Water on Mars

[alxxx]

Have you any thoughts on this http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4727847.stm

I just came across it and it made me think why didn't they spot it before as they have stated in the artical that it is highly visible, i thought they checked signs of water before they launched the rovers.

AL

[OXO]

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMGKA808BE_0.html

Hi Al,

Good spot! above is a link to the Mars Express site giving more details on the Image..

James

PS:gonna read up on this before commenting lol

[alxxx]

Thanks for the link James, will bookmark that one.

AL

[Ant]

Thats great news on two fronts.

First, it means that the chances of a manned visit is much much higer now.

and Second, if there is watrer then there is almost certainly life there... Answering that question once and for all.

Ant

[Rob]

Great news.

There have been traces of frozen mist deposits for some time now. They have also found pockets of frozen gas deposites on the moon!!.. this allows creation of rocket fuel. good to move from moon to planet etc

Rob

Keeps the cost down... in turn keeps the projects alive!!!

[Astroman]

You can't make the jump from the presence of water to life automatically. There are many, many other factors involved. Heck, the ring system of Saturn is almost entirely water! The presence of amino acids and many other chemicals are so far missing from Mars. The water may not be as pure as we'd like. I know that pure water is not a show stopper, but it would help as a beginning. Atmospheric conditions are not conducive to life on Mars. (I should add at this point, that anytime one speaks of "life", it should be followed by "as we know it". eg. would we recognize a silicon based life form, for instance? Or copper?) The air has been very, very thin for maybe hundreds of millions of years, if not billions. Carbon dioxide has dominated, which is poisonous to much of the animal life as we know it. Sure, plants love it, but there is still no trace of animal or plant life on Mars that we can detect. And we can detect a lot.