Slashdot Mirror
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."
they are going to be looking at a lot of before / after pictures now. I'm looking forward to as well. Very interesting.
There is simply too much glass..
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
Um, that wasn't water. I had had a lot of juice earlier, and there wasn't a gas station or anything to be found... sorry about that.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
It would be cool if NASA could keep a few micro-probes in reserve in Mars orbit that could be de-orbited as needed to investigate these kinds of phenomenon as they are discovered. Nothing large and complicated like a rover, just a very hi-resolution camera and some very basic devices to measure the local environment. The real trick would be getting pinpoint accuracy on the landing. To save weight and increase simplicity they need not even be designed to survive landing, just to deliver a high speed data squirt to an orbiter as they collect the most relevant and valuable data on their way down by parachute. If they do survive the landing they only need enough power to last long enough to send a few more surface condition measurements -- again the emphasis on cheap and expendable.
At the other end of the scale we need to develop landers that can investigate hard to get to locations like the very bottom of Valles Marineris. I assume this is where what little atmosphere there is would be the most dense, warm, and possibly moist. This would also be the most sheltered location on Mars from all forms of ionizing radiation.
Letter To Iran
In related news, Starbucks announced it is booking passage on the next flight to the Red Planet. "This enables us to continue our mission of providing coffee to the races of the solar system," said its CEO. "I look forward to asking our first Martian customer, 'Would you like a double mocha latte, Mr. Xzart'FooKniznak?'
Dinosaurs = Fossils = Fossil Fuels = INVASIO^H^H^HLIBERATION!
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.
For water to flow, it has to have gotten to the source of the flow first. So, there has to be a mechanism for transport back to the source of the flow. Like rain moves water on Earth back to higher ground. The article offers no speculation on this transport mechanism. I would, of course, suspect evaporation and then dew/frost. But, that would be picked up easily from our probes and even from Earth-based observation.
What am I missing here?
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Move over, Dasani, Poland Spring, and Evian... Here comes Lunar Liquid!
There's been pictures indicating recent water flowing for years. Guess the evidence got overwhelming. There's been also strong evidence of seasonal darkening as if the ground was damp during summer months. I found a camera shot years ago that showed the ground next to the rover that seemed to show a patch of water maybe the size of your palm. The ground around that was dark. NASA definately suffers from dogma. The current dogma had been for a dry Mars. Just glad they are surrendering finally and accepting the evidence. Given the resistence to change I think it'll take samples brought back from Mars to prove life. There was evidence as far back as Viking but still no missions looking for direct signs of life. I'd love to see that resolved during my lifetime but I have my doubts. It may have to wait for the manned mission and even then there'll be debate for years if something is found if NASA brought it there themselves.
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
You, in fact, did spell his name incorrectly. The correct spelling of his name is as follows:
W-h-a-c-k J-o-b
That moon base plan has been the works for a long time, but the timing of the announcements may not be a coincidence.
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
If they have found water on Mars this could send the price of water down.
No matter where you go, there you are.
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen that means we can breathe." -- Dan Quayle, 8/11/89
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
You probably can't get closer to the reality. BBC is reporting it too and there they say:
"Other scientists think it possible that gullies like this were caused not by water but by liquid carbon dioxide.
One of the reasons for favouring CO2 was that computer models of the Martian crust indicated water could exist only at depths of several kilometres. Liquid carbon dioxide, on the other hand, could persist much nearer the surface where temperatures can drop as low as -107C."
But for funding it just has to be water, that's science and that's sad.
(I don't blame them, I know game too, different league, same rules.)
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
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
A photo that Nasa published over a year ago already unquestionably demonstrated the existence of water on Mars, see http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050401.html
(And if you're still not convinced you can even try this at home...)
This sounds like every party, ever.
"Aw man, I can't believe you left our chess club bash last night. FIVE MINUTES after you left, the entire cheerleader squad stumbled in and started making some unconventional moves with the bishops!"
"Dude, you JUST missed it. The keg floated FIVE MINUTES ago, and the stores are all closed now."
"Man, I'm telling you, the water was just here FIVE YEARS ago. What took your ass so long to get here?!?"
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
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.
Great, who's couch is Tom Cruise going to ruin this time over this finding? Maybe Scientology was right after all.
Full Tilt
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.
Now all we have to do is locate and turn on the alien machine, to melt the glacier, that will make Mars habitable.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
For what it's worth, I should point out that this is perfectly consistent with the story that's been gradually developing over the years. We know that there are substantial amounts of hydrogen in the first few meters of most of the Martian crust (cf. the MO Gamma-ray spectrometer) and hence there is likely water ice there. We know that in the distance past large quantities of liquid water flowed on the surface to carve the fluvial geomorphological features we see (cf. MGS MOC images). We know that liquid water sloshed in at least some areas to form certain minerals (cf. MER results). We've seen gullies on the sides of craters that looked recent (cf. MGS MOC images). And now this study which shows gullies being created over the timeframe of a few Earth years. Basically, this is just one more little increment in our understanding of the distribution of water on Mars. This is how science usually works but sometimes press releases unduly hype things.
There is absolutely no proof that there's actually water in that glass. It could be liquid carbon dioxide. Enough of this junk science.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
I'm going to throw a bunch of links at you here, but this should answer your question.
...
...
...
... "Lava tubes on Earth are only a few meters wide. The width of channels on Ascraeus Mons are measured in thousands of meters. Even with Mars' lesser gravity, solidified lava is not strong enough to span such distances: None of the channels should be covered.":
...
... well, let's just say that I rest my case with this article ...
First, look at the electric dust devils of Mars etching the ground black as it moves across:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0509 16dustdevil.htm
Now look at the scalloped curled trenches that would result from a pair of Birkeland Currents twisting around one another (as happens in plasma globes). The scalloping and flat bottoms are exactly the same thing you notice on asteroid and cometary craters too
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0508 29curly.htm
More Martian electric rilles. You've seen the electric dust devils now, so this should not be any great mystery
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0503 18europamars.htm
Domed craters on Mars look precisely like things that have been generated in the lab with electricity
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0511 16domes.htm
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0503 25blueberries.htm
And next, the "collapsed lava tubes"
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0511 11ascraeus.htm
Rilles exist on the Moon, Earth, Mars and Venus (among other planets), and yet we ascribe different geological mechanisms for nearly all of these. Shouldn't we also consider that one single phenomenon is possibly causing many of them? We know, for instance, that the Grand Canyon was not carved out by the Colorado River because it would have had to plough straight through a gigantic plateau called the Kaibab Upwarp. Interestingly, scientists to this day cannot agree on what caused the Grand Canyon and the fact that entire geological records are missing for that canyon doesn't help either
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0504 08marineris.htm
Remember this? When the rover was mysteriously cleaned? What's so mysterious about electrostatic cleaning?
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0505 31roverclean.htm
But my favorite of all time is the mysterious Martian geysers popularized in the news media like here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/21/mars_geyse rs/
The fact that somebody can look at these images (pictured below) and conclude that they are geysers rather than the remnants of electrical strikes
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0607 24spiders.htm
Water on Mars? I'll believe it when astronauts are drinking it.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
Who is controlling NASA PR these days, and who decides to put these stories out? A few years ago there was the 'bacteria in meteorites' tale and they've been desperate to imply running water on Mars, with a pile of puff pieces over the last couple of years.
;-) and sometimes they don't even have the same conclusions that the PR pieces have...
Now I have the highest respect for the NASA scientists and I don't doubt their work, but both in the 'bacteria' case and in this one there are far more likely scenarios, which are supported by plenty of good scientists. They publish in the media anyway and in the long run it makes them look foolish, when the guys doing the work certainly are not. I've read a few of the published articles from the Mars research in scientific journals, well 'Science' anyway
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
yeah - with our weapons of mars destruction
I don't understand this particular stand which most of the professional/amateur scientists seem to have about the conditions necessary for 'Life' to exist anywhere. Surely we can say that life, as we know it on earth (or the type we have seen so far on earth), needs water to exist but why the generalization ? Why is it necessary that all types of life everywhere in the universe has to be carbon based ? Why should even the lowest level consciousness need water to exist ? We frequently talk about the future when AI will be indistinguishable from human intelligence and still put water as one of the indispensable ingredients when we go looking for life in other planets.
Its a huge flight of fantasy but why can't there theoretically be Sulphur/Silicon based life in say Mars or Venus (or even Mercury) The life we know as it exists on Earth will not be able to survive in those condition but then that is probably the reason we are not living there. If there is actually life in those places then I am sure it is well suited to survive in those "extreme" conditions.
Yeah I know the primary purpose of searching for signs of water is to decide if we can someday colonize that particular planet or its satellites but when someone proclaims something like "No evidence of water therefore no life possible on that Planet", I really wonder about the possible pockets of Life we may be ignoring.
Politicians and Pedophiles: Two groups of exploitive bastards who are most dangerous when they're thinking of children.