Study Casts Doubt on Water on Mars' Surface

[Centaur]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It made a big splash when scientists announced in 2006 that images from a NASA spacecraft indicated water apparently had flowed on the surface of Mars in the past decade but new research casts doubt on that finding.

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080229/sc_nm/mars_water_dc

[JonClarke]

Sigh. Other example of a misleading headline. One feature is probably a dry flow, therefore suddenly all gullies on Mars by implication are formed by dry flows despite sinous channels, but and fill bankss, levees, fans, and other features indicating that they were formed by liquid water.

We have gullies formed by dr flows on Earth, but the same logic we have none formed by liquid water here either.

Jon

[Centaur]

Sigh. Other example of a misleading headline. One feature is probably a dry flow, therefore suddenly all gullies on Mars by implication are formed by dry flows despite sinous channels, but and fill bankss, levees, fans, and other features indicating that they were formed by liquid water.

We have gullies formed by dr flows on Earth, but the same logic we have none formed by liquid water here either.

In 2006 the headline proclaimed "LIQUID WATER ON MARS!" Could that have been misleading? It's a shame the way that emotional reactions occur so frequently in this particular realm of scientific inquiry. Hopes and wishes often quash diligent research. NASA knows what the public wants to hear. After the Martian water story was released in 2006, true believers were trumpeting that they knew it all along while everyone else had been closed minded. Even the heart of the usually skeptical "Bad Astronomer" started to melt: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2...water-on-mars/ . Some of the replies from at least one of the participants in that blog demonstrate extreme credulity.

Some of NASA's funding from Congress depends on attempting to find life or at least water. Remember when they got the president to announce possible microbial fossils in a Martian meteorite? Not long after that, one of the chief NASA engineers on the 1990's Mars Pathfinder vehicle was a guest on our TV program. When I showed him fresh news off the wires of European scientists with access to the meteorite claiming the nodules were ordinary chemical formations, he was crestfallen.

[dhd40]

In 2006 the headline proclaimed "LIQUID WATER ON MARS!" Could that have been misleading? It's a shame the way that emotional reactions occur so frequently in this particular realm of scientific inquiry. Hopes and wishes often quash diligent research. NASA knows what the public wants to hear. After the Martian water story was released in 2006, true believers were trumpeting that they knew it all along while everyone else had been closed minded. Even the heart of the usually skeptical "Bad Astronomer" started to melt: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2...water-on-mars/ . Some of the replies from at least one of the participants in that blog demonstrate extreme credulity.

There has been a thread on this here (see: New Spurts of Water Discovered on Mars, Fraser, 07-Dec-2006) and there have been a few sceptical comments on this.

NASA's funding from Congress depends on attempting to find life or at least water.

I don´t think that´s the whole truth. Yes, they have to fight for money. Nothing wrong with that. Would you use arguments like "I´m interested in knowing the compostion of Mars´ atmosphere" without any further explanations?
NASA´s operations may not have been perfect all the time. BUT: From my point of view, they have contributed tremendously to progress in space science (and general science).

[Centaur]

I don´t think that´s the whole truth. Yes, they have to fight for money. Nothing wrong with that. Would you use arguments like "I´m interested in knowing the compostion of Mars´ atmosphere" without any further explanations?

NASA´s operations may not have been perfect all the time. BUT: From my point of view, they have contributed tremendously to progress in space science (and general science).

I totally agree with you. I'm all for NASA scientifically exploring the solar system. I should have qualified my statement by saying, "Some of NASA's funding from Congress depends on attempting to find life or at least water." I first became aware of that many years ago during a conversation with my cousin, physicist John Andelin, who was the head of the science division of the now defunct Congressional Office of Technology Assessment.

[algorithms]

Well, I think the real problem here is how the media sometimes portrays science in progress...often turning a provocative idea into a conclusion.

For the moment at least we cannot say that liquid water has been found on Mars. Perhaps it's there. Perhaps not. But what we can conclude is that given the search has failed to yet produce unequivocal results, the presence of liquid water beneath the surface must be uncompromisingly rare. that fact, in and of itself, is significant.

[erisi236]

This is one of the reasons I'm big on manned exploration of Mars, just imagine what one Astronaut with a shovel could do for the water on Mars debate.

[JonClarke]

In 2006 the headline proclaimed "LIQUID WATER ON MARS!" Could that have been misleading? It's a shame the way that emotional reactions occur so frequently in this particular realm of scientific inquiry. Hopes and wishes often quash diligent research. NASA knows what the public wants to hear. After the Martian water story was released in 2006, true believers were trumpeting that they knew it all along while everyone else had been closed minded. Even the heart of the usually skeptical "Bad Astronomer" started to melt: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2...water-on-mars/ . Some of the replies from at least one of the participants in that blog demonstrate extreme credulity.

Certainly media loves to have headlines that oscillate between extreme statements, that is the problem.

Some of NASA's funding from Congress depends on attempting to find life or at least water. Remember when they got the president to announce possible microbial fossils in a Martian meteorite? Not long after that, one of the chief NASA engineers on the 1990's Mars Pathfinder vehicle was a guest on our TV program. When I showed him fresh news off the wires of European scientists with access to the meteorite claiming the nodules were ordinary chemical formations, he was crestfallen.

By the standards of the day the evidence reported for ALH84001 was very good. It is only with retospect it seems that it was not good enough. But that is how science works, through drawing conclusions and testing them.

Jon

[JonClarke]

Well, I think the real problem here is how the media sometimes portrays science in progress...often turning a provocative idea into a conclusion.

For the moment at least we cannot say that liquid water has been found on Mars. Perhaps it's there. Perhaps not. But what we can conclude is that given the search has failed to yet produce unequivocal results, the presence of liquid water beneath the surface must be uncompromisingly rare. that fact, in and of itself, is significant.

I think that is correct. I don't think there is any doubt that liquid water was very active at ertain times and places in the past, including the very recent past. It is therefore very likely that liquid water continues to play a role on the surface at present. How often and at what scale, we don't know. of course there are many areas on Earth - the Atacama desert for one - that are shaped by flowing water, but have not seen any for decades. On Mars the sales are quite probably longer.

Jon

[Centaur]

Well, I think the real problem here is how the media sometimes portrays science in progress...often turning a provocative idea into a conclusion.

For the moment at least we cannot say that liquid water has been found on Mars. Perhaps it's there. Perhaps not. But what we can conclude is that given the search has failed to yet produce unequivocal results, the presence of liquid water beneath the surface must be uncompromisingly rare. that fact, in and of itself, is significant.

Quite true; I was in the news business for much of my adult life. The media tend to go with scientific stories that might cater to their audiences' hopes and dreams and ignore those which do not. In any event, the time it takes to absolutely prove the negative of a hypothesis can be forever, so this particular issue may be unending.

As I noted earlier, even the Bad Astronomer got trapped by the 2006 report. He later admitted he was overly exuberant. In an earlier post in this thread I provided a link to his blog that followed the allegedly positive results for water. The two below contain reactions to research countering the notion of recent liquid water on Mars.

Bad Astronomy Blog – 2007 SEP 20: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2...-liquid-water/

Bad Astronomy Blog – 2008 MAR 01: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2...ars-maybe-not/

[JonClarke]

None of those show that there is no liquid water on Mars at least locally and on some occasions, only that specific claimed examples (generally borderline ones) do not show it. But even there the arguements against are sometimes equivocal.

The following examples I regard as being near impossible to explain without liquid water:

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/...eases/gullies/

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/june2000/eg_crater/

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/news2002/gullies/

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2006/03/29/

To pick just a few.

Jon

[Jerry]

...Liquid something.

[JonClarke]

...Liquid something.

Indeed. But water is the most likely candidate. CO2 is not liquid under Mars surface conditions. Everything else is very rare and and/or have wrong properties.

Jon

[MentalAvenger]

How dry I am, how dry I am………………

[loglo]

This is one of the reasons I'm big on manned exploration of Mars, just imagine what one Astronaut with a shovel could do for the water on Mars debate.

Make mudpies? :ducks and runs:

[3488]

What about the blueberries, layering & the wierd Wopmay Rock found in Meridiani Planum by MER B Opportunity????

Andrew Brown.

[loglo]

Could I ask how much progress has been made in the last couple of years with understanding the water history of Mars? Short/long, warm/cold, wet/dry? What has been ruled out, what hasn't? Its a pretty hard story to follow in detail for non-geologists, well for this one at least.

[erisi236]

Make mudpies? :ducks and runs:

Possibly

[JonClarke]

Make mudpies? :ducks and runs:

I am sure they would have fun

Jon

[Paul Scott Anderson]

It should be noted that whatever created the recent bright deposits and the older gullies could be two completely different things. So the deposits might be just dust slides, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the gullies themselves were most likely, from the reports I’ve read, originally created by water, even if a long time ago.

Paul

[JonClarke]

It should be noted that whatever created the recent bright deposits and the older gullies could be two completely different things. So the deposits might be just dust slides, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the gullies themselves were most likely, from the reports I’ve read, originally created by water, even if a long time ago.
Paul

Exactly.

Jon