Slashdot Mirror
Mars Gullies Show Water Once Flowed
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A new analysis of puzzling gullylike features on Mars offers further evidence that water flowed on the Red Planet's surface, perhaps as recently as several hundred thousand years ago. The findings bolster the case that melting snow from a departed Martian ice age carved these gullies, rather than shifting sands or other 'dry' phenomena."
Haven't they reported this a dozen times over the last decade? ...
For some reason, every time there's an incremental advance in understanding the environment of Mars, in the process of turning the results from science into news reports, the actual science gets simplified and simplified until the net result seems to be a headline of "Water found on Mars."
There's a lot more to the real science, of course.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Hi NYCL,
the summary (TFS) should have been written as:
"Lest there be any doubt that Brown University's Planetary Geosciences Group graduates Samuel C. Schon, James W. Head, and Caleb I. Fassett, study authors, NASA Martian crater dating, really do 'get it' about the presence of water in recent Mars history, all such doubt should be removed by the paper his team just released (http://geology.gsapubs.org - March 2009, either slashdotted or slow). It shows the Martian gully system is craterless, possibly as young as 1.25 million years old (see bottom right of photo). In the paper lead study author Schon spells out, in the clearest possible terms so that there can be no misunderstanding, that at the extraordinary HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) image taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter ...