Monday, June 08, 2009

Dewdrops on Mars


I've been meaning to post this and kept forgetting about it, but it's better late than never.


Last year, it was announced that the Phoenix lander on Mars had discovered what gave every indication of being a subsurface layer of ice just an inch or two below the top layer of Martian dirt. That was a very important discovery because the widely accepted theory is that abundant liquid water is the primary and essential component of conditions hospitable to life, and that if there is a lot of buried ice on Mars then there is a stronger likelihood that life has existed or still may exist in some form on our neighbor world.


Well, the ante has been raised. Last month, photographs were released of a phenomenon that appeared to be liquid water droplets condensed as dew on the legs of the Phoenix lander. With dew being an unremarkable occurrence on our native planet it is easy to dismiss these possible drops of moisture as being insignificant, but if the conclusion that water exists both as ice and as liquid dew on Mars is correct it is a monumental discovery of enormous significance.


If there is life on Mars, a planet that is right next door to the Earth, it is almost a certainty that life exists everywhere in the universe and is a normal and expected development in the existence of planetary bodies.



We are not alone.



3 Comments:

Blogger Mary K. Goddard said...

that might explain where people like Cheney and Palin and Orally, etc. came from....

9:20 PM  
Blogger Ronni said...

Could we send them back?

11:11 PM  
Blogger Milo Johnson said...

...and waterboard them.

1:04 AM  

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