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Mars Lander Sees Falling Snow
Riding with Robots writes "NASA reports that the Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds. According to the Canadian team running a weather experiment, a laser instrument designed to study how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars has detected snow from clouds about 4 kilometers above the landing site. Data shows the snow vaporizing before reaching the surface, but one of the mission scientists said, 'We'll be looking for signs that the snow may even reach the ground.' Spacecraft soil experiments have also provided evidence of past interaction between minerals and liquid water."
Now all we need is to get enough nuclear fissible material into the core of mars to start back up its protective magnetic field to keep any atmosphere we might create there from being stripped away.
If we ever needed an "Ironic" choice for moderation purposes, this post is it!
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Rain or snow, like virga, on Mars may not be consisting of water only. Here is the Wikipedia entry on virga:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virga
Also Universities Space Research Association has some information on virga:
http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=47776
They have a excellent NOAA photo of virga.
but maybe there is just enough in some places that it can support life...which would mean that there is life on 2 planets in our solar system...which means that it almost certainly exists somewhere else in the galaxy too, which is kinda exciting to me.
With 26km of vertical, I'm bringing my skis.
"bleh... that'll teach me to post when awake..."
As opposed to what, posting when asleep? I don't know that that would turn out much better... ;)
That's actually far easier to determine than if it really was water that caused liquid erosion of the surface: all they had to do was to determine the temperature at which it evaporated.