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Evidence of Martian Liquid Water
#1
If you guys haven't seen this already:

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-...day-s-mars

Read it and weep.

The MRO has found signs of hydrated minerals and salts on seasonal downhill flows on several craters. Points to briny water flowing downhill.
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#2
Fingers crossed in the near future we'll send a probe to that location to take a look at what's in this water. Double fingers crossed for evidence of a past martian biosphere.
OA Wish list:
  1. DNI
  2. Internal medical system
  3. A dormbot, because domestic chores suck!
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#3
This old article by John M Dollan describes a water-flow on Mars.
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4a6f97fc61c1d
Atmospheric pressure is so low there that any liquid water would start to boil as soon as it formed.
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#4
(09-30-2015, 12:06 AM)Rynn Wrote: Fingers crossed in the near future we'll send a probe to that location to take a look at what's in this water. Double fingers crossed for evidence of a past martian biosphere.

According to Nick Bostrom we should hope that there is no life and has never been any life on Mars:

http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf
"Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people." -- Edward Robert Harrison
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#5
I may be naturally pessimistic, but when I did the fermi equation, including rather a bunch of things he didn't include and my own best guesses for some of the probabilities he assumed....

I got approximately 1 in 100 billion. Coincidentally 100 billion is our approximate estimate for the number of stars in this galaxy.

So I figure it's probably about even odds that we're the only ones.
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#6
I remember reading a short story by Kim Stanley Robinson unrelated to the Mars trilogy (I think the title of the story was Discovering Life or something like that) where, in a near-future Earth of the 20th/21st Century, NASA discovers signs of bacterial life on Mars. The main character despairs over the fact that terraforming Mars will surely not happen in the near future.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lak...ement.html
Reader-friendly article that details what hydrated minerals might be present in these surface features.

Quote: - The best mineral matches to the spectral data are magnesium perchlorate, magnesium chlorate, and sodium perchlorate.

- The presence of perchlorate salts could lower the melting temperature of water at Martian conditions by 40 kelvins, making it much easier for water to melt.
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