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.

Comments

Re:Peer Review?

[tfreport]

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.

Re:This is HUGE NEWS.

[jafac]

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.