Back when i was a sci-fi geek (okay, i still am - i used to have a crush on Data from Star Trek :o ), this was the stuff of my dreams… to find evidence of life on Mars. Obviously, they haven’t found life; according to NASA, they have found evidence that water used to exist. Whether that has created on Mars the conditions for actual life forms - remains an open-ended question.
Ten years ago i’d have been ecstatic. Today, i have to say - i hope, for the sake of any remaining living organisms on that planet, they manage to evade discovery by us. God only knows how we would colonize and exploit them should we discover anything else.
More signs of water found on Mars, BBC, 6 March 2004
A Mars rover has found further evidence that water once existed on the red planet, the US space agency Nasa says.
The fresh signs were discovered by the Nasa rover Spirit, after it bored a hole in volcanic rock. The announcement comes days after its twin, Opportunity - which is exploring the other side of Mars - revealed that rocks there had once been drenched.
The rovers landed in January, and are looking for signs that the planet may once have been able to sustain life. The latest discovery was made at Gusev’s crater. Scientists working with Spirit deduced that water had formed small holes and left mineral deposits. The water there would have been much less than at Opportunity’s site, Meridiani Planum, according to Nasa experts.
“It is by no means the gobs of water at Meridiani, but again it demonstrates that when rocks are made on Mars, fluids are involved,” said Nasa’s Ray Arvidson.
On Tuesday, Nasa said Opportunity had found proof that parts of the planet had in the past been covered in water. The evidence included the rocks’ physical appearance - which pointed to water modification. The rover’s instruments also detected high levels of sulphate salts which on Earth would normally form in water or, after formation, be highly altered by long exposures to water.
“The only way you can form such large concentrations of salt is to dissolve it in water and allow the water to evaporate,” mission scientist Dr Benton Clark said on Tuesday. In particular, Opportunity found jarosite, an iron sulphate mineral which suggests that an acid-rich lake or hot-spring environment might have existed at Meridiani Planum.
“We believe at this place on Mars for some period in time… this was a ground water environment that would have been suitable for life,” said Professor Steve Squyres, one of Nasa’s leading investigators.
“That doesn’t mean that life was there. We don’t know that,” he added.
@ data
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My other favourite character was Geordi, the one who wore the visor. And of course Captain Picard.