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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."
Here comes the neighborhood!
Caveat Utilitor
Meh. Call me if they find crude oil on Mars.
Now what?
NASA found water on Mars over three years ago.
Well we know one place where the Housing bubble hasn't collapsed. The Deed I bought on MartianRealestate.com will finally go up in value. I purchased 3000 acres on the Martian polar regions. Now where to build my lake house...
I've given up on Slashdot's comment scores.
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!
our aquatic martian overlords.
-AC
I still can't believe we sent a small robot and let it run around on *Mars*. It seems so unfathomably far away that I find it hard to even imagine...
Next stop: Bacteria.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
...is what most people will think. Whilst this is of earth-shattering (well, mars-shattering) importance to a lot a scientists it isn't going to motivate Joe Public to commit any more tax money to the exploration of space, because they don't benefit from it themselves. 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. People are told its good to be totally egotistical, and here is a product that will help you do that.
So no, it won't boost interest in space exploration; everyone who will raise an eyebrow to this news is already interested in space. People who didn't care before now won't care now.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
This will be remembered in the textbooks as one of the biggest discoveries in human history - and yet it will of course be presently overlooked by uninterested masses.
Will humanity ever get past our predilections with ourselves?
I can't fathom the significance of this event fully, and yet the public applause so well deserved is again, starkly absent.
oh well - I think it's great at least, maybe I shouldn't care so much what the masses think or care about.
Read my Very Short "Stories"
Bring a Brita!! :)
I wonder if we'll someday be able to look at the quantum state of the molecules, atoms and subatomic particles making up even pure water, to learn about its history. The way that we look at the chemical composition now, with more familiar instruments.
--
make install -not war
It isn't water, it is water ICE. This is no big surprise, it has long been suspected that there is plenty of water ice on the Martian poles.
What would be a surprise would be liquid water, even if it only exists deep below the surface (given the current atmospheric pressure).
Life of any kind would be a real find, even if it is frozen bacteria, even if it is 8 million years old.
Wasted tax dollars? I'm sure tax dollars are wasted on many idiotic programs than the geological survey of Mars. Space exploration is so important to understanding how the universe was formed, which in turn makes us understand how the earth was formed, which in turn makes us predict many events.
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They previously found something shiny, white, and hard. Small scrapings disappear after a few days by sublimination (solid evaportation). When a chunk of icy soil was put into an oven, then slowy heated, the thermometer got stuck at 0 degrees Celius for a while. This a science experiment done in junior high: heat a block of ice with a thermometer in it. The temperature rises until 0 degrees and stalls there until the ice is completely melted before rising again. Solid water has this phase change at this temperature.
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.
Now that would spark some interest.
Or maybe: "NASA discovers naturally occurring beer on Mars!"
Roughly half my comments are never submitted. You may be reading the better half...
No it won't, because water is a fairly common molecular arrangement. Electricty, atomic power, Earth being round, these are things that qualify as the biggest discoveries. In 10 years this particular incident of the rover will be forgotten, and in 100 years, the rover itself will be a historical footnote. How much do textbooks cover the Apollo program other than #11 and #13?
Less than 100 years ago, people believed that Mars had canals full of water. Then with better optics people realized that no, those trenches, causing an extreme belief swing the other way - that Mars must be bone dry, any water having long since evaporated. Of course that ignores the polar ice caps which spectrography can easily identify.
We've finally come into direct contact with H20 on Mars' surface rather than simply remote identification. While a milestone, it's a pretty damn tiny one. It will not be remembered in textbooks. Look how results of the Venus expeditions of the 70s are now glossed over.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
People are curious by default. But you can't make money on reveling in scientific breakthroughs. Since money is the only measure of success in our culture, R&D that doesn't directly translate into more capital is ignored and often ridiculed, though almost all real breakthroughs are performed through the state sector (through funding to universities or even directly by DARPA).
Billions upon billions are spent convincing people to buy products they don't need with money they don't have. It's all fun and games until the currency crashes and the environment is left in ruins.
Why the hell should anyone care if there is water on Mars or not? A few scientists get their thrills about this, but why should they think that the rest of the people should get excited and spend money on this when there are far more meaningful and useful things to be spending money on and getting excited about. NASA has been spending huge amounts of money for 50 years now and we really have nothing useful to show for space research. Sure we have satellite technology but that's hardly the result of sending people to the moon or sending probes to Mars.
Even if Mars is shown to have bacteria and dinosaur fossils... so what. You can prove that life existed on Mars and that still does not change what is important on earth.
For example, we don't know much about our own oceans and those are far more important to us as a source of food, minerals etc.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
In the meantime, Chinese kids and other kids from developing countries are looking with awe and go on to study math and science.
A generation from now, when they are the leaders of the World, our children will wonder why they're sweeping up after the assembly robots - Chinese will move their manufacturing over here because of our cheap labor. After all, they'll be busy inventing things and exploring space while we're watching the latest reality shit on TV.
I blame the educators for making such a fascinating subject dull and harder than it has to be. Why, I really didn't understand derivative and integral calculus until I took Physics. A derivative is velocity?! Cool! And its derivative is acceleration?!? Awesome! And the integral of velocity is distance?!?! I have a hard-on!
Why does it have to be taught on its own? Calculus was invented for science and teaching it as a separate subject just makes it completely abstract and a mechanical wrote type of process.
That's just one example of how science education is this society needs to be updated, revamped, or whatever you want to call it. And I'm really glad that girls are being encouraged more to enter those fields.
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.
It is momentous only because it finally proves that sustainable human life is possible on Mars. However, since Mars is sadly lacking a Magnetosphere, the fact that water and oxygen are available there isn't as useful as we would like it to be. Hmm... how hard is it to build a dome that blocks out all harmful cosmic radiation, yet still lets in the sunlight necessary for photosynthesis? Since any Terran originated life on Mars would require a pressurized dome anyway, how big a win is a Martian colony over a lunar or asteroid belt colony? Seems the only advantage of Mars is earth-like gravity, which is also a disadvantage if you ever want to leave the colony...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Here's a jug of stuff that my instruments tell me is ricin. Why don't you go ahead and verify that for me?
Of course it's real.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
Is there any particular scientific significance to the discovery of water on Mars that isn't related to the possibility of discovering extraterrestrial life? I firmly believe that extraterrestrial life does not exist (and never has), so everybody else's excitement about it gets a little old after awhile. Is there another reason I should be excited about this?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
"Humans and all other organisms have a built-in feel for H2O." So do FTIR spectrometers, TGAs, Karl Fischer titrators, and other instruments. You're obviously not a chemistry geek.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Just to prove common sense?
Sure space is cool.. and so are the expeditions.. But we could have done something even more cool on the mission if we went out there looking for what everyone knew was there.
Hell, by now we could have people running around on Mars instead of wasting it on finding water.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It is the stupid democrats that don't want to upset the Martians: where ever they are now. They are afraid that the Martians will be unhappy if we take their land.
The Martians have not used their land in years: A lot of years.
I am tired of the democrats doing their stupid appeasement. 10 years-ago it was Saddam Hussein, next it was North Korea, Iran, and now it is the Martians!
The universe is a harsh thing to live in. If they are not willing to fight for their land then it should be taking from them.
(funny)
uh, it's not a rover. It doesn't rove.
it landed there and sits there.
Its not a great event. It only proved what everyone already knew, both by theory and common sense.
We are all made from the same building blocks, so on a rather similar planet, not so far away from us, finding water there is not really that amazing of a event. ( cool yes, amazing, no )
To me, when we find primitive life there it will be the same sort of "well, no kidding there is some sort of life there"..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Just to reiterate a point that a few others have made: the presence of water ice at the surface of Mars has been understood since at least the 1970's for high latitudes. This goes for parts of the polar caps (also made up of CO2 ice), and the seasonal frosts that are known to coat the very study area visited by the Phoenix lander.
Here's a snippet from an abstract of an article from 1982 (Journal of Geophysical Research, 87:367-370): "A new reflectance spectrum of the Martian north polar cap is analyzed, and it shows water ice absorption features. This evidence confirms the result of the Viking IRTM and MAWD experiments, which indicate that the north residual polar cap of Mars is composed of water ice during the season observed." The Viking 2 lander directly saw seasonal frost in the late 70's, as the Phoenix lander will in the coming months: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jplhistory/captions/vikinglander-t.php
The Phoenix results are new in that ice has been directly confirmed for shallow regolith ("soil") materials at the Phoenix site (as opposed to spectroscopically identified from orbit or from the Earth). This is a nice and important result, but is not a huge surprise (the site is known to be seasonally coated with water-ice frosts, and its sediments are distributed in a polygonal pattern that is analogous to what we see at high latitudes on Earth where freeze-thaw action dominates).
Phoenix is a great mission, but let's also give due credit to earlier workers.
from the so-val-kilmer-can-breathe-easy dept.
Val Kilmer? Don't you mean Dan Quayle?
"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."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, 1989-08-11 (reported in Esquire, 1992-08)
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I suppose they could go and join all the looneys holed up in bomb shelters who believed the world was going to end at the turn of the millenium.
But really, in a potentially infinite universe (and of course no one can yet say it ISN'T infinite seeing as the universe is not only expanding, but that expansion is accelerating also), anything is possible.
I can't see how anyone can DENY the fact the we cannot be alone in the universe, and that the whole thing is just so Adam and Eve had something pretty to look at at night.
Must... resist... Iraq... comparison...
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
"No it won't"
The Martians of the future may disagree with you.
Obviously, they will have to exist, before they disagree. But water makes it a lot more likely.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Overall, we're not surprised. Scientists have been pretty sure there was subsurface ice there for several years based on ground-penetrating radar on one of the orbiters. Confirming this was a major goal of Phoenix. There weren't a lot of other good explanations for all that hydrogen detected by radar, but that still wasn't considered proof. Nor even were the images of the bright, ice-like material uncovered earlier in the Phoenix mission. Also, we already knew for quite a while about water vapor on Mars, but the next question was about large quantities of surface water.
The Phoenix team was a little surprised by exactly how it occurred, however. Because ice sublimates on Mars once exposed, they had to get the sample into the TEGA oven relatively quickly. It ended up being even stickier than previous samples (possibly due to melting of the ice by friction from the rasp) and didn't fall properly from the scoop into the oven. By the time the results were received, analyzed, and a conclusion reached, they considered the sample already spoiled, but because some likely made it into the oven, the oven was also "contaminated," which affects the accuracy of measuring relative abundance. So they managed to dump the "ruined" sample into the oven to compare it to the last "ruined" sample, but found there was water in it anyways. Unfortunately, because of the sublimation, this still doesn't give them the relative abundance. It also, as far as I know, was only inferred so far by calorimetry. In the next day or two, they should get spectroscopy results back, which will be even better verification.
Because of all this, they're going to spend some more time practicing and polishing their delivery method so they can get a truly fresh sample into the ovens. They've got 6 empty ovens left, although there might be a problem with the doors on some or all of them.
but the determined the soil has the nutrients need to support plants.
Of course the atmosphere is sucky.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Could we send a Rove?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Pay my rent for awhile and maybe I'll have the time to care about something other than coming up with next month's rent.
Oops, I meant the next bag of groceries. Or tank of gas.
Joe Public is plenty smart and curious and altruistic. Too bad 'he' spends all day stressed out over losing the rat race, and all night poisoning 'himself' to counter the stress.
Luckily, some of us still can give a damn about shit that has zero effect on our lives. Most don't care how many angels are on your fancy pin.
Personally, I'm amazed that we can go to mars but Apple can't get my iPhone to stop crashing, after dedicating obscene amounts of time and money to the effort.
Space exploration is so important to understanding how the universe was formed
Devil's Advocate: Then pay for it your damn self.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Coke-Sponsored Rover Finds Evidence Of Dasani On Mars
March 24, 2004 | Issue 40â12
PASADENA, CAâ"The Coca-Cola-sponsored Real Rover has discovered evidence that the surface of Mars was once partially covered by free-flowing Dasani, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced Monday.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30505
--philo
now we have something to water the asparagus with.
Well from my take on the posting it's not the fact that we found water on Mars, it's the fact that we found a horse.
-- the opinions stated above aren't those of my employer. in fact, they're probably not even my own. you know what, ju
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."
What flavor is it?!?
The potential investors for my Martian Water Ice chain are really going on about this and just have to know before they will release the VC funds.
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
Was it liquid water they found or water ice?
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Many, so very many.
A bottling plant on Mars would make crazy money. "Don't drink earth water, drink E.T water!" (even more if they pluralize that and convince people alien urine will give them super health).
And then the Mars company will give everyone hell for calling it Mars Water.
Mod parent Insightful, and mod me drunk troll!
It'll be Evian or Volvic who leverage the new market! Probably Volvic, if Olympus Mons yields a source :-)
Devil's Advocate: Then pay for it your damn self.
In that case, I for one would like my Iraq money back so that I can transfer it to NASA.
Until the martians blow up earth for stealing all its water for the purpose of bottling and selling to hippies.
This is all the proof I need: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap050401.html
APOD said it, I believe it, and that settles it!
Calling atheism and agnosticism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
I think they should bring soil samples from Mars to Earth A.S.A.P. The analysis on Earth will be much more thorough, and it will be done by the top experts. I'd say bring 50 kilogram at least :).
If only I could give you a years worth of mod points for that comment.
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
I'm waiting for them to find scotch on Mars before I get excited about all this news.
What I want to know is what is that shiny thing in the panorama image vertically in line with the beginning of the solar panel on the left.
I swear I saw that as a SPAM subject
Now what?
Now Fiji has competition for the most obnoxiously resource intensive bottled water.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This is pretty off topic, but I've always thought it would be really cool if you got to choose where your taxes went directly, say through a form or something. Check the boxes next to the things you want your taxes to go towards, leave the boxes unchecked for things you're not interested in funding. The only problem is I could see people possibly neglecting areas like welfare.
It's turtles all the way down!
...water was also recently discovered in Antarctica.
You are confusing the roman catholic church with your run-off-the-mill protestant crackpot from the US. The roman catholic church has stated numerous times that they see no conflict between either extraterrestrial life or evolution and the church. E.g.,
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=12628
Wow, that boosts the Roman Catholic Church's credibility by 1 point. So now they're about a 3 on the 100 point scale.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
What are the plans for the mission after funding is removed? I mean, is there a contingency that allows for a different department to take over? Forgive me for my ignorance, I haven't been keeping track of things lately. The other idea I had then immediately shot down due to the military applications is profit sharing in a sense. I was going to say if they didn't have the funding, maybe the EU or some other country with the proper funds could take over funding and continue the mission. But I remember reading the review on the hardware/software being a National security issue. I know this has been done before for launching satellites, but has it ever been done in the sense of transferring the cost burden? I.E I launch the hardware, get my science on and then sell it to you to use?
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
The only problem is I could see people possibly neglecting areas like welfare.
I disagree. Most people would love to support assistance programs that actually produced results.
Anyone that's actually been poor - truly poor, not "my daddy didn't buy me a Benz for my Sweet 16!" - knows all too well that a guiding, helping hand can turn a life around.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Great, they found water on Mars.
Now we just need to find some in Lake Mead!
(for those not in the US desert southwest, the lake is very low and is predicted to be likely to be empty in 13 years)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
No, you just put a web server there and post a link to it on Slashdot, and you'll have all the heat you need.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Here's a jug of stuff that my instruments tell me is ricin. Why don't you go ahead and verify that for me?
Is the jug painted hideously with a huge wing on the back?
Does it have the -MOMFG-REALLY-FAST flag set?
If you answered yes to either, than the stuff is ricin'. Otherwise, it's not.
Indeed, I'm amazed by how so many Slashdotters' sense of humour consists in repeating the same fucking joke they heard before over and over again. "Tell Bush there's oil on Mars/Titan", "Bush is gonna want to "spread democracy" there har har har", "But, the Earth is only 6,000 years old!" and so on..
Memes are only funny when you use them in a way that makes your meme-based joke somewhat novel. Brainlessly repeating the same fucking thing without bringing any new twist to it is about as funny as an Adam Sandler movie.
You just got troll'd!
unfortunately... that's the minority of folks on the program blood attracts leeches.....
Even if we're not alone, the probability of two or more civilizations coming "of age" at the same time and actually crossing paths is highly minuscule. I think it was Carl Sagan's eggshell theory or something like that