NASA Announces Water Found On Mars 281
s.bots writes "Straight from the horse's mouth, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has identified water in a soil sample. Hopefully this exciting news will boost interest in the space program and further exploration of the Martian surface." Clearly, this has long been suspected, but now Martian water's been (in the words of William Boynton, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer) "touched and tasted."
Uh Oh (Score:3)
Water? Big Deal! (Score:5, Funny)
Meh. Call me if they find crude oil on Mars.
Re:Water? Big Deal! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Water? Big Deal! (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but that's one gawdawful pipeline you gotta build to get at it, dontcha think?
(...and I don't even want to know how what's gonna happen once the Sierra Club crowd finds out...)
(yes, I'm being facetious).
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Same shit, different phase.
Re:Water? Big Deal! (Score:4, Interesting)
And as far as corectness, that's a matter of perspective. Crude oil is just a mixture of hydrocarbons with a large enough formula to be liquid, and natural gas is hydrocarbons with a small enough formula to be gas. The fact that ethane, propane, butane, and pentane are in both just goes to show the distinction is arbitrarily based on phase. Unless you know some special reason why all the hydrocarbons are counted as crude oil, except the ones that are gasses?
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Meh. Call me if they find crude oil on Mars.
But we've already got that on Titan [slashdot.org].
Hurray! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Funny)
...now we find a way to launch approximately 40bn gallons of fine single-malt whisky to Mars.
Oh, okay, - it really means that now we don't have to drag as much stuff with us when we finally do get sufficient testicular fortitude to get people out to Mars for exploration, perhaps settlement, etc etc.
Now to answer your question specifically? We need to know how much H2O are we talking here, and in what concentrations and distributions.
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...now we find a way to launch approximately 40bn gallons of fine single-malt whisky to Mars.
no no, we just need to send barley, oak casks and some funny shaped copper tubes.
If your willing to wait a bit longer, we only need to send barley and acorns, I'm sure there must be some copper on Mars.
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Informative)
Satellite surface penetrating radar measurements indicate a layer of almost pure ice with depth of up to 1.8 km in places. Lateral spherical distribution of what is most likely water ice with about 1000 km diameter has been observed in March 2007 around the south pole.
Source (Sorry is German):
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-33791-9.html#backToArticle=569278 [spiegel.de]
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Something like keeping people alive in space for years rather than months is the REAL issue.
You mean like this [uidaho.edu], this, or perhaps [marssociety.org] this [nsbri.org] (to count just a few among literally thousands of projects dedicated to accomplishing exactly that)?
Incidentally, the Russians have a HUGE volume of data on long-duration spaceflight, for periods that could conceivably cover an exploratory trip to Mars.
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Funny)
Now what?
Now we move to mars. Naturally, we won't actually use or drink the readily available Martian water, but buy bottled water from earth instead.
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Get your ass to Mars.
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Now we move to mars. Naturally, we won't actually use or drink the readily available Martian water, but buy bottled water from earth instead.
You've got it backwards. We bring the Mars water back here and sell it to gullible yuppies for 6 million dollars a bottle. Just tell them it's free of all of those earthly contaminants that cause cancer and wrinkles.
Re:Hurray! (Score:4, Funny)
Awesome! Let's come up with a brand name. How about 'naive' backwards?
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Dejah Thoris and a hot tub, what else?
Projected quantities, availability and ease of procurement of said water, but first need need other resources necessary for sustained life there. Perhaps afterwards can discuss algae and people with a greenhouse. Lots to do, rest assured though somewhere along the line there will be a push for terraforming, if we don't destroy ourselves first.
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I was under the impression that Phoenix was equipped to detect organic compounds in the water vapor. [arizona.edu] Sure that's not about trying to grow terrestrial lichen or algae on Mars, but it's a good idea to see if there might be native microscopic life in the water/ice layer of Mars first. Just what sort of astrobiology experiments did you have in mind?
Big deal... (Score:5, Funny)
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I had never seen it before.
But yeah, it's lame.
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I love that this has been moderated "+5 Interesting" :D
Obviously lots of people moderating without clicking on the link.
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it hasn't aged well.
Neither does whine.
Great! News (Score:2, Funny)
Are we surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Are we surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously are we really that surprised we found water on Mars? Considering most of our galaxy is made up of the same compounds here on Earth, I wouldn't doubt if we found water on nearly all our planets, in one form or another.
from our perspective here on earth we might seem to have an overabundance of water, but on a universal scale it's a fairly rare compound. After all, water can only exist in a limited number of states under a limited number of conditions.
Re:Are we surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary: I'd guess that water is the most common compound in the Universe.
The most abundant substance in the by far in the visible Universe is hydrogen. The second most abundant is helium. The third most abundant element in the Universe is oxygen, but in the presence of elemental hydrogen oxygen is unstable and reacts exothermically to produce water. Probably most of the oxygen not locked up inside stars is in water molecules.
Liquid water is rare, I'll grant. But the Universe is absolutely riddled with water vapour and with ice.
Sort of, but not really (Score:5, Informative)
The Phoenix team was a little surprised by exactly how it occurred, however. Because ice sublimates on Mars once exposed, they had to get the sample into the TEGA oven relatively quickly. It ended up being even stickier than previous samples (possibly due to melting of the ice by friction from the rasp) and didn't fall properly from the scoop into the oven. By the time the results were received, analyzed, and a conclusion reached, they considered the sample already spoiled, but because some likely made it into the oven, the oven was also "contaminated," which affects the accuracy of measuring relative abundance. So they managed to dump the "ruined" sample into the oven to compare it to the last "ruined" sample, but found there was water in it anyways. Unfortunately, because of the sublimation, this still doesn't give them the relative abundance. It also, as far as I know, was only inferred so far by calorimetry. In the next day or two, they should get spectroscopy results back, which will be even better verification.
Because of all this, they're going to spend some more time practicing and polishing their delivery method so they can get a truly fresh sample into the ovens. They've got 6 empty ovens left, although there might be a problem with the doors on some or all of them.
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They also watched it sublimate. Since only water can go from solid to gas, it's a pretty good test.
Mars... (Score:5, Insightful)
I still can't believe we sent a small robot and let it run around on *Mars*. It seems so unfathomably far away that I find it hard to even imagine...
Next stop: Bacteria.
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There isn't any bacteria on Mars. Earth is the only planet that God chose to bless with life.
I mean seriously, do you realize what kind of damage control the Roman Catholic Church would have to deal with after something like that? They have way to many altar boy molestation lawsuits to deal with.
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Re:Mars... (Score:5, Informative)
You are confusing the roman catholic church with your run-off-the-mill protestant crackpot from the US. The roman catholic church has stated numerous times that they see no conflict between either extraterrestrial life or evolution and the church. E.g.,
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=12628 [catholicnewsagency.com]
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We didn't. This is Phoenix. It's stationary.
On the other hand, Spirit and Opportunity *are* running around on Mars.
Re:Mars... (Score:5, Informative)
For very low values of "running".
The rover has a top speed on flat hard ground of 5 centimeters (2 inches) per second [nasa.gov].
Which is approximately 0.1 miles per hour.
Re:Mars... (Score:5, Funny)
Are you kidding? That's sprinting for most slashdotters.
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On the other hand, Spirit and Opportunity *are* running around on Mars.
So, we did :)
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"So what?" (Score:5, Insightful)
...is what most people will think. Whilst this is of earth-shattering (well, mars-shattering) importance to a lot a scientists it isn't going to motivate Joe Public to commit any more tax money to the exploration of space, because they don't benefit from it themselves. This isn't a condition of human nature, this is a conscious choice by a significant portion of the population to never grow out of adolescent self obsession. People are told its good to be totally egotistical, and here is a product that will help you do that.
So no, it won't boost interest in space exploration; everyone who will raise an eyebrow to this news is already interested in space. People who didn't care before now won't care now.
Re:"So what?" (Score:5, Informative)
It's unfortunate that Joe Public is such an idiot. Yes, he doesn't benefit directly from space exploration, but he has many indirect benefits.
You have to be seriously ignorant to not see the benefit of the space program.
Ever used a cordless power tool? A smoke detector? Modern water filtration? Infrared thermometer? Edible toothpaste (this one is now used for baby toothpaste and we probably all used it as babies)? Composite forceps in the delivery room? Global communications?
Here is a kid friendly site that Joe Public might be able to comprehend
http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html [nasa.gov]
Re:"So what?" (Score:5, Funny)
...
FWIW, I think if Joe Public has used composite forceps in the delivery room, we have larger problems than NASA funding. For one, we need to fix the healthcare system so that when my wife delivers her next child, it's an obstetrician, not Joe Public, prying the little rugrat out of her dilated vagoogoo.
(My apologies to my as-yet-unconceived (I hope) second child).
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prying the little rugrat out of her dilated vagoogoo.
(My apologies to my as-yet-unconceived (I hope) second child).
As long as you are calling it a 'vagoogoo' you are to young to have a first child, never mind a second.
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As long as you are mistaking "to" for "too", you ought not be complaining about the spelling in other posts.
As long as you think vagoogoo is a simple mispelling you ought not to be posting in the first place.
Who's really being self obsessed? (Score:2)
Why the hell should anyone care if there is water on Mars or not? A few scientists get their thrills about this, but why should they think that the rest of the people should get excited and spend money on this when there are far more meaningful and useful things to be spending money on and getting excited about. NASA has been spending huge amounts of money for 50 years now and we really have nothing useful to show for space research. Sure we have sa
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For example, we don't know much about our own oceans and those are far more important to us as a source of food, minerals etc.
[sarcasm]Absolutely. We should immediately stop space research entirely and focus ALL of our efforts on the oceans. I can't believe no one is looking into this subject already.[/sarcasm]
I care if there is water on Mars. With the advent of nuclear and biological weapons, we now have the power to significantly fuck up our living space. Hell - one of these days there will be another asteroid strike.
It would be nice to know if humans can be self sufficient in places other than earth. That won't happen tomorrow
Human condition (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't a condition of human nature, this is a conscious choice by a significant portion of the population to never grow out of adolescent self obsession.
Actually, I'd rather spend the majority of my resources on my children, which is probably a trait shaped by evolution to become part of the human condition. If you can send a mission to Mars without impacting my kids' education, future debt, or well-being, I'd completely support it.
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Also, I want to meet this legendary Joe Public. Wanting to invest in things that probably will have more immediate or more significant payoffs seems to be incredibly human. You're turning the 'non sciency' people into a large monolithic blocks. Since they believe that there are
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I know that a good segment of the public appears to be apathetic to space exploration, or even basic science. But the misconceptions the public has of NASA budget isn't because their stupid or 'anti science'. It means their ignorant and should be informed. ...
Sorry, rant over. I just grinds on my nerves whenever a science article comes out, and people start talking about us, those who appreciate science, and the dirty stupid majority who is too dumb to understand the beauty/importance.
Information isn't hard to get. These days you would be hard pressed to find someone who couldn't figure out to type 'NASA' or 'Mars' into google. So if someone is uninformed, it is purely by choice.
To me, 'willfully ignorant' is not significantly different from 'stupid'
Re:"So what?" (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sick of these constant attacks on "Joe Sixpack". When was the last time you were consulted on NASA's budget ? Ordinary folks have no control over this.
And what did you personally do to encourage congress to spend more of space exploration ? Probably nothing. (whining on slashdot doesn't count).
I also disagree with the idea that nobody cares. I care, and I bet a lot of people here care too. I remember the record number of visitors pathfinder's website had at the time. You are certainly not alone in finding a robot driving around Mars more exciting than a bunch of guys bicycling in orbit. But I guess having a superiority complex is fun.
Amazing! Unprecidented!...I wonder what's on MTV ? (Score:5, Insightful)
This will be remembered in the textbooks as one of the biggest discoveries in human history - and yet it will of course be presently overlooked by uninterested masses.
Will humanity ever get past our predilections with ourselves?
I can't fathom the significance of this event fully, and yet the public applause so well deserved is again, starkly absent.
oh well - I think it's great at least, maybe I shouldn't care so much what the masses think or care about.
Re:Amazing! Unprecidented!...I wonder what's on MT (Score:5, Insightful)
No it won't, because water is a fairly common molecular arrangement. Electricty, atomic power, Earth being round, these are things that qualify as the biggest discoveries. In 10 years this particular incident of the rover will be forgotten, and in 100 years, the rover itself will be a historical footnote. How much do textbooks cover the Apollo program other than #11 and #13?
Less than 100 years ago, people believed that Mars had canals full of water. Then with better optics people realized that no, those trenches, causing an extreme belief swing the other way - that Mars must be bone dry, any water having long since evaporated. Of course that ignores the polar ice caps which spectrography can easily identify.
We've finally come into direct contact with H20 on Mars' surface rather than simply remote identification. While a milestone, it's a pretty damn tiny one. It will not be remembered in textbooks. Look how results of the Venus expeditions of the 70s are now glossed over.
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it landed there and sits there.
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Could we send a Rove?
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"No it won't"
The Martians of the future may disagree with you.
Obviously, they will have to exist, before they disagree. But water makes it a lot more likely.
Marketing (Score:4, Insightful)
People are curious by default. But you can't make money on reveling in scientific breakthroughs. Since money is the only measure of success in our culture, R&D that doesn't directly translate into more capital is ignored and often ridiculed, though almost all real breakthroughs are performed through the state sector (through funding to universities or even directly by DARPA).
Billions upon billions are spent convincing people to buy products they don't need with money they don't have. It's all fun and games until the currency crashes and the environment is left in ruins.
Science education (Score:2, Interesting)
In the meantime, Chinese kids and other kids from developing countries are looking with awe and go on to study math and science.
A generation from now, when they are the leaders of the World, our children will wonder why they're sweeping up after the assembly robots - Chinese will move their manufacturing over here because of our cheap labor. After all, they'll be busy inventing things and exploring space while we're watching the latest reality shit on TV.
I blame the educators for making such a fascinating s
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I blame the educators for making such a fascinating subject dull and harder than it has to be.
Are you talking about Linux zealots here?
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Not so much (Score:3, Insightful)
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It is momentous only because it finally proves that sustainable human life is possible on Mars.
It proves no such thing. It only hints at the possibility.
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"How hard is it to build a dome that blocks out all harmful cosmic radiation"
You don't build a dome. You dig a cave. You use nuclear or solar power to light lamps and let plants use that light instead of sunlight. You could also use mirrors, but you would need a lot of them because Mars is farther from the Sun than we are and Earth plants evolved for earthly amounts of light.
Alternatively, if you really want a dome, you could build two and fill them with water. Then, if you are really clever, you can build
Re:Amazing! Unprecidented!...I wonder what's on MT (Score:2)
Its not a great event. It only proved what everyone already knew, both by theory and common sense.
We are all made from the same building blocks, so on a rather similar planet, not so far away from us, finding water there is not really that amazing of a event. ( cool yes, amazing, no )
To me, when we find primitive life there it will be the same sort of "well, no kidding there is some sort of life there"..
Only one thing to say (Score:2)
Bring a Brita!! :)
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Wait until they start bottling it. You think the stuff imported from Fiji is horrendously overpriced?
Quantum Fingerprints (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if we'll someday be able to look at the quantum state of the molecules, atoms and subatomic particles making up even pure water, to learn about its history. The way that we look at the chemical composition now, with more familiar instruments.
water ICE (Score:2)
It isn't water, it is water ICE. This is no big surprise, it has long been suspected that there is plenty of water ice on the Martian poles.
What would be a surprise would be liquid water, even if it only exists deep below the surface (given the current atmospheric pressure).
Life of any kind would be a real find, even if it is frozen bacteria, even if it is 8 million years old [newscientist.com].
the oven was the clinching experiment (Score:2)
suspected? are you kidding? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Viking landers observed frost in the 70's. Mars obiters found huge amounts of water underground. Ice is clearly exposed in many photographs. Knowledge of ice and water on Mars goes way, way beyond "suspected". If detecting ice is all this mission yields, it's a big waste of money. This mission was intended to give detailed information about what's in the ice and soil, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
The question for the last decade or two has been whether there is liquid water on Mars. Despite the low air pressure, even pure liquid water can exist in some places and times: aquifers, briny puddles and lakes, lakes enclosed in ice, etc.
Re:suspected? are you kidding? (Score:4, Interesting)
Bullshit. The Viking lander saw water frost, as evident from the temperatures:
http://www.solarviews.com/cap/mars/frost.htm [solarviews.com]
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1990/89JB03428.shtml [agu.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_2 [wikipedia.org]
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Well, no, the air pressure at the top of Everest is about 300mb. I suppose that's "comparable" to 7mb if by that you mean "one and a half orders of magnitude bigger than". The Martian air pressure does vary quite a bit (maybe +/- 2mb) seasonally as CO2 at the polar caps sublimates or freezes. It's higher also at the bottom of Mariner Valley, but I couldn't find a reliable number for it.
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Pure liquid water was never sampled by the Viking missions.
So? Who said it was? The new mission hasn't found "pure liquid water" either.
The frost you refer to I assume are the pictures from the Utopia taken by the #2 lander. That wasn't pure water.
Of course that was "pure water". What do you think it was?
The average air pressure in Mars is about 7mb, which is comparable to the top of Everest.
No, it's not. The pressure on top of Mt Everest is about 260mb. The boiling point of water on to of Mt Everest
Significance (Score:2, Interesting)
Is there any particular scientific significance to the discovery of water on Mars that isn't related to the possibility of discovering extraterrestrial life? I firmly believe that extraterrestrial life does not exist (and never has), so everybody else's excitement about it gets a little old after awhile. Is there another reason I should be excited about this?
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I firmly believe that extraterrestrial life does not exist (and never has)
Around here we tend to rely on evidence and not beliefs.
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Around here we tend to rely on evidence and not beliefs.
The only evidence we have right now is that intelligent life has never existed in this galaxy prior to us. See: The Fermi Paradox.
It's not ironclad proof, obviously, but it's far more evidence than we have for the existence of other intelligent life, which is absolutely none.
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"I firmly believe that extraterrestrial life does not exist (and never has)"
well, that's the smallest minded thing I have ever read on /.
Wow, such hubris.
I mean, you are ignoring the fact that there is water on another planet, nutrients in the soil of another planet, but refuse to consider that somewhere else there might be life of some kind?
Everything needed for there to be something out there have been found on other bodies.
But you refuse to consider that in the billions of years this universe has existed
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I don't understand how you can say that - if the universe is in a constant (albeit slow) state of change, and buying the theory that the universe is endless...
It's simple: I reject your assumptions. :-)
What if the orbit of Mars was similar to that of earth at one time, and Mars was exposed to a similar set of circumstances that brought the process of life to earth (going from the scientific approach, not the opposing biblical version)? Would not the discovery mean something then?
Nope. I mean, sure, finding water is cool and all, but that's not life.
Better yet, what if the discovery of water there invalidates some long-standing scientific theory? Could it not then force some new way of thinking?
Well, this was the whole point of my original question. Was there some long-standing theory that the discovery of water on Mars invalidates? How does this change our understanding of the universe? So far I haven't seen any indication that it does.
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Well maybe not for you, but hey why don't just skip over this article and find something you would rather be interested in? Just saying...
Because maybe there is something interesting here, other than the possibility of extraterrestrial life. That's what I was asking about. If not, then I'll skip over it (and any similarly uninteresting articles in the future).
How many billions were spent? (Score:2)
Just to prove common sense?
Sure space is cool.. and so are the expeditions.. But we could have done something even more cool on the mission if we went out there looking for what everyone knew was there.
Hell, by now we could have people running around on Mars instead of wasting it on finding water.
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Nobody 'knew' is was there. Now we do.
Yes, we could ahve people on mars by now, but there isn't a real budget for it, so we send the specific mission robots.
When we are ready to build something their, we will send people.
water ice not previously "suspected" (Score:3, Informative)
Just to reiterate a point that a few others have made: the presence of water ice at the surface of Mars has been understood since at least the 1970's for high latitudes. This goes for parts of the polar caps (also made up of CO2 ice), and the seasonal frosts that are known to coat the very study area visited by the Phoenix lander.
Here's a snippet from an abstract of an article from 1982 (Journal of Geophysical Research, 87:367-370): "A new reflectance spectrum of the Martian north polar cap is analyzed, and it shows water ice absorption features. This evidence confirms the result of the Viking IRTM and MAWD experiments, which indicate that the north residual polar cap of Mars is composed of water ice during the season observed." The Viking 2 lander directly saw seasonal frost in the late 70's, as the Phoenix lander will in the coming months: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jplhistory/captions/vikinglander-t.php [nasa.gov]
The Phoenix results are new in that ice has been directly confirmed for shallow regolith ("soil") materials at the Phoenix site (as opposed to spectroscopically identified from orbit or from the Earth). This is a nice and important result, but is not a huge surprise (the site is known to be seasonally coated with water-ice frosts, and its sediments are distributed in a polygonal pattern that is analogous to what we see at high latitudes on Earth where freeze-thaw action dominates).
Phoenix is a great mission, but let's also give due credit to earlier workers.
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No, there where ice absorption features, and indications.
Phoenix also found out that there are nutrients in the soil.
Yes, the soil could grow plants.
This is huge, plant supporting material found on another planet.
Department (Score:3, Funny)
from the so-val-kilmer-can-breathe-easy dept.
Val Kilmer? Don't you mean Dan Quayle?
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit ... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, 1989-08-11 (reported in Esquire, 1992-08)
Not only that (Score:2)
but the determined the soil has the nutrients need to support plants.
Of course the atmosphere is sucky.
Wonderful... (Score:2)
now we have something to water the asparagus [hubpages.com] with.
Re:Measurements on a human level (Score:5, Insightful)
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Devil's Advocate: Then pay for it your damn self.
In that case, I for one would like my Iraq money back so that I can transfer it to NASA.
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Must... resist... Iraq... comparison...
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Here's a jug of stuff that my instruments tell me is ricin. Why don't you go ahead and verify that for me?
Of course it's real.
Re:It's not "real" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:First ? (Score:5, Funny)
Many, so very many.
A bottling plant on Mars would make crazy money. "Don't drink earth water, drink E.T water!" (even more if they pluralize that and convince people alien urine will give them super health).
And then the Mars [mars.com] company will give everyone hell for calling it Mars Water.
Mod parent Insightful, and mod me drunk troll!