Nasa is to reveal Mars water secrets...

[blobrana]

The US space agency's "Significant findings" about water on Mars will be announced  today in Washington DC.

I hope that by confirming the planet was a wet world like Earth some time in its geologic history, and that Mars retains significant amounts of water even today; they will establish that conditions were also suitable for life as well...

i`ve got a feeling that mars is crawling with underground lifeforms...er, like the earth...

  :-o

[blobrana]

Well,
Mars has a lot of sulfer...
i think that the one biggest problem with my theory is that (if life does exist underground due to the hostile surface) any life-forms, given enough time, would have adapted to surface conditions and we should be able to see them...

Unless they are recovering from some past planetary extinction event...

There have been recent discoveries of hydrogen peroxide on the surface, (it`s nasty stuff), and the climate has undergone through several `ice ages`, so perhaps life-forms have gone underground, and have a very slow metabolism...

I don`t think the probes have any instruments on-board to look for living life-forms (except the cameras)..

Hum,
So what`s the bet that nasa says they haven`t found any evidence of life...

[blobrana]

Well mars has a semi-molten core, and there are reasons to believe that there are deep volcanic activity still happening. It has even been suggested that a few of the viking images show volcanic steam venting...
Theres a nice image here:
http://mysite.freeserve.com/blobrana/cefoss.jpg
That shows the source of a water flow...the line of `dots` are probably a natural aquifer that is/was sitting above a thermal heat source...

The question is when the heat source cooled...(or if)...
And perhaps their metabolism has adapted, so as not to require an external heat source...Even at minus 120 degrees chemical reactions stall take place (slowly)...

UPDATE on Meeting:
NASA's associate administrator Ed Weiler accompanied by the mission's top geologist Professor Steve Squyres  will attend the press conference at 1900 GMT.


Visual inspection indicates that the region's spherules are made of different material than the matrix rock. The layered rock is tan, while the spherules are gray.
The bulk, or "matrix," of the rock, is composed of very thin layers. The spheres, or "spherules," embedded in the matrix, are about half a centimetre.
One theory about the  origin is that the spherules are "what geologists call concretions." Concretions form when water flows through a rock, carrying tiny bits of dissolved sediment along with it.
The sediment "precipitates around a nucleation site, and it grows these little spherical granules within the rock."

But then again it could have been the discovery of a jaw bone that swayed the balance: see `rock` near upper right , next to the skullcap...
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/n/036/2N129563086EFF0361P1635R0M1.JPG
 :insane:

[blobrana]

Hum,
(and for those withut Realplayer...),
so basically NASA  has reported compelling evidence that the tiny crater that the Mars rover Opportunity has been scooting around for the last month was once soaked in water.


"Liquid water once flowed through these rocks. It changed their texture, and it changed their chemistry,.
The finding greatly enhances prospects that Mars was a much more hospitable planet early in its history, possibly even amenable to the rise of life at one time.
There were several key lines of evidence to support the conclusion, including the presence in the rocks of sulphate's and small spherules that were probably precipitated out of water.

The rocks' physical appearance,
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/m/034/1M131201699EFF0500P2933M2M1-BR.JPG
such as niches where crystals once grew, also helped to prove the case. It seems to have formed in water or, after formation, have been highly altered by long exposures to water. Jarosite may point to the rock's wet history having been in an acidic lake or an acidic hot springs environment.




Pictures from the rover's panoramic camera and microscopic imager reveal the target
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040302a/16-jg-02-mi1-B035R1_th200.jpg rock, dubbed "El Capitan," is thoroughly pocked with indentations about a centimetre (0.4 inch) long and one-fourth or less that wide, with apparently random orientations. This distinctive texture is familiar to geologists as the sites where crystals of salt minerals form within rocks that sit in briny water. When the crystals later disappear, either by erosion or by dissolving in less-salty water, the voids left behind are called ...VUGS!..., and in this case they conform to the geometry of possible former evaporate minerals.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/m/033/1M131117272EFF0454P2953M2M1-BR.JPGhttp://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040302a/07-ss-07-moess1-B038R1_br.jpg


Hum, i thought so...

[blobrana]

Yea, there hasn`t been liquid surface water on-mars for a loooong time...
But just below the surface and maybe to a depth of 20 miles there could be ... and life may continued to survive there...

There have been recent studies of the life forms on earth. And it seems as if there is more bio mass living inside the earth than in the surface seas or jungles...

"The  Spirit rover has also found more evidence that water once existed on Mars, following close behind Opportunity that sits in a region that was soaked by water in the distant past.
 Spirit made its find by studying Humphrey, a 23-inch (60-centimenter) tall rock at Gusev Crater. The rover found that despite the rock's volcanic beginnings, water apparently seeped through it at one time, allowing minerals to crystallize inside.
Extensive studies of Humphrey with the multiple science tools on its robotic arm, which included drilling into Humphrey with the rock abrasion tool (RAT) then taking images of the area with the microscopic imager, Spirit detected fractures in the rock filled with minerals that were most likely formed in the presence of a tiny amount of water."

[Ancestral archaebacteria were probably heterotrophic, anaerobic, sulphur-dependent hyperthermoacidophiles] :-)

[blobrana]

Yea this is true...
The core has cooled down, (although not quite solid)  and  the protective magnetic shield has gone...

Impacts would have blown away parts of the atmosphere (and planet) into space, but they also (in the early bombardment era) brought water, and frozen gases etc to the planet surface.

The inner planets all started out completely molten, so any water  or gases that we find on the planets today have been transported there by comets and asteroids...
(Quite remarkable, when one looks at earth`s oceans...) :-o

[blobrana]

Hum,
plants are green because the sun is a yellow star, and the earth atmosphere lets in a limited electromagnetic range...

The leaves look green because that part of the spectrum is les energetic and reflected back...(er, leaves are every colour , apart, from greeen...)
I remember that there are a lot of red fish, because the red colour is absorbed by the water, so the fish become less of a target to predators.

As for silicon life forms , i personally can`t rule it out. but, silicon (which can form long chains) are very unstable: and require a cold environment, so chemical reactions would correspondingly take longer...(and silicon based life may require longer than 13 billion years to `happen`)




[it is strange how everything just seems right for life in this universe though (not in a mystical way!)...]

[blobrana]

Didn`t she?




[but it could all have been a huge farcical mix-up...
concocted up by a strange desert sect, living on a small planet on the edge of the galaxy...] :-)

[blobrana]

Hum,

There is more biomass inside the earth than on the surface

On mars there is an abundance of sulphur, hydrogen, c02 etc...
more so deep down, say 5 to 20 mile deep...in solid rock, no need for cracks or `air pockets`...

i imagine that there are a few earth life forms that would easily survive those harsh Martian conditions...




[remember Dune?]

[blobrana]

Hum,
i feel a starship trooper thread coming on....