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NASA Announces Water Found On Mars
s.bots writes "Straight from the horse's mouth, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has identified water in a soil sample. Hopefully this exciting news will boost interest in the space program and further exploration of the Martian surface." Clearly, this has long been suspected, but now Martian water's been (in the words of William Boynton, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer) "touched and tasted."
Now what?
Seriously are we really that surprised we found water on Mars? Considering most of our galaxy is made up of the same compounds here on Earth, I wouldn't doubt if we found water on nearly all our planets, in one form or another.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
The Viking landers observed frost in the 70's. Mars obiters found huge amounts of water underground. Ice is clearly exposed in many photographs. Knowledge of ice and water on Mars goes way, way beyond "suspected". If detecting ice is all this mission yields, it's a big waste of money. This mission was intended to give detailed information about what's in the ice and soil, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
The question for the last decade or two has been whether there is liquid water on Mars. Despite the low air pressure, even pure liquid water can exist in some places and times: aquifers, briny puddles and lakes, lakes enclosed in ice, etc.
This isn't a condition of human nature, this is a conscious choice by a significant portion of the population to never grow out of adolescent self obsession.
Actually, I'd rather spend the majority of my resources on my children, which is probably a trait shaped by evolution to become part of the human condition. If you can send a mission to Mars without impacting my kids' education, future debt, or well-being, I'd completely support it.
I was going for funny, I thought Slashdoters were dedicated pun connoisseurs.
And as far as corectness, that's a matter of perspective. Crude oil is just a mixture of hydrocarbons with a large enough formula to be liquid, and natural gas is hydrocarbons with a small enough formula to be gas. The fact that ethane, propane, butane, and pentane are in both just goes to show the distinction is arbitrarily based on phase. Unless you know some special reason why all the hydrocarbons are counted as crude oil, except the ones that are gasses?
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?