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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?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Dear wired.com,
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Hope this helps,
Anonymous Coward
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
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