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Water!: Curiosity Rover Finds Ancient Riverbed On Mars

September 28, 2012 / aha!, but where did it all go?!, cooooooool, curiousity, curiousity killed my roommate, dum dum dum!, evidence, hooray!, is there life on maaaaaaaars (that was david bowie), mars, neato, outerspace, pictures, planets, proof, river? that looks like a creek or brook tops, rover, science!, water

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In outerspace news, the Curiosity Rover just beamed back some pictures to earth that scientists are saying provide proof-positive evidence that flowing water once existed on the red planet. Cool, now maybe if we time traveled back a billion years we could drink it.

Scientists are studying the images of stones cemented into a layer of conglomerate rock. The sizes and shapes of stones offer clues to the speed and distance of a long-ago stream's flow.


"From the size of gravels it carried, we can interpret the water was moving about 3 feet per second, with a depth somewhere between ankle and hip deep," said Curiosity science co-investigator William Dietrich of the University of California, Berkeley. "Plenty of papers have been written about channels on Mars with many different hypotheses about the flows in them. This is the first time we're actually seeing water-transported gravel on Mars. This is a transition from speculation about the size of streambed material to direct observation of it."

Damn, they even calculated how fast the water was moving! That's science right there. SCIENCE, BROBRO. I love that stuff. E equals McSquares and all that.

Hit the jump for a closeup with the head of a peen-shaped rock circled for good measure.

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Thanks to Jacob and MC Nekkid P, who want there to be water on Mars NOW so it won't be so expensive to build a water park there when we finally colonize that mother.

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There are Comments
  • ZomBBombeR

    All the mars theories going on at the moment are making me think way too hard for my liking, but on GW's note what if thats not a peen shaped rock but rather a fossilized martian dong?? something to think about.

  • You DO NOT want to find water on Mars.
    http://static.bbci.co.uk/progr...

  • ZomBBombeR

    Thank you for that lol.

  • I do wonder if this planet may have underground water areas. Water might of seeped through the ground or there were some thirsty alien invaders. Anyway, this is a great find.

  • BillGatesIsYourDaddy

    So when the core cooled the water seeped underground and then froze? In the end, all we need is to slingshot Arnold Schwarzenegger up to Mars and kick start that machine to convert all that ice into oxygen and then we are set.

  • the atmosphere would still leak out into space since Mars has a weak magnetic field.

  • BillGatesIsYourDaddy

    restart the core. we have a movie explaining how for that scenario too.

  • So we just need to slingshot a giant nuclear bullet in the shape of Arnold Shawartzchaninja into the core of Mars?

  • BillGatesIsYourDaddy

    We have always known there was water on Mars. We have known there to be oceans just like here on Earth. Answer the question of what happened to it all.

  • The atmosphere went to crap and it all went away

  • BillGatesIsYourDaddy

    yes...but why? why did Mars lose it's atmosphere and we kept ours?

  • because the human race use to live on Mars and pollution destroyed the atmosphere so we moved to Earth. Now we're doing the same thing to this planet. The space ship crash is what killed off the dinosaurs.

  • ZomBBombeR

    wow that seems plausible, kudos to thinking of that before me lol. also explains why the mayans knew about helicopters and we had to re-learn the technology after their civilization collapsed.

  • it does make one wonder doesn't it

  • MC

    Ha ha ha! Your theory is intriguing, may I ask what scientific establishment you represent? I am greatly interested in your theoretical research on Mars beings Ms. Trout. A big wet kiss!, Montgomery Charlemagne the VI.

  • no establishment ^_^ just my own ideas at work, and a big wet kiss! to you too. LOL

  • Solar wind. The Earth has a magnetic field to shield our atmosphere. Mars does not.

  • Televise

    To go a step further, mars used to have an active tectonics system like earth. This is where the magnetic field comes from. When these functions ceased on Mars, and the core cooled, there was.nothing left to keep the atmosphere in place. It isn't like gravity alone makes an atmosphere, or an alien race came with the giant vacuum from space balls and stole all the air.

  • maybe whatever the humans who lived there eons ago had some sort of new tech they were playing with and it screwed up the plates. Like trying to harness their power for energy and something went wrong causing the plates to stop moving. Maybe not all at once but slowly so they had time to realize what was happening and move to Earth but not enough time to try and fix it.

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