Re: Liquid Water on Mars



Pat Flannery wrote:

But at the depth the "water" is exiting the side of the crater at, the temperature is going to be near the mean Mars temperature at these latitudes.... around -60 C. That's so cold that you'd need something as freeze resistant as a 60-40 glycol/water mixture to keep it liquid: http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF6/680.html
Barring some sort of biological process or underground heating and liquid water in these conditions becomes very unlikely.

I completely agree with you that all 'evidence' for liquid water flows on Mars at *present* is just way too vague and seems very unlikely. Unless they have some data which as yet has not been published I find it way and way too early to make any claim like 'we found liquid water'. What we see on those pictures could have been caused by lots of events of which liquid water seems to me one of the most unlikely explanations.

Something else is 'has there been water in the (FAR) past', there are a lot of surface features which still seem difficult to explain by anything else then liquid water. Several complete 'oceans' of liquid CO2 seem to me just as difficult to explain as oceans of water. But time and time again we just run into one thing: we do not have enough data.

What I can't understand is why they just stick a decent high-powered optical microscope on a lander. You go to the most desolate places on earth, and you'll find recognizable biological forms in a soil sample. Just look for something that has symmetry and isn't a crystal, and it's almost certainly the remnants of life; you start seeing stuff like this, and you know you've found something: http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/epubs/bolide/images/microfossils.jpg

I often get the feeling that to them the worst possible event is sending a high-publicity mission to mars to "search for life" and then afterwards having to admit that the instruments were unable to find any sign of microbes or whatever... That's more or less what happened with the Viking landers and the end result will be that to the general public the question of 'life on mars' has been solved, case closed, Mars is a dead planet covered with rocks and nasty chemicals and why should we send any more spacecraft to it? No more budget, end of mission.

If you like to get budget to send a spacecraft to Mars or any other planet, just state that the planet 'might' harbour life and you stand a change of at least getting mentioned somewhere in the press and getting a budget for it. But NEVER say that your spacecraft is going to solve the puzzle of whether or not there actually is life, searching for water or something like that is okay, you can discuss endlessly about the results and in the meantime send more and more spacecraft. From this position the statements by the PAO seem understandable although they don't have anything to do with science, just publicity to make sure you will get budget for new missions.

One of the things I don't understand is why we not get a bit more of the old Soviet mentality: stick to a proven design. The present marsrovers turn out to be very sturdy and productive and although their airbag landing is not very elegant, it has shown to get you down on the surface even in rough conditions. Then just build ten or twelve more of these rovers, same design but slightly different instruments, make them drive a bit faster (now the navigation software has been improved) and give them slightly more power to climb in and out of craters and just keep sending them out two at a time at every possible launchwindow. Drop them down in craters where you see these "water" flow gullies or at any other place that looks interesting from orbit, there are so many features which require a surface-inspection... Don't waste time and money on new stationary lander-designs which might fail due to as yet unknown bugs (aka MPL), or on big nuclear powered rovers which are too expensive to send in larger amounts, make use of the experience we now get with the present rovers and build on that!

Regards,

Geert.
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