
NASA Evidence Reveals Possible Water on Mars - codegeek
http://www.weather.com/news/science/nasa-evidence-reveals-possible-water-mars-20140211
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wmeredith
I feel jaded. I know NASA has new evidence of water on Mars. I know this is
true everyday when I wake up, because they've announced it so many over the
last 10 years. I don't care any more.

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crusso
Yeah, at this point I've heard so much about water on Mars that the next
unmanned probe should float.

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wmeredith
Ah! Well said. Almost made me spit-take my coffee.

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moocowduckquack
To be fair, we know there is sometimes liquid water on mars, at least it is
incredibly unlikely that there would be none at all, comets crash into it
occaisionally, for instance.

Evidence of liquid water regularly occuring near the surface is very exciting
though. This isn't cool because they might find H2O, we know that there is
H2O, this is cool because having liquid water near the surface increases the
chance of finding life.

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bfe
Essentially, researchers found numerous sloping terrain sites with ferrous and
ferric spectrographic signatures that have been rising and falling with
temperature. The best explanation seems to be melting briny water. The effect
varies a lot from one year to another, and lots of comparable candidate spots
don't show any effect.

But you can't learn anything about what's going on from this dumbed-down
reference. Here are some better ones -- the two peer-reviewed research papers,
and the JPL press release:

[http://wray.eas.gatech.edu/Ojha_etal2013-acceptedGRL.pdf](http://wray.eas.gatech.edu/Ojha_etal2013-acceptedGRL.pdf)

[http://wray.eas.gatech.edu/Ojha_etal2014-acceptedIcarus.pdf](http://wray.eas.gatech.edu/Ojha_etal2014-acceptedIcarus.pdf)

[http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-042](http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-042)

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lutusp
A quote: "Confirming the presence of water on Mars would undoubtedly be huge,
namely because — at least within framework we can understand — it’s
fundamental for sustaining life."

This is very misleading -- we already know there's plenty of water on Mars, by
way of several lines of evidence. The original observation of seasonal
markings doesn't address the issue of water on Mars, for which there's plenty
of evidence, but whether the markings result from water briefly flowing
downhill as it sublimates (a process measured in seconds because of Mars' low
atmospheric pressure), leaving a trail of debris to mark its passing -- a much
less dramatic claim.

But these facts won't stop ignorant science journalists from presenting this
observation as though it represent some kind of theoretical breakthrough.

Link:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars)

Quote: "Water on Mars exists today almost exclusively as ice, with a small
amount present in the atmosphere as vapour.[1] The only place where water ice
is visible at the surface is at the north polar ice cap.[2] However, abundant
water ice is also present beneath the permanent carbon dioxide ice cap at the
Martian south pole and in the shallow subsurface at more temperate
latitudes.[3][4][5][6] More than five million cubic kilometers of ice have
been identified at or near the surface of modern Mars, enough to cover the
whole planet to a depth of 35 meters.[7] Even more ice is likely to be locked
away in the deep subsurface.[8]"

In other words, contrary to the linked article, the presence of water on Mars
is not a new discovery.

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moocowduckquack
We have detected a lot of ice, but we haven't confirmed flowing liquid water
yet, and while water can be used to mean the chemical in any phase, it is more
commonly used to mean the liquid phase of H2O.

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nonsequ
Are the rovers too far away to drive there and check up on it? It's amazing to
me that it has taken us so long to arrive at such a tentative result on the
existence of water on Mars. In a weird way, I find it heartening that there
are such unexplained frontiers facing humankind, places where we still grope
around blindly.

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gus_massa
The surface of Mars is approximately equal to the _land_ surface of Earth.
It’s big.

[http://www.msl-
chemcam.com/index.php?menu=inc&page_consult=t...](http://www.msl-
chemcam.com/index.php?menu=inc&page_consult=textes&rubrique=66&sousrubrique=234&soussousrubrique=0&titre_url=Education)
\- Mars 101#.UvuUrHbfMdc

We have there only ¿three? moving robots there, but IIRC one is not moving and
one is not working. And there are some (maybe 10) full static platforms, but I
don’t know if any of them is working now.

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cecilpl
There are four rovers that have successfully moved around.

Sojourner stopped working in 1997, Spirit stopped working in 2010, and both
Opportunity and Curiosity are still moving around.

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astrowilliam
[http://spaceindustrynews.com/nasas-mars-orbiter-sees-
signs-o...](http://spaceindustrynews.com/nasas-mars-orbiter-sees-signs-of-
seasonal-water-flow-on-mars-surface/4173/)

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chrisBob
Is allowing submissions from weather.com a feature or a bug?

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InclinedPlane
I hate how misleading these silly pop science reporting articles can be.

We know there's water on Mars, that's not interesting. What's new here is that
there may be _liquid_ water on Mars at present. That's pretty fascinating
because it opens up the possibility of there not just having been life on Mars
but there continuing to be life on Mars. Which, I would say, is actually kind
of a big deal.

