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NASA Finds Evidence of Recent Flowing Water on Mars
SonicSpike writes to mention that Scientists are claiming that they have evidence of water flowing on Mars within the last five years. From the article: "Subsurface aquifers or melting ground ice were floated as possible sources of the water. One of the springs even appears at a fault line, according to Malin, just as they often do on Earth. The shortness of the gulleys, which seem to flow for but a few hundred yards, might be accounted for by a process similar to a volcano's eruption on Earth, with water instead of magma building up underground, and ice, instead of fire, characterizing the resulting flow."
Keep your pants on:
"Nothing in the images, no matter how cool they are, proves that the flows were wet, or that they were anything more exciting than avalanches of sand and dust," Allan Treiman, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston said in an e-mail.
nuff said.
Get your ass to Mars
Richard Hoagland (sp?) was talking about this last night on coast 2 coast... the radio show normally infested with funny alien abductees and anal probe recipients.
He apparently had seen this stuff in mars rover pictures and predicted it.... guess nasa has finally came to the same conclusion.
I bet they were just more thorough or cautious in their analysis before declaring anything.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
From what I understand, they think it 'bubbled' out of an underground aquifer, ran down the slope for a bit (leaving the trail that was spotted), and then sublimed away.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Not all scientists are convinced that it was actually water.
"Many scientists believe the gullies were carved by liquid water, although others have argued they are due to avalanches of carbon dioxide gas or rivers of dust," from The New Scientist.
Also, here is the NASA release from their site.
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
If you look at the high res images (from NASA here)
You can see the flow emerges from the side of an impact crater.
The water was most likely locked underground (as expected by the briney moist soil effect the rovers noticed just under the surface)
Its like diggign a hole in the sand at the beach, eventually water will start to seep in.
liqbase
I am the original poster and the summary or even the link is NOTHING like I submitted. I guess the /. editors take 'editorial liberty' to the extreme! No resemblence to the orignal at all.
;-)
Oh well, at least I got credit for it and good karma
Libertas in infinitum
This has also been picked up by the major media.
On a side note, the HiRISE team is now posting new large images on the HiRISE Website every week on Wednesday. (A file size and format warning is needed. The full super high resolution photo of the Opportunity landing site is 677 MBytes in JP2 format)
Of course, there are some pics that I wouldn't mind a little more investigation on. I happen to be interested in something I call Gulliver's Golf Ball, something that looks like a perfect sphere, roughly 200 meters across.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Don't kid yourself - NASA PAO isn't nearly well-enough organized to strategize about when to release stuff like this. The paper is being published this week, so that's what dictates the announcement schedule. And believe me, you never know exactly when your paper will get published, so trying to time such disparate announcements to coincide would be very difficult anyway.
When you squirt something, you're trying to find a gay hookup.
Think about it.
So? "Squirt" in the lewd sense is *still* a rapid data transfer. Works better for the intended purpose, however, when one end is a responder - rather than both ends being initiators.