Water Found On Mars (Pic)

[Ingo]

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12026-mars-rover-finds-puddles-on-the-planets-surface.html

Hi-Res Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=536615119&size=o

Water (or perhaps clear ice) found on Mars. A new analysis of pictures taken by the exploration rover Opportunity reveals what appear to be small ponds of liquid water on the surface of Mars.

[duncan]

Certainly looks real. But can you believe all you see. If it is real wow what a discovery!!! Will have to wait and see, more proof needed. Sure looks promising though.:eyepop:

[Outbackmanyep]

A discovery such as this ought to be dealt with carefully...just something about the image that smacks of reality...could be wrong, but yeah it would be nice if it was officially recognised...the scientists would tread carefully about jumping to conclusions...

[Astroman]

I would have thought water on mars would look a reddish colour visually.

[Ingo]

It does look like Earths blue sky reflecting off.

[KG8]

that hi rez picture just doesn't look right to me...

[ballaratdragons]

Here are the factual websites. Nothing mentioned on any of them.

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity.html all 90,035 images
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/home/index.html
http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/

So who's pulling who's leg?

[KG8]

I'd say so Ken. Time to raise the BS flag on this one lol! My flatmate is a total mars junkie, has been over every photo and scrap of data there is on the place and if there was a consiensus about sheets of water there I think I would have heard about it by now. Probably just 2 hungry scientists trying to get a little funding for a new lab.
Frank.

[iceman]

I agree with ken - it would be a big announcement and would not be stored on a flickr website.

[[1ponders]]

Photo or not, I'm going with the physics of the situation. Unless there is a reservour below that area contually resupplying the pond, then there would be no long term liquid water on the martian surface.

The temperature and atmospheric pressure would not allow it. Either the water would freeze to ice, with some of it evaporating away before the reaminder freezing or all of it would evaporate away before it freezes. If it was out in the open receiving light from the sun it would sublimate away anyway.

Check out the info on Triple Point of Water (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_point).

Besides if you look closely at the hi-res you will see ripples remeniscent of surface flow disturbances. Where is the water flowing to? Particularly as it is only in the central channel, and that bizzarely regular rectangular "dead end" channel at the top. I wonder where it is flowing from there :shrug:

My view - Hoax.

[cahullian]

The photos look like hals the roads in Newcastle atm

Gazz

[Geoff45]

A bit of egg on the face for New Scientist if it does turn out to be a hoax
Geoff

[ballaratdragons]

Well, they should have checked with NASA first! Maybe a lesson learnt.

Confirmation took me about 1 minute to find out there is nothing on the Nasa Rover pages, which is kept up to date. And NASA would be boasting about it if it were real!!!

[Outbackmanyep]

if you look at the top of the image where the water meets the dirt it just looks wrong....
And the reason its not red is cos they process it with false colour to bring out detail in whatever they're looking for.

[PeteMo]

I've seen other Mars Rover photos that show what looks like rocks under a sheet of water ice. Mars can get up to 20 degrees C during the day which may be enough to thaw ice in rocks at the surface. It is strange how all the boulders, rocks and pebbles in some shots have smooth areas of soil around their bases. This looks consistent with water erosion, as if a small puddle had existed around the base of the rock and evaporated off.

There was an article in the May/June edition of Australian Sky & telescope magazine where a couple of scientists have shown how it may be possible for water to exist for longer periods than previously thought.

There is enough atmosphere on Mars for winds, since it is these dust storms that clean the solar pannels on the rovers.

Just because NASA don't have anything on their website doesn't mean that there's nothing in it. There are mountains of data and images to study from the rovers. NASA may not have released anything because they are being cautious about making any definite statements until they are sure.

[Outbackmanyep]

Watch out for conspiracy theorists! I agree that if there is anything there they'd wanna be dead sure!

[little col]

hmm interesting to see that there are ripples to in this martian water , strange

[JohnH]

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/space/2007/06/no-puddles-on-mars.html

[ballaratdragons]

:thumbsup:

[iceman]

How about that!

[[1ponders]]

Boom Boom!! :lol:

[PeteMo]

Ah well at least they had the balls to go public when they realised they were wrong. Whilst not exactly a conspiracy theory I did wonder if the "water on Mars" finding was to justify sending other probes and manned missions to Mars, since I understand that Congress has stalled on funding all the planned missions.

[RB]

It's not a hoax guys, Percival Lowell Jr was head of the team that took that shot.

:P

[erick]

So what is the smoother "stuff" in the "vallleys"? Very fine-grained material? With some wind-blown ripples?