New Mars Forums

Considering NASA said they were going to make public significant findings about Mars, what did you think of the coverage the announcement received? I know a lot of people have doubts about if it was really an important announcement to make - but come on it was confirming a lot of past speculation. A scientific theory is just that until its proven - a theory. I consider the water announcement to have been big enough in my eyes to warrant a good coverage on the TV. I don't know what coverage other countries got but here in the UK, I watched the start of the announcement live on FOX, they cut away after a couple of minutes so I changed to CNN, they also cut away, it was only after flipping through say another 10 news channels that I found it on Sky news, tucked away on an interactive screen.
When headlines normally cover celebrity misshaps and affairs - don't you think they could have given reasonable coverage to a subject that probably interests thousands of people in this country alone?
If water is not big enough news for the media to give live coverage to, what do you think is....
A little bug-eyed monster popping up to opportunity and giving its lens a wipe perhaps

Do you mean if they are hematite could there also be signs of life in the past?

They are still normally bound to the planet by gravity, or there would be none at all. It is only when they are acted upon by some external force giving them enough energy to reach an escape velocity which if the motion of the molecules/atoms is in the correct direction means they exit the atmosphere into space.

Liquid water that once drenched the surface sounds good to me.

Only if inside the tube already had a vacuum in it, otherwise it would be full of air (or whatever molecule you'd pumped into it first).

Here's the article in case the link goes dead...

Have you calculated how much energy would be required to get say hydrogen to escape velocity?
If we say the mass of an hydrogen atom is around 1.6735 x 10exp-24 g
And it needs to reach 11200 meters per second, what is the amount of energy required, and furthermore is that amount of energy provided?
Remember that helium would require twice as much energy.

I hope the pasta was good
The image of the trench dug by Opportunity has me almost agreeing with you on this, its probably wishful thinking on my part but the right hand side of the trench in this image, on the 'dug' side has almost a water trickle shadow effect on it. I know there will be a hundred and one explanations for these shadows, but just for a while I'll believe its water marks (not water itself).
When I say almost agreeing, thats only because I need to look at them again, and again, and again.....

I hope when the mission is over (as in no more data coming back) that NASA will compile all of the images onto CD or DVD, it'll take me ages to download them all on my internet connection speed!

One thing I did notice about the image is how loose the spherule on the left looks to be, it could have been dislodged by the rat when it was being scraped but it looks almost as if you could tap it out.

I'm in favour of to start with a half wheel, half track vehicle. Using tracks for the propulsion and wheels for steerings. How would a hovercraft type vehicle work in the Martian gravity/atmosphere, then you don't have to worry about the tyres freezing and breaking or tracks coming loose. A downside to the hovercraft would be it kicking up dust - but not being an expert on such things (having only built a small one that you can not ride   ) I don't know how much dust they create when hovering.

No, it would not raise much higher if you popped the balloon but would again be dispersed into the surrounding atmosphere.
I don't think anything I say will convince you Errorist that the straw would only provide a trickle of molecules into space so I think I'll agree to disagree on the matter, or we could be here for a long time :;):

I liked the line "There is a palpable buzz here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena". So they're certainly onto something, water and biological history sounds good to me, perhaps they 'know' what the blueberries are? Or they have a nice juicy fossil image to show us. Could be an interesting week.