Water On Mars: Flowing Salt Water Discovered On The Red Planet

[4Vikram]

We can't say for sure that Mars harbors all the necessary ingredients to support life, but a new landmark finding strengthens the case that flowing, liquid Martian water could sustain life on the red planet and perhaps one day, us too.

It's not quite the Dead Sea or the Great Salt Lake, but it is the confirmation Lujendra Ojha has been looking for the past few years -- that there is flowing, briny water on or near the surface of Mars. Ojha is the Georgia Tech graduate student who first helped spot so-called "recurring slope lineae" (RSL) when he was just an undergrad. RSL are seasonal dark, finger-shaped markings on Martian slopes that look an awful lot like liquid flowing downhill to create wet sand or soil.

"This is the smoking gun," Ojha told CNET. "This is as good as we're going to get with the current technology."

That technology is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which has been circling and surveying the planet for nearly a decade. Ojha was part of the team that originally spotted RSL in MRO photos back in 2011. Now, he's the lead author on a paper published online Monday in Nature Geoscience that lays out a new spectral analysis of MRO data and finds evidence of hydrated salts in those dark, wet-looking lines on Mars.

"What we're observing here is the spectroscopic signature of perchlorates that are hydrated by water," he explained to me via phone from France Sunday. "These perchlorate salts have salt crystals that have molecules of water in them."

Spying these salts strongly suggests the mystery dark lines on Mars really are as wet as they look, according to Ojha and his co-authors.

Enlarge Image

These wet streaks are a few hundred meters long on the walls of Mars' Garni Crater.

We see hydrated salts occur naturally here on Earth. One well-known example derives its name from an English spring where compounds from local rock and soil dissolve in ground water, float around for a bit, then bind together to create salt molecules that hydrate with the water's molecules. Boil down that water and what remains is known as Epsom salt.

The paper draws a comparison between the apparently wet lines on Mars and Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth, where similar salts offer the desert's "only known refuge for active microbial communities and halophylic prokaryotes."

Ojha cautions that this doesn't mean the briny waters that appear to be flowing on Mars are teeming with microscopic life, because they may just be too intermittent to support anything.

"But what we're saying is that compared to most of Mars in the present day climate, these places (where RSL have been spotted) are probably more habitable than most of the rest of the planet, which is completely bone dry."

 

The revelation of apparent flowing brines on our neighbor might begin to solve the mystery of what causes RSL, but it also opens up a whole new batch of questions.

Because the lines seem to emerge seasonally and then apparently dry up and disappear, scientists now wonder what is recharging the source year after year. Could it be some sort of hidden spring or aquifer? Perhaps melting water ice?

Another paper (PDF link) being presented Monday from lead author Alfred McEwen, the lead scientist for the MRO's high resolution imager, (on which Ojha is also a co-author) suggests that the Martian atmosphere itself might be the source of the salty flows. The basic idea behind this hypothesis is that RSL sites are found in a really diverse set of locations on Mars, including spots and elevations where aquifers or ice would seem less likely to exist.

There's also the question of what the RSL look like at different times of the Martian day. As Ojha explains it, all the MRO's observations of the lines have been taken at mid-afternoon. He suggests that different technology might allow scientists to see what they look like at cooler times of day.

Related stories

• NASA photos sh

I think he's talking about more than just making pickles with Martian mountain brine, but I'd sure love to sample a few of those at my first Red Planet tailgate party.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9GrvTgtYWU

[micxas]

:O

[Comfort]

eseyandi flight lu ellipodam..bore 10gesindi earth

[4Vikram]

eseyandi flight lu ellipodam..bore 10gesindi earth

vuuu padandi podam padandi podam mars ki 

[Comfort]

vuuu padandi podam padandi podam mars ki 

akkada kuda meme rule chestam

[micxas]

akkada kuda meme rule chestam

You mean com cast intranet :giggle:

[micxas]

Or teddy bear internet :giggle:

[Comfort]

You mean com cast intranet @3$%

yes monopoly no democracy..we rule the red planet @3$%

[micxas]

yes monopoly no democracy..we rule the red planet @3$%

A lemon with a red Apple :)

[4Vikram]

You mean com cast intranet @3$%

yes 

[Comfort]

A lemon with a red Apple :)

 

 

yes 

nasty fellows :O

[4Vikram]

A lemon with a red Apple  :)

 

 

4Vikram, on 28 Sept 2015 - 10:55 AM, said:

yes 

nasty fellows  :o

 

anthe anthe,,, Mars lo kuda maade pai cheyi 

[dappusubhani]

mottham develop chesaaka cheppandi mem laakkupothaam 

[Comfort]

anthe anthe,,, Mars lo kuda maade pai cheyi 

cheyyi cheyyi ante cheyyi kosestam akkada undalsindi cheyyi kadu cycle 

 

mottham develop chesaaka cheppandi mem laakkupothaam 

sare..matllallone vachesav :) 

[4Vikram]

mottham develop chesaaka cheppandi mem laakkupothaam 

anukuna inka evaru ilanti quote cheyaledu endi ani, nuve chesnava ee sari inga randi ochi kotuku savandi