Salt Water Flows on Mars Today

The salt water flow on Mars is new but the evidence was there for liquid on the surface of Mars from Curiosity.
Looking at this picture from Mars, you can see at the bottom right a small rivulet.
I have highlighted in the pictures below .

The second close up shows a clearance in the soil caused by recent flowing liquid. Note how the size is larger at the top and less deep and then collating into a narrower deeper channel - the action of a fluid. Also note the small size of the rivulet, it would take little wind / gravity for any tiny granules to fall/cover this track and yet it is not covered. Suggesting that the rivulet is fairly recent.

Appreciate Mars is a different planet with different weather system (but still the same physics). Happy to be debunked but please tell me if that is not evidence for recent liquid movement on the surface of Mars

Does the announcement of water shed any more light on the so called lava tubes

a reply to: glend


aren't those what Percival Lowell called the Mars Canals?

a reply to: Picollo30

They are perhaps too small to be detected by earth based telescopes.

a reply to: Christosterone

a reply to: templar knight

I think it's compelling.

Cool beans.

Remember when lots of photos showed clumping and packing in the tracks left behind, and even soil sticking to the wheels of the rovers? I remember saying that's mud in an old forum post about it (same exact behavior seen in red clay here on Earth), therefore a sure sign of water.

Cool that it's confirmed now to some extent. Mars may be mostly a desert on the surface (like salt flats), but I bet it has tons and tons of permafrost if you dig deep enough. I suppose that's good news for anyone bold enough to try going there.

These things may make it foolhardy to bring humans to Mars and make it near suicidal....

.....At least not yet...

The possibility that life forms because of liquid water, it may have pathogens we have absolutely no defense against.


And any complex life forms in Mars if they exist will have a grudge on humans because we offended them by calling them "simple life forms"!

originally posted by: MystikMushroom

In the 1962 the first American orbited the Earth. Seven years later, we landed a man on the Moon. Now, 40 years later we're hitching rides with the Russians to a glorified tree fort in low Earth orbit to watch lettuce grow and observe spiders -- and sending glorified R/C cars to Mars to piddle around without the right sensors to detect life.

*sigh*

This can be summarized in the graph below...

a reply to: AceWombat04

Thanks for the input.
Your explanation, while pedantic, serves the utility of providing a basis for this reply.

When a researcher is plagued by limited, IMPOSED, bandwidth, they only have what is MADE available to make assessments. In this case it causes some adventure in analyzing this small pool of strictly photographic evidence. To be willing to find, and then hold to the evidence while generating a theory while snipers from the 'conservative establishment' wale/wail away, is demonstrably heroic. Skipper's reasoning is immaculate. The information he used was available to anyone including those who were far better off in this realm.

What I have seen is that same group of the 'in crowd' lie and cheat with their obfuscations and deletions in what they DO share.

This entire enterprise has been subverted through academics and security concerns that go without much explanation. Years of careers could be briefened if ALL information as it is gathered is shared with everyone. Since I KNOW (witness here) that there are UFOs it is incumbent upon me to demonstrate disdain for ANY reluctance to explore and then report on the extraterrestrial. Anything that affects my position on that issue is very important to me.

Academic reluctance, control by 'Senior' scientists who have much to lose by way of face, military oversight, Intelligence Agencies, Dark projects, etc, with marginal careerists afraid of a blotch all add up to s..l..o..w when the excitement mounts.

That vetting is fine for making ultimate conclusions. It would be of benefit to us all (I'm old and have helped pay for the Moon Shots.) to get some return on OUR principal. I want to know what they know when they know it. Splashy PR stunts like this revelation suck.

They are a dollar late.

Once again, Skipper spoke boldly and put his own money out there to perform the tasks and disseminate the information he had gathered and made conclusions on. To think that this is just putting out unsupported statements is ignorant and haughtily dismissive of genuine efforts.

I like that TPTB confirm things that are obvious, such as flows and streaks. The fact that they SHOULD have been able to measure water densities and do this within a brief period of these sightings is what annoys me. Warding off the MFers who never believe without authority's full support is something that we do here when we speculate. They suffer the same 'oversight'. They just perform like wimps.

To say that GOOD, THOUGHTFUL DISSECTION of pretty crappy material makes weak soup is wrong. It still needs to be seen as a best effort, best approach, best practice when the geniuses in charge are the only ones who know anything for certain and do not share the best or most recent information.
Especially because they lie.

To make the conclusion, Mars has running water, while supplied with only miserable quality, incomplete data, is a lot more in line with the ethos of this site. Skipper+Nobel
He worked harder than Roentgen.

originally posted by: largo
When a researcher is plagued by limited, IMPOSED, bandwidth, they only have what is MADE available to make assessments. In this case it causes some adventure in analyzing this small pool of strictly photographic evidence. To be willing to find, and then hold to the evidence while generating a theory while snipers from the 'conservative establishment' wale/wail away, is demonstrably heroic.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean, but the hypothesis that these streaks had something to do with water was the leading mainstream explanation. There were competing hypotheses (such as dark soil flows), but as far as I know, the hypothesis that these streaks were caused by water was deemed as reasonable and worthy of study when it was first proposed.

I remember a few years ago, NASA scientists explaining how salts and perchlorates could allow water to persist longer in Mars' low pressure than plain water otherwise could, and that might be an explanation for how the water could persist long enough to cause the streaks.

Another idea from NASA was that it was highly muddy water that was just below the surface, and that mud and surface layer protected it from boiling away in the low pressure.

But I heard nothing at all about these researchers being "snipered" from the "conservative establishment". I think this hypothesis that ended up being proven had the "establishment's" general support from the start. It seemed to me that most scientists thought the streaks could be caused by flowing water, but they understood the need to test and confirm that hypothesis.

What if Mars doesnt have the conditions for life even with water (briny excessively salty and corrosive water) present? Maybe in our planet it is one of the bulding blocks of life but on Mars it may be different anyone thought of that?

originally posted by: Picollo30
What if Mars doesnt have the conditions for life even with water (briny excessively salty and corrosive water) present? Maybe in our planet it is one of the bulding blocks of life but on Mars it may be different anyone thought of that?

"Life as we know it" is easier to find and test for than "life as we don't know it". It is difficult to create methods for determining if life processes are occurring without knowing what those life processes are.

Having said that, astrobiologist, such as NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay, are studying the possibilities of how "life as we don't know it" works in order to hopefully recognize it when they see it, such as the possibility of hydrogen and acetylene-eating liquid methane-using life on Titan. This hypothetical life could use liquid methane as a solvent and transporter of molecules instead of water:

What is Consuming Hydrogen and Acetylene on Titan?

originally posted by: Picollo30
What if Mars doesnt have the conditions for life even with water (briny excessively salty and corrosive water) present? Maybe in our planet it is one of the bulding blocks of life but on Mars it may be different anyone thought of that?

Thats the strong possibility but they believe Mars once had a better atmosphere with large oceans a few billion years ago. We sometimes get hit with martian rocks so perhaps we might find a microbe in one.

Soil sticking to things is not necessarily water, remember the atmosphere on mars is quite thin, and the surface gets a nice UV radiation bake. This would make the environment quite prone to static, withthe differences in static build up being the property of the material.