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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.
"The grains are apparently too course for the wind to have created"
Are they assuming Earth-like winds?
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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/?
Your solvent was a trick question, because water and NH3 are both polar so there is at least some overlap in solubility. Also they dissolve ridiculously well in each other. If you spec'd liq methane or some weird liq fluorocarbon then there's practically no overlap given methane is non polar.
Anyway yeah its the solubility thing which is indirectly related to pH. Its not very hard on earth to figure out if something was sitting in a water tank or an ammonia tank same thing on mars.
Also temp and pressure. Maybe you could do something weird with NH3 at 10 bar and 500 deg that looks kinda like water related corrosion, but no one will believe that happened on martian surface.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
I have to agree. Coming up, a shocking article about a discovery of nerds trolling slashdot.
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.
The presence of water ice is hardly interesting, numbnuts. In fact, I'd say we all know Mars has water ice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_polar_ice_caps
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
If there's water, there's oil. I DRINK YOUR MARS SHAKE.
Your question is one that has been answered Mars lost its magnetosphere 4 billion years ago, allowing solar radiation to strip away its atmosphere. Water vapor was flung into space by this process over the billions of years, and any surface water will boil away due to the low atmospheric pressure.
Man, you really need that seminar!
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 ...
Why is this modded insightful? His question was NOT answered and still isn't. We have postulated that Mars lost it's water because it no longer had a functioning magnetosphere. However, we have absolutely no clue why it lost it's magnetosphere or how to prevent the same from happening to earth.
Describing a process does not mean you understand why the process started in the first place.
We know exactly how Mars lost its magnetosphere, and we sure as hell can't prevent the same thing from happening to Earth (despite what a really bad movie might have told you). Eventually, the Earth will lose it's magnetosphere the same way that Mars did: the mantle core will cool down, and you're no longer going to have a bunch of molten iron moving at the center of the planet.