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In 2015, observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed trace amounts of water (mixed with heavy doses of salts) on the Red Planet's surface. These "hydrated salts" corresponded with dark streaks on Martian hillsides called recurring slope lineae (RSL), which researchers had already identified as possible sites of liquid water rising to the surface. Studies of RSL, and in particular the findings by the MRO, introduced the tantalizing possibility that there could be enough liquid water on the surface of Mars today to support microbial life But the new study shows that those dark RSL could simply be flows of sand...

In case you were wondering, there's no evidence that Mars hosted an alien civilization thousands of years ago. Nonetheless, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., asked a panel of planetary scientists to speculate about this possibility today (July 18), during a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Space and Technology's Space Subcommittee.

The situation for human beings on Mars is dire, and not just because the red planet's atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide and the average temperature is -81 degrees. There's also the issue of the child-trafficking ring operating in secret on the planet 33.9 million miles from earth, according to a guest on the Alex Jones Show. “We actually believe that there is a colony on Mars that is populated by children who were kidnapped and sent into space on a 20-year ride,” Robert David Steele said Thursday during a winding, conspiratorial dialogue with Jones about child victims of sex crimes....

A mysterious ‘stone circle’ has been spotted on the surface of Mars, according to alien hunters. The image, captured by NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover, was featured on the secureteam10 YouTube channel after it was spotted by a UFO hunter. In the YouTube video, secureteam10 describes the image as “a very strange formation of rocks that are put together in what appears to be a very artificial way, arranged in a perfect circle.” The formation is “much different from the craters that we normally see on Mars and the moon and the other planets in the solar system,” secureteam10 added. “This...

Nasa's Curiosity rover has snapped a photo of a mysterious object on the surface of Mars, which conspiracy theorists believe could be evidence of aliens. The high-definition image appears to show the object glinting against Mars' rocky landscape. While many people believe that the object is made by aliens, others have suggested that it is merely the rover's own entry debris.

A mysterious circular rock formation on the surface of Mars has been captured by one of NASA's Orbiters. The formation was photographed by the Curiosity Rover this week and has excited alien hunters who invited speculation over how it came to be online. They suggested that the rocks were 'arranged', laid out by another form of life, or that it was part of a larger, buried structure which has never before been seen.

Curiosity discovered high levels of manganese oxide minerals in rocks investigated at a location called “Windjana” during the spring of 2014. Manganese-oxide minerals require abundant water and strongly oxidizing conditions to form. “Researchers found high levels of manganese oxides by using a laser-firing instrument on the rover. This hint of more oxygen in Mars’ early atmosphere adds to other Curiosity findings — such as evidence about ancient lakes — revealing how Earth-like our neighboring planet once was,” NASA reported. The newly announced results stem from results obtained from the rovers mast mounted ChemCam or Chemistry and Camera laser firing instrument....

Had you searched the sky with a telescope just a few hundred thousand years ago, you would have struggled to find a red planet. Instead, you would have seen a gleaming-white ice ball where Mars should be. A team of astronomers led by Isaac Smith, an astrophysicist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has collected the first concrete evidence that Mars has just exited an extreme ice age, one so intense it would have put Earth's recent frosty foray to shame. Using cameras and a radar-pinging device on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Smith's team deduced this history...

A volcano on Mars half the size of France spewed so much lava 3.5 billion years ago that the weight displaced the Red Planet's outer layers, according to a study released Wednesday. Mars' original north and south poles, in other words, are no longer where they once were. The findings explain the unexpected location of dry river beds and underground reservoirs of water ice, as well as other Martian mysteries that have long perplexed scientists, the lead researcher told AFP. "If a similar shift happened on Earth, Paris would be in the Polar Circle," said Sylvain Bouley, a geomorphologist at...

Here's the NASA link. Wut? http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/surface/sol/01237/opgs/edr/ncam/NLB_507300229EDR_F0521162NCAM00322M_.JPG

Caltech and JPL scientists suggest the fingerprints of early photochemistry provide a solution to the long-standing mystery. Mars is blanketed by a thin, mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere—one that is far too thin to prevent large amounts of water on the surface of the planet from subliming or evaporating. But many researchers have suggested that the planet was once shrouded in an atmosphere many times thicker than Earth's. For decades that left the question, "Where did all the carbon go?" Now a team of scientists from Caltech and JPL thinks they have a possible answer. The researchers suggest that 3.8 billion...

I was seeing tease lines in the news over the weekend and on the NASA twitter feed hinting at a major announcement which would come out today. That spurred the usual rounds of speculation with the most popular candidate being that they turned up some form of life or perhaps a fossil or something along those lines. (Personally I was pitching for a large black obelisk of some sort full of stars, but you can only ask for so much.) I honestly wasn’t getting my hopes up too far because they’ve played these games before. Rather than just announcing what...

Dark streaks on Mars's surface may indicate liquid water on the barren planet, the National Aeronautics and Space Association (NASA) revealed Monday. “We now know Mars was once a planet very much like Earth with warm salty seas and fresh water lakes,” Jim Green, NASA's planetary science director, stated. “But something has happened to Mars, it lost its water.” But recent photos from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show long, dark streaks - some as long as 100m - which scientists believe could be a live source of flowing water - and, just maybe, could prove the existence of life (or...

Scientists have discovered the strongest evidence yet that "flowing liquid water" exists on Mars, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said Monday morning.

Right now, 140 million miles away, somewhere on the frigid surface of Mars, there is water forming. Scientists announced they have strong evidence that briny water flows on the planet, a critical step toward identifying possible life on Mars. “Water is essential to life as we know it,” wrote Lujendra Ojha, Mary Beth Wilhelm, and their co-authors in a paper published Monday in Nature Geoscience. “The presence of liquid water on Mars today has astrobiological, geologic and hydrologic implications and may affect future human exploration.” If this announcement, which NASA billed as “major” in the days leading up to...

Wordsworth and his collaborators arrived at this conclusion after running 3D atmospheric models to see how water moved between Mars' surface and its atmosphere billions of years ago. The first scenario envisioned Mars as a temperate place, with an average global temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius). The second scenario then cast the Red Planet into ice-ball conditions, with an average global temperature of minus 54 F (minus 48 C). The results showed that the "cold" model did a better job of eroding features on the planet's surface similar to those observed by spacecraft currently on and orbiting...

Nasa is preparing to unveil a "major science finding" from its Mars exploration programme, amid speculation it could have found water flowing on the Red Planet. The space agency has scheduled a press conference for Monday, in which it promises to announce a "Mars Mystery Solved". While many are hoping for a discovery of alien life, the leading theory among those who follow research into Mars is an announcement of the presence of liquid water. The speculation has been driven by Nasa's disclosure that Lujendra Ojha, a PhD candidate who discovered possible signs of water as a 21-year-old undergraduate student...

NASA officials will announce Monday morning a major scientific discovery related to their continued exploration of Mars. The agency won’t give too many details on what exactly the big reveal is, apart from the fact that the briefing will feature some pretty big names at the space agency (including Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA HQ; Michael Meyer, the lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program; Lujendra Ojha, a grad student at Georgia Tech; Mary Beth Wilhelm at NASA’s Ames Research Center, and a grad student at Georgia Tech as well; and Alfred McEwen at the University of...

From ancient pyramids to military bunkers, there's not much conspiracy theorists haven't seen on Mars. Now, in their latest bizarre sighting, alien hunters say they have spotted a mysterious 'facehugger crab' on the red planet. Since the image was uploaded on Facebook, a number of people have said it looks like the facehugger monster shown in the 1979 film, Alien.