
Water seems to flow freely on Mars - cryptoz
http://www.nature.com/news/water-seems-to-flow-freely-on-mars-1.14343?
======
jboggan
Is anyone else tired of hearing about the dangers of interplanetary
contamination, particularly from the Earth to Mars? I want to see the whole
place terraformed and I can't imagine that we'd be so successful in our
lifetimes that we'd wipe out whatever scientifically interesting traces of
extant Martian flora there are. Whether or not there was life on Mars is a
fascinating question, but I think the more important one is when will we
expand life on Mars?

~~~
Crito
We basically have one shot, per body in the solar system, to find an example
of life with an independent abiogenesis point. Right now biology only gets to
work with a _single_ example; the impact that finding another would have on
the field really cannot be understated _^W overstated_.

Now, you may not be particularly interested in biology, preferring space
travel, but you should be. Any realistic attempt to terraform Mars will
require a _lot_ of skill with genetic engineering. Furthermore, the discovery
of life that can only be properly studied on Mars would provide a major boost
to any colonization effort. The more 'kinds of science we use to justify the
initial expenditure, the better.

~~~
pavelrub
That's just begging the question. The whole point here is that we shouldn't
need "science" to somehow "justify" the colonization of Mars. Saying that it's
a good thing because it "justifies" expenditure, is like saying that it was
good for Hitler to continue WW2 because that's what incentivised the US to
invade Europe: pragmatically it's correct, but pragmatism is really not what's
debated here.

Personally I would like to see the priorities of "colonization vs science"
reversed.

~~~
Crito
The expenditure does not need to be justified to people like you or me; it is
obvious to us that we should colonize Mars even if it is currently a dead
sterile rock. Sadly however I have not yet become emperor (work in progress),
and funding for space exploration often requires short-term tangible
justifications. This becomes more true the more expensive it gets.

From a pragmatic standpoint, it is important that any life that may be on Mars
is discovered so that we can use those results to push for more funding.
Anything that could accelerate the process should be investigated.

If that is unsatisfactory for you, I'll point out again that it isn't just a
matter of politics and funding. The discovery and study of non-Earth life
would provide countless opportunities for the advance of biology. An advanced
understanding of biology is essential to the core mission of colonizing and
terraforming Mars, even if I _am_ made emperor.

~~~
pavelrub
I agree, but what you are saying is "assuming the status-quo, let's see if we
can find something good about it". Whereas I'm saying: you might be right, but
the status quo is still wrong, and we shouldn't be happy about it being wrong.

Concerning your last paragraph - while it may be true, I'm pretty sure that
gaining terraforming-related knowledge plays a very minor role in NASA's
research decisions, which is also something we shouldn't be happy about.

~~~
Crito
Anything that we learn of biology will help with the eventual terraforming.
That is not the sort of thing that necessarily needs to be researched directly
right now, researching things in general expands our knowledge base, giving
something for terraforming research to stand and build on.

------
feelthepain
I think the key part of this research is that this adds significantly to the
evidence that there's liquid water deep in the crust of Mars. We know that
there is water in the form of ice in lots of places on Mars but the idea of
subsurface liquid water is exciting because there might be life in there! If
it's gushing up to the surface periodically, we might even be able to sample
it and see if there's signs of life! There's been previous evidence of these
streaks before - but researchers had generally thought that was due to ice
melting during the planet's warm season. Now they've found "streaks near the
equator, including in the gargantuan Valles Marineris canyon". Any subsurface
ice here would likely have sublimated. So it's looking pretty likely that this
is subsurface liquid water that is leaking out from time to time. An
alternative explanation - dust avalanches - was offered when the same
scientists unveiled their initial results back in 2011. With the observation
of so many streaks at the equator now the simplest explanation appears to be
groundwater welling up to the surface. Similar streaks on Antarctica are known
to be caused by water.

------
drcode
I know this is an unpopular opinion here but:

NASA needs to stop milking the "water on mars" thing. Every few months it
seems their PR department lazily says to themselves "Hey! let's do another
water on mars story!" (I know, NASA doesn't do PR and these are just
completely objective releases of scientific papers... believe what you will.)

I hope within my lifetime we have some disruption in this space and NASA stops
constantly taking blatant advantage of its near monopoly on space exploration.

~~~
Havoc
>NASA needs to stop milking the "water on mars" thing.

Perhaps. I'm inclined to cut NASA some slack though - they are in a tricky
catch 22 position: To get spectacular results they need funding and to get
funding they need spectacular results. So I'm all for them milking whatever
seems viable.

>its near monopoly on space exploration.

When it comes to space exploration I tend to agree with Nike & their slogan. I
really don't care whether the US or the Chinese does it as long as someone
acts. Same thing with costs...humanity as a whole needs to get off this rock
to have any hope of long term survival. If it takes X billion USD...who cares?
Raise some notional debt ceiling if you must...

~~~
genwin
> humanity as a whole needs to get off this rock to have any hope of long term
> survival

Or, people could have <= 2 kids on average. Seems more achievable to me than
terraforming another planet.

~~~
Havoc
Agreed. Your answer is entirely sound. We are talking past each other here
though.

We are talking about fundamentally different time scales here: I was thinking
more asteroid hitting earth / nuclear MAD. Sooner or latter something scary is
going to screw over earth. Given sufficient time its inevitable - earth is
going to die...maybe tomorrow, maybe in a billion years. If it happens
tomorrow...so be it. Nothing can be done about that. If it happens in 200
years & humanity _didn 't_ plan for it then I'd say humanity fcked up things
in royal style.

Thats also why I don't care whether the US/russians/chinese make
progress...they're all humanity in my book.

Terraforming - admittedly not happening right now. Forget terraforming. I just
want to see progress. The above risks are real & we don't have an answer right
now. Fine - so be it. Republicans & democrats arguing about debt ceilings and
NASA budgets...that I have little patience for. As I said - Nike slogan. How
exactly progress is achieve - I really don't care as long as it happens.
Frankly I'm thankful that the Chinese are playing the space race. Their
political structure and resource allocation seems uniquely well suited to said
nike slogan approach.

During the Apollo era the US gov had both the political will & the public
support. In short - they were invincible & the outcome was certain. If a
nation like the US is collectively hell bent on putting a man on the
moon...then a man shall walk on the moon. The US has lost that spirit & right
now the Chinese are humanities best hope - yes the US has mars ambitions -
it'll go nowhere. This I'm certain of - unless something drastic changes.
Compare the __ emotional content __ of Kennedy's moon speech vs current NASA
budget cuts. Forget budgets, technical ability etc...just emotional content.
That is why I'm cheering for the Chinese - they have the will power and the
resources. The US has politicians squabbling about budgets.

~~~
genwin
What extra percentage of taxes are you willing to pay? Assume that the
everyone gets the tax hike and the money is well spent solely on this issue.

------
Nicholas_C
Oh how I wish Mars had a thicker atmosphere.

~~~
throwaway_yy2Di
You'll love this!

[http://wikitravel.org/en/South_Pole](http://wikitravel.org/en/South_Pole)

Rocks, water ice, _and_ a thick atmosphere with oxygen. For only 0.00001% the
price of a Mars vacation.

~~~
throwaway_yy2Di
I'm half joking, but I'm worried someone will try to sell spaceplane trips to
some inhospitable alien desert like Namibia and market it as "the
interplanetary experience"...

edit: Actually that could be interesting..

~~~
wpietri
Ooh, I'll happily build the spaceship's "earth communication unit" so it has
realistic delay:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/614795/simulate-
delayed-a...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/614795/simulate-delayed-and-
dropped-packets-on-linux)

------
jds375
So, how legitimate is this claim? I feel like we hear about this all of the
time, only to be disappointed later after further analysis.

~~~
rlpb
As far as I can tell, this is not a claim at all. It is an observed
phenomenon, for which the presence of water is one possible explanation.

~~~
Cthulhu_
As far as I can see, shadows being the other one. Depending on the time of day
/ position of the sun of course, so it should be easy enough to rule that one
out.

~~~
Flenser
Could it also be explained by saltation[1]? If avalanches can behave like a
fluid due to a saltation layer, and saltation can happen to sand particles in
wind, then couldn't the streaks be caused by sand/wind instead of water?

Any geologists reading that could offer an opinion? Would this part of the
article support this hypothesis:

> Some of the streaks seem to begin at the tops of ridges, too close to the
> surface to easily be explained by subsurface aquifers

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltation_(geology)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltation_\(geology\))

------
cygwin98
Why not send a drone plane together with the Curiosity? It sounds more
efficient doing exploration from sky than land. I get that the weather could
be a problem. Anyway, just food for thought.

~~~
ortusdux
Not enough atmosphere to generate lift. Same reason we can't fly satellites
into orbit.

~~~
artmageddon
Silly question, but why is it that we can't fly a satellite into the orbit of
Mars? What is it about the space 300 miles up from Earth that differs from
Mars? (unless we also want to discuss geosynchronous orbit)

Edit: I should have written "launch" a satellite into Orbit from Earth to Mars

~~~
el_zorro
Orbit isn't about going up - it's about going sideways so fast that the planet
curves away just as fast as you fall towards it. While you can use the
atmosphere to lift yourself up to a certain extent, it doesn't help you
achieve orbit. The 100km boundary for space on Earth isn't picked as just a
clean number - it's the altitude at which a plane would have to fly at orbital
speeds to generate the required lift, and if you're going orbital speeds you
don't need lift.

I know this doesn't exactly answer your question, but it might help to frame
it better.

~~~
artmageddon
I probably should have phrased it better, actually. I understand the concept
that the satellites are falling along a path in orbit that causes them to
"miss" the planet as you describe. I misunderstood the parent's phrasing use
of flying, which implies the presence of an atmosphere, as opposed to just
"putting" a satellite into Mars orbit(by way of launching a rocket with the
desired payload or whatever).

------
jusben1369
Let's suppose there is water there and we could somehow take advantage of it.
Why would human's be inclined to spend any time on Mars?

~~~
Pxtl
Hunting for liquid water on mars is mostly about trying to find life. If
there's anything living on Mars, it'll be in the water.

~~~
rfnslyr
Can you imagine what it would be like finding some sort of living organism
observable by the human eye? That would be the most profound moment ever.

~~~
Pxtl
It would be, but realistically any liquid ecosystem on Mars is just too small
for respectable evolution. It'll be a miracle if it's more complicated than
Earth's prokaryotic microbes. But then, it'll be a miracle if we find anything
at all.

------
stefantalpalaru
This link (without the trailing '?') was submitted 5 days ago and it was
ignored:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6884527](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6884527)

------
alixaxel
So Curiosity and all the other rovers are not sterilized?!

~~~
sebnukem2
Actually I was thinking: wouldn't the exposure of hardware in the cold space
vacuum sterilize everything?

~~~
vignesh_vs_in
Apparently not [http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-
nasa/1998/a...](http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-
nasa/1998/ast01sep98_1/)

~~~
fixedd
and if you keep going down the rabbit hole you'll end up here:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia)

------
ondross
If this water evaporates so quickly, there must be a ton of it. Or else
wouldn't it have run out by now?

~~~
andyhmltn
I'm by no means an expert but wouldn't it work the same way as earth as in the
evaporated water would make it back down to the surface and repeaet?

------
rms
Mars really doesn't seem that bad; it's just too cold and you can't breathe
the air.

~~~
babby
Actually the major issues are; low atmospheric pressure and radiation (which
is related to atmosphere density, as is temperature).

So live underground in air-tight domes, at least in the beginning before
industry takes off.

To actually fix the cold, pressure and breath-ability? My bet is on either a
heavily optimized artificially created vegetation that exploits Mar's soils
enough to generate greenhouse gases, or, more realistically, shit loads of (or
massive) machines doing that same thing. Here's to hoping 3D printing-esque
evolutions in technology and automation permit this to happen within 150 years
instead of 500.

------
thret
"spacecraft will probably have to steer clear of them unless the craft are
carefully sterilized"

Question: How could they still be carrying live earth bacteria after the trip?
What kind of sterilization is going to be more effective than interplanetary
travel?

~~~
gdw2
There was a post on HN a little while back about the possibility of a large
earth impact event sending debris into space which would take life from earth
to Saturn's moon. I guess some single-celled organisms are very resilient.

------
sidcool
If true, this is huge.

