Scientists have discovered evidence of flowing salt water on Mars, which has ignited debate about potential alien life within the planet's surface. The images sent from NASA's orbiter show waters descending from rocky slopes.
Information from the orbiter has added new fuel to the discussion on Mars' capability of supporting alien life forms. Scientists have sent numerous space missions in obtaining a variety of evidence that may reveal biological microbial life outside of Earth.
"NASA's Mars Exploration Program keeps bringing us closer to determining whether the Red Planet could harbor life in some form ... and it reaffirms Mars as an important future destination for human exploration," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.
Mars contains many crevices, perhaps remains of dried up bodies of waters, valleys, and rivers. Scientists speculate that millions of years ago, Mars contained lakes and other large bodies of liquid, but over time the water has disappeared, perhaps flowing down beneath the planet's surface through the numerous cracks.
The latest photos of flowing water presents theories that living organisms are able to survive in Mars' underground flowing waters, living in darkness under the planet's surface. There are examples of such organisms on Earth, and it may also hold true on Mars.
The water shows up as dark-colored, finger-like streaks flowing down from various slopes and crevices. Based on seasonal photos, the water patterns appear to grow or recede depending on the season. Scientists hypothesize that the briny water could appear and disappear based on the winter or summer months on the Red Planet.
"We expect water on Mars to be briny, to be salty, because we know that the surface is salty from all of the past landers and rovers. ... Furthermore, the salt serves to depress the freezing point of the water, so in places where it's below freezing, we see this activity, it is still plausible for that to be salty water," said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona.
The theory of Mars holding briny salty water is connected to its freezing point. The more salt water contains, the lower the freezing temperature. Based on McEwen's observations, the apparent unfrozen flowing waters were spotted on steeper slopes as it descends at warmer seasonal months. Water streaks on Mars are thought to be hundreds of years old.
Evidence from Mar's flowing waters could bring stronger speculations of life outside of planet Earth. Click "START" to see other planets and moons that have the potential to support alien life.
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Water flows that appear in spring and summer on a slope inside Mars' Newton crater are shown in this combination of orbital imagery with 3-D modeling in this NASA handout photo released to Reuters August 4, 2011. This image has been reprojected to show a view of a slope as it would be seen from a helicopter inside the crater, with a synthetic Mars-like sky.
ReutersPast discoveries of microbes within the cloud layers above the planet’s surface may prove that Venus contains supportive climates to sustain life.Handout picture released June 14, 2005 shows an artist's conception of a newly discovered planet being shown as a hot, rocky, geologically active world glowing in the deep red light of its nearby parent star, the M dwarf Gliese 876. The heat and the reddish light are among the few things about the new planet that are certain, depending on the thickness and composition of its atmosphere - if any - it could range from being a barren, cratered ball of rock like Mercury or the Moon, to being a featureless, cloud-shrouded cue-ball like Venus.
ReutersTitan is Saturn’s largest moon and was discovered to hold liquid lakes. Based on the chemistry of the atmosphere, it is hypothesized that living organisms on the planet are producing methane.A handout photograph shows the first flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn's moon TitanReutersJupiter planet.ReutersSimilar to Ganymede and Callisto, Europe is believed to contain water under its layers of ice. Scientists believe that warmer waters exists near the bottom of the ocean.New Horizons took this image of the icy moon Europa rising above Jupiter's cloud tops after the spacecraft's closest approach to Jupiter. The spacecraft was 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Jupiter and 3 million kilometers (1.8 million miles) from Europa when the picture was taken.
ReutersOne of Saturn’s moons, it is believed that geothermal activity exists under the ice layer.Plumes, both large and small, spray water ice from multiple locations along the famed "tiger stripes" near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus in this NASA handout photo released on June 22, 2011. The Cassini spacecraft has discovered the best evidence yet for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft's direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon. The tiger stripes are fissures that spray icy particles, water vapor and organic compounds. More than 30 individual jets of different sizes can be seen in this image and more than 20 of them had not been identified before. This mosaic was created from two high-resolution images that were captured by the narrow-angle camera when NASA's Cassini spacecraft flew past Enceladus and through the jets on Nov. 21, 2009.
ReutersGanymede is the largest moon in Jupiter’s orbit and may contain an underground ocean.The solar system's largest moon, Ganymede, is captured here alongside the planet Jupiter in this picture taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on December 3, 2000. Ganymede is larger than the planets Mercury and Pluto and Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Both Ganymede and Titan have greater surface area than the entire Eurasian continent on our planet. Cassini was 26.5 million kilometers (16.5 million miles) from Ganymede when this image was taken. The smallest visible features are about 160 kilometers (about 100 miles) across.ReutersImages of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, from the Galileo and Voyager space missions show a bright flat surface that scientists said on February 28, 2001 was probably caused by eruptions of icy volcanic material. The scientists believe the data is evidence of water or slush that emerged one billion years ago. The moon is shown during Galileo's 14th orbit of Jupiter in January 1999.ReutersCallisto is one of Jupiter’s moons and may also contain an underground ocean that may support living microbes and plants.This photo, taken in May 2001 and released by NASA on August 22, 2001, is the only complete global color image of Jupiter's moon Callisto obtained by Galileo, which has been orbiting the planet since December 1995. The ice and rock surface of Callisto, which is about the same size as the planet Mercury, is the most heavily cratered of any moon in the solar system, signifying that it is geologically 'dead,' project scientist James Klemaszewski of the Academic Research Lab in Phoenix, Arizona said.
Reuters
