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NASA Says Mars Rocks Formed in a Salty Sea
NASA has made another announcement, live on NASA TV, regarding the discoveries of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. They believe that the rocks examined by Opportunity were actually formed in water; that those rocks were actually sediments laid down in a shallow salty sea. They've already had outside scientists examine their data and those scientists concur with the conclusions. NASA has a story with explanations and some photos.
It's time to get our asses to Mars. There is far too much to learn for us to just sit around and do nothing.
Especially considering some of this may be applicable to what will happen to our own planet in the future. We currently have seas. Mars used to. It'd be a good idea to figure out why they don't have them anymore.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
Umm... it depends. Salty sea = Water salt? Or an acidic sea? Water != life. Sea Water != life. Its a posibility, but I think your jumping the gun a bit.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Okay, so they've shown it to a few scientists who concur.
Whatever happened to *publishing* the results of your experiments (and the data) in peer-reviewed journals?
Now, granted, there's plenty of political bias in the journals -- anyone that thinks science is purely dealing with the facts these days is *beyond* an idiot, but still. Just because you've got the rovers and you've got a daily press conference doesn't mean that your statements should be treated as anything but sensational speculation this early on.
If NASA were claiming Cold Fusion or Perpetual Motion, they've be laughed out of the scientific community for broadcasting just a revolutionary claim without first publishing.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
I don't know anything about this area, really, but in seas on the earth isn't it thought that salt accumulation occurs from activities of living (and dying) organisms?
Oh, for chrissake.
They're throwing out updates as soon as they get them because, really, this is so far beyond anyone's expectations that we're really floored.
The big deal is that if we really do find life that evolved separately from terran life, it throws a *huge* quandary for some philosophies and a lot of world religion, besides being a major psychological breakthrough for science. And the signs look *awfully* good.
Besides, NASA had a lot of bad press from Columbia, and they're hungry to be able to give good news.
And, really, aren't you even a little bit excited.
May we never see th
but I think your jumping the gun a bit.
;-)
Well, you obviously aren't a modern journalist.
Do you like German cars?
You can't blame the guy for being excited. Skeptics called everyone 'foolish' for believe that water could have existed in any significant quantities on mars, in any form.
He may be jumping the gun a bit, but those water seekers certainly scored big by hitting two targets that both were drenched in water at one time.
'Course, nothing drives people better than proving someone else wrong...
Actually, if you were deterred from being an astronaut because of Challenger, then it's probably for the best. No offense, but to be an astronaut you gotta have some huge nuts (so to speak) to ride those flying bombs up to orbit.
What a great job, but you know... it's probably full of meetings and paperwork and boring-ass busy work most of the time, just like all the rest of us.
if we really do find life that evolved separately from terran life, it throws a *huge* quandary for some philosophies and a lot of world religion
Like when they first showed the earth wasn't flat, and suddenly christianity collapsed because a flat world was one of its cornerstones? Don't kid yourself, there is a world of difference between dogma and religion. Dogma comes and goes like the tides, religion is eternal. The handy thing about holy scripture is that you need to interpret it, so what it actually says is left up to the interpreter. When we do find conclusive evidence for alien life, the major religions will all come back and say "well ofcourse, our holy scripture said it all along, here's the passage that mentions it."
"If this is true, and those rocks truly are sedimentary, they should be full of bacterial fossils. "
Not to be a spoil sport but change "should be full of bacterial fossiles." to "could be full of bacterial fossiles".
There are a lot of unanswered questions still but all in all very exciting news.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
What amazes me isn't so much that they discovered evidence of water on Mars, it's that they've discovered so much of it so quickly!
This is really the first fully sucessful mission to Mars whose primary function is to search the geologic record for evidence of water -- and not only did they find it -- they found it twice and quickly at that!
First of all -- kudos to the mission planning team. They picked their landing spots beautifully (and then hit a moving target from a moving target -- this isn't Lawn Darts folks. That alone is impressive.)
Second -- how much like Earth is Mars??? If the entire planet was covered with Oceans at one point, then (obviously) finding water isn't that remarkable. If, however, Mars is geologically similar to Earth, then 3/4 of the "land" would have been covered with water at one point. But I don't see that.
Mars seems to have little/no active tectonics -- and therefore no sea floor spreading. Also, since we can't find magenetically charged banding on the ancient Mars "ocean" floor, it suggests to me that Mars simply does have the characteristics that created large oceans like Earth does.
What I want to know is if the rovers are cabale of taking a thin-section of some of these sedimentary rocks. So much of the ocean floor on our planet is actually microscopic bits of dead diatoms and other creatures -- that would certainly answer the life question!
Which brings me back to point 1 -- if there isn't that much water, those rocket scientists really did their homework.
Wow. This is some seriously cool sh*t.
If bacterial fossils would be found, it could possibly tell us a lot about how life orginated on earth.
The biggest problem with all the hypothesis of the origin of life is that of falsification. This problem is not confined to theories of the genesis of life alone.
All biologist that want to explain why a certain animal evolved from its ancestors in such a way and not in an other way, have this problem. So do historians. "What would have happened if king George the whatever died at 18 of pneumonia, I assume that germany bla bla ".
You can probably tell a nice story, but do you have any data to prove your assumptions?. Although biologist often are in a better position to prove their assumptions (there are a lot more animals with the same niches/ancestors, living in different continents/islands evolving in different species in comparison to king George's), it often resorts to just story-telling.
If life did orginate independently on Mars and any remains of this event could be found and studied, it could not only falsify a lot of hyphotesis but also stir new ones in the right direction
"And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose;... But only an account of this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, give I unto you. For behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power. And there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they unto man; but all things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them."
Wouldn't a geologist (I'm not but I did) conclude that earlier pictures showed clear signs of the rocks being sedimentary?
Look at the area below Zugspitze in the picture above and then try and tell me with a straightface that those striated rocks are igneous in origin.
The question is why did they wait so long to announce the fact that there were sedimentary rocks?
Maybe a geologist could tell me whether there are any igneous rock formations that might look sedimentary & they therefore had to do further analysis.
The Machine stops.
I'd be willing to bet that the first sample-return mission will bring back sedimentary rocks...
I hope they don't do that. It would be a tremendous waste of resources. This is one case of many where it is much wiser to send the equipment up there to do the analyzing. Kind of like what we're already doing.
What?