We've known for a while that there are frozen water deposits just beneath the surface of the Martian poles, but now it seems that there are seasonal streams of liquid water that wind across the red planet's surface. Today, a group of scientists announced their discovery in Science, and told io9 what this liquid water might be like — and whether it changes the prospects for life on Mars.
The watery streams were spotted by NASA's HiRISE Martian orbiter in several different locations on the Martian surface. They look like thin, dark rivulets coming down from the tops of craters - much like mountain streams on Earth. The dark streaks appeared seasonally over a period of three years, so the researchers are relatively certain that they're seeing what might be equivalent to a spring thaw on Earth. But what kind of water could maintain liquid form on the surface of Mars, which is such an icy planet? The answer is that it's probably extremely brackish and packed with salts that lower the freezing temperature of water.
Researchers on the project dubbed these seasonal flows "recurring slope lineae" or RSLs for short.
Plenty more in the article.
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From: pjbasis | #009 I guess when amazing things happen with technology in different areas I find it strange we didn't see it already.
But what do I know? That's cool. I wonder how much water that is exactly.
Did you look at the pictures? Finding this requires looking at presumably huge amounts of land for these tiny differences over time. You can't figure it out from looking at an area once.
**** all, are you serious? I just spent hours the other day reading up on this kind of **** and now you've gone and piqued my interest again. Goodbye afternoon, see ya when I'm done nerding out.