Liquid Water on Mars - Not Huffington Post

[MineralMan]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-29/evidence-for-liquid-water-found-on-mars/6810080

If you'd rather read this news at some place that isn't a clickbait site and that doesn't overload you with irrelevant ads, etc, you can click this story on Australian news. It's a great story.

[MineralMan]

1. Liquid water is really a big deal, even though it may

not sound like much. Even here, there are life forms that survive in places where liquid water exists very rarely. They have adapted to that in various ways. That there is liquid water on Mars, even today, means that there are probably life forms there that evolved to survive in the changing environment over time.

Life will survive.

Here's a very interesting article that has some relevance to this discovery:

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/259509077_Desert_crust_microorganisms_their_environment_and_human_health

[hifiguy]

2. You are right, MM.

Confirmation of liquid water anywhere else in the solar system, or the universe, is a VERY big deal and there is not an astrophysicist or cosmologist who will say otherwise. It opens the door to a vast number of possibilities.

[Skraxx]

6. The Chance of Discovering Extraterrestrial Life Just Went Up Exponentially

[Aerows]

8. Absolutely it's a big deal!

Hopefully they will find life, too.

[hunter]

3. Yep, Huffington Post is a link I won't click.

I don't need that crap.

BBC has it:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34379284

CBC has it:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/mars-nasa-science-finding-1.3246527

The Guardian has it:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/28/nasa-scientists-find-evidence-flowing-water-mars

And of course, links to the published paper:

http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/ngeo2546

[kestrel91316]

4. Without a magnetic field from a molten iron core to block radiation, though,

I don't know if life would have much chance.

IMHO without that, planetary life is probably not going to get a foothold.

[hunter]

7. There's lots of life on earth that lives underground in hostile environments, hot or cold.

There are sorts of life that live in acid mine drainage, hot springs, in lakes deep under the antarctic ice, and even in the cooling circuits of nuclear reactors.

Various sorts of Archae live in acid mine drainage, environments too toxic for other life.



I'm especially fond of speculations of the sort that maybe bacteria evolved on earth and the archae evolved on mars. Perhaps the archae were later transported to earth inside rocks launched into space by big meteor impacts.

It's likely archae (whatever their origin) established symbiotic relationships with bacteria that evolved into Eukaryota, which became all the plants and animals we now know and love.

Or perhaps it's all panspermia. Maybe the first forms of life originated outside this solar system.

Philosophically I'm the sort who thinks there is life is everywhere in the universe. We humans are simply too ignorant to recognize it.

The "discovery" of life on mars or anywhere else would not change my internal model of the universe at all.

I don't think humans are the center of the universe, and I don't think our self-proclaimed "intelligence" amounts to anything on the larger scales of matter.

It's only very recently that some of us humans have recognized the intelligence of many species we share this planet with, or even in our fellow humans from "alien" cultural backgrounds.

If we humans are the standard of "intelligent" animals then so are many other creatures of this earth, from our sibling apes and other bright mammals, to the problem-solving and tool-using birds.

[Glassunion]

5. Interesting week in science... The moon was bloody, and Mars's water just broke.

Up next: Uranus is no longer safe...