Mars Had Surface Water for Eons

LukePieStalker writes "Far from being a one-time event, it now appears that surface water flowed on Mars for eons. Nasa has announced that, after descending down further into the Endurance crater, the Opportunity rover has found a 'razorback'. It is believed that this was formed by 'fracture fill' from the minerals in percolating water. Since this feature extends through several geologic layers, it argues for a long period of wetness near the surface. This would seem to substantially increase the chance that life once existed on the red planet."

Comments

Mars

[Luigi30]

So does this mean that we might be able to find traces of water and/or life if we keep digging, or that the water is all gone?

Re:Mars

[Jim Starx]

If there was life then the right kinds of test should be able to find traces of it. I wonder if they've got the right stuff for the tests on the rover. There's only so much you can fit on that thing.

Re:Mars

[cephyn]

Well there's multiple scenarios. First, there's the estimated amount of water that would cause the global areological features. Take that number, and subtract the estimated amount of water locked in ice at the poles -- we can estimate this through satellites. The North Pole is mostly water ice, South is mostly dry ice.

Now, that leaves a Heckofalot of water. (A Heckofalot is an official measurement, look it up. It's just short of a Hellofalot) Anyway, that water could be underground...perhaps in shallow aquifers, perhaps quite deep. It's hard to say, we just don't have the tools yet. Then there's the portion that would have been lost. Martian gravity is lower than Earth's, so it couldn't hold as thick an atmosphere as we do. So some water might have just evaporated off the entire planet. Also the Martian magnetic field is quite weak -- perhaps it was stronger before (there is some evidence for that) but when it weakened, it would have allowed solar wind and radiation to rip away the atmosphere and carry water vapor with it.

In short (ha) If we keep digging, we may find none, a little, some or a lot of water.

Water common?

[lecithin]

If we can confirm that there is/was water on Mars, what does this say about the rest of the Universe? Is water all that common? If we then associate water with the chance of life, out of the billions of stars, we just ain't alone. Insert Overlord comments below.

Re:Water common?

[Ra5pu7in]

I had that same sort of thought. Confirmation that flowing water existed on Mars, even if none remains today, coupled with the number of asteroids / comets that have ice does tend to imply water is reasonably common in our universe. Two planets within a certain size range and within a certain distance of their star both having had water seems a better argument for the existence of water on other planets around other stars. (No Overlord comment - it would just confuse the puny humans I am controlling.)

Re:Water common?

[Artifakt]

To expand on Leah's comment - There are other liquids that are very simple atomically so they exist a lot around the universe. Two of these are Methane and Ammonia, both liquid under some circumstances. Because they are not polar molecules, the range they stay liquid is much narrower than for H2O. Their ice form is denser than the liquid, so lakes or oaceans of them will freeze from the bottom up, and there won't be an insulating layer to keep them from freezing over completely. So not only life as we know it, but some of the alternatives that we guess just might be possible are affected. Ammonia based life would only be possible in environments with a colder AND much narrower temperature range than Earth's. Freezing winters would be a critical problem instead of something life might be able to adapt around.

Re:Water common?

[Rei]

This requires a couple of assumptions:

1. Life can't exist in high-pressure environments.

Higher pressure environments have much wider ranges for the liquid phase of ammonia and methane.

2. Life cannot develop on planets with freeze/thaw cycles.

I see no reason why this should be the case. In fact, with methane and ammonia, you don't have to worry about cells being ruptured by freezing, so long as they don't have stiff cell walls.

Further, a "cell" is not the first life; you first have molecules that tend to catalyze the production of "similar", if not exact, molecules. The processess regionally take off. Groups of molecules that more accurately catalyze the production of their member molecules form "hypercycles" - regions which, while not distinct from each other, catalyze their own development. As these hypercycles begin to become distinct and compete with each other, they end up being walled off into "Ur-cells/Protocells" (depending on your terminology).

At least, that's one theory I've seen presented, which seems reasonable.

3. It is not hotter near the bottom.

There is no particular reason to expect this. In fact, in many environments in the universe where we expect there to be liquid, this is exactly what we expect; geothermal heating, tidal heating, precipitative convection heating, etc.

4. There are no dissolved molecules that can act as "antifreeze"

Pure solutions of methane or ammonia are unlikely.

5. Life requires a liquid solvent to develop.

While this is probably true, we don't know this for sure yet.

Re:Water common?

[Rei]

I'll second this. I once was debating with someone over whether silicon-based life was possible, and as I researched, I was actually surprised by the chemical complexity available in silicon compounds. Silanols, for example, are found all over in Earth's oceans, and can form sheets, catalyze reactions, and all sorts of other things. While your basic "silicone" is pretty simple (chains of Si-O-Si-O... etc), so is your basic N-ane hydrocarbon chain. What makes organic chemistry interesting is functional groups, and silicone backbones can handle them just as well as carbon backbones can. Then there's silicates (Si-O tetrahedral structure), which have all sorts of interesting properties that have made them valuable in industry (for example, zeolites - in which some of the Si's have been replaced by other metal atoms - act like molecular sieves, and can have "superacid" properties).

Re:Water common?

[gamgee5273]

Carl Sagan, in Cosmos, believed that, when (and yes, he was a firm believer of when) we encounter life on another planet we should not be surprised if we find silicon-based life.

Popular imagination doesn't think of alien lifeforms as anything other than carbon-based (see almost any popular SF TV show in the past 40 years) or cyborgs (the Borg in Star Trek, of course). The best example of a silicon-based lifeform in popular fiction is the xenomorph (the aliens) from the Alien and, frankly, the fictional biology/biochemistry of the xenomorph is close to what you are describing.

I just hope we run into things that are a little less agressive than xenomorphs. :)

Re:Water common?

[Artifakt]

NH3 Polar, well, yes, as you point out, but if you don't mind me qualifying it a bit, I'd say NH3 isn't usefully polar, in that it doesn't have the equivalent of Van der Walls forces between liquid molecules at a strength sufficient to much help stretch the range of liquidity (a tiny bit, but not much). The 2 Hydrogens in a water molecule don't line up on the opposite sides with the oxygen atom in the middle, but form a rather pronounced bend. By contrast the three hydrogens in Ammonia don't leave the Nitrogen sticking out by itself. They may not maintain perfect 120 degree angles in a flat plane around the N's "equator" under all conditions, but they are pretty close to it.
When you analyze this geometrically, we're talking about an inverse square law force (electromagnetism), and various sine or cosine based equations for the resulting angles in determining the resultant forces. Then you have some fairly small adjustments to factor in the different masses and orbital diameters of O and N, and so on.
What this all ends up meaning is the resulting 80 degrees F will be a bit broader than Methane's totally non polar 37 degrees F, but it's still less than half the 180 degrees F for liquid water, and not nearly 1.5/1.8 of it. (I assume your 212 F is a typo - you obviously know this stuff better than that).
It's really the more limited question of how NH3 molecules react solely with each other when we're talking about the freezing of an entire ocean of the stuff, not how NH3 and H2O (or some other interesting combinations) interact (many of which can be quite polar crystalization reactions).
Now as regards life forms, what applies to a relatively pure liquid is more than usually not something we can extrapolate too much to a mixture, so I wouldn't read too much into it. Our one example of liquid oceans is not exactly pure H2O, after all, and showing that there are some reasons life is less likely in close to pure Methane or Ammonia doesn't limit a lot of other possibilities.

Re:Water common?

[Xilman]

NH3 Polar, well, yes, as you point out, but if you don't mind me qualifying it a bit, I'd say NH3 isn't usefully polar, in that it doesn't have the equivalent of Van der Walls forces between liquid molecules at a strength sufficient to much help stretch the range of liquidity (a tiny bit, but not much).

By a hell of a lot, actually. Compare its liquid range with methane, which has essentially the same molecular weight (CH4 = 16, NH3=17, H2O=18).

NH3 is also usefully polar in that it allows a good many salts, acids and bases to disolve in it, again like H2O. Methane doesn't.

The 2 Hydrogens in a water molecule don't line up on the opposite sides with the oxygen atom in the middle, but form a rather pronounced bend.

Correct.

By contrast the three hydrogens in Ammonia don't leave the Nitrogen sticking out by itself. They may not maintain perfect 120 degree angles in a flat plane around the N's "equator" under all conditions, but they are pretty close to it.

Incorrect. The NH3 molecule is substantially pyramidal. The H-N-H angle is close to 107 degreesIt's the flipping between the pyramidal configurations that's the basis for the ammonia maser. (Actually, it isn't, really, but unless you want a digression into molecular quantum mechanics that explanation is good enough and will have to do.)

Now as regards life forms, what applies to a relatively pure liquid is more than usually not something we can extrapolate too much to a mixture, so I wouldn't read too much into it. Our one example of liquid oceans is not exactly pure H2O, after all, and showing that there are some reasons life is less likely in close to pure Methane or Ammonia doesn't limit a lot of other possibilities.

Good! It is extremely unlikely that an ocean would be pure ammonia, any more than our oceans are pure water. It's rather likely, I suggest, that a predominantly ammonia ocean would contain a large amount of disolved water, which would raise the liquid range and make the chemistry both different and probably more interesting from a biochemical point of view.

Paul

Chances of Life

[Dominatus]

I don't quite see the obession with finding life on Mars.

In terms of science, we know it's possible, it's not an issue of "can" it happen it's an issue of "where" did it happen again. We also know that if there was life it's doubtful it went beyond the microscopic range as not only is there no evidence of that, but life existed on this planet for eons w/o going past the microscopic range. It's arguable that the natural result of life is not always complexity and size.

It seems to me the only reason people are obessed with finding life on Mars, or anywhere else for that matter, is to fill some urge that if they do, to less scientific minded (read: religious) people will be proven wrong.

Re:Chances of Life

[QEDog]

I don't quite see the obession with finding life on Mars.Because by finding life somewhere else we can learn a lot about life on earth.

What is life? Really? You will find many people with slightly different definitions just on life on Earth.

What about other planets? What if life in mars, the DNA strand twists the other way? Or what if there is no DNA. If the DNA is the same, then, maybe life in Mars and Earth have a common origin. If not, what common things do we see? What is the minimum requirement for life? And these are just a few questions I can speculate on. I think we can lear about ourselves, and the fundamentals of life on Earth by finding life somewhere else.

And that is all without any religious (or anti-religious) agenda.

Re:Chances of Life

[devilsadvoc8]

How do we "know" that it didn't go beyond the microscopic level? Take a rainforest, insert cataclysmic event or two (or even drastic climate change), wait a few million years- now tell me what signs would be visible from the surface of the rainforest? I would gather that there would be not one sign whatsoever from the surface let alone from satelitte imagery.

I think that the interest lies in the possibilities- if this solar system had two (minimum) planets with life then #1 earth is not such a freak accident and #2 there are millions upon millions of life bearing planets out there and intelligence must exist external to earth.

Re:Chances of Life

[Kphrak]

I've never understood the thinking that if life was found on another planet, all religious people's (they mean "Judeo-Christian and maybe Islamic", not "religious") heads would explode, and God Himself would vanish in a puff of logic. What's to stop God from creating life on another planet?

The idea that Earth was the center of the universe originated with some Greek philosophers (Aristotle and Ptolemy were among these), and the idea was actually quite controversial even then. The only reason why it became canonical (plenty of Christian scientists, including Johannes Kepler, argued against it) was that it was one of the few things left from the ruin of the ancient world by the time monastic scribes got hold of it, and the ancients were so impressive that it was hard to imagine anyone one-upping them at the time. Such a theory is never mentioned explicitly in the Bible, and it's pretty doubtful that any religious person would care about its collapse. Unless there are still Christians who believe that the orbit of any planet can be described by a perfect circle...

Re:Chances of Life

[jdavidb]

I'm a literal (6000-year) creationist, and I fail to see how the Creation rules out life on other planets. It just isn't in the original text, although I suppose a lot of people (both religious and non-religious) have tried to read it into it.

Re:Chances of Life

[Sgt York]

Mostly, I just want to know stuff. It's why I became a scientist.

Reminds me of a fortune I saw once. "As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."

It rings so true for a grad student in the doldrums of the 4th year.....

But I still just want to know. It's a curse. If my PI would let me pursue all the tangents I want to pursue, I'd be here for 15 years with no coherent project. He once told me that science is like a hydra; if you answer one question, two more pop up in it's place. The nad news is that you can never kill the hydra, but there is some good news. Being a scientist does not mean you have to kill the hydra. Being a scientist just means you have to fight it. The Zen of biochemistry. Heh.

Re:Why is it surprising?

[xenophrak]

I think the common dogma is that a catastrophic event happened some billion years ago where Mars lost its magnetic field. The loss caused the upper atmosphere to be evaporated from solar radiation that was then allowed to pass into the lower levels.

One might surmise that since the Earth has a molten fluid core and routinely undergoes magnetic reversal that Mars once had the same type of core, but it may have cooled and solidified, rendering the field inoperable.

Whatever it's worth, I think that the ammonia presence is far more interesting than the traces of water.

Another possibility

[techno-vampire]

If water is dripping into a gap caused by a fault, it might not take that long for dissolved minerals to fill the hole. Considering how big stalactites and stalagmites can get in a few thousand years with just a slow drip, how long would this take with periodic flooding followed by a long dry spell?

Re:Another possibility

[NTAC]

This is not why they think liquid water existed on the surface for a long time. It's because the 'razorback' cuts through rock that also shows evidence of water. That means that liquid water existed when the original rocks formed, and again much later when the 'razorback' formed.

too bad Mars didn't have more mass

[frankie]

If only Mars had a deeper gravity well, it would still be wet today, and probably alive.

Of course, if it were, either we would have gone there and slaughtered the natives already, or vice versa.

Instead, Mars and Venus serve as object lessons on the narrow window of planetary viability.

My guesses about water and life on Mars.

[MtViewGuy]

Personally, I think that once Mariner 9 showed what is very likely former riverbeds on Mars, it's obvious that in the distant past, Mars had water and very likely some form of lower-level lifeforms.

In my opinion, here's what happened on Mars:

1. In the distant past when there was flowing water on the plant, life did evolve, with the likely chance that we had fairly advanced plants lifeforms and lower level animal lifeforms.

2. Alas, when the atmosphere thinned, the surface water evaporated, essentially killing all lifeforms except for (at best) forms of bacteria and possibly algae that could survive in today's extremely severe Mars climate, living off the water trapped under the surface of the planet.

3. I think when the Mars Science Laboratory lander/rover reachers Mars in 2009, it will find that life does exist on the planet today in the form of bacteria or something related to it.

Re:Why is it surprising?

[Cecil]

A significant amount of ammonia in the atmosphere that has not been broken down by solar radiation would signify that it is being generated on the planet currently. The only two methods we know of that would produce enough ammonia to be detected are active vulcanism, specifically an active volcano somewhere, which we have never seen, or microbial life. I suspect the original poster is more excited about the latter possibility.

What about the giant crater lake?

[Anonymous Coward]

The evidence presented here (w/pictures) is pretty compelling too. I mean, if that doesn't look like a crater lake resort, then nothing will.

Dynosaur skeletons and oil

[HermanZA]

That is all they need to find, to cause a new space race.

Existance of Life

[Harpua22]

"This would seem to substantially increase the chance that life once existed on the red planet" I think a more accurate statement would be that this increases the chances that we might find evidence of carbon based life forms having existed at some point on mars. It is theoretically possible for life to exist without water by using another liquid solvent as a substitute. One often proposed substitute is ammonia (see article http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/ammoni alife.html/ ). People seem to think narrowly about the possibilities of life, and often constrain their thought process to life that is, at a very basic level, similar to life on earth. Granted, since carbon is fairly prevalent throughout the universe there is certainly a good chance of it forming life in areas other than earth, but we should keep in mind that it is not (at least theoretically) the only option.

NewScientist Scoop?

[captainClassLoader]

Well, this article is pretty fascinating, and not only for its content - None of the other space exploration sites I visit regularly seem to have this information - At most, they talk about Opportunity's discovery of the Razorback feature, but no discussion of analysis. Has NewScientist scooped everyone on this discovery, or was this publicized prematurely?

No tinfoil required, really, just an observation.

No one would have believed...

[Darth23]

...in the last years of the 19th century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets. No one could have dreamed that we were being scrutinized as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurable superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly, and surely,

they drew their plans against us.

Life IN Mars

[Randym]

This would seem to substantially increase the chance that life once existed on the red planet.

Every planet probably has microscopic, non-oxygen-using life INSIDE it. (In fact, it may even be NON-microscopic.) Just because we don't find it lying about the surface does not mean that it did not exist.

When we talk about 'life on earth' it's assumed that we are talking about life on the *surface* of Earth. But that surface is *7 miles thick* [depth of ocean] and the radius of Earth is *4000* miles. And we know non-oxygen-using extremophiles and Archaea exist *here*. Why not there?

Is it possible that... (Hypothesis)

[lcllam]

...maybe Mars was an older form of the Earth, and as the sun cools and the heat is drawn inwards towards the center of the solar system, that maybe Venus is a young Earth?

What I've always found weird is that, based on the assumption that the planets were formed from the same 'cloud' of interstellar particles, how they've evolved with such different compositions. There's clearly activity that we don't know about going on.

Suppose during the birth of the sun, it was immensely hot, and began cooling as the fuel for fusion burned off. Initially, life formed on one of the outer planets, as temperature and perhaps a few said unexplained phenomena created the so-called 'life conditions', and that this gradually moves inward as the planets cool.

We don't really have a timeline on when this happened, but I'd expect it to be longer than you or I have ever lived. Maybe it's actually been long enough that all traces of civilization have been eradicated by natural forces (such as a meteor impact). We've only been fiddling with rocks on the surface on Mars, but closer to home, we only find traces of older civilizations when we unearth then from several meters below the surface.

Um.. no, I will have to say there's no supporting evidence.