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How Water Helped Shape Martian Landscape


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NASA’s Curiosity Rover Finds Clues to How Water Helped Shape Martian Landscape

Observations by NASA’s Curiosity Rover indicate Mars' Mount Sharp was built by sediments deposited in a large lake bed over tens of millions of years.

This interpretation of Curiosity’s finds in Gale Crater suggests ancient Mars maintained a climate that could have produced long-lasting lakes at many locations on the Red Planet.

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Curiosity Rover Report: The Making of Mount Sharp (Dec. 8, 2014)

How a Martian mountain came to be: the story behind Curiosity's current location on Mars.

Credit: JPL/NASA

Source: NASA/JPL - Videos

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The Curiosity rover has now found strong evidence of long-standing water on Mars. Water over long periods of time is thought necessary for the formation of life. The opportunity for life to take hold on the Red Planet is now substantially enhanced. Very good article on this, with details, linked below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/science/-stronger-signs-of-life-on-mars.html?_r=1

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Good article. I like how it shows that Curioisty, while not as "sexy" as other missions in regards to its discoveries, is the workhorse we needed to finally bring all the theories and ideas together into a workable model of Mars' history and future. It's the mission scientists needed to get done before any future missions can be planned. It answered many of the questions we still had and will continue to do so into the future.

Edited by Merc14
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bison, I have merged your topic with this one as they are on exactly the same discovery.

I do have to take issue with the title you chose: Case for Life on Mars Grows Stronger. That is just plain wrong.

This new finding provides no evidence for the past or present existence of life on Mars. What it does do is provide evidence that Mars was SUITABLE for life. These are absolutely NOT the same thing.

Curiosity has not presented any evidence for the existence of life on Mars, it mission was not to search for life and it is not equipped to do so. It's mission was to determine if Mars had ever been suitable for life and it has done that supremely well.

You should have taken a closer look at the NYTimes article you linked to, they got it right with their title: Mars Rover Finds Stronger "Potential for Life" (emphasis mine).

That one word makes the difference between a correct title and a misleading one.

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The presence of organic materials on Mars is also an indicator of the possibility of life there. The Curiosity rover team reported the discovery of 'simple organics' some time ago. They will hold a press conference tomorrow, Sunday, Dec. 14th, at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union, in San Francisco. They promise to expand upon what was found, offering new information about this.

The crux of the matter seems to be how simple, or complex the organic materials are. Methane, among the simplest organic compounds (CH4), is already known to exist on Mars. The more complex the compounds they found, and the more closely they resemble organic compounds associated with life on Earth, the more interesting their discovery will prove to be. Even some of the simpler organic materials, relatively speaking, are life-connected.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Finding signs of life that formerly may have been present on Mars is a major goal of the 2020 mission. Curiosity has done an outstanding job of showing that 2020's goals are viable.

Also, those photos of outcrops on Mt. Sharp. Those are the coolest frickin' things ever. Earth analogues, sedimentary structures, complete E.O.D sequences...love it.

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  • 1 month later...

The Curiosity rover has now found strong evidence of long-standing water on Mars. Water over long periods of time is thought necessary for the formation of life. The opportunity for life to take hold on the Red Planet is now substantially enhanced. Very good article on this, with details, linked below:

http://www.nytimes.c...ars.html?_r=1

if found also that Martian soil has 2% water in it http://www.huffingto..._ref=mars-rover

This brings a solid potential that life can exist beneath the surface ... even more , perhaps some plants that on Earth lives in harsh conditions could also live on Mars...

Edited by qxcontinuum
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This brings a solid potential that life can exist beneath the surface ... even more , perhaps some plants that on Earth lives in harsh conditions could also live on Mars...

No, unfortunately it doesn't.

This is not liquid water that life can utilise, this is water chemically bonded to the soil. It was only released when the soil was baked at over 800oC. Show me a plant that can do that.

In this study, scientists used the rover's scoop to collect dust, dirt and finely grained soil from a sandy patch known as Rocknest. Researchers fed portions of the fifth scoop into SAM. Inside SAM, the "fines"—the dust, dirt and fine soil—were heated to 1,535 degrees F (835 C).

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/curiositys-sam-instrument-finds-water-and-more-in-surface-sample/#.VOB-di6Anag

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if found also that Martian soil has 2% water in it http://www.huffingto..._ref=mars-rover

This brings a solid potential that life can exist beneath the surface ... even more , perhaps some plants that on Earth lives in harsh conditions could also live on Mars...

I certainly agree with the highlighted part. It is entirely probable that during the surface water epoch on Mars when water erosion and sedimentation was occurring that liquid water filtered down into the older rock and may even have pooled there under great pressure and remains in liquid form. This would be a pre-cursor and suitable vector for rudimentary life to exist - and may yet be extant.

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