Movie of water flowing on Mars!

If their only conclusions come from these images and no samples have been taken, then how to they know the water is salty?

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

I generally agree with this, except for one caveat: If life was found on Mars AND it was biologically similar to life on Earth, then it could be argued that life started on only ONE of the two planets, and that planet seeded the other with fife (potentially from a chunk of meteor that broke off).

There's another possibility if you believe in Panspermia. Both planets could have been seeded by the same interstellar microbes which were around before life evolved on either planet.

Originally posted by OGOldGreg
If their only conclusions come from these images and no samples have been taken, then how to they know the water is salty?

Their conclusions are probably based on two things:

1. The rovers Opportunity and Spirit found Mars may have had standing pools of salty water. So the environment itself is salty.

2. Evaporation of salty water is much slower than the evaporation of pure water. Since the atmosphere of mars is so thin, maybe only salty water can be found near the surface for long periods of time. This phenomenon also occurs on earth and is called the equilibrium vapor pressure of liquids. This salty water is itself moving through the soil, again reducing evaporation.

Originally posted by OGOldGreg
If their only conclusions come from these images and no samples have been taken, then how to they know the water is salty?

Spectrometers everything we know of has a certain light signature and since we have salt here on earth and there was salt on mars it would give off the same signature unless.......

thanks for this post.
the vids amazed my wife.
i love all of the things that we are finding out about our existence.
thanks again.