On Jul/31/2018 at 8:59 AM, Jeff Findley wrote :
In article , says...

On Jul/27/2018 at 6:37 AM, Jeff Findley wrote :
In article ,
says...

Planetary Society Blog

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Liquid Water on Mars! Really for Real This Time (Probably)

Posted: 25 Jul 2018 09:11 AM PDT
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily...rs-really.html

A radar instrument on one of the oldest operational Mars orbiters has
discovered possible evidence of present-day liquid water on Mars.

This is really big news. We really, really need to explore this area to
determine how much water is there and how easy it is to get to. Water
means air to breathe and rocket fuel (CO2 from the atmosphere plus H2O
gives you liquid methane and liquid oxygen).

I agree with you that this is big news, but not for the same reasons. In
my opinion it is interesting for the possibility to find life in there.
For rocket fuel, mining the ice caps is probably an easier way to get
large amounts of water. For an initial base needing smaller amounts of
water (but still many many tonnes), extracting water from the small
amounts of moister in the air should be easier.

There are many means to make rocket fuel, on Mars. But finding life that
has originated independently from the life on Earth would be one of the
biggest scientific discoveries of all time, maybe even the biggest.

Clearly we'll be looking for any signs of life during any mission to
Mars. That's a given. But until we have definitive proof that there is
life, I'm going with the assumption that any life that was there is long
gone. The exception being that there might be single cell organisms in
any areas that actually do have liquid water.

That is also the way I see it. In fact I'm going with the assumption
that there never was any life. But I would really like to know whether
that assumption is true or not. And if there is or was any life, I would
like to know whether it was transported from one planet to another by
hitch hiking on a rock ejected from one of the planets. But if we can
prove that life arose on Mars independently from Earth, that is really
really very interesting.


Alain Fournier