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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."
Moister Mars.... mmm.... sweet...
"wahts woring iwth my tyoping?"
and delicious! Reminds me of that time I accidentally left a mars candy bar in my shirt pocket on laundry day. OK, it was not delicious, it was pretty gross. It also involved a lot of coins and a lot more detergent.
Your not worth my mod points.
Due to probing?
Mars: What The Earth Will Look Like If We Fuck Up Too Much
Wars increase economic activity
And why not? It sure worked wonders for Deep Space Nine and Voyager's ratings!
mod +2 Star Trek Reference!
Every time someone claims ANYTHING about water on mars, it always trails with "There could have been/should/would been life!". Find me a fossil and then we'll talk.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
"...and possibly life."
Can't leave that out. Life is so easy to get started that it must have been everywhere there was water.
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!
So just send an inflatable biosphere and some bacteria/moss/whatever, at let's see if that rock can still support life if it's given a little help.
Why wait? A stable biosphere outside of earth orbit would be a monument to humanity. Let's do it.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Wars increase economic activity
Wars increase economic activity ... needed to wage wars. After a war is over, the economy usually goes to Hell in a Hand-basket, because waging a war has distracted everyone, and other aspects of the economy have been neglected. "Yeah, we built a lot of tanks, and won the war!" ... "But our infrastructure is a shambles."
And why not? It sure worked wonders for Deep Space Nine and Voyager's ratings!
After the war was won on Deep Space Nine, the series ended. They never showed what happened afterward: soldiers returning home, demanding jobs, etc.
But, of course, this "getting-distracted-by-a-war-and-leading-your-economy-to-Hell" can't happen this day and age.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I have seen lakes that were so saline or full of some organism that they could not support life.
They were so full of some organism that they could not support life? Yogi Berra, is that you?
Damn...how did you know?!? Sorry...I guess I did a 13th floor on myself there :o)
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
or full of some organism that they could not support life.
Whaaa? Who modded this "informative"? If the lake is "full of an organism", it is supporting life. It might not be the kind of life you'd like to hang out with, but it's life nonetheless.
As for lakes that are so saline they don't support life, please let me know where they are. Some bacteria THRIVE in ultra-saline conditions and these lakes are full of them. Yeah ok maybe there are no ducks.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
He was being sarcastic... He goes on to talk explicitly about window repairmen and window smashers. I'm certain he understands the fallacy quite well.
They didn't say *intelligent* life, merely life.
Ummm... organisms are living things, by definition. Utah's Great Salt Lake also has lots of brine shrimp & algae; it's far from lifeless. Just because there aren't creatures scurrying about the martian surface on their 12 tiny green legs is no reason to think that there was never life there.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
It's been discussed at several recent conferences (AGU, LPSC) and was the main focus of Spirit's scientific research all through the last (Martian) summer.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The Moon gets MOIST over Mike Douglas...
Maybe we can make more, nuttier Mars Bars?
And, for slogans, we can add to out-of-space ones:
"A world without fences: Windoze"
and
"*I* will use less energy; Human Power"
or just
"I will eat less mars"
"I will sex less"
and so on... and so on...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Perhaps it was full of lawyers. Many would claim them to be organisms...but not life. Then again, the same might be said of politicians!
I think you may have forgot the worst case of this: Star Trek: Enterprise.
Then we could put to rest all of the hysteria associated with religion. Life happened twice in this solar system, why didn't your god tell you guys about his other try? I can just imagine the hand wringing and apologetics.
"Moist" is just one of those words that is automatically associated with one other particular word, usually sexual in nature. "Pert" is another.
I just had to make that comment. It was either that, or "mmm, a moister, chewier Mars."
Fixed version:
What do you mean by fossil? Life on earth was consisting of creatures equally complex to bacteria for approximately 4 billion years, and these organisms are tough to find and difficult to identity
From TFA:
Hydrated silica doesn't sound like much, but I think most people understand what opal is. Granted, you're not going to fund a Mars mission with opals. Wikipedia says the largest uncut opal on *this* planet, the size of a fist, is worth "just" $1.2 million. You'd have to haul back several thousand of them, and pretend you didn't just turn supply-and-demand on its ear.
But surely there's going to be more than just pretty rocks out there. A big vein of gold, with no environmental concerns, might be a boon for semiconductor manufacturers (even if it does put a bunch of commodities traders out on the street). Better yet, finding a big patch of tantalum would put some particularly nasty dictators out of business.
Of course, those elements would be much easier to mine from a passing asteroid. But you've got to go to Mars for the opals.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
In the minds of many people Enterprise doesn't count as Star Trek.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Which Star Trek?
Enterprise was the pick of the new litter IMHO.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
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
Last one's a rotten martian egg!
Does mars also have holes and juices?
And has not nasa now added probes to the holes and juices?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The evidence is mounting that early mars from the Noachian period and perhaps later (3.8 billion years ago give or take) was extremely wet - you only have to look at the MOLA data set to draw *a* conclusion that the Northern polar regions were a single vast ocean, either that or the 4km+ deep depression was caused by a huge impact. Evidence of the "coastline" can be interpreted as a receding shoreline or something more cataclysmic - depends on who you read and believe.
Clearly later periods with channels that show large water outflows demonstrate that water is still there, perhaps in considerable quantities just below the surface as permafrost.
The bottom line, an awesome boon to us all-colonizing all-conquering humans. Finding evidence of life, even fossilized, would just complicate the picture. Life, especially the microscopic kind, can thrive in really cold environments for extremely long periods as Antarctica demonstrates. I'd really just like my descendants to have the water, the possibilities it opens up, and not have to worry about wiping out some tenacious, unique alien lifeform.
Hmm... Let me see... Historical interest... Or better chance of survival for life as we know it... Interest... Or life... Argh, I hate tough choices like that!
In all seriousness, we can build colonies first, and analyze historical evidence later. It's not as if we couldn't tell ancient material from current life here on Earth.
As if a fossil would prove anything. First you'll ask for a fossil, then you'll demand that there be no gaps in the fossil record... Honestly, where will your skepticism end?!
I hate to say it, but you're not following the blind faith of science. Are you sure you're feeling okay? Next thing you know, you could be denying the theory of evolution based on the lack of evidence, and other crazy things.
Are you sure you're feeling okay?
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I truely enjoyed Enterprise. A storyline that actually progressed from episode to episode *gasp*
DS9 developed a good storyline, but wow it took a few seasons. Voyager felt like a continuous story because at the end of the episode Janeway would say, "Tom, set a course for home." But rarely did a plot stretch more than a few episodes. But seriously, DS9's dominion war and Voyager's whole borg thing saved those shows.
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