DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... NASA To Make "Major Announcement" on Mars this Monday

I'll bet they found a plaque that said made in pangea.

The speculation is that they found some sort of liquid salt water.

Which could potentially mean discovering bacteria at some point.

They discovered that this cute little fellow really
did live on Mars years ago.

I'll be tuning in... that's for sure.

Nope. Nothing alive or ever was alive. Sterile. More sterile than a Surgeon's scalpel.
Nothing.

Great. They'll probably preempt The Price Is Right.

I'll put the odds at 7:5 that "the news" is that Mars once had liquid surface water.

Or did we already know that?

I'll put the odds at 1:5 that Mars currently has frozen water.

I'll put the odds at 1:1,800,000 that they have irrefutable proof that life once existed on Mars. (in other words - that's not the news)

Hmmm, interesting. I like to think I have a finger on the pulse of space exploration, I don't remember too many planned announcements like this. I'd guess it has to do with the curiosity rover. While it wasn't sent to Mars to find life itself, I guess it was equipped with tools to determine if Mars was once habitable.

I'm gonna guess they will present evidence that confirms, Mars did support life at some time.

We have satellites orbiting Mars, that provides evidence of liquid erosion happening on Mars today. Wether that' is liquid water is in question, but there is already a lot of ice at the Martian poles. Frozen water is already confirmed on Mars.

i'll be paying attention

whats that

It's one of the Martian poles, not sure if it's north or south

Salt water on Mars (presently?) is the most likely answer. The hint is in the panel that is set to give the press conference. 4 of them are PIs, high level NASA folk, and others who would be expected to be at this type of press conference. But Lujendra Ojha is a grad student, who would never be a panelist at something like this, unless it is actually his work being presented.

He wrote a paper (while still an undergrad two years ago), arguing that there is good evidence for salt water on Mars. I think other groups have been trying to follow this up for the past few years - so my guess is that they all agree. The interesting things will be how much exists now, and how deep underground is it (which is the key for whether you can set up a base on mars and use it effectively).

How often would you say NASA makes an "announcement" like this?

I guess I'm just trying to gauge the frequency of this.

Not entirely sure, i'd like to know as well. The last announced press conference was this July and announced the discovery of Kepler-452b, which at the time of the press conference was thought to be the most Earth-like exoplanet discovered (though it was close to a few others, and recent observations have moved it down to 6th).

My guess: once every 15-20 years.

On that note, if anyone is interested in looking at discovered planets orbiting other stars, aka exoplanets. Download "exoplanet" on your iOS device.

Water flowing there.

http://news.discovery.com/space/mystery-solved-water-does-flow-on-mars-150928.htm

Scientists have their first evidence that trickles of liquid water play a role in sculpting mysterious dark streaks that appear during summertime months on Mars, a finding that has implications for potential life on Mars, as well as planning for future human expeditions.

The Mars rover Curiosity just found out that Martian soil is 2 percent water! Anthony tells us what that means for the age-old question of whether life once existed on Mars and what it means for future human colonists on the red planet.
The discovery, reported Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, follows years of speculation and studies to learn why the faces of some cliff walls on Mars are streaked with narrow dark slopes, some more than 300 feet long, that appear when temperatures are warm and then vanish during the winter chill.


The streaks, known as recurring slope lineae, or RSL, were first reported in 2011 in the Martian southern highlands, but have since been found throughout the planet’s equatorial region, particularly within deep canyons.

Using data collected by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and a new analysis technique, scientists were for the first time able to detect the telltale chemical fingerprints of hydrated salts in dozens of RSL sites.

“That implies that there was liquid water there very recently to leave this residue of hydrated salts. It confirms that water is playing a role in these features,” Arizona State University planetary geologist Alfred McEwen told Discovery News.

In a press conference advisory, NASA said that the research “solves” a Mars mystery, but it actually opens the door to another, potentially more challenging puzzle: Where is the water coming from?

“We haven’t been able to pinpoint the source,” lead researcher Lujendra Ojha, a graduate student at Georgia Institute of Technology, told Discovery News.

“Water could form by the surface/subsurface melting of ice, but the presence of near-surface ice at equatorial latitudes is highly unlikely,” Ojha and colleagues write in Nature Geoscience.

Another option is that salts absorb water vapor directly from the Martian air, though scientists are at a loss to explain how they could trap enough water from the tiny amount available in the atmosphere to seep down hill slopes and form the streaks.

“It’s just not clear that the atmosphere can supply enough water to do that,” McEwen said.

Whatever the source of the water, its seasonal appearance on the surface of Mars raises the prospect that life might be present on the planet today.

Scientists, however, are quick to note that the RSL water is briny and possibly so dense that no terrestrial organisms, at least, could survive there.

NASA, which is working toward a human expedition to Mars in the 2030s, has another interest in the water. Future crews will need water for drinking and to produce oxygen, both for breathing and for rocket fuel.

For now, far more information is needed about the chemistry of the water as well as its source.

“We’re just starting to scratch the surface,” Ojha said.

That was my hunch! Soooooo awesome NASA!

If they just go in the caves, they would find the atmosphere machines left behind by previous inhabitants.

I understand the excitement some have for this, but given that meteors and such made up largely of ice, and the fact that they constantly bombard the surface of Mars, wouldn't it be more surprising to not find ice on Mars?

Since the Martian atmosphere is so very thin that it provides far, far less protection against meteors than Earth's does, and since Mars also has no real magnetic field for protection, isn't it far more likely that almost any elements found in meteors roaming our solar system would wind up on Mars?

It's flowing water, though, which composes an estimated 2% of the soil. This is VERY exciting since it could be an indication that life (bacteria) exists and could be useful in human expeditions (with a goal of doing one in the 2030s). Having seasonal flowing water is different from elements from crashed meteors, this water is a part of the planet's makeup.

I have a question. Given that Mars does not have a magnetic field, and does not have much of an atmosphere, and since Mars is subject to the tavages of the solar winds, wouldn't that make it more difficult for anything to live there? (even bacteria)

Absolutely, which is why it would be even more amazing if we found that life does indeed exist on that planet. In the most extreme conditions on Earth, life exists, even when it's a microscopic creature. As the wise Dr. Ian Malcolm once said, "life finds a way."

Great stuff. Great posts.

"Life finds a way."

*Grabbing some bait and my fishin pole and heading off to mars*

At the very least we should take a couple of clown fish on our next flight there to populate the planet (again?).

i'd take plankton and algae since they produce oxygen. who knows if you got them to take hold in a few million years ....

You'd have lots of plankton and algae, and maybe some oxygen.

Edit to add:

I think that it would take a miracle for Mars to develop and maintain an atmosphere, at least from what little I know. It seems as though any atmosphere could be ripped away quite easily because of their lack of any substantial magnetic field.

http://www.ibtimes.com/earths-magnetic-field-crucial-keeping-atmosphere-place-422356



The idea that the Earth's magnetic field helps keep the atmosphere from being whisked away has theoretical support, but the current study is the first time astronomers observed the magnetic effect in action.

The shielding effect of the magnetic field is easy to understand and to prove in computer simulations, thus it has become the default explanation, Yong Wei, researcher at the Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Germany and study leader, said in a statement.

The chance alignment between the Earth and Mars took place Jan. 8, 2008. The European Space Agency captured atmospheric data from Earth and Mars using their Cluster and Mars Express missions.

The researchers found that solar winds hit the two planets with the same force, but Mars bore the brunt of atmospheric loss.

if there's intelligent life on other planets, i wonder how fire their version of weed would be.

Stop at my place on the way, we'll take my boat!

Do they have a podium and news crews on Mars already?

Some of you will understand.....

I get it.. I get it... I get it.

3>2

I'm thinking thats a buy on Victoria's Secret stock.