Submitted by Pendekar Timur: A patch of Martian soil analyzed by NASA's rover Spirit is so rich in silica that it may provide some of the strongest evidence yet that ancient Mars was much wetter than it is now. The processes that could have produced such a concentrated deposit of silica require the presence of water. Members of the rover science team heard from a colleague during a recent teleconference that the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, a chemical analyzer at the end of Spirit's arm, had measured a composition of about 90 percent pure silica for this soil. "You could hear people gasp in astonishment," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the Mars rovers' science instruments. "This is a remarkable discovery. And the fact that we found something this new and different after nearly 1,200 days on Mars makes it even more remarkable. It makes you wonder what else is still out there." Spirit's miniature thermal emission spectrometer observed the patch, and Steve Ruff of Arizona State University, Tempe, noticed that its spectrum showed a high silica content.

The team has laid out plans for further study of the soil patch and surrounding deposits. Exploring a low range of hills inside a Connecticut-sized basin named Gusev Crater, Spirit had previously found other indicators of long-ago water at the site, such as patches of water-bearing, sulfur-rich soil; alteration of minerals; and evidence of explosive volcanism.

View: Full Article | Source: Physorg

Finding even extraterrestrial water would be an extraordinary discovery. I wonder if water on mars could have an unusual property not found here in Earths water.

The only way it could would be due to pressure or temperature differences. Maybe there are different molecules dissolved in it that changed its properties, similar to how ocean water has a higher buoyancy and freezing point due to a high salt content... but other than that, water can only behave differently in relation to pressure and temperature. It is very highly unlikely that it is of a different molecular composition then the H2O we have on Earth.

is water still considered a rarity in the universe by mainstream science?

I don't think liquid water has been found anywhere but on earth. There's plenty of water ice, however.

^ Frozen H20? Where?

I wonder if Methane causes silica? Neptune's moons have lakes of Methane.

curious you been to every planets in the univerise

I don't get it. Notice that I said "...has been found anywhere but on earth." "...has been found..." does not imply that every possibility has been investigated.

Brrr! Imagine how cold it is out there to have Methane in liquid form!

The ice caps on Mars are part frozen CO2 and part frozen water.
http://www.spacetoday.org/SolSys/Mars/Mars...et/MarsIce.html

There are indications of vast amounts of water ice under the surface of Mars.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/28may_marsice.htm

Comets usually have a lot of frozen water in them.
http://ca.geocities.com/spacephysicsisu/comet.html

One of the moons of Saturn, Enceladus, has shown "volcanoes". Some of the material blowing off of the moon is water.
http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/enceladus/review4.php
It's likely that there's a huge amount of water on that moon and some of it may be liquid, but that hasn't been directly observed yet.