[Brett66]

This gets more interesting by the minute........

[Brett66]

Ping.

[Paul Atreides]

It would still be a water world if Bush had gone to Kyoto.

[King Prout]

"This gets more interesting by the minute........"

you are a master of understatement
the presence of readily available liquid water might change things rather drastically.

[Fitzcarraldo]

I wonder if a form of desparation is creeping into the MER Project. The lifetime of the craft are limited, the instrumentation can address some issues, but not all, and the list of subjects of interest grows with each passing sol.

When the rovers finally fall silent, in 50, 100 or 150 days, how many issues will be left unresolved?

[montomike]

Beagle, beagle, beagle...Calling the beagle. Where are you beagle?

Woof, woof, woof.

We got a two fer and fixed one from afar.

[Phil V.]

Sorry for being so late, Brett but I've been so absorbed in the MIs that I've just now seen your post. I'll say up fornt (nothing to lose) that the announcement will be WRT fossil-water-life evidece. I'm "seeing" criters all over. . . . "son of thing" . . .

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glyph of "son of thing" . . .

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stereo of "son of thing" . . .

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If you'd like to be on or off this MARS ping list please FRail me

[537 Votes]

As long ago as the 1970s, people were looking at the first topographic maps of Mars and noticing that the terrain in the northern hemisphere was smoother than the terrain in the southern hemisphere, and that the dividing line between terrains looked remarkably like a dried, ancient coastline.

That would imply, of course, that half of the Martian surface was once covered by an ocean. Mars was a water world without any question.

IMO, NASA is simply trying to make PR points by proving and reproving something which was proven to most intelligent people's satisfaction long ago.

[In_25_words_or_less]

scientists are carefully piecing together a compelling historical portrait of a wet and wild world

"Eureka! Two jet skis and a 9 & 1/2-horse Johnson outboard!"

[SunkenCiv]

contains small amounts of water mixed with salt in a brine. That brew of dissolved salts keeps the mixture well below the freezing point of pure water, permitting it to exist in liquid form.

Uh, no. There may be water ice in the soil, but it's clear from the "from nowhere to nowhere" erosion features that there are very brief, very localized events consisting of a temporary denser atmosphere made up of (for example) water vapor, making liquid water possible, and features to form in the permafrozen soil.

[Dialup Llama]

from the article...

Levin said that brine on Mars is a code word for liquid water. He senses that great care is being taken by rover scientists because the liquid water issue starts the road to life.

"That's the monument that they are afraid to erect without real due process," Levin concluded.

Much like this monument...

[unibrowshift9b20]

I don't see how anyone can argue that robots are always better than people in space after they read what exactly they do with these rovers. For goodness sake! If it were me on mars instead of that rover, I could pick up that little rock and show you the side of it so you could decide whether it was a frozen bug or not. I could turn back around and look at my footprint and stick my finger in it and tell you whether or not it was icy. I could dig you a little hole in the ground, instead of turning the rover back and forth for hours on end to make a little rut. These little rovers are certainly good, but they don't replace people.

[NotQuiteCricket]

Here is a link inside of the article that you posted:
http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/viking_life_010728-1.html

The link above is for an article about the Viking I/II mission.

Here is a quote from the article:
""To my surprise, in their LR experiment, they seemed to have clear periodic oscillations in the release of gas from a Martian soil sample injected with a nutrient solution. The oscillations in gas release had a period of what appeared to be one Martian day. Being a circadian biologist, I became very excited," Miller told SPACE.com.

On Earth, Miller said, circadian rhythms -- oscillations with a period of nearly 24 hours -- are present in every species examined down to blue-green algae. Was it possible, he asked, that the LR experiment was recording the circadian rhythm of a Martian soil-dwelling microbe?

NASA worked with Miller, providing him the 1976 LR data sets, as well as converting the information to an electronic format. That allowed the circadian biologist to study the data using modern computer-based analytical tools.

"I found that the gas release was indeed rhythmic, with a period of precisely 24.66 hours, a Martian day," Miller said. This finding, along with other painstaking assessments about LR operations, the scientist feels that a Martian circadian rhythm in the experiment may constitute a biosignature - a sign of life."

[Phil V.]

If you looked quickly after I hit this thread with the MARS PING I placed it in the BREAKING NEWS side bar. It stayed there for at least FIVE MINUTES! It got yanked and my heart is warmed to see that as of this moment at the top of the BREAKING NEWS sidebar is . . . (warm, fuzzy glow) . . . the OSCARS LIVE THREAD!!!


. . . WORTH AT LEAST 1/2 CUP OF WARM SPIT . . .

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Haven't we known Mars had water since Viking?

***NASA's Viking Mission to Mars was composed of two spacecraft, Viking 1 and Viking 2, each consisting of an orbiter and a lander. The primary mission objectives were to obtain high resolution images of the Martian surface, characterize the structure and composition of the atmosphere and surface, and search for evidence of life. Viking 1 was launched on August 20, 1975 and arrived at Mars on June 19, 1976.

........The results from the Viking experiments give our most complete view of Mars to date. Volcanoes, lava plains, immense canyons, cratered areas, wind-formed features, and evidence of surface water are apparent in the Orbiter images.

....Further information on the spacecraft, experiments, and data returned from the Viking missions can be found in the September 30, 1977 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research, "Scientific Results of the Viking Project", vol. 82, no. 28. Viking Mission to Mars

[longtermmemmory]

What is to say this is not residual water from some kind of very large commet/meteor? Just playing devis advocate.


If those spheres are water, does water behave like that at 1/2 earth gravity?

Boy is this stuff interesting.

[aruanan]

Turns out, even on Mars, a political and ego outcrop hangs over science.

Politics and ego always hang over science. For many scientists, "science" is the Viagra for their egos and they use it to facilitate their political pole vaulting in academe.

[Pagey]

bump

[Lee'sGhost]

I don't get it. Everybody here seems focused on "water," while Levin is talking LIFE. Could it be that's what the announcement is about?