Water flows on Martian surface!!!

[stinky]

Perhaps one of the most important discoveries of all time...

Nasa thinks they have evidence for the flowing of water recently on Mars.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/news/mgs-20061206.html

It'll be interesting to see how this develops, ther undoubtedly will be counter theories, but the news it stirs will be great for exploration. I'm just amazed that it's taken so long to get to the news.

[Omaroo]

The high-resolution images are certainly compelling evidence huh! Very interesting indeed.

[ving]

interesting. the pictures are great but is it really water or was it a tremor related landslide or something similar?

thanks for the article. :)

[robagar]

wow, that is big news! If these flows indicate liquid groundwater, that has huge possibilities.

[Omaroo]

Thought of that too. The material could be an ultra-low viscosity powder fluid - like quicksand.

[robagar]

true... is that more likely given the very dry, thin atmosphere environment do you reckon?

[robagar]

.. although the article points out that if they were dust flows, they would likely be dark like the rover tracks. The brightness suggests frost, or possibly salt crust concentrated by liquid water. Very interesting.

[Doug]

Well either way NASA can expect more money.
It just doesn't look like a water flow. If water started at the top and flowed down the crater wall till all was absorbed, wouldn't it get thinner as it goes or is Martian water different from Terra water?

[Doug]

Looking at the 2 images, shows a remarkable similarity with the shadows. What are the odds of imaging at the same crater area, the same time of day and the same part of the Martian year?
cheers,
(a skeptical) Doug

[ving]

another thought doug. the shaddows are different in each image. is it posible that the "flow" is a lighting effect?

[Doug]

Who knows? Looking closely at the older image you can see spots of the same lighter shading all over the place. What NASA is all of a sweat about might simply be an area of frost that has not evaporated as much as in the earlier image.
Heck if it means so much to the poor devils to have hot & cold r unning water on Mars, why not just send a water tanker a team of Plumbers up there?

[Omaroo]

Even if it isn't anything truly significant, it should be - for types like us who want to see Mars explored further. If this is the catalyst that gets the public and the US Congress all excited, and a manned Mars mission is the result, then ripper!

[ispom]

It looks like a waterfall:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/images/pia09027.html (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/images/pia09027.html)

one should be able to determine with a spectrometer from the orbit, whether it concerns water, or merely a sandy fata morgana

[iceman]

Good point right there.. It was the discovery of so called "fossils" in a Martian Meteorite back in 1996 that triggered more funding for Mars lander/rover missions, which eventually led to the current MER rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

I'll try and find out more.. I have a contact who might have some interesting theories on this.

[Doug]

G'day Chris, this is the point I hinted at back in post #8.
And as Mike has reflected, the now (in)famous martian meteorite certainly invigorated the US senate funding. That is what is needed, VISION + $$$$$:lol: :lol:

[JohnH]

The water is the same - but the pressure and temp in the environment are different - the water will boil or freeze as it flows....but the formations are analagous to those created by flash floods - the water is constricted to a narrow channel where the slope is steap and forms a delta on the gentler slope when it slows and can no longer carry the embedded materials...the water cannot be absorbed either if it is fast flowing...

Looks good to me...

[Doug]

John! we seem to have a difference of opinion here. There is only one thing for it. What say we invite NASA to fast track an expedition to Mars and give us free RETURN boarding passes.
Loser shouts a schooner of Martian Adam's Ale.:cheers:
Doug

[JohnH]

Your on, in fact as it is Friday lunchtime and I am a pommy I'm off to the pub for some practice....

First Pub on Mars? The RED Lion of course.

Serves Red Dragon beer btw - warm flat English beer would be the go in the cold low pressure environment...
:)

[iceman]

I had the opportunity to interview Steve Squyres, the PI on the MER mission and I asked him about this recent announcement of new water on Mars..

Check out his answers and the full interview, here:

IceInSpace Interviews Prof. Steve Squyres (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/?id=84,352,0,0,1,0)

[ispom]

some hundred years ago the high mountains (alps for example) applied as places, which one should avoid,
everyone was glad, if he had to cross a montain pass
and overcome it without loss,
a weather stationon at the peak of “Zugspitze” (the highest peak in Germany),
a hotel on the Grossglockner (highest peak of Austria),
a souvenirshop in the midst of the Rhone-glacier in Switzerland,
that were at that time identical "pipedreams", phantasms
like today comparable Mars objects....
everybody at that time would hav asked "which to want we on the summit?"
and in some hundred years research stations, supply installations and also souvenir shops on Mars become as (http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/dings.cgi?o=3021;service=deen;iserv ice=en-de;query=as) a matter (http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/dings.cgi?o=3021;service=deen;iserv ice=en-de;query=matter) of (http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/dings.cgi?o=3021;service=deen;iserv ice=en-de;query=of) course (http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/dings.cgi?o=3021;service=deen;iserv ice=en-de;query=course), self evident...

into the future looking greetings from Ispom

[sheeny]

The following is from news @ nature this morning.

Al.

Water could be flowing on Mars today

Photos show gullies growing within the past few years.
Katharine Sanderson (http://www.nature.com/news/about/aboutus.html#Sanderson)

Photographs snapped of Mars show gullies that must have grown sometime in the past seven years. That, researchers say, is strong evidence that liquid water is still flowing on the red planet today. And with running water comes a better chance of finding life.

Previous work had suggested that some gullies on the planet are new in geological terms. But that could have meant anything from millions of years ago to just yesterday. The latest data, collected by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) before its recent demise (see 'Goodbye Mars Global Surveyor (http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061120/full/061120-6.html)'), suggest that water flows are happening now.

"Recognizing new contemporary processes is always a thrill," says Michael Malin of instrumentation company Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, California, who led the investigation. "The current gully activity was anticipated, but to find it actually happening was very cool."

Scientists are a long way from finding any evidence of little green bacteria on Mars, but now, they say, they have a better idea where to look. "If I were looking for life on Mars, I'd bias my research in the direction of these features," says Mike Ravine, one of Malin's colleagues.

The same project has also revealed some 20 craters that have formed since 2004. An accidental snap with MGS's wide-angled camera in January 2006 caught a black smudge of the dust kicked up by an impact. Earlier high-resolution images of this area showed no crater — in later snaps there was a small one.

Getting data about how often craters form on the surface will help scientists to date other features on Mars by looking at the cratering there. "Knowing how old bits of the surface of Mars are helps us know what Mars did when," says Albert Haldemann, Mars exploration rover scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Ice caps

Mars was known to hold water — but in the form of ice. There are polar ice caps on the planet, and radar signals have hinted at underground ice.

The MGS pictures, analysed by Malin and his colleagues, show gullies that look very much like they have been formed by flowing liquid — they have finger-shaped branches and travel around obstacles just as a stream on Earth would do; and there are sedimentary deposits at the ends of the tracks.

One of the gullies was snapped first in 2001, and then again in 2005. During that time, about 300 metres of new deposits had been formed. In another gully, formed sometime between 1999 and 2004 in a crater in the Centauri Montes region, a number of finger-shaped branches appeared over an area of about 600 metres.

"It really is showing we're probably getting liquid water under current climate conditions," says Nathan Bridges, who works on the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRise), which is flying onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Though there are other features on the Martian surface that seem to have been produced by flowing water — deltas at the ends of river valleys and vast flood plains — they are far, far older than the gullies seem to be.

Salty flow

There is no definite explanation yet for how the gullies are forming, or where the water might be coming from.

The gullies could be formed from snow deposits, but Malin is betting on underground water sources. His guess is that water is being heated deep within the planet's crust and bursting out to form the gullies. The question remains how the water manages to stay liquid on the chilly surface of the planet, which averages temperatures of well below zero.

"It is possible, but we don't yet have evidence, that freezing point depressants are in solution," says Malin. Salt water, for example, freezes at a lower temperature than fresh, and martian water is expected to be very briny. Pockets of the surface might also trap a lot of sunlight, heating up a small area.

These things cannot be figured out from pictures. Landing on the planet and taking samples would be the best way to work out once and for all what is happening

HiRise will set up a sort of gully watch — it has already spotted some gullies in a region very near to one of Malin's finds, and there are plans to take pictures of these every few weeks.

[ispom]

Today we have an APOD about:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061212.html