements of proposed rules for all affected entities? instead of proposing rule changes narrowly tailored to small companies. Indeed, in at least four of the six rules established in 2012 in which the Office of Advocacy claims cost savings for small businesses, the office pushed changes that would benefit all businesses, not just small ones. In another case, the office proposed increasing the small-business size standards set by the S.B.A. to accommodate larger businesses.

Brad Howard, a spokesman for the Office of Advocacy, said in an e-mail that ?our sole focus and Congressional mandate is and always has been on minimizing the burden on small businesses.? But, he said, ?occasionally, these alternatives benefit everyone.? And the office?s work with trade groups ?is only part of the picture,? adding that staff members of the office also talk directly with small companies.

Trade associations are essential to the Office of Advocacy?s efforts to understand how regulations might affect small companies, said Thomas M. Sullivan, a Washington lawyer who served as chief counsel for the office during the Bush administration. ?Do you know how hard it is to find an independent trucker and get them to read an 800-page Federal Register proposal? They just don?t have time!? he said.

Of course, the interests of small and large companies may coincide, even when small companies are granted preferential treatment. A handful of large companies make the chemical styrene, and thousands of small companies use it to manufacture other products. All could face consequences if the Health and Human Services Department labels it a cancer risk. The fact that no small businesses complained to the office about the assessment for styrene, or submitted comments while the Health and Human Services Department was preparing its report, could indicate lack of interest or, as Mr. Sullivan, the former chief counsel, suggested, lack of time or awareness.

Ms. Rabinowitz, of the Center for Effective Government, sees it differently. The Office of Advocacy was set up to give voice to businesses that otherwise would not have one. ?But in the cases we?ve looked at, and the cases C.P.R. has looked at, apparently, Advocacy is not voicing any unique small-business perspective,? she said. ?The American Chemistry Council is adequately, legitimately and loudly representing the interests of the chemical companies ? they?re a big player in these debates.

?As a matter of policy, why is the taxpayer subsidizing an office of the federal government to amplify their complaints??

Source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/a-small-business-office-is-accused-of-advocating-for-big-business/

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Sistine chimney installed as conclave nears

VATICAN CITY (AP) ? The Vatican sought Saturday to quash speculation that divisions among cardinals could drag out the conclave to elect the new pope, while preparations for the vote plowed ahead with firefighters installing the Sistine Chapel chimney that will tell the world when a decision has been reached.

But the specter of an inconclusive first few rounds of secret balloting remained high, with no clear front-runner heading into Tuesday's papal election and a long list of cardinals still angling to discuss the church's problems ahead of the vote.

"You don't have your mind absolutely made up" going into the conclave, U.S. Cardinal Justin Rigali, who participated in the 2005 conclave that elected Benedict XVI, told The Associated Press this week. "You have your impressions."

The Vatican spokesman, however, took pains to stress the "vast," near-unanimous decision by the 115 cardinal electors to set Tuesday as the conclave start date and noted that no conclave over the past century has dragged on for more than five days.

"I think it's a process that can be carried out in a few days without much difficulty," spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told reporters.

While Tuesday's initial voting will likely see a broad number of candidates nominated, subsequent rounds will quickly whittle down the field to those candidates who are likely to obtain the two-thirds, or 77 votes necessary for victory, he said.

"This process of identifying the candidates who can receive the consensus and on whom cardinals can converge is a process that can move with notable speed," Lombardi said.

The Vatican was certainly going full-throttle Saturday with preparations: Inside the frescoed Sistine Chapel, workmen staple-gunned the brown felt carpeting to the false floor that has been constructed to even out the stairs and cover the jamming equipment that has been installed to prevent cellphone or eavesdropping devices from working.

The interference was working: cell phones had no reception in the chapel. Reporters allowed to visit the chapel used their phones instead to pose for photos in front of Michelangelo's "Last Judgment," the huge fresco behind the altar depicting a muscular Jesus surrounded by naked masses ascending to heaven and falling to hell.

Off in the rear left-hand corner sat the stove, a century-old cast iron oven where the voting ballot papers are burned, sending up puffs of smoke to tell the world if a pope has been elected (white smoke) or not (black).

After years of confusion, the Vatican in 2005 installed an auxiliary stove where fumigating cases are lit. The smoke from those cases joins the burned ballot smoke in a single copper pipe that snakes up the Sistine's frescoed walls, out the window and up on the roof where firemen on Saturday fitted the chimney top.

Elsewhere in the Apostolic Palace, officials on Saturday took measures to definitively end Benedict XVI's pontificate, destroying his fisherman's ring and the personal seals and stamps he used for official papers.

The act ? coupled with Benedict's public resignation and pledge of obedience to the future pope ? is designed to signal the end of his papacy so there is no doubt that a new pope is in charge. These steps were made necessary given Benedict's decision to resign rather than stay on the job until death.

The developments all point toward the momentous event soon to confront the Catholic Church: Tuesday's start of the conclave to elect a new leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics who must try to solve the numerous problems facing the church.

For the sixth day, cardinals met behind closed doors Saturday, and once again discussed the work of the Holy See's offices "and how to improve it," according to Lombardi.

The Holy See's internal governance has been a constant theme in these days of discussion, an indication that the revelations of corruption, political infighting and turf battles exposed by the leaks of papal documents last year are casting a very big shadow over this conclave.

The attention the issue has received suggests the cardinals will want a good manager in a pope ? or at least a pope who would appoint a good manager as his secretary of state, the key administration job in the Vatican.

Another round of secret consultations is scheduled for Monday, the last day before the conclave.

Lombardi, meanwhile, confirmed that the bells of St. Peter's Basilica would ring once a pope has been elected, though he acknowledged that there will always be some uncertainty in the whole endeavor. In 2005, it wasn't clear if the smoke coming out of the chimney was black or white and whether or not the bells were ringing for a pope or simply because the clock had struck noon.

"This is the beauty of these events, that is to say, having a minimum of suspense," Lombardi said. "A few minutes (of uncertainty) are more interesting than if everything happened like a Swiss watch."

___

AP Religion reporter Rachel Zoll contributed.

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sistine-chimney-installed-conclave-nears-135418278.html

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Police strikes in Egypt accelerate, adding turmoil

Egyptians mourn during the funeral for Abd Alhaleem Mohanna, 23, who was killed on March 5, 2013 during clashes with riot police, in Port Said, Egypt, Friday, March 8, 2013. Egypt's police forces have withdrawn from the streets of this restive city on the Suez Canal, handing over security to the military after nearly a week of deadly clashes. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Egyptians mourn during the funeral for Abd Alhaleem Mohanna, 23, who was killed on March 5, 2013 during clashes with riot police, in Port Said, Egypt, Friday, March 8, 2013. Egypt's police forces have withdrawn from the streets of this restive city on the Suez Canal, handing over security to the military after nearly a week of deadly clashes. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Egyptian police officers hold a protest demanding the resignation of the interior minister, in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, March 8, 2013. After weeks of battling with angry young protesters, Egypt's police forces have had enough. Police units around the country have launched mutinies, strikes and protests, accusing the Islamist president of using them to fight his opponents. Angry riot police locked their commander in a camp for hours. Policemen in cities around the country have shut down their stations. The wave of police discontent adds a new layer to the breakdown of politics, order and institutions in crisis-torn Egypt. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

An Egyptian army soldier helps another soldier with a mask as troops take control of the state security building after several days of clashes between protesters and riot police in Port Said, Egypt, Friday, March 8, 2013. With the country in chaos from weeks of protests against the Islamist president, the police have now joined the fray, launching their own protests. Some security forces in Port Said have refused to leave their barracks to move against protesters in the street amid clashes raging for days. Others have refused orders to deploy to Port Said from elsewhere to help in the fight. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Women mourn for their relative, Ahmed Abdul Khalim, 24, who was killed with a bullet to his head during recent clashes with Egyptian security forces in Port Said, Egypt, Friday, March 8, 2013. Egypt's police forces have withdrawn from the streets of this restive city on the Suez Canal, handing over security to the military after nearly a week of deadly clashes.(AP Photo/Ariana Drehsler)

Egyptian protesters chant angry slogans during a demonstration after the noon prayer in Port Said, Egypt, Friday, March 8, 2013. With the country in chaos from weeks of protests against the Islamist president, the police have now joined the fray, launching their own protests. Some security forces in Port Said have refused to leave their barracks to move against protesters in the street amid clashes raging for days. Others have refused orders to deploy to Port Said from elsewhere to help in the fight. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

CAIRO (AP) ? Strikes by Egyptian security forces spread swiftly around the country Friday, as police walked off the job or took to the streets, angry at being blamed for crackdowns on protests against the Islamist president and accusing his Muslim Brotherhood of trying to control them.

The wave of police discontent adds a new layer to Egypt's turmoil and political breakdown. In a sign of the disarray, a powerful hard-line Islamist group said its members would now take over policing a southern province because most security forces in the province were on strike.

The top security official in Assiut province, Gen. Aboul-Kassem Deif, said the announcement by Gamaa Islamiya ? a group that in the 1990s waged an armed Islamic militant uprising but in the past two years entered politics ? was illegal. But he seemed to acknowledge he could not stop it.

"I don't know what to do," he told The Associated Press.

Strikes by policemen and riot police were reported in at least 10 of Egypt's 29 provinces, including at several stations in the capital, Cairo. Even as some police went on strike, others were clashing with protesters in Cairo, the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta industrial city of Mahalla el-Kubra. Dozens injured in the fighting, according to security officials and witnesses.

In Cairo, police demonstrated in front of the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the security forces, and demanded the resignation of the minister, their boss.

In Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city, police closed their stations and plastered posters on the door reading, "We don't want politics" and ? in an attempt to show unity with the public ? "Police and the people are one hand."

The police discontent comes after relentless protests and unrest around the country since late January ? which in turn followed an earlier wave of protests in November and December. In past weeks, protesters have taken to the streets largely in anger against Islamist President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, which the opposition accuses of trying to dominate power in the country. But other factors have fueled unrest, including a declining economy and fuel shortages.

Near daily, the demonstrations have turned into clashes with police in multiple cities, resulting in the killing of around 70 protesters. Each death has increased public anger against the security forces, fueled further by reports of torture of some activists by security agents. The force is already widely hated because of its legacy of abuses and brutality under ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

Now that has sparked a backlash by many of the lower-ranking members of the security forces. Protesting police accuse Morsi of using them to crack down on his opponents and demand the resignation of the current, Morsi-appointed interior minister, who they accuse of engineering efforts to bring Islamist sympathizers into the ministry.

Police officers in the southern city of Sohag marched in front of one station, holding signs reading, "No to the Brotherhoodization of the ministry."

Police in charge of protecting the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, which makes up the backbone of Morsi's rule, have gone on strike, as have others tasked with escorting Morsi's motorcades.

Some members of the Central Security forces ? the riot police force that is at the forefront of cracking down on protesters ? have come to near munity.

On Thursday, protesting riot police trapped the Central Security's top commander for several hours inside their camp at the city of Port Said, refusing to deploy in the city against protesters.

On Friday, the Interior Ministry announced that the commander, Gen. Maged Nouh, had been removed from his post and replaced by his deputy, Ashraf Abdullah. Abdullah, who previously commanded Central Security in Cairo, reportedly instructed his forces not to clash with protesters on Dec. 3, during the first wave of mass protests outside Morsi's presidential palace.

It is not clear whether the new appointment would assuage anger of riot police.

Port Said, located at the Mediterranean end of the Suez Canal, has been the center of the heaviest violence during the unrest. A police crackdown on protests there in late January left 40 dead. Protesters have been clashing with police there the past week in fighting that has killed at least eight people, including three policemen.

On Friday, the military took over security in the city as police withdrew from the street and riot police stayed in their barracks. The handover was an attempt to bring calm since protesters largely trust the army more than police. Protesters climbed at the top of tanks in celebration, took down an Interior Ministry flag from a police building and vowed to ally with the military in managing the city.

But many fear a new wave of violence on Saturday when a court issues new verdicts and sentences in a contentious trial over a deadly soccer riot in Port Said in February 2012. A first set of verdicts on Jan. 28 ? in which 21 Port Said residents were sentenced to death over the riot ? sparked the city's initial uprising because its population sees the trial as unjust and politicized.

On Saturday, the court is scheduled to issue verdicts on around 50 more defendants, mostly Port Said residents but also including nine police officers. If the police personnel are convicted or handed heavy sentences, it will likely further fuel resentment among the security forces.

Hundreds marched through Port Said on Friday in a funeral procession for one of two protesters shot to death in fighting with police the night before, one of whom had been shot in the head. In Cairo on Friday, protesters and police fought on a main thoroughfare along the Nile River for the fifth straight day.

The mainly liberal and secular opposition says the turmoil shows that Morsi and his Islamist allies are not qualified to rule. They have accused Morsi and his Brotherhood of imposing their control and failing to seek consensus with other groups.

Morsi's supporters, in turn, say the opposition is trying to use street violence to overturn their election victories. In June, Morsi became the country's first freely elected president, and Islamists dominate parliament after elections last year.

Over the past days, some Islamists have spoken of the police mutiny as a "soft coup" against the president, warning of an "Islamic revolution" if Morsi is toppled.

The announcement by the Gamaa Islamiya in the southern province of Assiut raised the possibility of Islamist groups moving in to fill the void left by striking police. Members of the group beat up a number of youth opposition in front of the governor's office before police arrested three of the opposition, officials said.

The group declared its offices the "security headquarters" for the province and said it was organizing volunteer members to carry out police duties like patrols. Islamists in nearby provinces have spoken of doing the same.

The Gamaa was one of two main militant groups that waged a bloody campaign of violence in southern Egypt aiming to overthrow the state in the 1990s. It since forswore violence and entered politics after Mubarak's fall in 2011, but it maintains a hard-line Islamist ideology.

The Assiut security chief, Deif, accused the Gamaa of exploiting the situation to expand its influence before parliamentary elections expected in coming months.

"It could enflame the situation," Deif said, "and people will not accept it."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-03-08-Egypt/id-8652507366b1467dbae348600d016c55

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Radar reveals traces of Martian mega-flood

NASA / MOLA / Smithsonian

Mars' 600-mile Marte Vallis channel system is filled with young lavas that obscure the source of the channels. This map shows Marte Vallis against the background of an elevation map of the planet, based on readings from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor.

By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

A 3-D reconstruction of structures beneath the surface of Mars shows the 600-mile-wide footprint of a mega-flood that carved deep channels into the planet within the past 500 million years, scientists say.

Since that time, the evidence of the flood in a region known as Marte Vallis has been covered over by fresher lava flows. But a team of researchers pieced together the evidence by analyzing readings from a ground-penetrating radar instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The analysis was laid out Thursday on the journal Science's website.

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"Our findings show that the scale of erosion was previously underestimated, and that channel depth was at least twice that of previous approximations," lead author Gareth Morgan, a geologist at the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, said in a news release. "The source of the floodwaters suggests?they originated from a deep groundwater reservoir and may have been released by local tectonic or volcanic activity. This work demonstrates the importance of orbital sounding radar in understanding how water has shaped the surface of Mars."

Over the past decade and a half, missions to Mars have provided ample evidence that the planet was once warmer and wetter than it is today. However, scientists say the most recent outflows of water came in brief, catastrophic bursts rather than as steady streams. The newly published research is consistent with that view.

Morgan and his colleagues used the orbiter's Italian-built Shallow Radar sounder, or SHARAD, to put Mars' subsurface geology through the radar equivalent of a CT scan. They found that the boundaries between the layers of fresher lava and the underlying rock traced a network of buried channels. The patterns and depths of those channels were characteristic of the canyons that would be cut by flowing water. Lots of flowing water.

The depth of the main channel was estimated at 226 to 371 feet (69 to 113 meters). "This is comparable with the depth of incision of the largest known megaflood on Earth, the Missoula floods, responsible for carving the Channeled Scabland of the northwestern United States," the researchers wrote.?

The Missoula floods occurred 12,000 to 18,000 years ago, due to a post-Ice Age warming trend, and discharged dammed-up water at a rate ranging up to 2.6 billion gallons per second. Morgan and his colleagues traced the Martian mega-flood to a radically different type of source: a fracture system in Mars' Cerberus Fossae region that apparently opened up to release water from miles beneath the Red Planet's surface. "It was a big crack in the ground, basically," Morgan told NBC News.

Smithsonian / NASA / JPL-Caltech / Sapienza Univ. of Rome / MOLA / USGS

A 3-D visualization shows the buried Marte Vallis channels. Marte Vallis consists of multiple perched channels formed around streamlined islands. These channels feed a deeper and wider main channel. The surface has been elevated and scaled by a factor of 1/100 for clarity. The area covered by this visualization is outlined by dotted lines in the global map above.

NASA / Goddard / Anna Brunner

NASA interns look down on Frenchman Springs Coulee in Washington state's Channeled Scablands. Researchers say the Martian mega-flood cut channels similar to those created thousands of years ago in the Channeled Scablands.

SHARAD's depth readings suggest that the channels had to have been cut somewhere between 10 million and 500 million years ago. Morgan said that makes the mega-flood channels "much younger" than the geological features being studied by NASA's Curiosity rover in a different region of Mars. Curiosity's science team wants to find out whether Mars had liquid water and the other conditions conducive for life 3 billion years to 4 billion years ago. On the surface, at least, those conditions were long gone by the time the Cerberus Fossae mega-flood washed over Marte Vallis.

More about Mars:

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In addition to Morgan, the authors of "3D Reconstruction of the Source and Scale of Buried Young Flood Channels on Mars" include Bruce A. Campbell, Lynn M. Carter, Jeffrey J. Plaut and Roger J. Phillips.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's?Facebook page, following?@b0yle on Twitter?and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Source: http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/07/17225462-radar-reveals-traces-of-monstrous-martian-flood-millions-of-years-ago?lite

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