Another place has been confirmed as being more habitable than Vegas via Reuters:
Briny water flows during the summer months on Mars, raising the possibility that the planet long thought to be arid could support life today, scientists analyzing data from a NASA spacecraft said on Monday.
Although the source and the chemistry of the water is unknown, the discovery will change scientists’ thinking about whether the planet that is most like Earth in the solar system hosts microbial life beneath its radiation-blasted crust….”Mars is not the dry, arid planet that we thought of in the past. Under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found on Mars,” said Jim Green, the agency’s director of planetary science.
This is just cool.
Open thread
AxelFoley
Mars, bitches!
schrodinger's cat
You know who put water on Mars?
Ben Carson: God.
Davis X. Machina
All we need to do now is select a crack team of a couple dozen ex AEI, Heritage, and Cato interns to go up there and install a low-tax, no-tax, low-regulation, no-regulation regime, and the Free Market — blessed be It – will do the rest.
Yatsuno
Am I the only one who remembers this Doctor Who episode?
bystander
If they don’t know the chemistry of the water, how do they know it’s briny? Further, does this mean more bad news about Clinton’s email?
trollhattan
I so wish we had a few dozen rovers puttering around the joint, reporting back from an array of regions. The big, fancy ones are great but a swarm of smaller, more standardized ones could give us a better sense of the planet as a whole.
Recall seeing what a tiny sliver of the budget NASA now represents compared to its heyday in the ’60s. So sad.
NotMax
Whew. Was worried Mr. Cole wouldn’t be able to mop should he travel there.
:)
Greg
Because salt water ice melts and becomes liquid at a lower temperature than fresh water ice. Mars doesn’t get warm enough for fresh water to liquify.
Richard mayhew
@NotMax: but he could not get out of his space suit so it would be a non Cole injury story
benw
Phew. I was worried what would happen when we finally make this planet uninhabitable. Now I can stop worrying about climate change and all that hassle with recycling and shit. Fire up the coal plants and prepare the interplanetary barges!
MomSense
Let’s hope it works out better than for the poor souls on Bowie Base One.
MomSense
@Yatsuno:
Nope!
Brachiator
It’s might suspicious that these “scientists” make this announcement just before the release of a Hollywood movie called The Martian. Yep. Mighty suspicious.
I bet you folks also believe that astronauts landed on the moon.
More seriously, very cool stuff. And a tip of the hat to the undergraduate whose work helped develop the method used to make this amazing discovery.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/28/us/mars-nasa-announcement/
rikyrah
Leave Mars alone…LOL
Chris
@schrodinger’s cat:
My problem with these people isn’t that they think Goddidit, it’s that they deny how God did it.
You wanna believe the Big Bang was, somehow, set up by the will of some higher power, be my guest. If you want to deny that the Big Bang in fact happened, though, you’re a fucking idiot.
NotMax
@Richard mayhew
Mop handle. Helmet face plate.
The horror, the horror.
bystander
@Greg: Thanks! Sounds bad for bathing and drinking.
Cervantes
@bystander:
Sensible question. If you really want to know the details, read this:
Southern Beale
Also, they found the first biofluorescent sea turtle. WTF is happening. Water on Mars and glowing sea turtles. I AM FREAKING OUT.
Southern Beale
@Brachiator:
I thought the announcement basically ruined the premise of that movie. Because I’ve seen the previews and it shows Matt Damon figuring out how to make water and grow food on a planet that has no water and is not suitable for agriculture. So my first thought was, why does God hate Matt Damon?
Marc
This is big news. We knew that water had flowed on the surface in the past, but this is the first compelling evidence that it is doing so right now. This means that the odds of finding quite a bit of subsurface water just went up a lot. As did the potential complications from current Martian life (albeit microbes)….which is also now looking much more likely.
Baud
But no oil. Sigh.
#Neocons
redshirt
@Marc: Maybe I follow astronomy subjects too closely, but this doesn’t seem like a big deal to me at all. We already knew there was frozen water on Mars. We’ve seen these appearing/disappearing gullies for years. It seemed obvious to me that there is a cycle of limited liquid water on the planet.
It’s not like this is a pond or a stream or anything. It’s probably quite limited underground melting.
Matt Damon could make no use of this water.
trollhattan
I’m filing this under Big Surprises, not the ironic kind.
Oops, linkie.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34377434
Roger Moore
@bystander:
Because if it weren’t, it would freeze and evaporate too fast to create the features they’re seeing. They aren’t sure exactly what salts it contains, but they’re pretty sure it’s chock full of them.
Cervantes
@Marc:
Not exactly. The findings are also consistent with water being absorbed out of the atmosphere.
Hungry Joe
@Southern Beale: BIOFLUORESCENT SEA TURTLES ON MARS??!!! That so cool!
No, wait … damn … DAMN. You had me pretty worked up there for a minute.
tsquared2001
@schrodinger’s cat: Because they don’t have abortions on Mars. Ben Carson has one answer and one answer only for every question.
redshirt
Far more important in my mind is that several moons of Jupiter and Saturn have more water than Earth – and a great deal of it in liquid form.
Enceladus has a 15-30 mile deep ocean beneath its ice crust.
It seems counter-intuitive, but Earth is on the dry side in the solar system. Relatively speaking, there’s not a lot of water here, compared to the ice planets and moons of the outer solar system.
Mandalay
AAAAAAAAGH!…..
She has to be the most dishonest, nasty, worthless candidate of the whole clown car. Trump looks like Lincoln next to her.
glory b
George Zimmerman is retweeting a picture of Trayvon Martin’s body with the caption “Z man is a one man army.”
I’m thinking about Trayvon’s mom and getting upset. If it was my son, I couldn’t take it.
Baud
@Mandalay:
Fiorinaphones!
trollhattan
@glory b:
He’s WHAT?!?
ruemara
@Southern Beale: Because God loves Obama. SATSQ. Also, stay off my planet! Mars is mine!
@trollhattan: yes. He did. Last Friday. Because he’s evil.
benw
@redshirt: Did you ever read Clarke’s “2061”? It’s science involves the water on Europa. I read it a long time ago and remember really enjoying it.
redshirt
Top five places to explore in the solar system:
1. Europa
2. Titan
3. Enceladus
4. Lunar north pole craters (ice water)
5. Calisto – the best planet for future settlement.
Cervantes
@redshirt:
Don’t forget to write.
benw
@Baud: Phiorinafones!
tsquared2001
@Mandalay: That is hilarious. My work colleague has a flip phone. Recently, the hinge on her flip phone broke so she had to upgrade. To another flip phone (6 bucks).
BUT, this flip phone talked to her (Hubby calling, daughter calling, etc) so she had me turn off that feature.
Okay. Maybe it was only hilarious to me.
Hungry Joe
@redshirt: What do you suppose a liter of bottled Saturn-moon water would go for? All the cool kids will want it.
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
Why else did you think her numbers were rising so fast?
Belafon
From Rush Limbaugh (via Daily Kos):
Yep, the discovery of water on Mars is a left wing plot.
Iowa Old Lady
I have a flip phone. Are you saying there’s something wrong with that?
tsquared2001
@glory b: What a fucker. I do wish I believed in karma or even life after death – contemplating his afterlife would let me fall to sleep very easily.
bystander
@Cervantes: Thanks but I like science the same way repubs like their politics: Based on unsourced, simplified reasoning of anonymous posters that requires little more than a few minutes of reading.
tsquared2001
@Iowa Old Lady: Nope. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly and Iowa Old Ladies gotta have flip phones.
Baud
@bystander:
Water flows in, water flows out. You can’t explain that.
redshirt
@Hungry Joe:
Many dozens of millions of dollars, just in terms of the cost of returning it.
Mandalay
@Baud:
Heh….when you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail.
Cruz is a lawyer so he frames his presidency in terms of upholding the Constitution.
Trump is a property developer so he frames his presidency in terms of contract negotiations.
Fiorina is a failed technology CEO so she frames her presidency in terms of the latest electronic gizmo.
Brachiator
Just in time for the holiday season. Looking forward to the recipe using Martian brine water for a juicy Thanksgiving turkey that’s out of this world.
bystander
@Iowa Old Lady: Under President Fiorina, you’d be taken in after the stop and frisk for possession of an unsanctioned electronic device in an effort to evade Homeland Security purview.
redshirt
Remember when mobile phones used to get smaller? Remember when it was cool to have a small phone (Zoolander)? And now we have tablet phones.
I’d like to switch back to a flip phone.
shell
@glory b: Are you sure that isnt a hoax? Hard to believe anyone being that cruel/deluded.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady:
You can’t post on Balloon Juice with a flip phone.
Baud
@Belafon:
Now we know why Obama went there.
tsquared2001
@redshirt: My first generation Android with the slider qwerty keyboard is working just fine for me, despite nephew insisting that it sucks.
Archon
I for one hope they don’t find any life on Mars. If they do that pretty much means the universe is teeming with life which would make Fermi’s paradox even more paradoxical.
redshirt
@Archon: How so?
I’m betting (bacterial) life exists on quite a few moons and planets, enough to make it common.
tsquared2001
Open thread so I will share that I am SO digging Wild with Reese Witherspoon. Not a bad way to spend a vacation day: a cool movie, interactions with you cool people and the realization that God is a ruthless bitch.
At first, I was not a fan of Reese but she has certainly grown on me.
SectionH
@Yatsuno: No you’re not.
Check out Tom Tomorrow’s tweet this morning:
https://twitter.com/tomtomorrow/status/648515285503361024
NotMax
@Hungry Joe
5 quatloos, same as downtown.
/variation on a hoary punchline
catclub
@Archon:
Don’t you mean, “even more scary”? One possible reason we see no teeming life is that something big and dangerous wipes it out.
Archon
@redshirt:
Long story short, life occurring on two planets in the same solar system would suggest that pretty much any planet that has water is likely to have some level of life on it. Since water and planets with water are ubiquitous in our galaxy it would also suggest that hundreds of millions if not billions of planets in our galaxy have some life on it.
So billions of opportunities for intelligent life to appear in our galaxy alone, yet no sign of anything. It makes the paradox more perplexing.
dlm
@Iowa Old Lady: I have a flip phone too. It’s all I need.
Ian
@catclub:
That’s our species calling.
The Other Chuck
@Brachiator: I am so going to name my next album “Deliquescence”
eldorado
youngish bartender told me recently that only old people and drug dealers have flip phones.
maya
@Baud:
Haven’t you heard? The XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXL pipeline is already in the works, even as we blog.
pat
I read the article. I recall that they used some spectroscopic method to identify several salts (chromate? would have to check again.
The significance of SALT water is that it is much more likely to support life.
It took 4 billion years for us to appear in our present form, and we’ve only been here for a couple of tens of thousands of years. Other planets could be in vastly different phases of their evolution.
Marc
@redshirt: We had no idea, until now, whether the stream channels were sporadic and ancient or whether they were new. Mars isn’t geologically active and weathers slowly, so they could very well have been hundreds of millions of years in the past. These are recent, which is why it’s so interesting. They’re changing over time – now. Not only is this decisive evidence – it makes abundant water in the past more probable.
The Other Chuck
@Mandalay: “Measuring the drapes” is a phrase that comes to mind. You go write that app, Carly, have fun with it.
Marc
@Cervantes: Could be. There isn’t much air on Mars, however, so a ground reservoir is a lot more likely.
trollhattan
@tsquared2001:
Plan to see it, haven’t yet. I was sold on early (non-chunky) Reese on first seeing her in “Election.” Very tricky role for such a young actress.
Cervantes
@bystander:
I’ll make a note of that.
trollhattan
@The Other Chuck:
In Carly’s world, “writing apps” is something for the help to do. “And after you’re done, there are leaves in the pool. You know I can’t abide leaves.”
redshirt
@Archon:
Gotchya. I take it from a different perspective. Perhaps life is widespread, but technological life that can use advanced communications methods is highly rare.
There’s no reason to assume that because life exists on a world it will develop eventually into a spacefaring species. Perhaps that’s the real rarity, and life is as common as water.
It’s also possible (though I think unlikely) we’re the first.
Cervantes
@NotMax:
Well, I liked it.
Cervantes
@pat:
Apparently, that’s not done. You must be new here.
Brachiator
@Yatsuno:
Yes, a true Who fan would have titled this thread, The Waters of Mars.
redshirt
I also bet there’s actual alien fish and fish type creatures – some of which might be truly scary – swimming right now in the subterranean oceans of Europa, Titan, Enceladus, and every other moon planet with an ice shell and a liquid ocean beneath.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
The Veronicas of Mars?
pat
@Cervantes:
Teehee. Just a (mostly) lurker. I’ve been reading recently about the evolution of the human species and it is amazing how many millions of years the hominims evolved in different directions before Homo sapiens came along.
Lots of false starts before God finally said, fuck it, the next one is going to be in MY IMAGE. And now I bet He is having second thoughts. “it was a great little planet, and now look at it…..) ;-)
redshirt
@Marc:
We had plenty of ideas prior to today. Those pictures of quite obvious drainage channels are several years old. The lander Phoenix had apparent liquid water on its legs. Frozen water has long been observed as well as the measurement of temperatures above freezing nearer the equator.
Again, I don’t mean to poo-poo this announcement, but for me, since I follow the subject, it’s not surprising at all.
Omnes Omnibus
@pat: He said, before it had really begun, “I prefer the one about my son
I’ve been wading through all this unbelievable junk
And wondering if I should have given the world to the monkeys”
NotMax
@redshirt
Or we have the fortune (for good or ill) to have evolved on the wrong side of the tracks, galaxy-wise.
Brachiator
@tsquared2001:
One of the local digital broadcast stations showed Legally Blonde a couple of weeks ago. Held up pretty well. And I think Reese deserved all the accolades she received for Walk the Line.
redshirt
@NotMax:
Possible, but unlikely. There’s nothing special or not-special about our corner of the galaxy, so it would make little sense for life to be common in this solar system (my thesis) and not therefore common in all solar systems.
I just think people assume too easily that evolution will always create technological spacefaring creatures if life is present on a world. When indeed that is the truly unique thing about Earth, and not the presence of life.
I mean, consider if life exists on Europa, below the 15 mile crust of ice. They live in an ocean world with no idea at all of a world above them. Look at Earth’s oceans. While there are certainly intelligent creatures down there, none of them have used any technology apart from a few limited examples.
Maybe that’s the norm? And it’s humanity that is the true rarity.
Archon
@redshirt:
That would be my guess too, that intelligent space faring civilizations are extremely, extremely rare. It’s entirely possible, maybe even likely that we are the first intelligent species in our galaxy.
(Thinking about intelligent life in other galaxies is almost irrelevant since we are unlikely to ever know.
Brachiator
@trollhattan: Good one.
Life on the Veronicas of Mars?
@redshirt:
You can’t poo-poo it. It’s the confirmation that nails it.
redshirt
@Archon:
There was a real science project recently concluded that searched for alien life in other galaxies based on whether the entire galaxy produced less than expected infrared light – the idea being that super advanced alien societies could harness the energy of their entire galaxy and we could see that via a reduction in expected heat.
They found nothing, but I don’t think this means anything. Even if the survey was accurate in its assumptions, measurements, and analysis, who’s to say it means anything? Ok so there are no alien societies that use their entire galaxy for energy – so what? That seems like an awfully high bar to clear. We of course wouldn’t register on such a survey.
redshirt
@Brachiator:
I find the “confirmation” to be a bit weak too. Because they’ve measured some salts. This is a secondary confirmation, an indirect confirmation. Not that I doubt them – I’m sure it’s true. Just that it’s an inference and not actual evidence of liquid water.
NASA has been critiqued lately of making PR moves in their “Big” announcements and this feels like one of them. That said, I don’t begrudge them at all if it gets more of the general public excited about space stuff.
NotMax
@redshirt
Still cannot ever rule it out. Space being so big and all, the distances between galaxies so vast, that such evidence could appear tomorrow.
;)
@Archon
Or the last.
:)
Marc
@redshirt: You’re right that evidence of flowing water on Mars is old news. But how recent, and how steady, has honestly been a real controversy. In the refereed literature there is a lot of back and forth about whether those surface features were occasional eruptions – basically, catastrophic events – or whether they represented steady running water. Age dating surface features is quite challenging – so if you want to argue against recent surface water you can actually construct a surprisingly good case. In terms of the source, this could be the equivalent of dew – you just wouldn’t expect that sort of thing from such a thin dry atmosphere, but there aren’t any actual good mechanisms, so who knows. (See http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC2015/EPSC2015-838-1.pdf).
What this does is tip the odds in favor of a wetter planet, and make some otherwise reasonable scenarios – namely, that the planet was never really that wet any time recently – a lot less likely.
Jparente
@Yatsuno: Nope. Excellent episode!
Brachiator
@redshirt:
Hence, my earlier joke about the announcement being product placement for the upcoming film, The Martian.
But I give them full credit. It the announcement doesn’t rock your world, that’s between you and the Martian deities.
Meanwhile, did you see the thing about the black and white version of Fury Road before the links were taken down?
http://io9.com/mad-max-black-chrome-is-fury-road-the-way-george-mil-1732519536
Cervantes
@Marc:
We don’t yet know enough about the lower atmosphere to conclude very much.
redshirt
@Marc:
Oh, it should be obvious water once flowed freely on Mars, a long time ago, given the surface features. I thought that was long established. We’re talking about current liquid water. And I felt as if that was generally accepted as a given for 5-10 years now. Not “proven”, necessarily, but a given assumption.
This “proof” seems not much greater than previous evidence, frankly. The only real proof of liquid water on Mars would be seeing/sensing liqud water.
Perhaps there are weather phenomena on Mars that make an “out-watering” more powerful. Like if the temps get relatively wicked hot (40’s). And this can cause an actual stream or at least rivulet where liquid water could be detected on the surface directly.
redshirt
@Brachiator:
Of course. Word is Miller wants to release an official B&W version, and it was supposed to be on the Blue Ray, but nope. I hope it actually exists because I would indeed pay $$$ to see it.
Frankensteinbeck
@redshirt:
The confirmed presence of currently liquid water, as opposed to historical liquid water or current frozen water, vastly increases the likelihood of life on Mars. I cannot sufficiently express just how ridiculously easily life forms once you give it water, the right elements, and any kind of energy source – even strong acids. Scientists keep running experiments, and they keep finding new, even easier and more common circumstances where everything you need to make a functional single celled organism forms spontaneously.
redshirt
@Frankensteinbeck: Don’t get me wrong – I’ve assumed liquid water was on Mars for years. The previous evidence proved it for me, long before this announcement.
Given what we’ve discovered about life on Earth over the past 20 years – bacteria living miles underground, eating rock for energy; black smokers miles under the ocean where diverse communities of life evolves; bacteria floating high up in the atmosphere, on the very edge of space….
There’s few places life can’t exist.
Gravenstone
@Cervantes: Which implies that Mars likely has some form of water cycle. Perhaps with sublimation rather than evaporation, and the deliquescence replacing rain.
Gravenstone
@glory b: “Z man” obviously feels his 15 minutes of fame slipping away and wants to rekindle it. And maybe he can tap into the wingnut welfare circuit one last time along the way.
redshirt
Mars is a TERRIBLE place for colonization, by the way.
There’s nothing there that makes living there easy.
As opposed to a properly sourced asteroid, which could have incredible deposits of highly useful minerals sitting on the surface in large pockets. And water. And sun light.
Consider Mars. Which has really nothing to offer. The soil is rust, the sky is rust, the water is hidden and hard to find. And the gravity is not enough to prevent degradation of the human body.
Space colonies with gravity are the only space based future.
Amusing Alias
NASA announced today the discovery of poisonous water on Mars. The water is full of a chlorine compound (perchlorate); the same stuff we use to kill life in our swimming pools and water supply here on Earth. Although from a PR stand-point NASA naturally did not want to emphasize this fact, this announcement did nothing to advance the possibility of finding current life on Mars. In fact if the surface is being rinsed with an anti-bacterial agent on a daily basis, it probably reduces the chances of finding life on Mars. The possibility, however remote now, still exists, but today there are fewer places to find life on Mars than there were yesterday.
redshirt
@Amusing Alias: This is the skepticism I’m talking about.
Also, Mars is one of the least likely places to find life, compared to the moons of the outer solar system.
redshirt
We already know of methane blooms on Mars which realistically can only be caused by life, but there’s a small chance it’s geologic and so no claim yet.
Cervantes
@Amusing Alias:
Quite the contrary.
We’ve known about the presence of perchlorate on Mars for nearly a decade. It’s in the soil at concentrations that can produce significant amounts of oxygen. It’s toxic to human beings, yes, but, even here on Earth there are microbes that obtain their energy from it (by fiddling with the chlorine content).
Thoughtcrime
@redshirt:
Did you say Europa?
redshirt
@Thoughtcrime: Never heard of it. Is it good?
And yes, I’m sincerely 75% sure there are large fish-like creatures swimming in the warm, liquid oceans of Europa, Titan, Ganymede, Enceladus, and probably 10-20 more moons right now.
These moons have liquid oceans because they are stretched during their orbit around their mother planet. This stretching generates heat, enough to keep a 30 mile deep ocean in liquid form, surrounding the solid core of the moon, and surrounded by a 5-100 mile deep ice surface. Other moons have a rock surface of 1-5 miles, then an ice core of 10 or more miles, with a liquid ocean below that.
Thoughtcrime
@redshirt:
Slow paced, somewhat slim plot, not the greatest character development, but still not bad for such a low budget. It held my interest enough to be worth my time and as a cheap Redbox rental (in my case, free).
And it does make an attempt to be much more scientific and accurate than the space action movies.
Beware though – it uses the Cloverfiled/Blair Witch Project “found video” gimmick to recreate events, although much less “shaky-cam” since it’s primarily on-board cameras.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Is some of that because we found that space is not that habitable? Of course it might also be because we needed to spend the money on the military to fight wars which were fucking stupid and unnecessary but that’s OK, some days you’re the Titanic, some days you’re the iceberg and some days you’re the guy who jumps over board…..
right into the propeller.
Ruckus
@glory b:
People are tweeting back a picture of Trayvon when he was at space camp, trying to show little georgie what an outstanding ass he is.
xenos
@redshirt: Antarctica is a lot easier to colonise but you don’t see excited speculation about it.