Major MER Science Announcement Tomorrow

Major announcement tommorrow. Given the lineup (Grotzinger and Rubin), I'd say they are going to announce the finding that the water responsible for the hematite was a large lake or sea that was in existence for a long period of time.
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NASA Announces Major Mars Rover Finding on Tuesday, 23 March

NASA will announce a major scientific finding at a Space Science Update (SSU) Tuesday at 2 p.m. EST, in the headquarters Webb Auditorium, 300 E St. SW, Washington. The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity is exploring the martian Meridiani Planum and recently discovered evidence rocks at the landing site have been altered by water.

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe will make opening remarks. SSU panelists:

Dr. Ed Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator, Office of Space Science
Prof. Steve Squyres, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and MER Principal Investigator
Prof. John Grotzinger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass, and a MER Co-investigator
Dr. Dave Rubin, U.S. Geological Survey Sedimentologist at the Pacific Science Center in Santa Cruz, Calif.
Dr. Jim Garvin, NASA Lead Scientist for Mars and the Moon, Office of Space Science, NASA Headquarters

The SSU will be carried live on NASA TV with two-way question-and-answer capability for reporters covering the event from participating NASA centers. NASA TV is available on AMC-9, transponder 9C, C-Band, located at 85 degrees west longitude. The frequency is 3880.0 MHz. Polarization is vertical, and audio is monaural at 6.80 MHz.

For audio only of the broadcast call: 321/867-1220/1240/1260. For a live webcast of the briefing and information about NASA TV on the Internet, visit:

The water is old news. I see fossils in some of the photographs, and it's not my imagination. They had better address the larger picture everyone is seeing.

Not everyone. I haven't seen any fossils.

The area could have very well been a lake or a sea. The other day I came across this interesting crater, not too far from Opportunity's landing site at Meridiani. Looks like the meteorite has punched through two distinct layers of that bedrock material.

http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/mer2003/mocs/Images/E03-01203/

March 22, 2004

It could have very well been a sea, and clearly the sea is now gone, but the ice bearing strata under it still remain. All of the fresh craters in the area have that look, and the dunes at the very flat bottom of the crater were left by evaporating water.

Thomas Lee Elifritz
http://elifritz.members.atlantic.net

For every potential "fossil" that Amalgamale and mann see, there is someone else who can come up with a potential non-fossil explanation for the "unusual" object...

But the non-fossil explanations are preferable to the fossil explanations. Why? Because the non-fossil explanations do not require the assumption of (1) long-standing bodies of water, (2) advanced multicellular biological development, (3) the random development of something vaguely similar to what might be found on earth, and (4) the random chance that it's been uncovered by wind/erosion and photographed by the rover.

Each assumption must be explained and verified in turn.. for instance, if NASA says, "Water existed in liquid form on mars for 100 million years, and then dried up."

... that statement _KILLS_ any possibility of multicellular life, because it took ~3 billion years for multicellular life to evolve on EARTH.

... well, unless of course there's a NASA conspiracy, or unless Amalgamale or mann somehow can show that life can evolve quicker on mars than it did on earth.

That said...
I think NASA will announce that it is, in fact, in the bottom of a sea, one which was excessively salty, and probably existant for only a relatively _short_ amount of time.

That's a FANTASTIC crater pic, youremi!

I think you might be right about the evaporating water/dunes link, Thomas.

March 22, 2004

Because the non-fossil explanations do not require the assumption of

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Lets take them on one at a time :

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(1) long-standing bodies of water

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We've pretty much established that if Mars is indeed glaciated (iced under) now, and with the type of massive runnoff features we see in the orbital imagery, plus a very large empty northern ocean basin, we've pretty much demonstrated that Mars had a very large body of water sometime after primordial accretion.

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(2) advanced multicellular biological development

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Well we know that microbial life flourished in a very stable environment for billions of years on Earth, but once the oxygen levels reached a certain point, that stable environment spiraled out of control in the snoball glaciation and voila, the cambrian explosion in short geological order. We also know that Mars was subjected to very similar and serious environmental stresses.

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(3) the random development of something vaguely similar to what might be found on earth

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Or, asteroidal panspermia. Besides, we know the laws of physics are not different on Mars, merely the environment is different, thus there is no reason to believe that the resultant life forms would be similar to earth, except when constrained by fundamental chemical and physical laws.

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(4) the random chance that it's been uncovered by wind/erosion and photographed by the rover.

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No plate tectonics, no previous fossil hunters, and everything has been in deep freeze for perhaps millions of years where wind and water erosion has been minimal.

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I think that just about covers it, especially as we know now that water ice is abundant on Mars, making past life quite probable, and extant life quite possible.

Thomas Lee Elifritz
http://elifritz.members.atlantic.net

You know .... The whole reason I used the orginal term "mythology" was to keep it in that context. Religion isn't totally non scientific, it's just very emotional.

If some of the Christians get scared, I guess they'll just have to be reeducated.

For what its worth, i realy dont'know how, to prove i'm alive. mann

By the way, great photographs youremi, that's the most way cool addition we've had to this site in awhile.

mann

Youremi, if there are no tectonic forces on mars, then these deposits could well hold the keys to the mystery we're ultimately looking for. Was there life in this sea?

Despite the self righteous sentiments of some, I say absolutely; and so does my even more skeptical wife, who hates fossil collecting.

The Bunny lives!

In suggesting Martian life forms may be somewhat similar to Earthly life forms, may I ask which of the thousands and tousands of plant and animal species do you refer?

We run the gamut from Blue Whale to protozoan, from Sequoia Gigantea to bacterium. from lichens under Antartic glaciers to bacteria thriving at very hot undersea "smokers". Life forms that aerobic, and a bunch that are anaerobic. Then there are the viruses, too.................

Life here has evolved as necessary to adapt to prevalent conditions. Sometimes those evolutionary adaptations have occurred extremely rapidly.

So I find it easy to expect that living beings - be they bacteria, fungi, or what, will be found on Mars, as some water remains.

I wouldn't expect that the basic geometry for collecting food, would be all that different, the bottom line in life as we know it. Exotic as it may seem, energy conversion or utilization inside a life system should have some key component similarities.

Hey Thanks! I've looked at a lot of craters, this one struck out at me as being one of the most incredible. Considering that Opportunity is only within miles from this crater and we've seen the bedrock and soil up close, you can really start to understand what this crater reveals.

For example, it's reasonable to assume that wind has blown the dark soil (with 'blueberries') away in some places (the light wisps at the bottom of the image).

DOUBLE-LAYER CRATER (COMPLETE IMAGE):

CRATER CLOSE-UP (300% magnification, sharpness added):

This thing really is incredible, especially since we now know that the bedrock is about 1/2 of salt...

Btw, this crater is about 1.2 km across! It's HUGE!

http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/mer2003/mocs/Images/E03-01203/

Yes. Fascinating crater. Anyone know its
approximate diameter? I'm guessing about
30 meters.

Thanks youremi -- our posts crossed in the
ether! The reason I was generally thinking of
larger than opportunity's crater is because
of the evaporative dunes area at the bottom.
Opportunity's crater has a very small such
puddle remnant. If there is some sort of
seasonal subsurface water table, a deeper
crater would create a relatively bigger such
evaporative dunes area at bottom.

Just wonder what on Mars is in the bottom of that thing! Damn, wish we had nuclear power on these rovers...so close and yet so far away....

Whoa! Awesome pics. Youremi, you are the man.

Check these out:

[link]

Those sure look like impact craters THAT HAVE BEEN FILLED WITH SEDIMENT!