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Brine on Mars?
Bagels writes "A new article on MSNBC (coming originally from Space.com) reports that the both Rovers may have struck water in the form of brine. The Opportunity rover found hints of salty water in the trench that it dug, and scientists note that the Spirit rover is currently digging a trench of its own to investigate the soil that clings to its treads, suggesting the possibility of moisture. The brine would only be small amounts of water mixed with salt, which can exist in liquid form at very low temperatures. More images are available over at NASA's rover site." Reader
frovingslosh would like to add: "I'm just hoping that when you get around to posting one of the many stories that the rover has found mud on Mars that you might include a link to the slashdot article where I predicted this but got moderated as 'funny'." Done!
Scientists now believe that advanced colonies of Sea Monkeys once inhabited Mars.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
...there's shrimp!
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
I believe this is obvious proof that Mars used to have oceans. Yes, oceans. And because they had oceans, they had life. And because they had life, they had Elephants. Only they weren't called Elephants. They were called Marlaphants.
Yeah, Marlaphants.
Anyone taking bets?
clifgriffin > blog
I'd be interested to see what kind of hardware/bandwidth NASA have cos they serve up images and movies 24/7 and never seem to get slahdotted...
Jokes, aside, let's not forget that this could house some microbial life, at the very least. Just look at our ocean's seabed around the vents.
Hey George, Mars called, and they're running out of shrimp!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
No, the ice caps have been known to be largely water ice for a while now. There was another story confirming it a few weeks ago. The real news here is liquid water.
If it's not on fire, it's a software problem.
And so begins the great Martian Salt Trade.
..why did it not evaporate?
The atmospheric pressure on mars is pretty low, which means that any liquid water (which this apparently is) will be vacuum dried to gas and move into outer space.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Here's a New Scientist article from January which argues for the presence of brine.
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
Coming soon - Bonanza 2012, starring the head of Lorne Greene: Mars - the new frontier, thousands of fortune seekers stake their claim on the red planet, hoping to make their fortune panning for frankfurters.
Now there will be salt mines for the riff-raff when I take over Mars.
--- Ban humanity.
Maybe it's leftover salt from Martian civilizations de-icing their driveways...
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
Rover is picking up hints of Martian Cities made entirely of Gold off in the distance. Spanish mercenaries, get ready!
Great findings, but it seems somewhat obvious that there can't be clean fresh, salt-free water on mars if the hypthesis that most of it evaporated away is true.
Else, all the rocks would only contain non water-soluble materials - hard to imagine.
Speculation: The salt content of the water is probably be linked to the water content in atmosphere. The average evaporation rate for the brine into the atmosphere should match the rate of hygroscopic attraction of water from the atmosphere.
My guess, one of these days one of the Mars rovers will stumble on upon Bikini Bottom, and be treated to the whimsical antics of SpongeBob, Patrick, Plankton, and Squidward. Come on, there's no space helmet wearing sassy squirrels like Sandy on earth. If there were, would I be sitting here typing?
So what you are predicting is Martian rats with salty urine. :-)
--- Ban humanity.
This would be much much more exciting if they found spice.
:)
Other rover was actually taken by a sand worm.
In other news, new rovers will roll without rhythm.
The parent is right; the "+5 informative" grandparent is just wrong. We have known for some time that at least the north polar cap was composed mostly of water ice.
r _040123.html
References:
http://www.nature.com/nsu/030210/030210-9.html
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/express_wate
The very small particle size of Martian dust makes it likely that it sticks due to static charge. If the soil were moisture laden you would expect it to rapidly dry out and crust over (change appearance) on the wheels of the rover.
an ill wind that blows no good
why the heck havent they toddled over to the face? :( ...cause they've already determined that the face (ready for a shock?) isn't actually a face.
I hope they rust-proofed the Rovers.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
So the Rovers are not in Morocco/Sahara after all...
No need to thank me, just not doing my (real) job.
If you dig a trench in the sand and find salty water, you should start running because the tide is gonna come in any minute!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Stop the importation of Martian Dihydrogen Monoxide now! It's threatening the Earth's Dihydrogen Monoxide industry!
This raises the possiblities of halophiles living on Mars. On Earth, halophiles can live in up to 35% salt solutions. Pure water would kill these creatures --causing them to aborb water until they burst.
Its no wonder that Viking found no clear evidence of life on Mars, the low-salt water in Viking's nutirent broth probably killed any halophiles.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
You mean there might actually be water on Mars, meaning that there's oxygen, that we could extract and breathe?
If only someone had mentioned this possibility before.
Brine? Brine means pickles? Pickles means Mars was (or still is) inhabited by a highly evolved race of cucumbers? Earthlings eat huge quantities of pickles on burgers? Meaning McDonald's could be considered a weapon of mass destruction? So now Mars will declare war, great, this is just what the economy needs...
Yes, I believe Europe does offer a wide selection of women from which to choose.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
So now we know where all those pickled odities you find in redneck bars come from. I knew those things floating in brine must have come from another planet.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
When drilling for oil, there are often pockets of salt-water which need to be disposed of. This is done by drilling a new hole to another formation porus enough to accept the salt-water and pumping it down there. Wouldn't it be interesting if the rovers discover an old drill site and we find out (in Hoganesque fashion) that Mars really is the remains of a single catastrophic ecological disaster.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
I think they should take a picture at night so we can see what Mars' moons look like.
Rather than having the rovers scratch the surface or look at billion year old craters what they should do is send a large lump of heavy metal (say, 500 lbs) to Mars and, with it protected by a heat shield, slam it into the surface like an meteorite. Not having to account for parachute wind drift they could be pretty accurate with such a targeted blow and the result would be a small -fresh- crater. The crater could be observed by sensors in orbit and a rover landed in the vicinity shortly thereafter. Both the man-made meteorite and the rover could be sent together and initially orbited so as to allow time for a precise hit and accurate rover reentry.
======= ~\_/~\_O Burmese
Well I never...
Deimos and Phobos, while closer (23459 and 9378 km) to Mars than Luna is to Earth (about 384400 km), also have much smaller masses (1.8e15 and1.08e16 kg) than Luna (7.35e22 kg). [source]
Tidal forces (being a function of gravitational differential) are an inverse-cube function on distance, and linear with mass, so that would be a tidal force about 1/99th that of which we're used to. (Disclaimer: I am not a Physicist, but I share a house with one.)
While this is Mars, the concern isn't completely insane. If the rover's in position to get a 1% response from the Martian equivalent of the Bay of Fundy, we'll be needing yet another Mars probe, and someone at NASA should be needing a new job for putting it there.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I keep seeing references in the rover news about the microscopic imager, but is this really a microscope, or is it just magnifying as much as say a desktop macroscope for opaque objects (they let you see things around the size of a hair okay..? If there were things the size of microorganisms in the briny reaches, could we see them? It is impossible for the layman to look at the closeups we've been seeing and understand how big the field is.
Hasn't anyone else noticed this?
The mars face has returned!
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Maybe... just maybe, Mars was similar to Earth some-umpteen-billion years ago. And Earth will be like Mars in some-umpteen-billion years.
I'm willing to take an entreprenurial risk and say we're overlooking the real moneymaker here... and that's Venus... once Earth moves out of this cushy orbit, Venus is going to move in. A couple billions years after that... Hot Venutian Chicks on my beaches.
awwwYEAH.
(The other planet being Earth.) 'Torn fabric' puzzle on Mars
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Indeed, I've found an abstract from the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference on the subject.
I suspect that snagging a suitable astroid and lugging it to Mars is much more complicated and expensive then sending something from here. The rovers themselves weigh over 400 lbs (on Earth) so sending a 500lb chunk of metal is no big deal. I'm sure some scientist could quickly calculate how big and what shape such a thing would need to be to maximize results in such an experiment.
======= ~\_/~\_O Burmese
You stick a couple of 100 million dollars worth of water detecting apparatus aboard a rover, and how do you eventually find the wet stuff? Right, it sticks to the tires...
Doh!
Everyone always warns you to always refuse the underbody-coating option, I'm sure NASA was trying to keep costs down when they went to the rover lot. Maybe those salesman really are correct after all...
----- And all that the Lorax left here in this mess was a small pile of rocks, with one word...UNLESS.
signs of life on Mars, and since it's likely that (being scientists) some of them are Monty Python fans, I humbly submit that the project should be called...
"The Life of Brine".
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Because if they were sent to the polar ice caps, they'd probably get stuck in an ice-crevice or snowdrift upon landing. And you don't want to land on mountains or rough terrain either.
Even if there were lakes or oceans on Mars, you wouldn't want to land on them because the probe would be constantly bobbing about, making satellite communications extremely difficult.
So that leaves flat, soft sandy deserts as your only choice.
Administrator O'Neill: Are ya ready engineers?
Engineers: Aye Aye, Administrator!
AON: I can't hear you!
ENG: AYE AYE, ADMINISTRATOR!
AON: Ohhhh.... who's driving around on a planet briney?
ENG: Spirit Squarepants!
AON: Along with his good friend Opportunity!
ENG: Spirit Squarepants!
AON: He's grinding at rocks with his robotic arm...
ENG: Spirit Squarepants!
AON: Hoping his file system does him no harm!
ENG: Spirit Squarepants!
All Together: SPIRIT SQUAREPANTS, SPIRIT SQUAREPANTS, SPIRIT SQUAREPANTS
AON: Spirit.... Squarepants!
That means that NASA can start putting cool mudflaps on future rovers. You know, those flaps with the naked ladies on 'em? R-r-r-r-r baby!
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
And this related species of Marlaphant. Clearly this species could not survive on Earth!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
There can't possibly be any life on mars.
The club scene is a barren landscape, and the whole place is just one big red light district.
The opportunity costs are too high for this to be feasible. If we're throwing 500 pounds of anything at Mars, it's going to be a little more sophisticated then a hunk of inert metal.
This would be a feasible experiment if slinging 500 pounds of material around the Solar System were something we could do causually, so it's not like it's a bad idea, but at our present stage of development, we'd want that 500 pounds to be probes and satellites and sensors and such that are more useful for making things other then holes.
What happens if the rover DOES find water? Would it sink or would it float? Logic dictates that if it floats, it is therfore a witch and must be burned.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
I want whoever had hidden my shiny roundmarbles on Mars to come and tell me the truth.
I lost these things since the first grade, sniff, how am I supposed to get them back from there?
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Question: If you take viruses or bacteria from Earth's extreme regions and leave them on Mars, will they survive?
They BOTH found it? Maybe the rovers are just leaking some of their antifreeze?
I really wish that the majority of global space efforts would go towards designing and constructing a space elevator already. This is really what they need in order to get things rolling in outer space. The major hurdle is getting anything we construct here on earth off the surface, past the atmosphere and out past orbit....If a successful implementation of space elevator were to exist we could simply raise our payloads out past the atmoshere and snap together prebuilt space cruisers in space. Then we could really have some serious space travelling. Unt il then we will just piddle around with the Xprize and trying to get chunks of metal off the earth's surface....we're still stuck in our sandbox with our pale and shovel...how depressing. If only more effort and funing were to go toward space instead of missiles and chem weapons, etc...sigh.
Dry stuff. Wiggle. Rub. Static. Clumping?
Also, someone asked "if you took an earth extremeophile and plonked it mars, what would happen".
It might burst and die. It might dry out and die. It might use its energy reserve and die. Its innards might freeze and die. Its DNA and proteins might get fried by the radiation and die. (Notice how many of these involve the word "die"?).
There are one or two genera that might just have time to kick their sporolation apparatus into action and retreat their important bits (mostly tightly packed DNA) into a dry, tough husk. But thats as good as its going to get I would think.
I wish at was Friday, but I dont want to wish my life away. So I wish it was last Friday.
Why am I doubtful that life is there now? Because life is agressively pervasive. Once a life form can eek out a foothold in an environment it will exploit it to the maximum effect. The only example we have so far is our planet but the effect of life on Earth profound and blantanly obvious! There is hardly a spot any place where some life form of one type or another has exploited the environment around it and thrived leaving evidence something was once living there. Life doesn't hide. It spread like wildfire.
So if life on Mars exists now it should be easy to find. So if there is brine type life on Mars it should be easy to find because natural selection would kick in leaving the heartiest lifeforms left to spread as far and as wide as possible. You should be able to find large clusters of the stuff all over. So why haven't we yet? Maybe we aren't looking in the right spots. Maybe we don't have the right scientific tools out there yet. The point is that if life has a foothold anywhere on Mars is should be obvious when we stumble across it.
Well, if you'd like to walk over and verify it personally, be my guest.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Gases do move into outer space. Gravity slows down the process, but it doesn't stop it. When you get to the outer atmosphere, the velocity of gas atoms and molecules follow a predictable statistical distribution, dependent on their atomic mass and average temperature. Many atoms and molecules will reach escape velocity, and diffuse away from the planet. What do you think happened to the atmospheric helium on Earth?
Molecular weight of helium: 4
Molecular weight of water: 18
Gases escape over geologic time if the mean particle velocity is more than about a tenth escape velocity (if I recall correctly). Light particles at a given temperature (defined by average particle kinetic energy) move faster and so are lost more readily. Heavier particles are moving more slowly, and so are lost at a _much_ slower rate (the tail of the Boltzman distribution is exponential).
The real reason Mars has relatively little water is that water is broken up in the upper atmosphere by interaction with solar UV. While water may not be light enough to escape, hydrogen definitely is (molecular weight 2, and weight of an atomic hydrogen radical formed by a UV event is 1). This mechanism works on all of the planets (especially the inner ones) to strip their atmospheres of hydrogen.
Mars has a less active geology than Earth. We get hydrogen compounds (including water) replenished from volcanic sources. Earth also has a much higher escape velocity, which means that hydrogen is lost less quickly when formed (and has longer to recombine to form chemicals with higher molecular weight).
Both of these help explain why Earth is wet and Mars isn't. On the short term, however, water stays bound in Mars's atmosphere just fine. Those ice caps that migrate seasonally via atmospheric gas transport aren't all CO2, you know.
You can find a number of documents online discussing why Venus did get stripped of most of its water, despite being heavy and having a fairly active geology.
Look, it's just the way science works. People form a hypothesis, do a lot of testing to confirm it, submit it to peer-reviewed journals where other scientists attempt to reproduce their results.
It takes more than a 5-minute experiment to get any degree of certainty in science.
Would you rather that they announced fantastically overhyped results before doing any testing?
Frankly I don't know what the big deal is about liquid water and mars. We know that there's plenty of frozen water, and also that the martian atmosphere contains trace amounts of moisture. Is it 0.3% or 0.03%? It's been a while.
If we know that there's solid and gaseous water, liquid water just seems like something obvious and not a major discovery.
The really big deal would be quantifying that liquid water, which is almost impossible. We have no idea if there are gigantic oceans hidden underground, or even a few smaller pools, or anything at all.
Inside our planet there are literally tons of water, and in many cities that's what you drink, purified underground water.
I'm not an expert, but why aren't they doing more seismographic tests, or even looking at sending a ground penetrating radar to mars?
I dont know about the radar but seismographs are small and cheap...
The threads info and photo can be found here.
Could these be the worm tubes you are refering to? More on them here and here. The worm tubes are a heck of a lot larger than the microscopic images from the rovers. As mentioned in the linked articles, Arthur C. Clark, proposed the glass worm tubes idea.