Water on Mars

[gimmepie]

On the 28th of September, NASA revealed that they have found evidence of flowing water on the red planet. This is a huge scientific breakthrough for many reasons and something that is already drastically changing our views of Mars.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/28/nasa-scientists-find-evidence-flowing-water-mars

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

I hope this does not result in planning to move human civilization into Mars and destroy its natural resources, much like what we're doing to our own planet right now. The last thing we need is a second planetary water shortage.

 

[Nah]

lol gimme being 6 of the 7 likes on Ben's post

I hope this does not result in planning to move human civilization into Mars and destroy its natural resources, much like what we're doing to our own planet right now. The last thing we need is a second planetary water shortage.

Do you mean in the distant future or the near future? Right now it's far too early to move human civilization to Mars or even to extensively mine it for resources. It's far too costly, takes too long to get there, and there's no guarantee of safe travel to really consider ripping apart the planet for resources anytime soon.

But later on?.....yeah I can see it happening

 

[Sylphiel]

For whatever reason this wasn't what I had in mind whenever I first heard that "news about Mars will be revealed this Monday." I would have also thought, after the news about Pluto the other month, that anything about Mars would seem...not as exciting, I guess?

But no, I was wrong, something like this is definitely still exciting. I was a bit giddy reading about it the other day, because if we can find something like this, then what other kinds of things might we find there?

Ahh. *_* I eagerly await any future discoveries.

And yeah, unless there's no way of ever making it habitable, then I'm almost certain humans settling on Mars (or anywhere else, really) is mostly a matter of time now. Not anytime soon, but eventually.

 

[Aisu]

It's amazing, really, but I can't help but think of what we'll do with that; somewhere in the future, the Earth'll run out of its resources, and if they find Mars habitable enough/can make it habitable enough then they'll go and wreck that planet too. I dunno, I feel like news like that is only received in a "How can we make this work for us?" type of way, but maybe that's my own morbidity.

 

[Crystal Berry]

I would never want to live in mars, but this is still pretty cool. Makes me wonder a bit more if there's alien life out there, and actually I find that pretty fascinating to think about.

 

[gimmepie]

I would never want to live in mars, but this is still pretty cool. Makes me wonder a bit more if there's alien life out there, and actually I find that pretty fascinating to think about.

There may well be extremophile microbial life living in this wet patches of Mars, the trouble is they can't send Curiosity over to them because it has probably been contaminated by Earth's own microbial life.

 

[KetsuekiR]

To add on gimmepie's reply; With the discovery of water now, it's more likely than ever than microbial life exists on Mars and even on Europa and Ganymede, two of Jupiter's moons.

Just the thought of is exciting, isn't it? I mean, water on another planet! Sure, it'll be quite a while till we have the resources and technology to safely explore Mars to it's fullest but now we've got even more reasons to do so! I simply cannot wait to find out more! I just can't!

 

[xVaporeonx]

This is like people saying they would live on the moon. lol I am not apposed to people going out there and "living" but I personally would not.

 

[Livewire]

It's great because it makes people realize that the building blocks of life (water, amino acids/protein structures, basic elemental compounds) do exist off of this planet. It's another one of those stepping stone discoveries, where it opens up an entire realm of possibilities and it makes us re-examine our position in the universe. Where else might liquid water be? Maybe oxygen even?

 

[cacomellas]

What confuses/bothers me is that they actually made this discovery a couple years ago. For some reason it didnt become popular or really get announced until now... Although if we can get that colony on mars that Elon Musk wants to do that would be super cool!

 

[gimmepie]

What confuses/bothers me is that they actually made this discovery a couple years ago. For some reason it didnt become popular or really get announced until now... Although if we can get that colony on mars that Elon Musk wants to do that would be super cool!

It often takes years of further study to confirm things like this, I don't think there's anything to be concerned about.