Mars Rover Sniffs First Hint of Water? 479
mhw25 writes "It is reported that the Mars rover Spirit is already well into its scientific mission, and may be detecting hints of water. The mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer has returned its first image, with probable evidence of carbonates and hydrated minerals. We may know more after the rover rolls off its landing base, after making a 120 degree turn to avoid the airbag blocking its front ramp, to start analyses on soil from Thursday or Friday. An ongoing intrigue is already developing - a scientist reckoned that some of the soil around the airbag 'looks like mud, but it can't be mud'."
Re:intrigue (Score:3, Informative)
because as far as we can tell water cant exist in a liquid state on mars.
Re:intrigue (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"Looks like mud, but it can't be mud" ??? (Score:3, Informative)
Mud is water spatially mixed with soil, but not chemically bonded. It would freeze (as we saw in Boston, when they froze the soil for three years straight to prevent it from collapsing during the Big Dig).
--Dan
Re:intrigue (Score:3, Informative)
surface temp graph [nasa.gov]
Re:This Just In (Score:2, Informative)
You don't have to have water to have ice. The caps are made of frozen carbon dioxide.
Re:hydrated minerals? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This Just In (Score:4, Informative)
Re:yes, well (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This Just In (Score:3, Informative)
Although there are many examples of situations where life on earth exists in very extreme conditions. EG , very hot deep sea thermal vents, or in very cold conditions in the earths Ice caps. If we can find flowing water , or evidence therof. That might also open up the possibilites of sedimentary processes and thus increase the possibilities of finding fossilised remains.
I think many scientists beleive that water once flowed on Mars, although the evidence is already pointing in that direction the current mars mission aims to prove it once and for all and turn hypothesis into fact.
Whether mars still has regions that are still capable of supporting primitive life are conjecture. Maybe the ice caps hold the clue, or maybe beneath the surface where it is warmer? who knows. During mars summer months surface temperatures can sometimes raise to above freezing ? about 12-15degrees farehnheit. Which, although cold might just be enough to support some crazy organism !
Re:yes, well (Score:5, Informative)
It can't be mud because of physics. Water cannot exist in free form in the surface of Mars because it would simply evaporate instantly (at least in most locations). Temperature and atmospheric pressure are the usual suspects here. And we do know what those are with a relatively high degree of certainty. Ergo, it can't be mud. It must be some sort of wacky sand, like montmorillonite. Data from the Mariner probes has detected a few dozen types of this clay. Maybe this is one we haven't seen before.
Water, if found, will be either in the poles or trapped in molecule-sized amounts in rocks under the surface, nominally because of some sort of organism like microscopic algae or fungus keeps it there as part of its organic cycle. The idea goes that if you find water there you're also likely to find some type of primitive life.
But I suggest we let the thing dig holes and stuff before we get all excited =)
mini-tes website (Score:1, Informative)
http://minites.asu.edu [asu.edu]
Re:So let me get this right... (Score:3, Informative)
Water (Score:5, Informative)
The kinda cool thing is the TES data [asu.edu] shows a current temperature map at surface level - you notice at Gusev Crater (where spirit is, about 15S, 185W - so basically around halfway down the right edge of the picture) the temperature is somewhere around 0C, +/-10 degrees or so.
The *really* cool thing is, when they were getting ready to make the rover stand up and strut its stuff, they went through extra checks and testing on Earth because the landing site was a lot warmer than they expected - there's every chance that it's above 0 there, in fact, there's every chance that (on the surface at least) Spirit is enjoying much better weather than I am right now.
It's common knowledge that Mars' equator regularly gets up into the positive numbers, even up above 20c, the only real question as to the feasibility of liquid water in these regions is whether there is any ice left there to melt, or if it is all up at the poles (or underground). Due to the low triple point of water on Mars, and the theory that it's just coming out of an ice-age, there's every chance there is no liquid left around there to melt, but there's certainly a chance there is.
Fortunately, we have a rover up there that will be able to tell us for sure in a few days
Re:hydrated minerals? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, not exactly. Yes, water is present on comets. However, the H2O present on comets is primarily in a solid state. IOW, it's not fit to react with surrounding minerals (at least not in any sizeable quantities). So, yeah, it's perfectly reasonable to find trace amounts of water on Mars. However, the presence of large hydrated material deposits requires that this water be present in liquid form for relatively long periods of time.
Re:intrigue (Score:5, Informative)
Real surface temp graph [asu.edu]
Re:Best page for up to the minute news? (Score:5, Informative)
I'd have to say Gusev Crater, but if you can't make it there, you could try this jpl (has all images & press releases) [nasa.gov] or this other jpl site (has more articles) [nasa.gov]. Don't miss the 3D model they've built of the site [nasa.gov]
Re:intrigue (Score:5, Informative)
Is the reason it "can't be mud" that it would have shown up as such in previous spectroscopic analyses from orbit?
Re:Maybe not H20 (Score:5, Informative)
The permanent Martian ice caps are just that, water ice. They expand and shrink seasonally, with much of the winter increase being CO2 ("dry") ice. In the Martian summers the poles are too warm for CO2 ice, in the Martian winters, too cold for some of the atmospheric CO2 not to freeze out. (So yes, at any given time, one pole is mostly water ice, the other mostly (covered with) dry ice -- except in spring and fall when the CO2 is changing poles -- which is also when you tend to get planetary dust storms. Imagine that.)
This has been more or less known since some astronomer first pointed a spectrometer at Mars, and largely confirmed by subsequent observation and exploration.
The only real discussion is the percentages of same, and how much (if any) water or water ice is in the soil further from the poles.
Re:How are we supposed to know (Score:4, Informative)
If you REALLY believe that the US govt could maintain a fiction on such a scale, without word ever leaking, then my posting this is probably a waste of typing.
If you want access to the raw data streams, file a FOIA request. Or go build a 'scope and listen to them for yourself. You can be _pretty_ sure the latter signals aren't doctored. Unless, of course, all this 'data' was simply pre-programmed before launch, right?
I knew the
Re:Best page for up to the minute news? (Score:4, Informative)
Soon life will be found. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Microscope needed! (Score:5, Informative)
These will provide plenty of targets for the rover to study up close with its suite of instruments, which include a rock-grinder and microscope and a Mossbauer spectrometer.
Synopsis: There IS a microscope on Spirit.
Re:"Looks like mud, but it can't be mud" ??? (Score:1, Informative)
It changes into another form (there's solids, liquids, gasses, and plasma), or it's turned into energy (ala fire, explosions).
Water woild boil on mars about in the same way that leaving a pan of water out will allow it to evaporate. That's what boiling is. Fast evaporation, marked by pressure causing bubblets to form and escape through the surface.
Re:As a lowly engineer... (Score:2, Informative)
Of course, you could go the silica based route... but I haven't a clue as to what's needed for something like that.
And again, I believe I'm right in the CHON thing. I seem to remember that from grade school back in the 70's...
--Xan
Re:Planting Life (Score:5, Informative)
For whatever reason, NASA was reluctant to bake Pathfinder/Sojourner which landed in 1997 and instead baked bits and pieces (antennae, solar panels, parachute, etc.), and cleaned the rest (antibacterial windex, I guess) so that Pathfinder was "clean enough" - i.e., within the international guidelines.
I haven't found any info regarding the Spirit and Opportunity or the lost missions that may have impacted, however it's fair to assume that they, like Pathfinder and Mars Polar Lander (now in its own crater somewhere) went through some decontamination before launch, but Mars Climate Orbiter that burned on aerobraking gone awry was intended to orbit, not land, and may have not been so assiduously decontaminated. Like the famous Apollo example where astronauts retrieved a sneezed-on camera lens from a previous unmanned probe that still harbored some bugs, life is more hearty that we think.
Dissociation of water?? : -1 Wrong (Score:4, Informative)
This is what P-T diagrams are all about. Here's one for water [tpub.com]. Note that there is a region where you can go straight from solid water (ice) to water vapor (steam) - sublimation. This is what would happen, in short order, to ice on mars. Unless, of course, it was bonded to soil or another molecucle (hydrous form) rather than being molecular water.
But I'm not a chemist...
Re:Best page for up to the minute news? CLICK HERE (Score:5, Informative)
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH) [axonchisel.net].
This site has TONS of great links, animations, movies, cartoons, news, and everything else. I hit it and branch off from there many times a day.
*** CORRECTION TO BAD SCIENCE IN PARENT POST *** (Score:5, Informative)
Each water molecule is polarised (quite strongly as it happens): although it is overall electrically neutral, one end is rather positive and the other end is rather negative. You get residual interactions between the positive end of one molecule and the negative end of the next one along. When the water molecules are extremely cold they are held in a lattice structure by these residual dipole moments. This is ice. When you add some heat the water molecules jiggle around, and eventually have enough energy to break the lattice and move around freely, though they are still attracted to each other because of the electrical dipoles. This is water. Add some more heat energy and the jiggling water molecules move so fast that they have enough kinetic energy to break out of the energy well of the intermolecular bonds. They can move around at will and each molecule can go where it wants. This is water vapour. The temperature at which these changes occur depends on pressure for reasons that you can go and look up.
What you see as steam when a kettle boils is actually liquid water that cools and recondenses into countless tiny droplets above the kettle's spout.
as we know it... (Score:5, Informative)
its hypothesized you could base life on some other elements (like silicon), but since we've never seen it, we wouldn't even know *how* to look for it, much less recognize it if we did, short of a silicon based life form seen moving around...
Re:"Looks like mud, but it can't be mud" ??? (Score:3, Informative)
Not to be pedantic, but they are both chemical reactions, and so incapable of destroying matter. What you'll get is one bunch of compounds (eg carbon) turning into another (eg carbon dioxide).
It requires a nuclear reaction to actually annihilate matter and turn it completely into energy. The energy released in a chemical reaction comes from breaking/making bonds between atoms and molecules, not from breaking down the atoms themselves.
Re:Dissociation of water?? : -1 Wrong (Score:3, Informative)
They haven't! (Score:4, Informative)
At each conference they've been careful to explain that there are many competing theories at the moment, only *some* of which require the action of liquid water. I guess that didn't really filter through to the media, though. If you get NASA TV in your area, check out the briefings. They're broadcast live at 9am PST, 12 noon EST, repeated on C-SPAN 1 around 4pm EST (usually), and are very informative, presentations and questions alike. Except for one reporter from Astronomy Magazine, who alternately makes me laugh and throw heavy objects at the screen.
Re:Dissociation of water?? : -1 Wrong (Score:2, Informative)
I disagree. Mars does not have enough of an atmosphere for this to happen at high altitude. It'll more than likely happen at surface level.
you do frequently find optically thin clouds of ice crystals
CO2 crystals, not H2O. You would have heard about it in the news by now if a spectrometer detected a cloud of water in Mars (or anywhere else for that matter).
Good: Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH) (Score:3, Informative)
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH) [axonchisel.net].
This has links to tons of great information, images, QuickTimeVR, 3d images, videos, history, cartoons, and lots more about Mars and this MER Spirit mission in particular. Great as a springboard to look up more info as these issues (mud, water, etc.) come up.
Re:Water (Score:5, Informative)
This is correct -- in Spirit's vicinity, the water content is something like a few percent of the soil. This is exciting not because it's news that there's water in the Martian soil (we knew that already, from Odyssey measurements), but because there's water where we are -- it means Spirit has water right under her feet. Also because it's "ground truth" for the orbital measurements.
The higher temperatures are probably due to the (clearing) dust storm. Spirit is almost too warm, which is about the last problem we ever expected to have (but I'd rather have this problem than most others I can think of!).
Incidentally, there probably is liquid water on Mars -- or, more precisely, under Mars; it's all in the range of 100m to 2km below the soil. Surface water would sublime.
Still waiting to drive ....
Re:"Looks like mud, but it can't be mud" ??? (Score:3, Informative)
It's not exactly that the atoms themselves are slightly charged, and I no longer trust my memory of Chemistry enough to explain further. Suffice to say, it is the electrostatic force of attraction between the protons and the electrons that bind the hydrogen and oxygen atoms together to form water molecules. It's more like they "share" an electron each, though, than that they're charged.
The water molecules *are* charged, though, due to their shape - they form a sort of shallow v shape, with the oxygen at the point and the hydrogens at the end of the "arms".
And now, I'll stop wasting your time, let a real chemist take over, have my hot chocolate and go to bed
Names of the states of water (Score:3, Informative)
solid (ice)
liquid (liquid water)
gas (water vapor)
Steam is actually an aerosol form of liquid water. In other words, it is microscopic liquid water droplets suspended in the air.
Steam quickly evaporates, i.e., converts to water vapor.
Making News (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, the quote was elicited only when one of the reporters there asked "to me it looks like mud, any chance it could be". The reply was that although it might look like mud, it couldn't be, followed by a description of the behavior of fine particles (they can flow, etc.).
I'd say that to use this as a quote that "scientists say" it looks like mud is a bit disingenuous.
Re:intrigue (Score:3, Informative)
Re:what's mud? (Score:5, Informative)
Mud traditionally implies an element of H20 though, so I think scientists would have to be somewhat anal about classifying it as such. The implications for saying water can currently exist at the surface of Mars is quite staggering for all sorts of scientific reasons.
Judging from the pictures (though I have nothing to scale it too), much of the material looks very very fine grained, in the realm of medium grained silt to clay sized particles. But without the presence of H20, that is all they are, just silt or clay (note, using the Wentworth Scale, clay indicates the finest grains).
Now the processes that created these fine silts and clays are very indicative of having sometime of wet environment that broke down materials into these fine grains.
Re:intrigue (Score:3, Informative)
I've been inspired to rip your argument apart bit by bit. So here goes.
0 F is roughly the coldest temperature people most people experience in and 100 F the hottest (obviously there are greater extremes, but we're talking about the bulk of the population). 0 F is basically really cold and 100 F is really hot.
India's population tips the scales at just over 1 billion, not a small number of people I would say. They generally experience temperatures between 5 and 40 degrees Celcius. The temperatures I experience here in Australia are much the same. In fact people living in Darwin would rug up in temperatures that I feel a pleasantly hot. Basing a scale on what one man at a certain place defines as really cold and really hot is not just fairly arbitrary, it's totally arbitrary. Just as well Mr. Fahrenheit actually used a fair amount science for his minimum.
Ovens also happen to work very well on the fahrenheit scale (200 F - 500 F).
Is that why my oven never works properly. I'll have to get a Fahrenheit oven instead.
Celsius is just plain silly. Basing temperature on a random molecule's states at a specific atmospheric pressure is fairly arbitrary and has little to do with the human condition.
Fahrenheit was actually based on on a random molecule's state at a specific atmospheric pressure with the addition of salt as well as the temperature of a healthy and fit human. Gee, which is more arbitrary. In fact the original scale has changed since originally body temperature was 96 but since pegging water's boiling point at 212 body temperature is now at 98.6. So Fahrenheit is just as dependent on water's boiling and freezing points as Celcius.
In fact many people believe that the scale was chosen to make the mathematics easy. 32 (water's freezing point) and 96 (originally body temperature) are both divisible by a relatively high amount of numbers.
Kelvin makes sense for science, but little else.
You seem to say this simply because this is what science uses. You do realise that Kelvin and Celcius use the same scale only with differing zero points?
Someone mod parent +1 Funny
Re: clay? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:intrigue (Score:3, Informative)
So even if you do have 1 deg C temperatures, the pressure is such that you're already above the boiling point of water and hence no liquid water.