Me neither.
Well the century's only three years old. I think you might be jumping the gun a bit.
Me neither.
Neither would I, although ISTM (and others here) that the evidence that it has been found via this mission is "rock solid" to coin a phrase.
Simply conclusive evidence of standing liquid water or true water-generated sedimentary rocks on Mars would be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the space program, and, indeed, the whole century.
Here's an excerpt from something I posted in another thread:
My WAG is that they're playing the "limited hang-out" gambit and will not 'fess up to the obvious evidence of life found by the rovers, but will make great hay over the (already known) water.
What will (IMO) be new will be the revelation that there is liquid water in the immediate sub-surface region. One implication would be that the earlier satellite data of massive amounts of sub-surface water -- in the form of permafrost -- will have to be revised. This would mean that it could be fairly trivial to sink a shallow well and draw up liquid water. Whether it's sweetwater or "brine" is yet to be determined.
My theory is that the bitter cold temperatures reported in the Martian air are meaningless WRT the ground temperature. Some time ago it was reported that there was a dramatic air temperature gradient, with the air at the surface level being very warm, IIRC in the 70 deg. F range.
The extremely thin Martian air would be a very poor conductor, so, it would not be very effective at bleeding off the ground heat either by conduction or convection.
Meanwhile, the ground would continue to soak up heat from the Sun, and retain it. If there is residual heat from the core, it could contribute to maintaining the heat. In essence, it would be sort of a "greenhouse effect", only based in the soil, rather than the atmosphere.
A "warm, wet Mars" from the ground level on down could easily be teeming with life. (And, those "blueberries" might actually be turds afterall!)
Then, there's Gilbert Levin's startling assertion:
His credentials, from the article copied in that thread:Levin points to Opportunity imagery that offers conclusive proof of standing liquid water and running water on a cold Mars.
Other images show the rover tracks clearly are being made in "mud", with water being pressed out of that material, Levin said. "That water promptly freezes and you can see reflecting ice. That's clearly ice. It could be nothing else," he said, "and the source is the water that came out of the mud."
He is Chairman of the Board and Executive Officer for Science of Spherix Incorporated in Beltsville, Maryland.
Levin is a former Viking Mars lander investigator. He has long argued that his 1976 Viking Labeled Release (LR) life detection experiment found living microorganisms in the soil of Mars.
In 1997, Levin reported that simple laws of physics require water to occur as a liquid on the surface of Mars. Subsequent experiments and research have bolstered this view, he said, and reaffirms his Viking LR data regarding microbial life on Mars.
And finally, this statement of his from the same context:
"It's hard to image why such bullet-proof evidence was denied for such a long time, and why those so vigorously denying it never did so by meeting the science, but merely by brushing it away," Levin said.
"Of course, now that it must be acknowledged by all that there is liquid water on the surface of Mars," Levin added, "this starts those denying the validity of the Mars LR data down the slippery slope leading to life."
And then there are all of those obvious fossils found by many of us, including several geologists, in the threads over the past few weeks. Do a search on the Mars threads via the posting histories of members like Phil V., Piltdown_Woman, and the rest of the usual suspects. :)