I feel jaded. I know NASA has new evidence of water on Mars. I know this is true everyday when I wake up, because they've announced it so many over the last 10 years. I don't care any more.
If you're jaded (as am I and the public) do yourself a favor and don't read the article as it's "more of the same". Summary: We can't confirm nor deny that water exists, but there is no smoking gun yadda yadda.
Honestly at this point, if NASA ever finds the proverbial "smoking gun" they'll need to hold some never-seen-before massive press conference with fireworks, giant balloons, and celebrity guests to get anyone's attention.
To be fair, we know there is sometimes liquid water on mars, at least it is incredibly unlikely that there would be none at all, comets crash into it occaisionally, for instance.
Evidence of liquid water regularly occuring near the surface is very exciting though. This isn't cool because they might find H2O, we know that there is H2O, this is cool because having liquid water near the surface increases the chance of finding life.
Essentially, researchers found numerous sloping terrain sites with ferrous and ferric spectrographic signatures that have been rising and falling with temperature. The best explanation seems to be melting briny water. The effect varies a lot from one year to another, and lots of comparable candidate spots don't show any effect.
But you can't learn anything about what's going on from this dumbed-down reference. Here are some better ones -- the two peer-reviewed research papers, and the JPL press release:
Are the rovers too far away to drive there and check up on it? It's amazing to me that it has taken us so long to arrive at such a tentative result on the existence of water on Mars. In a weird way, I find it heartening that there are such unexplained frontiers facing humankind, places where we still grope around blindly.
We have there only ¿three? moving robots there, but IIRC one is not moving and one is not working. And there are some (maybe 10) full static platforms, but I don’t know if any of them is working now.
In its first year on Mars, Curiosity only travelled about 1.6 kilometers. So I imagine it'd have to be pretty damn close for them to risk driving her over there.
Quote: "Water on Mars exists today almost exclusively as ice, with a small amount present in the atmosphere as vapour.[1] The only place where water ice is visible at the surface is at the north polar ice cap.[2] However, abundant water ice is also present beneath the permanent carbon dioxide ice cap at the Martian south pole and in the shallow subsurface at more temperate latitudes.[3][4][5][6] More than five million cubic kilometers of ice have been identified at or near the surface of modern Mars, enough to cover the whole planet to a depth of 35 meters.[7] Even more ice is likely to be locked away in the deep subsurface.[8]"
A quote: "Confirming the presence of water on Mars would undoubtedly be huge, namely because — at least within framework we can understand — it’s fundamental for sustaining life."
This is very misleading -- we already know there's plenty of water on Mars, by way of several lines of evidence. The original observation of seasonal markings doesn't address the issue of water on Mars, for which there's plenty of evidence, but whether the markings result from water briefly flowing downhill as it sublimates (a process measured in seconds because of Mars' low atmospheric pressure), leaving a trail of debris to mark its passing -- a much less dramatic claim.
But these facts won't stop ignorant science journalists from presenting this observation as though it represent some kind of theoretical breakthrough.
Quote: "Water on Mars exists today almost exclusively as ice, with a small amount present in the atmosphere as vapour.[1] The only place where water ice is visible at the surface is at the north polar ice cap.[2] However, abundant water ice is also present beneath the permanent carbon dioxide ice cap at the Martian south pole and in the shallow subsurface at more temperate latitudes.[3][4][5][6] More than five million cubic kilometers of ice have been identified at or near the surface of modern Mars, enough to cover the whole planet to a depth of 35 meters.[7] Even more ice is likely to be locked away in the deep subsurface.[8]"
In other words, contrary to the linked article, the presence of water on Mars is not a new discovery.
We have detected a lot of ice, but we haven't confirmed flowing liquid water yet, and while water can be used to mean the chemical in any phase, it is more commonly used to mean the liquid phase of H2O.
I hate how misleading these silly pop science reporting articles can be.
We know there's water on Mars, that's not interesting. What's new here is that there may be liquid water on Mars at present. That's pretty fascinating because it opens up the possibility of there not just having been life on Mars but there continuing to be life on Mars. Which, I would say, is actually kind of a big deal.
