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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.
Well, I suppose that would explain the ruins of a Long John Silver's that Viking 2 found in the 70s.
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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.
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?
No, salt accumulates in the oceans from the erosion of surface soils and rocks, as the minerals wash into larger bodies of water. This may mean that Mars once had rain.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
"Would there have been life there?" asked Jayson Blair, new cub reporter for Tool & Die Quarterly.
"Dude!" said Corona, "With wave action like that how could there not be life? Can't you just imagine the green-skinned Mars babes lounging around, sipping Martain pina colodas while rubbing tanning butter all over their Barsooms."
"So you think Mars mught have supported intelligent life?" asked Baba O'Reilly, a distant cousin of Bill O'Reilly working for Akron City College Daily Herald, Mid-Morning Edition.
"Yeah... yeah... those barsooms, man," said Corona. "Huh? What? Oh, well, you wouldn't want them to be too intelligent, you know what I mean, man?"
The press conference was brough to an early end when a catsuited Gloria Allred and Camille Paglia paraglided into the taffy booth and beat Corona into submission.
--- Ban humanity.
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.
It (probably) got there in the first place during Mars' formation, and perhaps later due to cometary bombardment.
As to why it was lost, crudely put: evaporation into outer space.
Molecules of volatile gasses, including water vapor, that waft into a planet's upper atmosphere occasionally reach escape velocity and are lost.
Why some gasses and not others? There are a bunch of factors at work:
Heavier gasses -- CO2, for example -- require more energy to get up to escape velocity. They statistically hang around longer.
Larger planets have higher escape velocities.
Planets farther from the Sun recieve less insolation, so there's less of a chance that a molecule will get kicked up to escape velocity.
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 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.