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Strange Globs Could Signal Water On Mars
Joshua.Niland writes "Strange globs seen on the landing strut of the Phoenix Mars lander could be the first proof that modern Mars hosts liquid water. Images from the robotic craft show what appear to be liquid droplets growing, merging, and dripping on the lander's leg over the course of a Martian month. Just when is NASA going to fix that leaking roof on the backlot?"
That condensed on the metal parts of the rover. Assuming of course that those globs are water and not Martian spit or something else.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I thought we already had the signals with the sublimation we caught on camera. Then some more potential evidence with the snow. I think we should be reaching the point where we can start talking about this stuff as possible evidence rather than saying "signal" like we are surprised.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
We sent a robot to look for water on Mars. It lands in an icy puddle, and gets covered in mud and tiny droplets (that behave just like water). But we can't tell if it's water or not. Your tax dollars at work!
Oh the precious tax dollars!
You do realize that scientists have a higher burden of proof, right? They aren't going to say it's water until they analyze it and can confirm with certainty what it is.
Damn right it's my tax dollars at work, and millions of us approve of it.
You'd think any lander we send up there looking for water would have the ability to analyze any liquid droplets growing, merging, and dripping on the lander's leg over the course of a Martian month.
Another example of why the "why send humans, robots can do everything just as well" idea is bogus. If that was an astronaut up there this would be resolved in a minute, not a month.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
That's why scientists aren't calling it water.
I already see a few anti-science posts here, and it's astounding that these knuckle draggers don't understand that there is more than one substance this could be, and scientists won't say what it is until they can prove what it is.
Carbon Dioxide won't condense to water because
1) It's not water; and
2) if you're meaning 'liquid' CO2 doesn't appear in a liquid form at pressures below 5.1 (Earth) atmospheres of pressure. On Mars it will only appear as either gas or 'dry ice.'
Of course, there are plenty of other liquids it could be, and that's why no-one in the know has actually identified it as water.
Cogito, ergo sig.
Dear ___funding agency____, Is there surface water on Mars? We need to send another mission to Mars. It should cost less than the amount of money GM asked for bailout during this funding period to study this question, and 2 five-year funding periods to really find out. Please send money. JPL/NASA
Well then, we just need to increase the gravitational constant of the universe as well.
Saying that "martians created humans" only takes the "why do we exist?" question and changes it to "why do martians exist?".
You didn't really answer anything, the whole "why does life exists" question still remains.
please go back to watching american idol now, grown ups will keep doing the science. *pats on head*
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
It proves that a Martian dog found a leg to pee on.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Because of discoveries on Mars a few years ago, I registered the domain name martiansprings.com.
I get these late night brilliant ideas that go nowhere. I was picturing bottled water sold as a souvenir gimmick in science museum gift shops.
Some say I'm bipolar.
This space available.
Dear JPL. While we are thrilled about your discovery, Mars isn't going anywhere. We are trying to save the economy and lesten the impact of this economic down turn so that we can spend even more money on you guys in the future. Spending 10 billion on machinists creates more jobs than spending 10 billion on rocket scientists. Hope you understand.
Funding Agency.
Replace "martians" with "God" and try again.
I don't see that this is that surprising. The Phoenix landing site was low enough to have the surface pressure above the "triple point" of water, so liquid water is just a matter of having it being warm enough (or having enough salts to depress the freezing point enough).
Actually the final year of my space science degree almost entirely revolved around martian geology and impact cratering (you wanna know how many craters per square km there are in amazonis planitia? or the southern highlands? TS, go count em yourself...)
So anyway, bite me.
Some say I'm bipolar...
...and that there's a portrait of your left foot in the Louvre basement.
The only thing we know is: you're called The Stig.
You registered the wrong domain. You should have registered martianhomeopathy.com. I just checked and it is still available, as well as the .net, .org, and .mobi variants. You see, shipping millions of gallons of water down from Mars would be prohibitively expensive. On the other hand, if you market it as 'Homeopathy', you can actually advertise that you have diluted billions of gallons of earth water with just one itty bitty tiny drop of actual Martian water. This will be seen by many of the homeopathy crowd as giving it more powerful juju than if you had shipped 100% pure Martian water.
While I'm not saying that getting that first drop of Martian water would be cheap or easy, but it certainly would be cheaper and easier than setting up a full scale harvesting and shipping system for pure water.
The fact that liquid water can be stable on the surface of Mars has been known for a while. Direct observation, of course, is nice. The next question is whether there might be significant open bodies of water (brine) in some locations. Some satellite photographs could be interpreted that way.
The existence of perchlorates adds another dimension, though, because they are such an effective anti-freeze and a potential metabolite. The perchlorates might actually be biologically generated on Mars, somewhat similar to the way organisms on Earth have generated large amounts of oxygen and changed the environment on a global scale. On Earth, reduction in CO2 levels was an important factor in making the climate more hospitable, and on Mars, generation of perchlorates may make the water more accessible.
Dear JPL. While we are thrilled about your discovery, Mars isn't going anywhere. We are trying to save the economy and lesten the impact of this economic down turn so that we can spend even more money on you guys in the future. Spending 10 billion on machinists creates more jobs than spending 10 billion on rocket scientists. Hope you understand.
Funding Agency.
Dear _Funding Agency_,
We here at JPL understand your position. Since you feel that the space program has no benefits worth funding, we'll be sending over a large fleet of trucks to collect all your computers and other technology made possible by research connected with said space program.
We understand your need to keep operating however, and in the spirit of mutual understanding you've shown us, we will be sending you Univac for your future computational needs. Please have a very large building with a large electrical power system and a team of vacuum-tube replacement technicians ready.
Best of luck,
JPL
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
So this is supposedly water, or some other liquid, that's forming on exposed metal on a generally windy planet, and we're seeing photos over a 36 day period. Then why is it that there are quite a few persistent blobs that stay in the same place with basically the same shape over that period, while new ones form? Have any of you ever seen water droplets on your car retain their position and shape over 36 hours, much less 36 days? Isn't Mars generally pretty windy? Shouldn't there be much more rearrangement of blobs between these photos if we were looking at something like rain or condensation? If you showed me a picture series like that and said was a picture of a plant on Earth, I'd look at the spreading blobs and immediately tell you it was showing a spreading infestation of scale bugs (or some mealybug relative perhaps). Not saying this is evidence of life on Mars, but I'm interested to hear an explanation of how exposed liquid droplets on a metal surface outdoors can be persistent for that long, while more and more of them appear as time goes on.
Just FYI, NASA _is_ the funding agency.
Below is a marginal summary of the process. My colleagues will no doubt correct me where needed. For the record, IAAPS (I am a planetary scientist). It's a terrible system, but it's better than any of the alternatives.
Congress gives NASA some amount of money each year (~0.6% of the total budget). The bulk of this goes to the shuttle and space station programs, but a significant fraction is leftover for science and mission operations. This is portioned out to the various programs (Outer Planets Research, Planetary Geology and Geophysics, Mars Fundamental Research, etc.).
Scientists at their various institutions (including JPL) write grant proposals to one of the NASA programs to fund their research and spacecraft missions. Yes, JPL is a NASA center. Yes, this means that NASA employees still have to write to NASA asking for funding.
Each program convenes a panel of scientists (who have not submitted proposals to that program that year) to evaluate the proposals. In order to avoid conflicts of interest, panel members recuse themselves from discussion of any proposals by members of his/her institution. The NASA program manager selects which proposals to fund based on the panel's evaluations.