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77 Comments
- brianmuse, on 08/17/2008, -1/+21Which basically means that there is water vapor in the air/atmosphere. Planet shows more good potential every day.
- NathanCH, on 08/17/2008, -5/+21What ever happened to the huge news? =/
- Sornos, on 08/17/2008, -0/+15Wrong probe. Opportunity and Spirit are living on borrowed breath, but Phoenix is still in its prime.
- rdolishny, on 08/17/2008, -0/+14the article itself shows frost forming on the Viking lander in the 70's. can someone please tell my why this is significant thirty years later?!?
- CdnPhoto, on 08/17/2008, -0/+13You mean the Phoenix isn't designed to raise from it's own ashes?
Lame. - alpharaptor, on 08/17/2008, -5/+15the universe is awesome, their server...
- inactive, on 08/17/2008, -0/+10The soil is loaded with perchlorate, a mildly caustic bleach like substance.
- SirBruce, on 08/17/2008, -0/+8If you want to imagine that life can be something beyond what we can imagine or understand, well sure that's possible, but thinking like that is not very helpful. If life can be anything, then if we want to find life we might as well look everywhere, and even if we look at someplace we think doesn't have life, you can speculate it's really still there in a form beyond our restrictions.
But if we want to find life elsewhere, we have to look for places that are most likely to find life, and in a form we can reasonably understand and reason about. All scientific investigation so far suggests that some water, at least in minute amounts, is essential for life. Furthermore, we're pretty sure that life is most likely to be carbon based, and there's a good chance it'll use some form of nucleic acids similar to the organic chemisty of DNA/RNA that we're familiar with here on Earth.
So sure, life could exist in ways beyond what we can understand or predict, but since we probably wouldn't know how to recognize such life when we saw it, and it could literally be anywhere (since it's unknown), it's not worth wasting too much effort on contemplating. - drgruney, on 08/17/2008, -0/+6It could be used to make breathable air for long-term human visitors to Mars. I suppose it could also be used to make oxygen-based fuels for stuff.
- infiniphunk, on 08/17/2008, -2/+8Alright gang, here is what I don't get. We've known for a long time there is ice on mars. They have all kinds of pictures of what looks exactly like ice on the polar regions. Have a look at this link for an example photo:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/ ...
We've been seeing these kinds of pics for a few years now. Martian polar region with a nice white spiral thing common sense would tell us is ice. Fast forward to the Phoenix probe and its tests to see if there is ice in the soil. I guess maybe some were arguing that it could be some other frozen substance, and not necessarily water. But now we are getting excited by the formation of a little layer of frost on some rocks?? What next, a news story unveiling that rocks on Mars are red in colour? - ShaoKahn, on 08/17/2008, -1/+6Mirror: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=2157 ...
- rowlodge, on 08/17/2008, -1/+6rather see a plant or blade of grass or how about tumbleweed?
- lostngone, on 08/17/2008, -0/+5Its not like they have cable modems on Mars... Mars is 36,000,000 miles away from us.
Even with all the money in the world you can't change the laws of physics. It takes a LOT of power to send a signal that distance. The less time transmitting the less power they use and that leaves them more power for experimenting. - dobry, on 08/17/2008, -0/+4an alien
- NathanCH, on 08/17/2008, -0/+4There needed to contact the white house to tell them that?
- matt510, on 08/17/2008, -0/+4Everything thus far relating to water has been indirect observation, this is direct observation.
Even the polar caps, where we KNOW there is water, has never been directly seen. From what I understand, the white caps you see on the poles are actually formed by solid CO2 (dry ice), NOT frozen water ice. The water ice is actually under the surface which is why the used radar to detect it. - Coottie, on 08/17/2008, -0/+4So we've discovered water on Mars yet again? Ok but isn't this like the 5th or 6th time it's been discovered?
- Culyt, on 08/18/2008, -0/+3A) Because nothing we have would grow on Mars as it is currently, the soil might possible support some plants (asparagus seems to be a favourite) if the atmosphere/temperature was changed.
B) Because then we would never know if there was life on Mars or if the bacteria in the turnips evolved and spread on wind currents.
C) Because the Phoenix landed in the frozen south pole, which wouldn't exactly be turnip growing conditions even if it wasn't on Mars.
I think the first manned mission should take with them as many bacteria that could survive as possible and spread them out (the extremophiles etc...), but I'm not sure if anything we have at all would live. Maybe we can culture some by making an environment in a lab that we slowly make more Mars like. - tedrock, on 08/17/2008, -0/+3i'm not sure why people suggest stuff like this on here. do you think this wasn't considered by those NASA scientists? like honestly do you think you are the only person to ever think of that theory?
- Culyt, on 08/18/2008, -0/+3Everyone does, get with the program.
- guinpen, on 08/17/2008, -0/+3because -we- require water to exist. it doesn't do us much good to find a planet hospitable to life if humans couldn't eventually move in and blow each other up on it
- Patori, on 08/17/2008, -0/+3I read the word fuel, so yes. Yes, they did.
- cgbspender, on 08/17/2008, -0/+3Pixel errors on the photo sensor.
- Juaquin, on 08/18/2008, -0/+2Well, chemistry shows that Carbon is what life here on earth is based on largely because it has 4 readily acceptable bonding points. Water happens to be an almost necessary molecule in interactions with carbon-based compounds. Without water, carbon-based life would be mostly impossible. There are alternatives to carbon (namely, silicon) that are theoretically possible, but given that carbon bonds are stronger, it is far more likely that carbon life would take root than silicon based life. So, our best chance at finding life is finding carbon-based life, and since carbon-based chemistry relies on H2O, we look for water to point us towards the possibility of life.
In short, life does not require water, but the most likely form of life that we might find needs water, so we look for it. - lostngone, on 08/17/2008, -0/+2One of the reasons in bandwidth, it would take a lot of memory, power and time to transmit a 10 megapixel image to earth.
- stuffradio, on 08/18/2008, -0/+2@NathanCH if you actually read the twitter feed of the Phoenix Lander... you'd know that they said it was a hoax, and they weren't really contacting the White House about it.
http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix - Culyt, on 08/19/2008, -0/+2Mars has 0.03% water vapour, compared to the 1% of Earth according to Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_atmosphere
The Phoenix lander has showed that the ice evaporates when exposed to the sunlight, since its evaporating it would have to be going into the air and there is the south pole right near the lander.
The water vapour iself is likely coming from under the ground since that where the ice is, but it is going into the air, it would be doing that when hot then coming back down and turning into frost later when its cold.
Some very off bacteria have been found on Earth, for instance there was the discovery of bacteria the live in the Chernobyl sarcophagus (the name given to the area of the nuclear powerplant that has been covered over with concrete), the bacteria there live with the radiation and rebuild there genome when its destroyed by rays (actually It might have been fungus which is even more interesting).
There is another bacteria that eats toxic waste that was dumped into a pond by a near by plant and another load that is living in a strip mine that got and is now extremely acidic to a point that would normally kill anything alive, its basically cleaning it up.
I've seen it stated that within a few thousand years there will be bacteria that have evolved to eat plastic due to the amount dumped around, and other bacteria have been cultivated to eat oil to clean up oil spills.
Recently there was a post about artificially manufactured bacteria that convert CO2 into petrol, so it would probably be more likely that we would send artificial bacteria specially designed rather than cultivated, (such as eating the perchlorate in the soil and making CO2 as a result to help increase greenhouse effect, which on Mars is a good thing.)
I'm not studying anything like this at uni (just Computer Science).
☢ - fenderjazz, on 08/17/2008, -0/+2Phoenix hasn't even been on Mars for six months.
It will die once the Martian winter kicks in. I don't see any way for it to survive. - FolkTheory, on 08/17/2008, -0/+2because water is the only chemical we KNOW that life relies on. sure life could rely on other things, but we don't know of those...
- matt510, on 08/17/2008, -0/+2Yes, clearly NASA is a bunch of idiots. /sarcasm
- SirBruce, on 08/17/2008, -0/+2Well, no lander has ever been far enough North (or South) to see frost on Mars SINCE Viking. So it's neat. It's not really groundbreaking or significant.
- SirBruce, on 08/17/2008, -0/+2The rovers and landers have "crazy detail" pictures for scientifically interesting targets, but for the majority of time lower resolution versions are all that's needed to move around and identify terrain and potential targets. This saves bandwidth, memory, power, etc. which are all in short supply on Mars.
- Mithivh, on 08/17/2008, -0/+2You are a cruel, cruel person
- ddgromit, on 08/17/2008, -0/+2Just, no.
- dobry, on 08/17/2008, -0/+2i dont know why it didn't plant turnips or something. i mean that single event could seed much more life on mars.
- dobry, on 08/18/2008, -0/+2do you know if they have found much more out about the atmospheric conditions? getting details on its findings seems to all be vague. For instance, does the frost pictures automatically imply water in the atmosphere? Or perhaps it is just coming up from the ground. You definitely have to think outside the box, considering its literally a different world.
I just think it would be really amazing to grow a plant on mars. I brought up turnips because I read a study that supports evidence that they may be possible to grow. But, obviously, I understand all your points.
To me, this whole thing is simply amazing and a dream becoming reality.
Just sit back and look at what we are achieving.
And that would be a fantastic project (cultivating the bacteria). are you currently studying at a university for anything related? - brianmuse, on 08/17/2008, -1/+3Part of the problem is it's become such a large organization and it's basically a huge bureaucracy. Plus, government employees can't really get fired and there's plenty of laziness to go around. So basically not a lot gets done. Was working at the Langley Research Center this summer, and I saw a lot of this.
- themastersb, on 08/17/2008, -0/+1I wish they'd show Mars images in true colour instead of giving it that reddish tone. Anyone know why they do that?
- matt510, on 08/17/2008, -0/+1Water is toxic?
- MorphicMusic, on 08/17/2008, -0/+1Thats not frost, it's mold or fungus...
- FolkTheory, on 08/17/2008, -0/+1no. frost can be caused by plenty other chemicals. look at the clouds of jupiter, here on earth clouds are made of water vapor, but there there are many different chemicals making clouds so they have various colors of clouds that form at different heights.
- SirBruce, on 08/17/2008, -0/+1Eventually it will be cold enough for Carbon Dioxide frost to form there. But right now, the frost is just water.
- chedabob, on 08/17/2008, -0/+1A booger.
- Culyt, on 08/18/2008, -0/+1Well we know the temperature of Mars and the atmospheric pressure, there will only be so many elements the freeze in such a way with those conditions. Plus we know there is water there since the Phoenix dug some up and sampled it alread.
- plup, on 08/18/2008, -0/+1For the lulz.
- jimmick, on 08/18/2008, -0/+1Buried for not being BREAKING:
- Culyt, on 08/18/2008, -0/+1I'm still waiting to see Megatron.
- MattNF, on 08/17/2008, -0/+1You're an idiot. We did NOT know there was ice there for 3 decades. The ice in the polar region could have been anything, and it was suspected to be dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide). However these recent missions have shown that there is also WATER ice on Mars.
- ddgromit, on 08/17/2008, -0/+1"The Viking lander took the picture below in 1979 of its landing site at Utopia Planetia showing ample amounts of frost on the surface."
We already knew there was water on mars?! -
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