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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
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?'
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
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
Move over, Dasani, Poland Spring, and Evian... Here comes Lunar Liquid!
Thats no moon.
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 don't think NASA suffered from Dogma - more of an abundance of caution. Even know, I don't know how they can tell that the structures seen in the pictures are actual water, and not just sand that behaves similarly to a liquid.
Personally, I'll believe the H2O theory when someone actually pokes one of those areas, and they find water in either ice or liquid form.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
"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?
He apparently had seen this stuff in mars rover pictures and predicted it.... guess nasa has finally came to the same conclusion.
Actually, the water is really the face on Mars crying.
Probably because of something you did.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
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 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"
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.
yeah - with our weapons of mars destruction