Have I been living under a rock all my life, or did science just become really fascinating this year? (Probably the latter, but the results are not yet in.) From today's LA Times:
NASA scientists announced Wednesday that they have found evidence that water still flows on the surface of Mars in the form of sporadic gushers that increase the possibility that the Red Planet harbors some form of life.
While the two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have been roaming the ground and looking at rocks, finding evidence that water may have covered large expanses of the planet billions of years ago, it was the Mars Global Surveryor spacecraft, originally launched ten years ago, that found evidence of water on the planet now, when it photographed a crater that it had also observed in 2001. Comparing the two photographs, you can see that something in the topography has changed, and scientists believe that it is consistent with the effect of water flowing over the area. Poetically, the Surveyor, which was only expected to function for two years, not ten, went silent not long after making this discovery.
So, if there's water, there could be life. That makes two possible locations of life in our solar system discovered this year—one of Saturn's moons may, too. The rovers are at least a few hundred miles away from the area in question, so it will be a while before we can investigate further.
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