Serious NASA has discovered liquid water on Mars.

That's neat, I wonder if it is as clean as my tap water. If it is, it contains millions of lifeforms.

In all seriousness though, this is pretty cool. Glad to see that years of looking for flowing water has finally turned into something.
 
"Has discovered" is overstating things a little. They streaks they've found appear to involve flowing water, and I think (and hope) that's what the cause will turn out to be. I'm going to wait for further evidence before considering this to be anything approaching "proof."
 
I'm not convinced. NASA has a history of exaggerating/twisting facts/outright lying about stuff.

Remember that time a few years back when they "found life outside of Earth"?
 
Nev said:
I'm not convinced. NASA has a history of exaggerating/twisting facts/outright lying about stuff.

Remember that time a few years back when they "found life outside of Earth"?
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Nope. I do remember some amateurish, sensationalistic press coverage that exaggerated "evidence possibly pointing toward life" into (very nearly) "ZOMGGG aliens R landing on the White House lawn!!1!"

Proper scientists employ caution and hedge statements with disclaimers unless and until evidence is overwhelming. Good journalists report stories without embellishment, without hyperbole, sticking to facts and naming sources. Inept journalists want to get eyeballs on their stories, and accuracy be damned. This has happened over and over, and "those darned snooty egghead scientists" all too often get blamed for hysteria they had nothing to do with promoting.

In this instance I think NASA has found very strong evidence of liquid water flow. I'm looking forward to more evidence, which I think is going to back up that explanation for the streaks they've observed. But I won't rule out the possibility that another explanation exists.

That right there is what separates good scientists from bad — willingness to accept new evidence, and to refine or reject hypotheses that turn out to contradict that evidence. That's how science works, and that's WHY science works.

*ahem* Who put this soapbox under me? *steps down*
 
Bethany said:
Nope. I do remember some amateurish, sensationalistic press coverage that exaggerated "evidence possibly pointing toward life" into (very nearly) "ZOMGGG aliens R landing on the White House lawn!!1!"
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Nope, that was NASA from the beginning. Even the teaser before the announcement was designed to be as vague as possible while strongly hinting about them having found alien life.
Bethany said:
Proper scientists employ caution and hedge statements with disclaimers unless and until evidence is overwhelming
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This is exactly the opposite of what NASA usually does. They're already treating this water in Mars-thing as a fact and even talking about manned flights to Mars, even though they have no actual evidence of anything atm.
 
We must be reading different news then. I'll stick to the non-popular press, thanks.

[edit] Then again, it could be that they've got evidence so strong that they're willing to put their credibility on the line. By "they" I mean "whoever is being quoted in the media on this story," not "all scientists who work for or with NASA on Mars research." :dryadsmile:
 
There's no doubt they get quoted much differently in professional publications than in, for instance, the Grauniad. Or the Mirror, or any of the other outlets of varying levels of reputation who are running with this story.

In any case, time will tell how accurate the claims of water are. If disproof or counter-evidence are produced, even someone who's now certain of liquid water flow will necessarily change their tune. Otherwise they'll find they have no reputation left among serious scientists. As I said, I reserve judgement pending further evidence, whether pro or con, which I'm sure will be forthcoming.

Regardless of how this turns out we will have learned a great deal more than we knew before. To me, and all proper scientists,* the ultimate goal is to increase our knowledge, not to prove a pet hypothesis.
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* I'm not a scientist per se. But I play one on television work with scientists rather a lot.

[edit] Here we go. NBC is a reasonably reputable news source. Their article contains extended quotations from real NASA scientists. You'll find lots of words like "suggests," "strongest evidence yet," and "appears to confirm" but no claims of absolute proof.

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovat...g-signs-flowing-water-researchers-say-n434881

Regardless of how much the people in the know might think they've got conclusive evidence, they're still using proper scientific caution in their statements. Any outlet reporting certainty on this is simply spreading lazy reporting, very likely exploiting public gullibility and lack of science education for purely commercial purposes (that is, to gain eyeballs and clicks). Not that that's any surprise, but it is seriously disappointing that so many people — I'm not talking about you here, Nev, nor anyone else participating in the thread! — seem to prefer sensation over reality.

I'd much rather have genuine science than gosh-wowie fakery. It might not be as viscerally exciting but it's real.

By all means we should be excited that there's better evidence than ever for liquid water on present-day Mars. It opens many doors for the future. It's important to keep our feet on the ground and our heads in the clouds, keep our humor dry, and keep eating those Powdermilk Biscuits. Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious!
 
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NASA never ever over-exaggerates their minuscule finds in order to justify the pointless money black hole they've always been. And news sites also don't over-blow this kind of news to get views/money. That never happens. At all.

The bits they kind of "overlook" is that this "water" is saturated with salt and only flows when the planet's cold, arid surface heats up enough, and would thus be more of a bother to process than just landing near the poles and processing that into potable water instead.

Also, most versions of these news make it look like colonizing Mars will be Easy Mode and that anyone could go there and live in a new world. Grade A bull:red:, you could smell it from a galaxy away.
 
00Banshee00 said:
Looks like human kind will go to Mars after we finished destroying the Earth.
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Well, that bit of water would hardly help though. Apparently, making Mars inhabitable would take 2000 years or so, that includes creating a suitable atmosphere with algae creating soils for vegetation to grow upon (other than the standard CO2 to O2 conversion algae) and possibly creating an ecosystem similar ours.
Plus the gravity is lower there, whose effects we cannot yet predict. On long term, I mean. That could maybe interfere as well with the terraforming speed...

If they happen to find something that used to be alive in that mess and can analyse it well enough, it would give us great insight on the subject of what aliens function like, since it would be a lifeform which has no common ancestor on the same planet. If I remember well, they found some kind of bacteria on mars but that's all I remember. What would really be great would be a fossilized pluricellular organism.
In the meantime, we got History Channel.
 
The reports I've seen, including the one I linked above, don't exaggerate, distort, or omit important facts in the news story.

If the news sources you read feed you Grade A bull, and you keep relying on those sources instead of using critical thinking skills, it's not entirely the sources who are to blame, is it? The solution's simple and obvious. Find reliable sources, know or learn enough science so you can interpret the reporting sensibly, and you'll be ahead of the game. The alternative? Keep getting information from unreliable sources, fuss and fret and fume, and see how much good that does. I'll go with the former choice.

I find the news story very interesting not because it means everyone will now move to Mars and destroy it — that's not going to happen, folks — but because it means there's a chance we're could find traces of life, past or maybe even present-day, on Mars. Not a big chance, I think, but any chance at all is pretty good considering it's the closest nearly-habitable planet to our own. (Venus is closer at times but it's very unlikely to harbor what we think of as life, and it's extremely difficult to make probes that can last more than a few hours in its baking, corrosive, super-pressurized atmosphere. So Mars it is.)

As for colonizing and wrecking Mars, consider that by international agreement no space program is allowed even to land anywhere near the sites where scientists suspect liquid water is flowing. If there's any chance at all that lifeforms might be at a site, or that conditions at the site could allow any conceivable remnant of terrestrial life that survived the rigorous sterilization that Mars landers undergo prior to launch (not to mention the vacuum and hard radiation of space), then that site is strictly off limits.

Consider also the extremely high costs of sending even a small payload to Mars. At present humanity simply cannot afford to send living explorers or colonists to Mars, sensationalist reporting nothwithstanding.

The most important thing as I see it is to ensure the agreements on protecting other worlds remain intact, that they aren't weakened by renegade nations or grasping corporations. We have the science and we have the technology, though both are in their — not infancy, I'd say, but childhood. It's essential that the laws must keep up, and that they have teeth. Anyone who is genuinely concerned for other planets should work to strengthen and extend the agreements prohibiting the claiming and exploitation of extraterrestrial territories. Join the Planetary Society, for instance, and work for change if you're serious about protecting other worlds. Beats making a big show of being edgy and ironic while doing nothing.

Pirtz said:
If I remember well, they found some kind of bacteria on mars but that's all I remember.
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No bacteria, just some structures in rock that some people have interpreted as possibly being fossilized lifeforms. Few if any scientists accept that interpretation.
 
Yes, probably a one-time neighbor of Sol. They kind of drifted apart over the years, but back in their college days they used to have a great time! Love you too. :dryadhappy:
 
Although it's kinda cool that there's water flowing on Mars, in the end I guess it doesn't matter much.
At most there would be bacteria living there, since I doubt any advanced lifeforms like fish could live on a planet with such a poor magnetic field. But I'm no scientist ofcourse.

Maybe we'll one day send some sophisticated drillbot over to investigate so we can see what's in this water, but I highly doubt humans will go there anytime soon, as in within the next 100 years. Who would be crazy enough to travel for years in some sort of shuttle in order to reach Mars, because the person would definitely be stuck there and die of hunger and thirst or lack of oxygen. There's no launch platform on Mars and its gravity would be too strong to escape without rockets.

So yeah, we'd need a ship that could grow food, filter water and create oxygen. All this is possible, but the ship would need to be very large, as in 'movie spaceship' large. And the ship would need to be able to take off from Mars or have shuttles that can land there and take off again. We don't have the technology for this kind of stuff and as long as humans are too busy fighting eachother we'll never scrounge up our collective resources to make this happen.

All this space stuff is nice, but it's rather depressing to me that we'll never going to visit anything further than the moon. :(
"Space might be the final frontier, but it's made in a Hollywood basement." - RHCP
 
Kyouko Tsukino said:
NASA never ever over-exaggerates their minuscule finds in order to justify the pointless money black hole they've always been.
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You're being a bit hyperbolic, don't you think?

NASA's share of the US federal budget has been less than 1% since 1993, and for the most part, dropping ever since. It looks like quite a lot of money to us as individuals, but that's because we're not a department full of people with overhead and employment caps (government agencies often have to contract out to the private sector because of the limited amount of employees they're allowed).

It's not sexy to talk about these things, but that "money black hole" exists in virtually every aspect of government. Instead of having sour grapes over a science and research-based organization that actually contributes to the public good (see here - http://www.businessinsider.com/everyday-items-developed-by-nasa-2012-8) why don't we put a microscope on the actual "money black holes", like why congress keeps funding the development of vehicles that the military doesn't need or want? (link - http://www.military.com/daily-news/...-to-stop-buying-equipment-it-doesnt-need.html) Why not examine the incestuous relationship between corporate lobbyists and politicians, with their nearly unlimited ability to contribute towards politician campaigns, that nets them unfathomably massive returns just by virtue of not having to pay their fair share in taxes? (link - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1375082)

So what is congress doing to justify their money-devouring, and utterly-useless existence? :p
 
We're not talking about politicians here, at all. Not sure where "hyperbolic" falls (I only know the mathematical concept, and I don't see where this applies with the subject matter) but you're going out of your way to argue about politics in a thread about NASA. I don't even live in the U.S., so the congress doesn't quite matter that much. Third world country problems, and all that.

You're being off-topic. Politicians are a bunch of soulless bastards, yes, but this thread is not about them.

As for the small bit of your post that was actually on topic, that "1%" could feed a lot of people who need it more than wasting time on a deserted wasteland of a planet does - fix this one before it becomes another Mars, then waste your time with hobbies such as the e-peen enlargement career to see which country gets farther out into space. :dryadrolleyes:
 
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