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Curiosity Finds Evidence of Ancient Surface Water
An anonymous reader writes "Curiosity has wheeled its way over to the low point in Yellowknife Bay and has found veined rocks, evidence that water once percolated through this area. Scientists are excited because it is the first evidence of precipitation of minerals and water. There is also cross bedding that can be seen, thin layers of rocks oriented in different directions. The grains are apparently too coarse for the wind to have created, alluding to flowing water. Even with this discovery, much is still not known about Mars' past."
Rather than quickly moving along to Mount Sharp as planned, they're going to spend some time drilling into the rock.
we've finally discovered dehydrated water?
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
"The grains are apparently too course for the wind to have created"
Are they assuming Earth-like winds?
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Are you asserting the "deadbeat" trait is genetic and can be bred for?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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Anonymous Coward
Not a "trick" question....a real question: How do they know it was water and not something else like liquid amonia (like some other space bodies)?
Cultural not genetic, and class mobility is dead dead dead so basically yes.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I don't think anyone believes it's genetic, but most of us grow up to be like our Dads, whether we strive to or not.
Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
no, we've already spent enough money on you
In a Jan. 15 press briefing, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory researchers showed close-up photographs of the shallow depression, dubbed Yellowknife Bay, where the rover is located, about 500 meters west of its landing site. High-resolution photos of sand and rocks taken by Curiosity show signs of the presence of water in the past. Individual grains of sand have rounded edges from being "knocked around, busted up by some process," said Aileen Yingst of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson and deputy principal investigator for the Mars Science Lab. "Because they're relatively large on the sand size spectrum, [that] indicates water."
http://m.iwgov.com/264939/show/a1412b9dd084473569011d6612b77cf8/?
I don't think that anyone still doubts that there was water on Mars. Even at the time of Mars' discovery there was such clear evidence of water activity(erosion) that they thought that there were still water filled canals on Mars. WE KNOW IT HAD WATER, once upon a time. I don;t see any reason for more of these pseudo excited articles about "new evidence of water on mars".
Should they discover large quantities of liquid water or ice still on the surface, that would be interesting. We know there use to be lots there, but not anymore.
Not at all. I'm assuming that deadbeats breed more deadbeats because we know that those on the dole are likely to have children who go on the dole. It's a learned way of life.
I thought this was a done deal. http://www.space.com/5546-proof-water-ice-mars.html Curiosity should be finding underground caverns full of Martians. :)
The last time I saw a Mars article on here, it was faked. I'm still feeling the troll-burn from that. And this article is on a website I've never heard of also.
The ENTIRE surface of the planet is coated in a thick layer of iron oxide - i.e. rust - which cannot be created naturally without oxidizing the living shit out of some iron. Considering the tiny fraction of the atmosphere that's composed of oxygen (it's almost all carbon dioxide, which IIRC can't cause rust) then just how exactly do they thing all this rust was formed without water?
The question has never been if Mars ever had water - that much is BLATANTLY OBVIOUS, of course it did. The question is how did SO MUCH water disappear, when, and if we ever do finally start a colony there, how do we prevent our own water supply from also vanishing.
I take offense to that. I am nothing like my dad.
My dad used to walk down the isle of the grocery store asking me to pull his finger all the time.
Now that I do my own grocery shopping, I have never asked my son or any one else to pull my finger before I farted in the isle.
Are you assuming they're to stupid to know the difference between the Martian atmosphere and Earth's atmosphere?
See, we here on Slashdot are what the Yiddish call kibitzers.
See, we all have pathetic little egos and pathetic little lives and we waste countless hours up here talking out of our collective asses - sure there occasionally is someone who actually knows WTF they're talking about, but they get lost with all the other ass talkers who somehow get mod'ed up +5; so it's pretty difficult finding the folks who really know.
Now, the parent is under the assumption that since he's so good at what he does (my assumption), he is in fact qualified to comment on things that are completely out of his field with complete confidence. I call this the smart person's dilemma. Some celebrities suffer from it.
Bill Nye is trained as a mechanical engineer (only a BS) but he seems to be all over the place commenting on things that have nothing to do with ME - like climate change, evolution and child development.
Then there's that Japanese-American Physicist, who's name escapes me right now, who does the same - he jibber jabbers about everything scientific.
Unfortunately, they very often make fundamental errors when talking about things outside their field, word then gets out, and they subsequently discredit the scientific community to the general public.
And folks here wonder why John Q. Public is so "anti science" or believe in non-sense.
What Nye and that physicist should do is when asked to comment on something outside their field and expertise, they should refer them to an expert in that field instead of talking through their asses on national TV.
Free Mars!
If there's water, there's oil. I DRINK YOUR MARS SHAKE.
They announced finding rounded stream gravel a few weeks ago. Other fossil water traces would not be a surprise then.
Enough with the surface water already, show us the diatoms!
Now that NASA has demonstrated that the rover technology in Curiosity works, why aren't we sending more of them up?
The Skycrane landing had never been attempted before, but Curiosity landed intact. The analysis machines are working well, and are delivering good results from the rocks that are within 2 meters of the probe, but what about the rest of the planet? At the end of Curiosity's time on mars, we will have less than a square kilometer of the surface explored in detail.
Why don't we send a few (dozen) more up to explore other valleys? This is like trying to figure out the Earth's geology by driving from Chicago to Gary, IN. (and only looking out the right side of the car)
--Joe
I hope that the first life on Mars that curiosity finds is a cat, and that it runs it over and kills it ...
Did NASA not notice the massive canyons that scar the entire surface of mars? They also forgot about all the ice they found already? Obviously mars had water on it, I learned that in the 6th grade for peet's sake...
*yawn*
I don't know about the rest of you guys but I'm starting to get really tired of NASA's 'water' discoveries every 6 months. Yeah yeah all the rovers and landers have discovered water now.
Can we PLEASE send some biology detection experiments now?
Viking landers detected signs of biological life, then discredit the findings and has since refused to send any more biological detection experiments to the planet.
Why?
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Surounding the large rock in the upper left of the picture looks like mud to me. Specifically just to the right of the shadow.
Take a look at the high resolution image. Kind of looks like this to me:
http://godschildrenblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/img_2063.jpg
I think the big non-story is actually the interesting one. It seems like while Mars might have had water and still has it perhaps in places, it might also be that the other chemicals on the red planet preclude it from ever having developed life.
This is my sig.