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NASA Orbiter Reveals Details of a Moister Mars
Matt_dk writes "NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has observed a new category of minerals spread across large regions of Mars. This discovery suggests that liquid water remained on the planet's surface a billion years later than scientists believed, and it played an important role in shaping the planet's surface and possibly hosting life."
Yes, quite. Now regarding the actual article, what they seem to be saying is that there might have been a longer window for life to develop on Mars. Frankly this was always an unlikely event...Mars is and probably always has been dead. Sad, but true.
Interesting bit of geology though, and it's amazing what we can find out from these probes.
Smivs on the intertubes!
If life developed completely independently on Mars, it would be drastically different (on the cellular level) than anything we have here. If life is found on Mars which is cellularly similar to ours, we must conclude that one planet was the source and the other was "contaminated" via rocks or spacecraft or somesuch.
In short, sending a biosphere to Mars would not do anything to hamper our ability to prove or disprove that life developed independently on Earth and Mars.
And I doubt "environmentalists" (whatever that means) have the collective will and political power to interfere in NASA missions which don't directly harm particularly-cute animals. Outside of a few parts of California, fanatical environmentalist culture is pretty rare.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
The sea is called "dead" because its high salinity prevents macroscopic aquatic organisms, such as fish and aquatic plants, from living in it, though minuscule quantities of bacteria and microbial fungi are present.
In times of flood, the salt content of the Dead Sea can drop from its usual 35% salinity to 30% or lower. The Dead Sea temporarily comes to life in the wake of rainy winters. In 1980, after one such rainy winter, the normally dark blue Dead Sea turned red. Researchers from Hebrew University found the Dead Sea to be teeming with a type of algae called Dunaliella. The Dunaliella in turn nourished carotenoid-containing (red-pigmented) halobacteria whose presence is responsible for the color change. Since 1980, the Dead Sea basin has been dry and the algae and the bacteria have not returned in measurable numbers.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea