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Space Science

Mars Rovers Find More Evidence of Water 220

Posted by michael from the day-at-the-beach dept.
loconet writes "Space.com and JPL are reporting that the Mars Rovers might be on the verge of confirming that large amounts of water once flowed in a region of Mars that has looked curiously dry until now. Such a finding could be comparable to their discovery earlier this year of an ancient shallow sea on the other side of the red planet. Opportunity has found lumpy, odd rock unlike anything its seen to date. The rock concentration seems much rougher than the 'blueberries' found earlier on in the mission. Researchers hope to swing by the rock on the way out of Endurance for further study. 'It could just be one big mass of concretions,' Squyres said. 'I just don't know.' Meanwhile, Spirit, which has now climbed about 10 yards up a hillside, getting above the Gusev plain, found an interesting rock dubbed 'Longhorn'. Both rovers have been exploring more than twice as long as they were designed to last. And even though the Martian winter is at its coldest, engineers are confident that the rovers will continue, despite showing signs of mortality."
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Mars Rovers Find More Evidence of Water More

Mars Rovers Find More Evidence of Water

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  • In other news, (Score:5, Funny)

    by La_Boca ( 201988 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:22AM (#10012925) Journal
    Martians took over the rover and programmed it with an ominous message:

    "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
    • Martians took over the rover and programmed it with an ominous message:
      "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."

      Then they went on to demonstrate their superiour intellegence by holding tea and no tea at the same time.

    • Not unless Martians are now Big Nosed Penguins (see the first three strips in the newly revived version of Bloom County: OPUS!)

  • Now (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If they could just find some bottle it, then they'd never need to worry about government funding again.

  • This Headline Is Not for Sale (Score:4, Funny)

    by dmayle ( 200765 ) * on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:23AM (#10012930) Homepage Journal

    Now, I want to know, is this Longhorn rock a symptom of this? [slashdot.org] And if so, is Microsoft giving money to OSDN, or have they gone straight to NASA to participate in "the growing trend of inserting ads more directly into online content" [wired.com]

    It's funny... laugh... Please...?

  • oh no, its happened... (Score:5, Funny)

    by civman2 ( 773494 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:23AM (#10012941) Homepage
    Meanwhile, Spirit, which has now climbed about 10 yards up a hillside, getting above the Gusev plain, found an interesting rock dubbed 'Longhorn'.
    Microsoft now has products on TWO PLANETS! We need to find a rock somewhere and name it Sunbird, quick!
    • * Names the face on Mars Linus. *
    • Today its a rock. Tomorrow its a planet.

    • Meanwhile, Spirit, which has now climbed about 10 yards up a hillside, getting above the Gusev plain, found an interesting rock dubbed 'Longhorn'.

      And in other News...today the Mars Spirit rover, after spotting an interesting rock dubbed 'Longhorn', experienced a massive failure and is now permanently transmitting back to Earth what is known in the IT world as the 'Blue Screen of Death'.
      JPL engineers have tried to correct the problem by renaming the interesting rock to 'Red Hat Linux 8.0'. They have no re

      • "JPL engineers have tried to correct the problem by renaming the interesting rock to 'Red Hat Linux 8.0'. They have no response from the catatonic rover as of yet."

        Sadly, a phone call to Redhat surprisingly turned unhelpful when they suddenly announced they were no longer going to support 8.

  • So that's where it is! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:24AM (#10012959)
    Meanwhile, Spirit, which has now climbed about 10 yards up a hillside, getting above the Gusev plain, found an interesting rock dubbed 'Longhorn'.

    No wonder it's taken MS so long to get Longhorn out. They've got to haul it from Mars!

  • I still want to see. . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:25AM (#10012969) Journal
    the remains of the parachute and heat shield which were seen in other photos early on.

    Yeah, not the most exciting thing but you could send the rover(s) on a long trip to see the remnants and examine stuff along the way.

    Checking the remains would provide information for future designs regarding heat shield and parachute technology.

    • Re:I still want to see. . . (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Devar ( 312672 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:50AM (#10013336) Homepage Journal
      Although it would be interesting to see, there's no way they'd do it. We can test heat shield technology and parachutes here on earth any day. And it's a proven design anyhow. Sending the rover back to have a look at them wouldn't reveal any scientific data that we don't already know or can extrapolate.
    • I'm sure the engineers would like to see how their entry and descent gear fared, but the scientists who are running the show at this point care about the history of Mars. Time spent checking out hardware is time wasted.

    • Re:I still want to see. . . (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ToshiroOC ( 805867 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:39AM (#10013956)
      Opportunity is planned to go to its heatshield after it has finished geological surveys of the Endurance Crater and winter is over - the crater is shielding it somewhat from cooling winds, and since heating the rover to compensate for these winds is very expensive electrically, it is likely that the heatshield will only be seen if the rover survives the winter fully operational and something more interesting outside of Endurance crater hasn't been found.

  • more evidence... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chuck Bucket ( 142633 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:26AM (#10012991) Homepage Journal
    more evidence [nasa.gov] from a diff perspective. It seems pretty likely now that water *did* or perhaps is even still, on Mars. cool.

    CB)(*&^%$

    • Re:more evidence... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jesrad ( 716567 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:41AM (#10013206) Journal
      Are the rovers equipped to identify traces of life if there are some around ? Or would that specifically require an entirely different mission ? I know Beagle2 was built for this purpose but the poor thing slept to its death on the way down...
      • hey, it's a long trip, I'd be tired too when I got there. anyway the first day of your vacation is always a wash anyway.

        CV*BBb

      • Re:more evidence... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Lispy ( 136512 )
        Exactly. Beagle was on a mission for life, but the Rovers are a geological lab on wheels. They are unable to search for life. This annoys me now since the mission is on. I really hope NASA will send another rover now that the first ones were such a huge success.

        • Re:more evidence... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Chuck1318 ( 795796 )
          I really hope NASA will send another rover now that the first ones were such a huge success.

          In today's news, there is a description of research into a next generation rover [msn.com] designed to search for life, which will be tested in Chile's Atacama Desert. It is currently designed only to detect DNA-based life as we know it. This may be good enough for Mars, considering the meteorite-carried exchanges of material between Earth and Mars.

      • Well, not unless it sees a tree or something. ( :

    • Re:more evidence... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by brainstyle ( 752879 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:48AM (#10013298)
      And Arthur C. Clarke believes [space.com] Martian life exists to this day. It's easy to see that the so-called spiders [martianspiders.com] look life-like, and I'd like very much for that to turn out to be the case. Mind you, the human brain is pretty good forming patterns out of just about anything [badastronomy.com].

      • Re:more evidence... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by tjmcgee ( 749076 )
        I've seen those images and while they are impressive, I think what they are showing are artifacts from image compression. Have any of the probes taken high resolution images of this area. I would think the EU probe could provide some resolution to this issue.
        • I was under the impression that the image data being transferred was compressed losslessly; TIFFs are available on the NASA site. I've skimmed through a number of the images, and I have to say that they look nothing like images compression artifacts I've ever seen.
      • I've seen the spiders before, and never thought they looked at all like vegetation. Looking at the pictures again, my impression was they are one of:
        1. Some sort of errosion pattern
        2. Pattern formed by soil shifting as ice/dry ice forms and melts/sublimates
        3. Result of some sort of erruption of gases trapped in the soil during the winter

        I went to the homepage of the spider site you linked, and they had links to papers suggesting the third point. While I like his short stories, I think Clarke is looney on this

  • Longhorn (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:27AM (#10013005)
    found an interesting rock dubbed 'Longhorn'.

    Sheesh, when NASA works faster than Microsoft, there's a cause for concern...

    • Re:Longhorn (Score:3, Funny)

      by nizo ( 81281 )
      I just assumed they named it after a Microsoft product because it was full of holes.

    • Re:Longhorn (Score:3, Funny)

      by Shazow ( 263582 )
      "In other news, Microsoft sues NASA over trademark infringement, forcing NASA to change the rock's name from 'Longhorn' to 'Longspire'."

      - shazow
    • So that's where Longhorn has been! Golly...developing a project that huge over a network with that much latency must really suck.

  • Rocks on the Surface (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Launch ( 66938 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:27AM (#10013009)
    Isn't it possible, since Mars does not have a thick atmosphere like earth, that rocks that are found on Mars's surface are not nessicarly from mars?
    • In theory it's possible, but that's where the geologists come in. I would think that they can analyze the rocks and come to a pretty reliable conclusion as to whether they're meteorites, volcanic, or (fingers crossed) sedimentary.

    • Re:Rocks on the Surface (Score:5, Informative)

      by dave420 ( 699308 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:38AM (#10013165)
      Atmosphere or not, "alien" rocks can end up on the surface of a planet quite easily. Of course, if the rocks are all uniform, chances are they are local, and not from somewhere far away. The dead giveaway of a meteorite is that it's very different from the rocks around it. (and usually in a hole :))
    • I'm fairly certain that NASA's scientists are quite able to tell the difference from a rock that's been formed from volcanic or sedimentary activity from one that fell from space. Stop and think about it, please.

    • Re:Rocks on the Surface (Score:5, Informative)

      by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:40AM (#10013185)
      Isn't it possible, since Mars does not have a thick atmosphere like earth, that rocks that are found on Mars's surface are not nessicarly from mars?

      Anything that fell from orbit would still end up partly melted, probably fragmented, and showing signs of shock and heating from impact in its mineral structure. This is partly how we identify things like the antarctic Mars rocks as being from Mars.

      By contrast, conglomerates like the rock found now are weak and brittle, and wouldn't survive re-entry and impact intact. The other sedimentary minerals found have structures that would also have been changed by something as traumatic as falling from space.

      So, minerals on Mars that look like they were formed in water, almost certainly had to have formed in water that was on Mars.
      • Anything that fell from orbit would still end up partly melted, probably fragmented, and showing signs of shock and heating from impact in its mineral structure.

        But Mars has almost no atmosphere, so there'd be very little friction to heat up any incoming meteorites, so one shouldn't expect to find much evidence of thermal shock or melting (unless of course the meteorite fell back when Mars had a real atmosphere, if such a time ever existed).
        • But Mars has almost no atmosphere, so there'd be very little friction to heat up any incoming meteorites, so one shouldn't expect to find much evidence of thermal shock or melting

          Two reasons why this this turns out not to be the case:
          • Mars has enough atmosphere that we can use parachutes in it and float balloon-borne probes in it. That's enough for some heating.
          • Even when impacting an airless body, a meteorite will heat up plenty when striking the _surface_. This collision is largely inelastic - turning
    • The hottest parts of rentry in both the Terran and Martian atmosphere happen when it is much thinner than at the Martian surface. This is partly due to that the craft id moving at orbital velocities 10-20 the speed of sound. The Martian probes all had entry heat shields.

    • Re:Rocks on the Surface (Score:4, Informative)

      by ToshiroOC ( 805867 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:44AM (#10014017)
      Yes, it is possible, but keep in mind that the vast majority of the rocks being observed by the two rovers are bedrock - very large underground formations that have an exposed surface at the surface. Therefore, the chances of bedrock actually being a buried-and-then-exposed foreign body are reasonably slim. If we do find a foreign rock on Mars, though, we would probably be able to tell because we have a general baseline for what the majority of rocks on Mars look like spectrally - and we can be pretty confident that the vast majority of rocks we're looking at on the surface are NOT foreign because there are no impact craters in the sand around them - and many of these rocks are far too large to not have a visible impact crater, if they really were foreign.
      • Therefore, the chances of bedrock actually being a buried-and-then-exposed foreign body are reasonably slim.

        Quite right. However, I believe that we weren't really talking about bedrock, but the various loose stones scattered around. Now, if its in an impact crater then we should expect that traces of the meteor would be somewhere, even if it had been pulverised.

      • Actually, the vast majority of rocks observed by Spirit thusfar was not bedrock at all. That was one of the biggest reasons to try to climb the hills, to find bedrock.

  • In other news (Score:1, Funny)

    by Celt ( 125318 )
    The Mars roover has discovered water after a flash flood sweeped it away,

  • Where is all the water now? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Percent Man ( 756972 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:28AM (#10013024) Homepage
    This is fascinating news, and seems to confirm many astronomer's / xenogeologist's wildest hopes for the Red Planet. But, and forgive my ignorance, where has the water all gone? The atmosphere is mostly CO2, I believe... so, somewhere, there's a bunch of H2 missing. And whether or not Mars ever supported life, I doubt it ever hosted an ecosystem on a scale large enough to convert that much water. Where'd it go? How'd it get there? Anyone?

    • Re:Where is all the water now? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Laivincolmo ( 778355 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:32AM (#10013086)
      I think that the leading theory is that the water is locked up beneath the surface as permafrost.

    • Re:Where is all the water now? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Silly theory, and someone will probably prove me wrong, but if there was some form of stratification in the atmosphere, where the CO2 stayed on the bottom layer and H2 on the top, couldn't solar wind blow most of the H2 away while leaving the more massive (heavier) CO2 near the martian surface?
      Water could still easily exist trapped beneath the surface while a majority of the H2 was stripped from the atmosphere.
      There are likely a few loopholes in this idea, but it's not meant to be absolutely correct.
      • Your theory could have a ground of truth in it. For instance, when you release helium in our atmosphere, it doesn't stay there, it eventually wanders off in the universe, because it isn't heavy enough to stay ("not sticky enough" is probably better since we are talking about a totally inert gas here). The moon has no atmosphere at all, it gets blown away or gets too hot (too fast) to stay in its gravitational attraction. Mars is somewhere in between regarding mass and has a very thin (5% of our pressure) bu
    • How about solar wind stripping? Hydrogen is super light and rapidly ends up at the top of the atmosphere which is being hit by the solar wind (no magnetic field to shield the atmosphere).
    • Another theory is that a lot of the hydrogen got stripped from the water by UV radiation and knocked out of the atmosphere by soler wind. The lack of a strong, uniform magnetosphere could account for that.

      I'm hoping it's all in permafrost though. It would make terraforming a lot easier.

  • That explains things yesterday.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:30AM (#10013056) Homepage
    Opportunity has found lumpy

    I was wondering why I felt like someone was following me yesterday....

    This is not going to help my paranoia one bit.

  • The way the tin foil hat crowd will see it... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "There is no way NASA can lead us to believe that THIS [http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mer/images.cfm?i d=787] is a rock! It is very obviously organic. Just LOOK at it. It is some sort of fleshy, wrinkly creature, or remnant of one. Anyone with two eyes and half a brain can plainly see that.

    Now the question is, why is NASA trying to mislead the public YET AGAIN [link to moon landing hoax website] [link to mars face page]!

    blah blah blah..." ;-)

  • Wopmay (Score:2)

    by mikael ( 484 )
    This image taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows a bizarre, lumpy rock dubbed "Wopmay" on the inner slopes of "Endurance Crater.
    Man, it looks like a fossilised elephant!

  • Scientists say... (Score:3, Funny)

    by charlie763 ( 529636 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:33AM (#10013091)
    that the release of the pictures of the Longhorn rock are delayed and will not be available until 2007.

  • Ironic (Score:4, Funny)

    by MikeMacK ( 788889 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:36AM (#10013135)
    From the previous story, "Writing Software Worldwide Proves Difficult", it said 23 of 56 people couldn't find the Pacific Ocean on a map, and yet we can find water on other planets. Looks like all the people who got A's in geography work at NASA.

  • Nice! (Score:5, Funny)

    by The-Bus ( 138060 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:43AM (#10013230)
    Finally, more evicence of refreshing, live giving Dasani(TM) on Mars [google.com].

  • Trace of Dinosaurus Rex on Mars (Score:5, Funny)

    by denisbergeron ( 197036 ) <DenisBergeron@NosPaM.yahoo.com> on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:47AM (#10013287)
    This picture of Endurance rook look realy like Dinosaurus Rex feces
    http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mer/images .cfm?id =787
    May be this can explain why Dinosaurus was extinguish!

  • Stromatolite ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jesrad ( 716567 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:48AM (#10013308) Journal
    Could that "lumpy" rock be a fossil of a ? [daviddarling.info]

  • That doesn't quite look like a rock (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dexterpexter ( 733748 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @10:49AM (#10013321) Journal
    I don't know about anyone else, but when I first saw the picture, my reaction was not "Oh, it's a rock!"

    In fact, not that I believe it is as such necessarily, it looks like a fossilized organic somethingoranother. The back end looks something like a frog. Now, this is probably proposterous (it is most likely a volcanic-produced rock), but I sure wouldn't mind being (accidentally) correct.

    With the casual way that they mention that they *might* go by and check it out, I certainly hope that they do! Of all of the "rocks" that they have studied so far, I think that this one merits a much less casual reaction. I find their treatment of this discovery a bit odd.

    Who knows...
  • Sorry , but you can't have the whole planet in winter. If its winter in one hemisphere its summer in another and AFAIK the rovers are both near the equator anyway (just on opposite sides of the planet). Can anyone explain what they're talking about?

    • Re:Winter on Mars? (Score:5, Informative)

      by throughthewire ( 675776 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:20AM (#10013708) Homepage
      Sorry , but you can't have the whole planet in winter.

      You could if there was no tilt to its axis of rotation relative to its orbital plane.

      Mars, though, tilts about the same as Earth - 25 degrees or so. But its orbital eccentricity has a 19% variance, versus Earth's 2%. The 'Southern Winter' is much longer and colder than the 'Northern Winter,' and the whole planet is colder. The Martian Southern hemisphere experiences much greater temperature variance than any point on Earth.

      Seasons on Mars [msss.com]


  • Yesterday I was exploring Mars and found religious artifacts from a long dead civilization in a place called "Site 2". Now if you'll excuse me, I have some Imps to kill.

  • Worthwhile (Score:3, Insightful)

    by macdaddy ( 38372 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:10AM (#10013587) Homepage Journal
    Both rovers have been exploring more than twice as long as they were designed to last. And even though the Martian winter is at its coldest, engineers are confident that the rovers will continue, despite showing signs of mortality."

    I'd definitely say the rovers have been money well spent. I'm impressed by how long they've lived past their estimated KIA date. Most impressive. If only more NASA projects could be as successful.

  • Martian Longhorn (Score:4, Funny)

    by scottyboy ( 116119 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:27AM (#10013795) Homepage
    A NASA spokesperson said that the rover was projected to reach the Longhorn rock "sometime in 2005... no wait! 2006... um... 2007?"

  • Screw water -- where are the killer DNA bacteria? (Score:4, Funny)

    by IronChefMorimoto ( 691038 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:31AM (#10013848)
    Screw this "NASA found water today" and "Spirit discovered more water this month" and "scientists believe there's water in this rock" crap.

    When is NASA going to bring back a sample of killer DNA bacteria back to Earth from Mars, clone a fast-growing horny chick in a glass box, and then let her loose to find the first guy to fuck hard and nasty before ripping his groin in two with her alien scissor legs?

    'cause I'm waiting on that kind of woman, and I think it'd be a great way to go out in a blaze of...wait...never mind. I'm a computer nerd with a gut, pale white skin, and a rash that we won't talk about here. She'll be hunting a prime specimen with whom to sow her seed.

    Back to Far Cry and /. news. Sigh...

    IronChefMorimoto

  • JPL link (Score:4, Informative)

    by chaosmage42 ( 716255 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:34AM (#10013897) Homepage
    I think the JPL press release the link i sposed to point to is here [nasa.gov]

  • Does it have to be water? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tokerat ( 150341 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:34AM (#10013899) Journal

    Everyone is so excited about the possibility of liquid water on Mars, but has anyone considered that it might be some other type of liquid? Something with different properties that would explain the odd patterns?

    This article [nasa.gov] intrigued me, but why is everyone so focused on water? Could the carbon dioxide or some other atmospheric gas be condensing in the cold north to form the odd runoff channels on the rock. This rock faces away from the sun and would therefore be one of Mars' coldest points. Could that be why there is little other than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Could wind erosion and perhaps even blast shockwaves from meteorites have been causing the errosive-looking paterns in such an enviroment? With the atmosphere being lighter, wouldn't meteorites hit harder and more frequently than Earth? Finally, can we draw any similarities to our own moon's surface, a place which we know much more about?

    (I ask because I have no idea)

    • Re:Does it have to be water? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ToshiroOC ( 805867 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @12:02PM (#10014270)
      The Mars Odyssey mission found water within a meter of the surface in many places on Mars. Aeolian (wind) erosion processes are noticably different from water erosion processes (at least, that's what the geologists say - I won't pretend I can tell the difference myself just looking at something). Carbon dioxide freezes into a solid and then sublimes - liquid CO2 requires very high pressures, and the Martian atmosphere has a pressure some 1% of earth's. Other possible liquids such as methane require significantly colder temperatures to condense than what are available on Mars. Meterorite impact frequency isn't a function of atmospheric density - just they'll burn up less before hitting the ground, and then, yes, hit harder - but blast shockwaves aren't going to create the 'razorback' structures found in some of the cracks of the rocks at Endurance crater. Also, elements in the correct ratio to be particular salts are being found in the rocks, and some of these salts are known as ones that would be carried in water. We can draw similarities to the moon, but not many - again, aeolian processes will influence martian geology strongly, and there is no atmosphere or carbon dioxide ice or water ice on the moon (minus some possible craters, look up DoD/Clementine's recent moon imaging).
  • "water once flowed in a region of Mars that has looked curiously dry until now"

    um, excuse me, but what is "curious" about any part of Mars looking dry?
  • Opportunity has found lumpy, odd rock unlike anything its seen to date.

    I think they should name the next rover "Sheer Dumb Luck"

  • Woohoo! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by PretzelWagon ( 770175 )
    More free shrimp?

    http://www.ljsilvers.com/press/freeshrimp.htm [ljsilvers.com]

  • What would really be interesting is if they find a soulcube!

  • After Galileo, battles still to fight (Score:4, Insightful)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @01:53PM (#10015601)
    The thing I find seriously interesting is that so much effort has to be put into demonstrating the presence of water on Mars. Starting from the philosophical standard we apply to most things, we would expect to find it there (we live on a planet, it has water, it has life, why would we not expect to find it on the next planet out?)

    I have a feeling that we are still fighting Galileo's battle. A particular strand of Christian thought - medieval Aristotelianism - is still making the running. Aristotle, on no particular evidence, thought that the planets were perfect, lifeless and unchanging - the Schoolmen adopted this as dogma - and scientists and engineers at Nasa are still trying to demonstrate that we occupy what is probably a very ordinary little planet, with a very ordinary set of dominant life forms, against people who think we are unique and very important in this huge universe. You know who you are.

    You can still see the lens of Galileo's original telescope, which actually destroyed Aristotle's ideas for anyone with an open mind. I hope one day someone brings the Mars Rovers back to Earth, perhaps along with the Hasselblad left on the Moon. They are signs of a human achievement bigger than the Pyramids, St. Peter's or the Great Wall of China - and an achievement which is under threat from fundamentalists, whether Islamic or Christian. I still find it amazing that the country that has produced insitutions like NASA and Woods Hole has places that mandate the teaching of Creationism, and I find that far more worrying than a survey that suggests that only a minority can find the Pacific.

    • I have a feeling that we are still fighting Galileo's battle. A particular strand of Christian thought - medieval Aristotelianism - is still making the running. Aristotle, on no particular evidence, thought that the planets were perfect, lifeless and unchanging - the Schoolmen adopted this as dogma - and scientists and engineers at Nasa are still trying to demonstrate that we occupy what is probably a very ordinary little planet, with a very ordinary set of dominant life forms, against people who think we

    • ....And showed some amazing geological formations that looked like dried riverbeds and water-carved deep canyons, most serious planetary astronomers assumed that some time in the distant past water flowed on Mars. The fact that the two Mars Exploration Rovers has shown that it's more than likely we did once have liquid water on Mars means that the chances are good that life of some sort did evolve on that planet, though when the planet's atmosphere thinned the surface water vanished and what water is left o
  • if there are elephant turds, then there are elephants. And where there are elephants, there must be water. Ergo, there must be water on Mars.
  • The scientist in me dislikes this talk of "evidence of water".

    Isn't it more accurate to say that the rovers are finding more evidence that a relatively dense fluid was present at some point?

    Couldn't it be some other liquified substance that didn't freeze at the temperatures we see now on the planet, or perhaps lower? Could liquid nitrogen or carbon dioxide have eroded these structures in a manner similar to liquid water and then boiled away over time to settle at the poles, or form Earth's atmosphere?

    As

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