Possible briny water on Mars?

reply to post by wildespace


Well, now that makes me feel better about this post. Thank you.

I am currently compliling links and info in regards to sea ice brine samples from Antarctica as comparative studies to better understand, and explain, the discoloration formations in seasonal warming on the surface near the ridges that were photographed on Mars. The clue? EPS secretions by microbial life that is released upon the warming of the ice surfacing, melting, and submerging upon re-freezing. Microbial life my friends. NASA knows what it most likely is, but can only speculate for now.

I will compile and summarize tomorrow, look for it!

JadeStar

Aleister
reply to post by JadeStar

 

The tracks where the water/sand/shadows fall are already set in the side of the crater, so if these were shadows they wouldn't all fall in those tracks. And on the right of the gif, where the water/sand/shadows are longer, there is really no object above which makes a shadow. These were taken quite some time apart. I think NASA even acknowledged this as one of the areas which were possibly briny water, and the speculation also included sand, but would sand fall all at once over such a wide area? A good gif to explore these possibilities (funbox grabbed this gif from another source, but he could have made this one and made it stand on its head and bark if he had a mind to, he's one of ATS's proficient pic artists).

Fair enough. Usually when we have such animations there is a time/date stamp on them.

Why didn't funbox do this?

He went to a source provided by symptomoftheuniverse, where he found the gif, and here it is - a great article for this thread, thanks for making me find it. An extremely good article on this subject with pics, video, and the gif:

www.extremetech.com...

Adding credence to the melting-subsurface-water theory, these recurring slope lineae only seem to appear near the Martian equator, where temperatures are relatively warm. Most people don’t realize that the surface of Mars is incredibly cold: Unless it’s summer and you’re near the equator, the air temperature is nearly always below freezing (0 Celsius, 32 Fahrenheit). It’s around -153C (-243F) at the poles, with an overall average temperature for the planet being -55C (-67F). Near the equator, in the summer, at noon, surface temperatures might reach 20C (68F) — warm enough to melt those underground deposits of ice. As the summer wears on, melted water would streak down the hill, until autumn comes and daytime temperatures are no longer high enough to melt the subsurface supply.

The image below shows the location of every Mars rover and lander, and the location of every dark streak identified by MRO’s HiRISE camera. The equator runs roughly through the middle, in between Pathfinder and Opportunity.

Phage
reply to post by Char-Lee

 

Ok. Correction: Life as we know it requires more than water.

Looking for life as we know it on Mars is tricky enough without having to look for life as we don't know it.

There are forms of life that can survive in the vacuum of space, correct?

No, life as we know it does not require water.

Good grief, there is every possibility that one of our rovers could stumble upon even ADVANCED life on Mars, this instant.

We shouldn't be looking for life "as we know it." We should be looking for LIFE - period.
We can multi-task, ya know...

ETA: which goes back to my initial point in this thread that you contended with..


IT SHOULD BE CONSIDERED A GIVEN that Mars is SWARMING with life.

Now where are those "microscopes"? They have already found biosignatures on mars with the chemical approach, but science says "nope, still not confirmed".

Jesus man, we aren't alone
We have found it on Mars already. It is staring us in the damn face!



ETA2: What happens to the Drake equation once it is realized that the only two planets we have an active presence on BOTH are abundant with life?

Phage
reply to post by zilebeliveunknown

 

Like here on Earth, if we want to see microbial life, we use freakin' MICROSCOPE!

Yeah. If you want to see a particular thing, if you're lucky and pick the right spot. But there are things that look like microbes and aren't, just like there are rocks that look like...things.

I think the chemistry approach makes sense.

Because these compounds are essential to life as we know it, their relative abundances will be an essential piece of information for evaluating whether Mars could have supported life in the past or present.

mars.jpl.nasa.gov...

"Because these compounds are essential to life as we know it"...

That's the problem right there. "Life as we know it" doesn't include anything extraterrestrial so why in the heck would we be using terrestrial standards to look for it? We are specifically looking for life as we don't know it.

reply to post by Cuervo

We are specifically looking for life as we don't know it.

Ok. What do you recommend we look for then? Please be specific.
How do we go about identifying life as we don't know it?

Phage
reply to post by Cuervo

 

We are specifically looking for life as we don't know it.

Ok. What do you recommend we look for then? Please be specific.
How do we go about identifying life as we don't know it?

I'm not in that field so I wouldn't know. I can say something ignorant like "microscopes" or "bioscanner" (see, I don't even know if that's a thing) but my beef is that we narrow the search down to what we know when we are clearly looking for something beyond the scope of what we know.

I think it's the attitude we normally carry when searching for life outside of our planet that bugs me. We know what "life as we know it" is and that's fine but we shouldn't use that definition to define "life, period". For example, if they are looking at at some ice ocean on some moon, if "they" simply said "there is no carbon-based life here", that would be a big step towards being more open as opposed to saying "there is no life here".

reply to post by Cuervo

For example, if they are looking at at some ice ocean on some moon, if "they" simply said "there is no carbon-based life here", that would be a big step towards being more open as opposed to saying "there is no life here".

Sounds pretty much like saying "No life as we know it." That's exactly what they are saying. That's why they explicitly state it. They aren't being coy, they are being open about what they are doing.

Phage
reply to post by Cuervo

 

We are specifically looking for life as we don't know it.

Ok. What do you recommend we look for then? Please be specific.
How do we go about identifying life as we don't know it?

Do you really expect a rational answer...arguing with someone who is asking to search for life as we don't know it? Perhaps they should have mounted a tricorder on board.

The prospect of some sort of water cycle is exciting though...