Salt Water Flows on Mars Today

Okay, let me get this straight...

They discovered these "streaks" or RSL in 2011 with the MRO.

It took them another FOUR years to use the same orbiting satellite, just using different sensors to determine that it was water? Four years? Really? Using the same orbiting platform?

I realize getting assigned time on the MRO might be hard, but this should have been top priority.

I get the feeling this was already established a while ago, and that they decided to hold onto releasing it until the time was "right" for maximum effect.

Hm, that new movie "The Martian" comes out Friday.

In the 1962 the first American orbited the Earth. Seven years later, we landed a man on the Moon. Now, 40 years later we're hitching rides with the Russians to a glorified tree fort in low Earth orbit to watch lettuce grow and observe spiders -- and sending glorified R/C cars to Mars to piddle around without the right sensors to detect life.

*sigh*

a reply to: MystikMushroom

They discovered these "streaks" or RSL in 2011 with the MRO.

Before then, actually. But perhaps you're referring to this article about it?
science.nasa.gov...

It took them another FOUR years to use the same orbiting satellite, just using different sensors to determine that it was water? Four years? Really? Using the same orbiting platform?

Them? Who do you think "them" are, exactly? Do you really think you're in a position to critize their work? Do you know a lot about spectral analysis from orbit? Do you have any idea how it is done? Do you have any idea of the amount of data which had to be sorted through and processed to come up with anything meaningful?

"It took multiple spacecraft over several years to solve this mystery, and now we know there is liquid water on the surface of this cold, desert planet," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "It seems that the more we study Mars, the more we learn how life could be supported and where there are resources to support life in the future."

Read more at: phys.org...



www.nature.com...

Any day now... National Geographic presents. "Mars: The Life of Brine".

Wait for it.

a reply to: Phage

They said they used the spectrometers on the MRO from the space.com article, which was the same orbiter that first saw the pictures. Why they didn't jump on it right away is beyond me. I also don't know what else they thought it could be that would be less exciting than water. As I recall, they made an almost identical "major announcement" back then too.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Why they didn't jump on it right away is beyond me.

As is, apparently, the scope of work involved to do the approprate analysis.

I also don't know what else they thought it could be that would be less exciting than water.

There was the possibility that they represented dry flows of some sort (which have also been observed), in particular since no water was detected at the location of the flows. Still has not been, BTW.

As I recall, they made an almost identical "major announcement" back then too.

Oh, you fell victim to over anticipation then. The thing is, this announcement is quite different. If you bother to get into the actual science of both of them. One was based on appearances only. This one is based on the discovery of hydrated minerals (perchlorates) within the dark areas. A very tricky piece of work.

Big difference. Strong chemical evidence that the dark areas are caused by liquid water as opposed to just looking like they were.

a reply to: Phage

Its says, 4 rivers (?) 3 of them are a crater? Could you elaborate as speaking to a kid?

a reply to: Hyperia
No rivers.

Slopes where, periodically, dark areas appear. It has been determined that the dark areas contain chemicals which form in the presence of liquid water. No liquid water has been observed, but this is strong evidence that it does occasionally (and briefly) appear on (or very close to) the surface of Mars.

More easier to terraform!

a reply to: Phage

It just seems to me that they could have used the spectrometer on a few passes relatively soon back in 2011-2012, gathered the data and run it through the computers to see the spikes in the spectrum.

I'm sure you're going to tell me it's not that simple, or that they needed to do it 100 times to make sure, or that the instruments on the NRO are pretty old by today's standards LOL.

I don't expect flying cars or anything (god, wouldn't that be a disaster?) -- but come on, can't we do better? Can't we send probes to Mars with the right instruments look for microbial life? I mean we sent experiments on the Viking craft back in the 70s for goodness sakes to test for organic signatures...

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Well ok we are stuck between a rock and a hard place here... there is abundant evidence that water WAS once present on Mars, but, there are other ways that geological features can form and can look like water erosion. Now the researchers on this know what they are doing. They know that if they put out something half hashed together made out of back of napkin calculations that if they then have to retract it later, people are going to loose even more trust in their work.

So what do they do? they are careful and they probably do a whole bunch of secondary measurements. The issue with some types of spectral analysis is that you get de-generacies, the other issue here too is the atmosphere is different and the radiation environment on the surface is also different. This caught NASA off guard before.

I can imagine that they took measurements with a sister device, using chemistry they can understand and touch, trying to recreate something similar to what they see from orbit, this allows a double check and an assurance that they know what they are observing.

You know... these things are not just like... hey look, water peak.

Iv done residual gas analysis which is not the same as this, but one can be fooled into a false sense of 'ease' when identifying peaks in a spectrum. Best example of this is identifying mixes of organics... which is basically like a black art. I have written peak fitting tools in order to scan through a spectrum and compare it to standard 'pure' samples and attempt to match things up.

It is tricky, I only had 3 months to work on my particular example, and while i could say for certainty that my chamber had water, and argon in it, the rest... was organic.... what exactly? well Acrylic monomer and probably some cleaning chemicals... but out of everything i could not say for certainty why I seemed to have lots of carbon monoxide.

I know why now, but thats besides the point.

Also, there is only so much time in the day to do these things, science isn't all that well paid as people think it is. The people processing this data likely have a million and one other things to do, and this is just one item on a long list. The 'team' likely consists of 5 or 6 people.

a reply to: ErosA433

I realize it's not like "hey water peak on the spectrum..."

But the spectral analysis should show peaks for various chemicals and elements. It shouldn't be hard to se NaCl (salt) and other minerals spiking and put 2+2 together. Salt doesn't "flow" like a liquid unless its in a carrier solution.

It wasn't Gatorade, liquid nitrogen, liquid methane or something else either... So "duh water"?

I get that the transmission time to/from Mars is about 10-20 minutes depending on orbits and whatnot, and bandwidth isn't great ... but look how fast we got those incredibly hi-rez photos of Pluto? The newest color one nearly crashed my iPhone it was so large.

It wouldn't take 6 months to beam back spectral data on a few sets of images. See the spikes, note the elemental make up of the dark areas in question, notice salt, realize salt doesn't flow like water...

I always thought mars was very earth like and had a civilazation a couple billion years ago and as the core cooled over time the planet died and so did the ppl. Now everything Is 99.9% covered in dirt.the anomlies we see are the .1% that Isnt.Back then they probly looked at earth as we look at venus now. But eventually earth was habitable and partially seeded from astroids. A billion years from nowvearth will look like mars does now and there will be people from venus announcing how they may have found water flows on that next planet over whatever they name earth to be.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

It wasn't Gatorade

Dammit!
I just had the outlines of a seemingly viable Gatorade on Mars theory together and you dash it to pieces.
JK, I agree with your view on this.

What is the hold up with getting some close up Rover images of this area? Seems like that might be a good idea. Course maybe they are hundreds of miles away at the present moment. ~$heopleNation

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Well, the device does as you point out have limited bandwidth, the s full scan in mosaic of the surface with the optical equipment onboard would take a high priority. taking other measurements would come after that, you would want to identify the interesting locations, and then do further analysis as you see interesting features.

I am glad that the scientists are careful with their analysis, the rush to claim discovery is fine, but it can really lead to issues.

The way people on ATS seem to want science to be published is like publishing a photocopy of your lab diary at the end of each day, full of notes about errors and things you are not sure about. I think this one was important enough for them to really try and nail down to a high order of certainty.

Plus it is brine, not pure water. The pressure on mars is low, so too is the temperature. Which is again from reading things, only fully visible at certain times of the year. So what? they likely got a hint way back, and spent time gathering more data as the seasons changed. Once again, statistics of 1 can in very many cases be a big gamble.

As a scientist myself, id like to spend as long as i could being certain on what i am concluding. Something like this would have never, ever been a day 1 discovery nor even a 6 month discovery.

originally posted by: SheopleNation
What is the hold up with getting some close up Rover images of this area? Seems like that might be a good idea. Course maybe they are hundreds of miles away at the present moment. ~$heopleNation

Yes -- the rovers are not very close to any of these streaks.

You need to consider that the rovers do not travel very far. "Opportunity" has been roving on Mars for almost 12 years, and it has traveled a total of less than 27 miles during that time. "Spirit" roved for six years before getting stuck and dying, and over those six years it travel only about 5 miles.

"Curiosity" moves a little faster, and has traveled about 7 miles in 3 years. However, it is busy studying Gale Crater and Mt Sharp (also known as Aeolis Mons) and will probably spend its entire life doing so. Gale Crater is interesting because it was once covers by a lake, and Mt. Sharp is interesting because the exposed strata shows hundreds of millions of years of geologic history, including strata layers that may have been laid down by water.

There's that, plus the fact that these streaks have so far only been seen on slopes,and those slopes might be too steep for our present rovers.

originally posted by: Christosterone
I'm so glad president Obama gutted NASA so we have zero chance of getting to Mars in the next half century..
It is unfathomable that scientific minded people are not outraged by him killing both the ares v and constellation programs respectively....

Uhhh..Congress holds the purse strings.

Not to pee on your political nonsense...but this is not really up for debate.

House GOP Wants to Eviscerate NASA Earth Sciences in New Budget
www.slate.com...

GOP Proposes $300 Million Cut To NASA's Earth Science Budget
crooksandliars.com...

And it goes back years
2012 - NASA Budget Cuts Draw Threat of Presidential Veto
www.space.com...

2012 - House GOP unveils cuts to NASA, science funding
thehill.com...

2011 - House Republicans Want to cut $379 million From NASA
nasawatch.com...





Lets build this..

a reply to: lostbook

So many pages.....I wonder if J.P. Skipper will be given the Nobel?
He was the first person that Iknow of who had spoken with certainty about these phenomenons. He is studly and the scorn heaped on him has turned into a poop session for his detractors.

www.marsanomalyresearch.com...

This list began in 2000. Some of it is speculative but the streaks, mists and standing bodies of water are CAREFULLY examined. I like the guys work and think that he is a keeper. It is unfortunate that he is not publishing much naymore but his book on Mars is very well argued as to life and water.

originally posted by: Indigo5

originally posted by: Christosterone
I'm so glad president Obama gutted NASA so we have zero chance of getting to Mars in the next half century..
It is unfathomable that scientific minded people are not outraged by him killing both the ares v and constellation programs respectively....

Uhhh..Congress holds the purse strings.

True -- Congress are the people who set the government's budgets. However, the President has a large say-so in the matter.

Most budgets that are originally approved by congress gets vetoed by the President. The President and Congress then work together to come up with a budget that (1) Congress will pass, and (2) that the President won't veto.

On top of that, the President has historically been the person who sets the tone for what NASA will be spending its money on. NASA does write its own detailed budget requests, but NASA usually follows the President's general lead when it comes to big-ticket programs (such as a manned Mars program), and they follow the lead of congress when making their budget request insofar as already knowing how big congress thinks their budget should be.

There is a profound difference between:

1) "Well it seems totally obvious to (insert person or group here) that there's water on Mars."

And

2) "We have now meticulously confirmed by standards which will hold up to scientific scrutiny, through spectroscopy and other means, that the cause of a likely-to-be-attributable-to-liquid-water visual phenomenon is in fact liquid water, and said water is briny due to the presence of perchlorate salts."

The standards and rigor science has to hold itself to before presenting a conclusion are much higher than many of us who aren't scientists can fully appreciate in my opinion. I don't feel It's a waste of time or redundant. That time-consuming patience and redundancy is precisely what renders a mere scientific opinion or hypothesis a scientific fact or consensus. And that matters, because it will be the scientists who explore and ultimately colonize these worlds (assuming it's ever truly possible) if such missions are to have any hope of success.

It also radically alters the speculative probability of life on Mars. Which in turn alters the numbers we can punch into the Drake equation or any other similar means of approximating the probability of intelligent life and its frequency in the universe at large. And that has philosophical, humanistic, and conscious implications for anyone who happens to care about those possibilities in any tangible way.

All of this is on top of any potential other scientific ecological, geological, climatological, chemical, or technological knowledge we might gain emergently in the future as this new data becomes part of the base from which other specialties and fields work. Here are just a handful of the benefits space exploration (and this is only those limited to NASA funding and research) has brought back to Earth over the years: spinoff.nasa.gov...

I too would love to "get on with it," but that requires money. Which means funding. Which means public support and pressure for funding. Which won't happen if people dismiss every important, iterative discovery made because it's not deemed exciting or revolutionary enough. That's everyone's prerogative of course, and I respect those opinions... but I'm just saying. We've been conditioned to crave science fiction level events, when real science is slow, arduous, and meticulous. I feel we should curb our bias and instead encourage what needs to happen for the kind of progress we want to see to actually manifest.

One of my favorite threads here on ATS with regard to what might be possible in the not-too-distant future in terms of more exciting discoveries and insights... if space agencies are sufficiently funded: www.abovetopsecret.com... I hope against hope that I live to see that become a reality, among other achievements by our species.

Rome wasn't built in a day.

Peace.