Mud on Mars: Look for Life in Russell Crater

An anonymous reader writes "Mars Global Surveyor satellite images show mud may have flowed on Mars as recently as the last 100 years. The place is called Russell Crater, in the southern hemisphere. Water would exist during summer noon, long enough to carve out the embankments and dams that make these patterns different from rocky avalanches. The BBC has an interview."

seriously, though

[Rxke]

The article mentions the mud/liquid water could be present THIS VERY DAY, if this would turn out to be true,... boy, staggering.... Liquid water on Mars! I hope they really decontaminated all previous probes properly, would be quite a shock to discover earth-bacteria living there, instead of martian bugs.

Saxifrage Russell

[Anonymous Coward]

Was who I first thought of when I saw "Mars" and "Russell" in the same sentence.

Water on Mars...

[akgunkel]

I just wonder if all these water on Mars claims will be verified before we send Humans there.

By that I mean, if all of our probes can't confirm this and in 10, 20, or 30 years we finally get Humans out there and they do confirm water on Mars, will that justify the expense and danger of manned space exploration?

It just seems to me that if there is any water on Mars, a probe will have a lot harder time finding definative proof of it than an intelligent human being.

Re:COLOR Please?

[pyr0]

Why do you need color? Seriously...I'm not trying to troll you or anything. When all you want is to see surface features, black and white is perfectly adequate. If the images were in color, you'd just see what color the sediments are (some varying shades of red and yellow probably). Personally, I think black and white pictures of landscapes look pretty neat.