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Rover Finds Ancient Streambed On Martian Surface
sighted writes "NASA reports that its Curiosity rover mission has found evidence that a stream once ran vigorously — and for a sustained amount of time — across the area on Mars where the rover is driving. There is, of course, earlier evidence for the presence of water on Mars, but NASA says this evidence, images of rocks containing ancient streambed gravels, is the first of its kind."
Probably never occurred to those rocket scientists and geologists at NASA. :)
What else would it be besides water? Liquid Hydrogen?
Considering the place were Mars occupies in our Solar System, I don't see how it could be anything other than water.
Both mercury and bromine could be liquid at reasonable temperatures. Both are also just as unlikely to be in amounts to have streams.
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe. The only thing splitting them is Helium which is inert. All other things being equal the likelihood that a particular liquid at 'reasonable temperatures' is water is orders of magnitude more likely to be water than mercury or bromine.
There are other fluids than water that can sustain a semicolloidal solution or carry sediments. I assume that scientists now have to figure out what fluid flowed, rather than simply assuming that it had to be water.
Zap it with a laser and conduct at spectrum analysis on it and see what elements pop up.
Without proclaiming any expertise, I'd say that the erosion and eddy patterns left behind would be informative, since they would be indicative of the viscosity of the liquid. The pattern of sediment would drop hints towards its density. Water, CO2 and other highly-vaporous substances would not leave much, if any discernible residue or precipitate compared many other fluids. Some fluids would react with certain payload elements, other with different payload elements (in the structural meaning of the term "element", not the chemical one).
There's a lot you can learn just ogling the pictures.
THEN zap it with a laser!
I see Thoat tracks.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Nice job, submitting and subsequently accepting, an article with a link to the NASA article instead of some random blog linking to a multipage ad-heavy website that only vaguely discusses the NASA article. More of this, please.