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Mars Rover Sniffs First Hint of Water?
mhw25 writes "It is reported that the Mars rover Spirit is already well into its scientific mission, and may be detecting hints of water. The mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer has returned its first image, with probable evidence of carbonates and hydrated minerals. We may know more after the rover rolls off its landing base, after making a 120 degree turn to avoid the airbag blocking its front ramp, to start analyses on soil from Thursday or Friday. An ongoing intrigue is already developing - a scientist reckoned that some of the soil around the airbag 'looks like mud, but it can't be mud'."
Where there is water, there may also be a brewery. These Martians may be eons ahead of us..
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An ongoing intrigue is already developing - a scientist reckoned that some of the soil around the airbag'looks like mud, but it can't be mud'."
In a bioengineering course I took once we were playing around with various materials prior to creating various cements and I found that many very fine grained ultra dry powders exhibited qualities one might presume were qualities exhibited in mud. Specifically, the appearance of folding up in waves like there were some bonding force holding things together when pushed. Applying various degrees of static charges to the materials appeared to amplify these effects allowing for clumping as well.
I am curious though as to why they dont think it could be mud if they are indeed suspicious of water being present?
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There is water on Mars. The ICE CAPS were first noticed about FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
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Water is believed to be a pre-requisite for life.
Well, that and a 1x4x9 ebon slab.
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Isn't that what commets are primarily composed of? I fully expect H2O molecules to be present on Mars and every other planet. This should not be a suprise to anyone.
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Prediction for when the rover finally starts to rove: The good news: It finds water. The bad news: It sinks and vanishes in the mud.
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it is clear that it is very different from any of the three previous Mars landing sites explored by Vikings 1 and 2 and Pathfinder. For example, those plains all had about 20 per cent of their surfaces covered with rocks. Around Spirit, the figure is just three per cent.
Looks like our previous visits have made them clean up for company.
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to conclusions based upon early data before the rover has even "hit the road." We'll be getting more and better data.
As an example. One of my geology profs was studying an outcropping of calcium-rich meta-igneous rock (meta basalt). He kept finding a mix of calcium oxalate minerals on the surface of the rock in numerous places, but couldn't understand how they would be a weathering product. Oxalate minerals are unusual in nature.
Then it dawned on him. Oxalates are common in kidney stones. He bought a live trap and captured several wild rats. Then he kept them in a lab and realized they like to urinate in the same place. What appeared to be a strange chemical weathering reaction was actually just evaporated rat urine.
Point is, first impressions may be incorrect and additional data and study leads to more accurate conclusions. Sometimes those later conclusions are more interesting (or comical) than the original hypothesis.
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It can't be mud because of physics. Water cannot exist in free form in the surface of Mars because it would simply evaporate instantly (at least in most locations). Temperature and atmospheric pressure are the usual suspects here. And we do know what those are with a relatively high degree of certainty. Ergo, it can't be mud. It must be some sort of wacky sand, like montmorillonite. Data from the Mariner probes has detected a few dozen types of this clay. Maybe this is one we haven't seen before.
Water, if found, will be either in the poles or trapped in molecule-sized amounts in rocks under the surface, nominally because of some sort of organism like microscopic algae or fungus keeps it there as part of its organic cycle. The idea goes that if you find water there you're also likely to find some type of primitive life.
But I suggest we let the thing dig holes and stuff before we get all excited =)
Last I heard they'd found bound water, and the surface was a lot hotter than they expected it to be. In the last image release I notice they show a graph of the temperature (presumably up near the Pancam) at ~1m above the surface - the great thing about Mars' atmosphere is how quickly it get's cold the higher you get - i.e. very. Like, your feet could be warm and your head would be a solid block of ice.
:)
The kinda cool thing is the TES data shows a current temperature map at surface level - you notice at Gusev Crater (where spirit is, about 15S, 185W - so basically around halfway down the right edge of the picture) the temperature is somewhere around 0C, +/-10 degrees or so.
The *really* cool thing is, when they were getting ready to make the rover stand up and strut its stuff, they went through extra checks and testing on Earth because the landing site was a lot warmer than they expected - there's every chance that it's above 0 there, in fact, there's every chance that (on the surface at least) Spirit is enjoying much better weather than I am right now.
It's common knowledge that Mars' equator regularly gets up into the positive numbers, even up above 20c, the only real question as to the feasibility of liquid water in these regions is whether there is any ice left there to melt, or if it is all up at the poles (or underground). Due to the low triple point of water on Mars, and the theory that it's just coming out of an ice-age, there's every chance there is no liquid left around there to melt, but there's certainly a chance there is.
Fortunately, we have a rover up there that will be able to tell us for sure in a few days
Actually it would probably boil first. Freezing is a much slower process. The lack of atmospheric pressure would get to it long before the temperature ever did.
Big deal, mud on mars.. wake me up when the hot three-breasted mutant alien chicks are wrestling in it :)
All and all, I don't understand why a range of microscopes has not been standard issue on all Mars lander missions.
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Why not ask the prop guys?
...and not a scientist, I've always wondered...Why do we feel like all life *needs* water? Who's to say the martians don't live on nitrogen or uranium or plaine old red rocks? Or that they don't thrive on some yet undiscovered stuff.
/. :), but it always seems silly to me when NASA keeps says "we need to find the water to find the life!" Says who?
I know I don't have a clue what I'm talking about (hence posting to
Aren't there certain bacteria that can survive the long, harsh trip through space? What if they were attached since liftoff, survived the trip through space, survived the burn in the thin atmosphere, and wound up being deposited in a somewhat moist area? Even if there wasn't MUCH water, if there was SOME water, they could, in theory, manage to survive slightly under the surface. Even the tiniest petri dish could wind up with a breeding ground for life on Mars and so long as there's some atmosphere to contain the water and the gases emitted by the bacteria, it could be a spark for future life on Mars.
Sorry if I'm rambling illogically. I'm not well versed in the Martian atmosphere, so feel free to shoot my naive, young hopes down if I'm totally out in left field.
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What is THE best site for up to the minute reports?
I'd have to say Gusev Crater, but if you can't make it there, you could try this jpl (has all images & press releases) or this other jpl site (has more articles). Don't miss the 3D model they've built of the site
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Not this old argument again (referring to several of the above posts, but /. won't let me simultaneously reply to several).
The permanent Martian ice caps are just that, water ice. They expand and shrink seasonally, with much of the winter increase being CO2 ("dry") ice. In the Martian summers the poles are too warm for CO2 ice, in the Martian winters, too cold for some of the atmospheric CO2 not to freeze out. (So yes, at any given time, one pole is mostly water ice, the other mostly (covered with) dry ice -- except in spring and fall when the CO2 is changing poles -- which is also when you tend to get planetary dust storms. Imagine that.)
This has been more or less known since some astronomer first pointed a spectrometer at Mars, and largely confirmed by subsequent observation and exploration.
The only real discussion is the percentages of same, and how much (if any) water or water ice is in the soil further from the poles.
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Oh, PUHLEEEZE. Not more lame conspiracy theories. Heck, maybe the lander is just out in AZ somewhere, eh?
/. community ranged across the entire bell curve, but this is a new low, even for here.
If you REALLY believe that the US govt could maintain a fiction on such a scale, without word ever leaking, then my posting this is probably a waste of typing.
If you want access to the raw data streams, file a FOIA request. Or go build a 'scope and listen to them for yourself. You can be _pretty_ sure the latter signals aren't doctored. Unless, of course, all this 'data' was simply pre-programmed before launch, right?
I knew the
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is if Rovers camera spotted a fossil in the 'mud"...
Spaceflight Now also maintains good coverage and often posts the latest news even before the JPL weenies do.
Even once it has been released into the peer reviewed world, it will be sensationalized. How many times has there been a panacea cure for cancer published in Science? If you read the NYT, you'd say dozens. If you read Science, you'd say never.
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You can see here that natural processes most likely have occured in a similar manner Mars as they do on Earth. The rover is going to check out these rocks tomorrow or the next day if all goes well. It is exciting to see discovery and the scientific process in action. Who knows maybe water is very common there and thats what eroded this hole into this rock. In any case, sooner or later we are going to turn up water on mars, find life, and reaffirm how precious life on earth in its abundance indeed is.
Sorry, vacuum will not cause water to decompose into hydrogen and oxygen. It will remain water molecules, albeit very disperse ones. Breaking the molecular bonds between H and O in water requires an input of energy - electrical as in electrolysis or thermal - creating a dissociated plasma (very high temperatures). Vacuum is not sufficient to break molecular bonds.
This is what P-T diagrams are all about. Here's one for water. Note that there is a region where you can go straight from solid water (ice) to water vapor (steam) - sublimation. This is what would happen, in short order, to ice on mars. Unless, of course, it was bonded to soil or another molecucle (hydrous form) rather than being molecular water.
But I'm not a chemist...
I've been looking around various sites, but mostly keeping up with news about Spirit through google news. What is THE best site for up to the minute reports?
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This site has TONS of great links, animations, movies, cartoons, news, and everything else. I hit it and branch off from there many times a day.
Utter rubbish. Water doesn't dissociate into hydrogrn and oxygen just by being boiled. The interatomic forces holding the molecule together are not broken. You can make it dissociate by electrolysis but it does not happen through boiling. If it did it would be quite inadvisable to light a match anywhere near a kettle, given that a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen is just a bit flammable!
Each water molecule is polarised (quite strongly as it happens): although it is overall electrically neutral, one end is rather positive and the other end is rather negative. You get residual interactions between the positive end of one molecule and the negative end of the next one along. When the water molecules are extremely cold they are held in a lattice structure by these residual dipole moments. This is ice. When you add some heat the water molecules jiggle around, and eventually have enough energy to break the lattice and move around freely, though they are still attracted to each other because of the electrical dipoles. This is water. Add some more heat energy and the jiggling water molecules move so fast that they have enough kinetic energy to break out of the energy well of the intermolecular bonds. They can move around at will and each molecule can go where it wants. This is water vapour. The temperature at which these changes occur depends on pressure for reasons that you can go and look up.
What you see as steam when a kettle boils is actually liquid water that cools and recondenses into countless tiny droplets above the kettle's spout.
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carbon life needs water to form hydrocarbons which are the building blocks of the complex molecules of life.
its hypothesized you could base life on some other elements (like silicon), but since we've never seen it, we wouldn't even know *how* to look for it, much less recognize it if we did, short of a silicon based life form seen moving around...
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. . . I am very interested in eventually moving to Mars. It would be a bonus if there were lakes, so I could go ice fishing, but you can get the full "ice fishing experience" without them.
My real question, as someone who has camped outdoors in very cold temperatures, is this: could the combination of a shallow (half-meter) trench, a heavy-duty lean-to, and a heavy-duty sealed winter sleeping back (along with oxygen, of course) get one through the night?
Also, as Minnesotans are well-known for their masochistic, 'can-do' approach to weathering winter weather, are there any Minnesotans planned for the manned Mars mission?
Anyway, the quote was elicited only when one of the reporters there asked "to me it looks like mud, any chance it could be". The reply was that although it might look like mud, it couldn't be, followed by a description of the behavior of fine particles (they can flow, etc.).
I'd say that to use this as a quote that "scientists say" it looks like mud is a bit disingenuous.
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You're on the right track. As I understand it from a Sedimentary Petrology course I took, we also classified material as mud based on the size of grains apparent. We use something called the Wentworth Size Class. Mud is generally composed of clay to silt sized grains which range anywhere from .00006mm - .0530mm in diameter. When these grains solidify, they form Mudstones, Claystones and Siltstones.
Mud traditionally implies an element of H20 though, so I think scientists would have to be somewhat anal about classifying it as such. The implications for saying water can currently exist at the surface of Mars is quite staggering for all sorts of scientific reasons.
Judging from the pictures (though I have nothing to scale it too), much of the material looks very very fine grained, in the realm of medium grained silt to clay sized particles. But without the presence of H20, that is all they are, just silt or clay (note, using the Wentworth Scale, clay indicates the finest grains).
Now the processes that created these fine silts and clays are very indicative of having sometime of wet environment that broke down materials into these fine grains.