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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.
I bet they'll soon find some stuff that will look like biological processes. Cool stuff...
I remember back in Kindergarten when all of my classmates and I wanted to be astronauts when we grew up. All of our dreams were dashed to bits the next year when the Challenger exploded. We all went back to wanting to be fire fighters or whatever.
I tell you, these Mars rovers have done more to get me excited about space exploration than anything which has happened since then. I'm currently applying to medical school, but a long-dormant part of the back of my mind whispers, "You should have been an astronaut after all!"
What an amazing day to live in, when we may be at the threshold of discovering LIFE on ANOTHER PLANET!
Dude, this stuff is happening Live, as you see it. The fact that they've had time to let other scientists peer review their work, even at the highest levels, is pretty cool. There will be plenty of peer review going on over the next many years, but for now I think the Mars Rover science teams are going out of their way to make sure they are only reporting what they believe they can prove. None of them has stated that there was life on mars, they're just reporting the facts as they see them.
I'll bet you they'd be willing to debate the facts with you if you had credentials to match your statements above.
For now, this is a pretty big deal and one step towards making us wonder seriously if there was life on mars.
I don't think NASA is claiming anything more than broad speculation with lots of caveats. They're pretty sure there was lots of water. When? How much? How long? Who knows. Since I'm paying for this info anyway, I'm glad they're making it available as quick as they are.
Besides, isn't releasing this data to the world defacto peer review?
Blaze a trail to the New World
Exactly. NASA could have sent it to a journal that would have a handful of scientists look at the arguments (which they are sure to do) or they could let the world know what they were up to and in the process have the entire world analyze things. Sure this data is through a filter of the press, which may make it harder for scientists everywhere to analyze the claim. But they did do it live on NASA TV and surely have information on their website (or soon to). Therefore for you scientists out there, you will have a great opportunity to analyze, scrutinize, etc. a huge finding.
Meanwhile, Joe Blows like me can actually hear about it and read about it rather quickly, instead of waiting for the filter down process after a peer-reviewed journal down to a general science magazine down to Newsweek or Slashdot. And I am very happy about that. After all, I have at least a couple pennies invested in those two rovers. And I should have a right to know what they have found.
Liquid water + Gently flowing means the following:
Mars was once geologically active -magnetic field protecting from solar radiation - thus, thicker atmosphere, thus, warmer, warm enough for flowing, liquid water, possibly also hot springs or undersea vents.
I'd be willing to bet that the first sample-return mission will bring back sedimentary rocks filled with fossilized remains of sea creatures. Whether they evolved past the protazoan stage, who knows? But the conditions certainly existed, billions of years ago, as they existed on earth.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
What if there's still some form of archbacteria living on Mars? I mean the ones living on earth can survive basically anywhere. Or they could be hibernating as the bacteria on earth are able to do.
Yeah exploration is *far* too dangerous to risk the lives of American astronauts.
American astronauts should sit at desks pushing their mouse around playing solitaire or somthing.
I really pity them... its sad that such cowardice should infect such a (formerly) great nation.
Yeah *troll*, *flamebait*, *whatever* but its true.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
What we DO know now with reasonable certainty is that such water could not possibly have been any warmer than near-freezing. Noachian Mars may have been "cold and damp", but we can now rule out the view of some hopeful scientists that it must have been "warm and wet".
Well so much for reasonable certainty, eh?
AN interesting question those articles do pose, though, is - if Mars was so wet for so long (wet enough to make this sedimentary rock) why is there so much Olivine up there? Olivine breaks down when exposed to water - even frozen water.
It's a mystery - so I guess we'll just have to pack up the truck and go check it out.
Swimmin' pools, movie stars...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I've read a lot of discussions lately about recent evidence for why there must, at one time, have been liquid water on Mars. But, much of that evidence relates to the deposition of sediment, presence of erosion patterns, aftereffects of evaporation, presence of salts, crystallization patterns, and so forth -- none of which (to my knowledge) requiring the liquid in question to be H2O. Some of the evidence, on the other hand, relates to the formation of minerals such as hematite, which presumably form only in or near liquid H2O, and not, say, liquid H2O2, liquid CO2, or liquid N2. The biggest question(s) I have that I've not seen well addressed are:
1. What evidence supports or rules out the presence of liquids other than H2O on the surface of Mars, at one time, in large quantities?
2. How much, if any, of the present evidence could be explained by flows of liquid CO2, nitrogen, methane, ammonia, or some other liquid?
3. Which evidence, if any, points most strongly to the presence of large amounts of H2O as the liquid in question? I know there are currently thought to be large, polar caps of solid H2O, but how much of the current evidence precludes the existence of large seas of some other liquid in the distant geological past?
I apologize if these questions are simple or completely baseless. I am not a geologist, and am legitimately curious.
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F00F