Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Have Spotted the Signs of Flowing Water On Mars
New submitter universe520 writes: Using neat imaging technology that allows them to determine the chemical compound of a substance by looking at the light reflected from it, scientists have spotted the traces of flowing water on Mars. By looking at the dark streaks on some photos of Mars, Lujendra Ojha from Georgia Tech has found compounds that are made in liquid water—meaning that water may be trickling down those streaks when the climate is just right.
From the linked Economist piece: Details remain to be worked out, including where the water in question originates. Possibly, it derives from subsurface ice. Or it might condense out of Mars’s thin, dry atmosphere. Wherever it does come from, though, the amounts in question are modest in the extreme. But even modest amounts of water are intriguing to biologists. If Martians evolved during their planet’s earlier, wetter phase, the continued presence of water means it is just about possible that a few especially hardy types have survived until the present day—clinging on in dwindling pockets of dampness in the way that some “extremophile” bacteria on Earth are able to live in cold, salty and arid environments.
Life on Mars has already been discovered by somebody, but they're rolling out this news slowly so people don't flip their shit.
Alright we got some liquid water, time to for a trip to Mars.
Is "neat imaging technology" a technical term? Technical terms make my head hurt.
MAAAAAHHHZZZZ!
Using neat imaging technology that allows them to determine the chemical compound of a substance by looking at the light reflected from it
The author has never heard the term "spectroscopy?"
God dammit, I've _just_ finished burning off all my hydrazine!!
This guy could use a drink!
hey, look - flowing water....and there it goes!
Dude, that's religion racism.
Fuck all religions.
Didn't we already know this several years ago?
Didn't we literally watch ice turn to water turn to gas ON CAMERA next to the rover?
Or did I make that up in my head?
Here's hoping something like Tardigrades evolved on Mars too, if so, they'd probably still be revivable today even after a couple billion years.
Mars, back then and if it was similar to Earth, would have actually probably been like Earth is today, albeit colder due to its further distance and smaller size, but slowly on its way out as the atmosphere got blasted with solar piss. Thanks sun.
Those damn tardigrades though. Ain't nobody messin with them. Not even entropy.
If they are there, their DNA or whatever it is will still be intact. Probably. Maybe. Jurassic Park.
before the Apoco-lip-sync or something like that.
The oldest paper I know of on the topic was presented to 4th Annual Mars Society Convention at Stanford University on August 24th, 2001 and has far more content. The pdf http://palermoproject.com/SeepsPaper.pdf is from this page
They say, "If you go to Mexico...don't drink the water!" Can you imagine the alien parasites in the Martian water!!!
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap05...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The church changed their mind:
Now it's Jesus is special, Earth is special, aliens didn't get Jesus.
Pics or it didn't happen...
Seriously, I wanna SEE some water, not pictures of where we think water used to be, where it was 10 minutes ago and left just before we got there....I wanna see water...real flowing, sparkling, water.
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
The stuff of life, huh? What’s this gonna cost us, Brand?
Racism is racism. Learn what the word means and use it correctly. Aside from that, you can fuck yourself too. Not that I disagree with your position but making up shit like "religious racism" shows how much of a fuckwit you are.
" If Martians evolved during their planet’s earlier, wetter phase..."
... no.
Ah
And then, I want to send a lander there to extract it, put it in little plastic bottles and sell it for $1+E08/liter: "Martian water. Sustainably sourced from a planet unspoiled for 4 billion years."
We need to send a Curiosity-class rover to this area. We should have a few on standby for just this sort of thing.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Find me one person that would not want to be the first human in all of history to drink water from a different planet.
There are signs of regularly flowing water in my bathroom. No need to get excited about aliens. Although...
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
The idea that science and Christianity are compatible is a comfortable lie(for some). You would never accept a new vaccine because someone had a vision in a dream and then woke up and wrote down the formula. You would use the scientific method to determine if a vaccine works or not. Religion demands that you take the word of some unknown person having a revelation thousands of years ago as the truth for some pretty important questions. You are forced to not investigate and not question. This is the antithesis of science.
Is it just me or this is the 3rd or 4th time NASA confirm water on Mars? Or is it the fact that it's "flowing" water? Wasn't that already confirmed already?
Elok
We could send cucumbers to Mars and manufacture pickles
Like a movie once suggested: The Pickle
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
like I said...
Pretty interesting really, my first thought was that the pressure was too low, but the Martian atmospheric pressure is right near the triple point of water. For liquid water to be there the pressure must have gone up above the nominal 600 pascals to 611 or higher, and the temperature above 0 deg C.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
Mmmmm.... salty.
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
Water saturated with perchlorates? No, I would not want to be that first human.
One anecdote that is related indirectly to the topic is the ignorance of the nature of stars. Someone in my family didn't know that stars are like our sun but much further away. There was no malice or contradiction of beliefs and they took it as a VERY awesome fact, but that sort of gap in knowledge combined with religious fervor can, and does, lead to the outright denial of even the possibility of life elsewhere.
Indeed.
The first person to clearly state the hypothesis that stars are other suns like ours, but much farther away, was Giordano Bruno-- who also said that since they're like the sun, they undoubtedly also have planets with life. A pretty far-thinking hypothesis, considering that Copernicus' work saying that the Earth circled the sun (instead of vice versa) was still newly published when he asserted it.
Of course, he was burned at the stake for it.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Also, after a quick search, I found "religionism". I should have searched before my original comment and I'm sorry to have annoyed you.
You're still a fuckwit.
White Water rafting on the Red planet.
What a "coincidence" considering the opening of the movie "the martian",
It would be like drinking rocket fuel.
The ultimate energy drink!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
So there were canals on mars all this time!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
And you're still a great teacher! Your friends/wife/kids must absolutely adore you!
Oh wait, you're probably single and friendless with such an attitude.
"Dude, that's religion racism."
Because religious beliefs are encoded in your DNA, right!
They already knew all of this, before Curiosity landed in 2012.
Now tell me, what the hell have they been doing for the past 3 years?
Are you telling me NASA doesn't know how to use a f*cking humidity detector?
It is right next to the face. Oh wait, it is all just shadows.
If these signs are indeed water as we know it here on Earth, what does this tell us about the overlying upper Martian atmosphere? Any signifigant changes to what we have previously analyzed or hypothesized ? Is it possible that another type of atmosphere or environment could exist under the overlying crust ?
I want to apologize first for probably being too cynical, but I have to say this.
Applying Occam's Razor to the question:
Which of the two scenarios are more likely?
A. There is water on Mars.
B. There is a government agency, that a lot of people work for, who need money from a Congress that is in the middle of a budget battle, who have concocted a publicity stunt in order to justify their continued existence.
Proverbs 21:19
"In principle we can make rocket fuel with what we find on Mars in the form of perclorates and liquid water. Essential elements for a Settlement; able to live on the surface (sic) resources are there".
Liquid water. Perclorates. We do not need to drag fuel for return flights.
Salts.. We can make fertilizers.
very interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
future trips could have an electronic "nose" that follows any oxygen gradients, perhaps finding archaic bacteria making O2 on mars. imagine that!
or, alternatively, bring these earth bound archeobacteria perchlorate reducers, or just the enzyme, with you, and make salt water and oxygen at the same time
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Macroevolution is a theory and one that explains quite a bit of what we see, but it is not considered a Law yet. (Though even scientific "Laws" can be demoted or disproven, though the process by which it became a Law would generally indicate that it is highly unlikely that it will happen.)
You should have taken a Philosophy of Science class. Science hasn't done "Laws" for a long time, and theories do not ever become "Laws" any more. It doesn't fit well with the way Science is conducted.
Science is empirical, which means that the ultimate test of truth is (repeated) observation. If your theory does not match observed reality, then it is wrong. There are other systems of truth-finding, such as rationalism, where the test of truth is whether something makes logical sense. Rationalism is good for some knowledge domains (law, e.g.) but not for others. You get to have more certainty about your statements, but you can construct true statements that do not match reality. Since we touch upon the subject, a further test of truth is received wisdom, e.g. from scriptures or wise men. I assert that it makes very little sense to try to reconcile truths produced by different truth-finding methods -- what basis for comparison can one have?
The inherent problem with observation being your test of truth is that your observational powers will always be limited. With every experiment and measurement you have an error factor, and thus every truth that Science shows is also somewhat false. Further, every theory that exists today is incomplete, and will be supplanted by a more comprehensive theory, like zooming into another layer of a fractal. We don't ever get to the point of complete knowledge, or a rule that can describe every circumstance, and generally we're getting further away from that, not closer.
Evolution is the currently accepted scientific theory of speciation, and describes other related phenomena. It will never become a law, and it will eventually be supplanted. Everything that it predicts will still be true (it is an accurate description of the way the world works) but the new theory will explain other things. The process of extending physical theories is more or less what scientists do all day.
I won't touch on Acupuncture except to note that "internally consistent" is rational, not empirical, and that any phenomenon that is difficult to gather observational evidence of is not likely to be a good avenue for therapy.
You would never accept a new point of view because someone had a vision in a dream and then woke up and wrote a comment on slashdot.
And also the design of the AC motor.
SO that's how my Anonymous Coward motor works. Thanks.
Does Mars have any evidence of a catastrophic destruction event, involving burning Sulphur?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1dT85P4918
It would be like drinking rocket fuel.
The ultimate energy drink!
Great, as long as plants crave it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Let's put aside the long timelines and asteroid impacts and focus on more recent exchanges. We keep sending probes to Mars, and I don't think we sterilize them before we send them. I know space is a harsh place, but bacteria on Earth live in some exceedingly harsh environments. Is there any way to guarantee that nothing survived the journey, and that any life that may be on Mars wasn't in fact brought over by us in the first place?
And if we found bacteria there, how would we prove whether it is native or our own? We haven't even discovered all forms of higher life on Earth, let alone created a database of every bacterial strain. Could a "new" bacteria we find there actually be a less common form native to Earth that we've never catalogued, that managed to survive a probe ride and thrive over there? I keep expecting scientists to announce they've found bacterial life over there, only to eventually realize far later that it's actually Earth life.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Yep!
We had the same idea, but I think you're undervaluing it; 1 million per ml would be my price.
Yet Catholics eat bacon and oysters - no absolute inflexible literal interpretation for them.
Find me one person that would not want to be the first human in all of history to drink water from a different planet.
You were presumably the sort of kid who stuck his finger in an electrical socket to see what would happen. I took the more scientific approach of asking my little sister to try first.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
We keep sending probes to Mars, and I don't think we sterilize them before we send them.
Yes they do.
There's even a special requirement for wet Mars:
A special region is a region classified by COSPAR within which terrestrial organisms could readily propagate, or one thought to have an elevated potential for existence of Martian life forms. This is understood to apply to any region on Mars where liquid water occurs, or can occasionally occur, based on the current understanding of requirements for life.
If a hard landing risks biological contamination of a special region, then the whole lander system must be sterilized to COSPAR category IVc."
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
that's where the canals come from, duh.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Let's put aside the long timelines and asteroid impacts and focus on more recent exchanges. We keep sending probes to Mars, and I don't think we sterilize them before we send them. I know space is a harsh place, but bacteria on Earth live in some exceedingly harsh environments. Is there any way to guarantee that nothing survived the journey, and that any life that may be on Mars wasn't in fact brought over by us in the first place?
And if we found bacteria there, how would we prove whether it is native or our own? We haven't even discovered all forms of higher life on Earth, let alone created a database of every bacterial strain. Could a "new" bacteria we find there actually be a less common form native to Earth that we've never catalogued, that managed to survive a probe ride and thrive over there? I keep expecting scientists to announce they've found bacterial life over there, only to eventually realize far later that it's actually Earth life.
indeed https://www.rt.com/usa/160636-...
and to quote Laszlo Toth on the older probes which searched for Martian life by digging a scoop of Martian soil and vaporizing it to look for organic compounds to indicate there might be life there, "No! It means there was life, but you just burned it up!"
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Why prove life used to be on Mars? Life off-earth is real. You'd be a fool to need proof to believe life exists elsewhere.
Entropy is only seen in correlation as all things tend toward decay. As ShanghaiBill points out repeatedly is that the Bible is only interested in dealings with humans. If sin is the cause and not an evidence of paradise (BarEden) lost, with all the speculative "scientific" propositions that are already out there, why not believe that maybe there is a planet that is not affected by entropy or has an alternative catalyst for entropy?
There are so many variety Christians, the beliefs also are endless. Some believe in an old Earth, some in a young, some think Genesis only records a portion of history, some believe its poetic, some believe that it is an apocalyptic text describing Israel's conquests in the formative years, etc. Added to that, the beliefs in ETs are also endless. Some believe there is intelligent life, and some believe, if there is life out there, it will not be intelligent. I don't think you have to be religious to be skeptical of the idea that there is intelligent life in outer space. Lastly, we haven't definitively figured out the mechanism/s that started this complex system, so finding life on another planets, especially bacteria, will not be a death kneel to Christianity, because it tells us nothing about our origins. Its not like amoebas come with a tag telling us how it was formed or how old it is. We have to interpret the data, and just like religion in general or Christianity specifically, there is no uniformity in the beliefs of the secular scientific world either (on ANY of these topics).
Lastly, rationalism is the basis sometimes for such religious fervor. Rationalism is not science, science is not rationalism, as it equated earlier. In general (and since we are speaking philosophically), rationalism in its purest form is a denial of experience or emotion in making decisions or determining facts.