Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Surprising Further Evidence for a Wet Mars

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the slippery-when-wet dept.

Riding with Robots writes "When the robotic geologist Spirit found the latest evidence for a wet Mars, 'You could hear people gasp in astonishment,' said Steve Squyres, the lead scientist for the Mars rovers. 'This is a remarkable discovery. And the fact that we found something this new and different after nearly 1,200 days on Mars makes it even more remarkable. It makes you wonder what else is still out there.' The latest discovery, announced today, adds compelling new evidence for ancient conditions that might have been favorable for life, according to the rover team."

7 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Looks like ... by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... that gimpy wheel was a blessing in disguise. I think those little robots have been remarkable ... especially lasting years past their estimated '90 day' lives. If only the produce in my fridge could last that long past its estimated use date.

  2. Ok great... by lamegovie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Now how about looking in places that will show us the existence of LIFE on Mars....like say in the polar ice caps or subterranean caverns? I dont think even MORE evidence that there was water on Mars would be that shocking...

  3. Still more evidence... by jmtpi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...that robot/space telescope exploration gets you a lot more bang for the buck than trying to put a man back on the moon. Hopefully the next President will kill off this return to the moon business and start putting money into stuff like this again.

    1. Re:Still more evidence... by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yep. I definitely didn't mean to suggest that sending humans to mars to do "good science" was the point of sending humans to mars. Nor should it be. I'd be terribly happy if no-one ever mentioned science the same sentence as the manned space program ever again.

      Hopefully the costs of manned space flight are coming down. alt.space is that crusade. Then all these heady justifications for why we need to spend so much tax payer money will go away too. If we're lucky, NASA's role in manned space flight will be completely transformed and science will finally be recognised as the secondary motivation that it always been.

      The purpose of manned space flight is not science. It's not spin-offs. It's not pork projects. It's not "national pride". It's not communications. It's not even about the limits to growth on our tiny planet.

      All that stuff is just reasons we make up to keep the population paying for it. We need these justifications to explain why someone who barely has enough money to make rent should be paying for a space station.

      The purpose of manned space flight is human unity. It's the global selfless dedication to a goal greater than all of humanity. It's what we learn science and build surplus economies to achieve. It's the purpose of being alive now. We need to get off this rock right now. We need to be more than just one planet. We need this so that we can look up at night and know there are people up there. Not just a scientist or two.. but an entire civilization.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
  4. Re:Solvents by gardyloo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Perhaps "ought to". But that doesn't bode well for glass bottles holding ammonia solutions.

  5. Finding new things is surprising? by dreamchaser · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We still find new and interesting things here on Earth after a couple of million years of hominids running around. I fail to see how *anything* short of walking talking Martians would really be a shocker on Mars given how little we've covered of it.

  6. Why so surprised by TekPolitik · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't get why people keep being surprised that there's water on other planets. I would be surprised if there wasn't. With hydrogen and oxygen being two of the three most common elements in the universe with only helium in the middle, you have a simple compound made up of the two most abundant reactive elements in the universe. Given that hydrogen is so abundant, oxygen stands a good chance of finding hydrogen to bond with, and if it finds hydrogen it doesn't take much to get them to bond. Earth really isn't as special as people seem to want to make it out to be.