Water found on mars

[Shithappens]

The article

 

WASHINGTON: Striking images taken by Nasa's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft suggest the presence of liquid water on the Martian surface, a tantalising find for scientists wondering if the Red Planet might harbour life.

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The orbiting US spacecraft enabled scientists to detect changes in the walls of two craters in the southern hemisphere of Mars apparently caused by the downhill flow of water in the past few years, a team of scientists announced on Wednesday.

 

Scientists long have wondered whether life ever existed on Mars. Liquid water is an important part of the equation. On Earth, all forms of life require water to survive. Scientists previously established the existence of war on Mars in the form of ice at the poles and water vapour, and pointed to geological features that appear to have been carved by water ages ago.

 

Kenneth Edgett of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, a scientist involved in the research, said there had been a quest for "smoking gun" evidence for liquid water currently on Mars.

 

"Basically, this is the 'squirting gun' for water on Mars," Edgett told reporters.

 

The scientists, whose research appears in the journal Science, compared images of the Martian surface taken seven years apart and also found 20 newly formed craters left by impacts from space debris.

 

They said water seemed to have flowed down two gullies in the past few years, even though liquid water cannot remain long on the planet's frigid, nearly airless surface because it would rapidly freeze or evaporate.

 

That seemed to support the notion that underground liquid water may reside close enough to the surface in some places that it can seep out periodically.

 

The images did not directly show water. But they showed bright deposits running several hundred metres seemingly left by material carried downhill inside the crater by running water, occasionally snaking around obstacles and leaving finger-shaped marks diverting from the main flow.

 

"It could be acidic water, it could be briny water, it could be water carrying all kinds of sediment, it could be slushy, but H2O is involved," Edgett said.

 

Edgett said each apparent flow was caused by an amount equal to "five to 10 swimming pools of water."

 

Michael Meyer, lead scientist for Nasa's Mars Exploration Programme, said the observations provided the strongest evidence to date that water still flowed occasionally on the surface of Mars. "The big questions are: how does this happen, and does it point to a habitat for life?" Meyer said.

 

Among the planets in our solar system, only Earth has a more hospitable climate, and some scientists suspect Mars once sheltered primitive, bacteria-like organisms. Previous missions found evidence Mars at one time boasted ample quantities of water.

 

The scientists conceded the images were only circumstantial evidence not proof. They cited a possible alternative explanation that those features were caused by the movement of dry dust down a slope.

 

The researchers said their findings raised many questions, including the source and abundance of the water and whether it could serve as a resource in future missions to explore Mars.

 

The researchers reported finding those gullies in 2000, but this was the first time they revealed the presence of newly deposited material seemingly carried by liquid water.

 

Last month, Nasa said it had lost contact with the Mars Global Surveyor after a decade-long mission in which it mapped the surface of Mars, tracked its climate and searched for evidence of water.

 

This has some very large ramifications as with water the usage of introduced organisms could actually speed up the creation of oxygen .....

 

Or is it just another planet for us to rape???

[Luke Skywalker]

I would like to think that the lessons we've learned on Earth would help us shape a far better future for a planet like Mars than that we've pretty much guaranteed on Earth.

 

Steven Hawking has suggested that if Humanity is to survive, and the rest of terran life for that matter, we have to colonise other planets. The odds of an advanced civilisation surviving for any length of geological and astronomical time when you're confined to one planet is pretty much zero. The more colonies you form either within or outside the solar system, the better the odds that humanity will continue to survive in one place or another.

 

All it takes is a 1km asteroid to smash into the Earth, (which does happen relatively frequently in geological time) to wipe out most of the complex life forms. We're quite a bit overdue for a cataclysmic collision, so I feel that we have a responsibility to spread life (ours and the rest of Earths millons and millions of species) to the rest of the solar system and beyond.

[HighRising]

why do we have a responsibility?

[Budman2012]

Might not be responsibilty ...

Some beleive that we are and always have been headed toward becoming the "Alien" we search for ...

What has been known as "Science Fiction" has become "Reality" in more than a few cases as time "Evolves" ...

And to become the "Alien" certainly entails leaving this planet "Earth" ... whether in a physical or transcendent state ...

 

So ... I'll seeya then

 

Budman

[Luke Skywalker]

Cos we don't know if there is any more life in the entire universe. If it turns out, rather unlikely I would think, but possible, that there is only one outpost of this strange bio-chemical system defying entropy called Life then I would think it is our responsibility to spread it to as many corners of the universe as we can.

 

Life is so wondrous, so beautiful, so incredible, that the damage we've already caused is a tragedy. To allow it to die out alltogether, without knowing that somewhere else Life has a toehold, even if only bacterial or viral, that would be an absolute travesty.

 

Just as a small example, look at the orchid species on the Earth. There are more than 30,000 species in their own right, probably more. These will all become extinct, along with everything else, if we have a serious cataclysm. Even if the entire point of space exploration and colonisation was simply to grow one obscure orchid species on another planet, I would find it worth it, as it greatly, massively reduces the odds that that species will be wiped out. Thankfully it's not as ridiculous a program as that, (although the space age has brought some incredible stupidity) and as such, it offers an opportunity not only to help humanity to find new places to live, but all other life as well....

 

IMHO.

[Shithappens]

Ahh but then you raise the problem of what the introduction of other life forms will do to any existing ecosystems

 

I see the need to collat and form a storage of many of the endangered species but the introduction of them into a foreign environment for our own sentimental concerns would be dangerous...and not a very good start on a new world at all

 

If it is ever found!!

[WantDaChronic]

i can see how introducing earth animals and plants on another planet could be very bad, but considering mars is a lifeless planet i dont really think introducing life there will have any negative impact. the only way it would have an impact would be if humans were to introduce our flora and fauna on to a planet already inhabited....

 

i believe humans are a cancer upon this planet, i really do all you need to do is look around to notice all the cars spewing pollution, forests getting cleared, animals becoming extinct due to human actions, etc. and it becomes quite clear that we are no better than a parasite or cancer...with that in mind i dont think humans should consider colonizing other planets untill we have the technology to live in harmony with the environment. but in reality our recycling, energy, transportation, etc. technology is far too primitive to live like that and i believe we'll wipe each other out before we even get close

[Luke Skywalker]

The best recycling technological breakthroughs will come from a human trip to mars. A minimum (for a "quick" trip) is 2 years, so they have to be completely self contained. The technological breakthroughs could be astonishing.

 

I agree that humans are a pretty poor example for life, and we certainly are screwing things up pretty badly here, but if anything was to bring humanity together it should be the idea that if we don't colonise planets and perhaps moons other than Earth, both humanity and life on this planet are doomed. It's just a matter of time before life on earth is exterminated by a major cataclysm. They have happened before, with 95% of all life wiped out. Something only slightly larger could have done it all....

 

I don't think just of people, I think of the rest of the planet as well. What better way to ensure that the species of Earth and their dynamic ecosystems can survive, adapt and change than to seed them wherever possible across the solar system, and then perhaps any local neighbourhood stars (I'm thinking hundreds, if not thousands of years here) to spread the absolute joy that is LIFE....

 

But yeah, don't mistake that for human life only. I mean the whole kit and caboodle, every form of life you see around you is an absolute wonder which is just waiting to be absolutely and utterly destroyed by the mechanics of motion and gravity played on a solar scale... I dunno, I feel a bit of responsibility as a human being, being the only known species capable of doing such a thing for the planet... altruism it may be, but if we're the only outpost of life in the galaxy, or perhaps even the universe, don't you think that's something worth saving? Earth is not immutable...