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."

Comments

INNACURATE! This is Hype!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:INNACURATE! This is Hype!

[Chelloveck]

"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.

Well, yes, but according to the scientists at the press conference all disturbances of the martian soil so far have shown up as darker than the undisturbed soil, not lighter as these images show. Also, the shapes of the light spots are more consistent with those a relatively thick muddy liquid would make than with what you'd see in a landslide. They did allow that yes, these images could be showing some previously unseen dry phenomenon, but that the shapes and color are both indicative of liquid.

Re:Flow Means Bi-directional Movement

[syrinx]

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.

Not 100%

[silentounce]

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.

Not quite on the surface

[LiquidCoooled]

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.

I am OP

[SonicSpike]

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 ;-)

Lots More Pictures

[Alien54]

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.