For those who requested most star-gazers about water on Mars a month in the past, you’d possible be informed there’s proof for liquid H2O prior to now, nevertheless it’s in all probability lengthy gone. How issues can change. First was the massive announcement that liquid water is nonetheless current (in some type). Now, new knowledge from the Curiosity rover suggests there might have been much more of it than first thought, for longer durations of time, with the circumstances wanted to help life.

Curiosity has been investigating sedimentary rock round an space referred to as the Gale crater. The depth of the crater, and the high quality-grained sandstone on the backside trace at a big, lake-like physique of water that remained over an prolonged time period. This, in flip, provides gasoline to the idea Mars as soon as had the appropriate atmospheric strain, and a local weather that did not trigger water to freeze. The query about water on Mars, in fact, can be a preamble to the query concerning the purple planet’s potential to help life.

Curiosity’s findings cannot affirm life on Mars, however they do recommend the important elements for organic soup (water and microbe-pleasant circumstances) have been there. Theories and proof for floor water on Mars have lengthy existed, however often based mostly on the thought of subsurface water bursting up in a one-time occasion, or slower seepage to the floor — or an ocean too saline for something to stay in it. This new knowledge helps the thought of floor water much more conducive to the emergence of life. The workforce behind the findings claiming there is a “tantalizing risk that extraterrestrial life may exist or have been preserved, as a result of the proof of water is so plentiful.”