What is the Mechanism?

If you look at some of today's "sidelinks", you'll see more speculation that water--liquid water--might be present under the surface of Mars.

That ties in nicely with today's Mars Picture of the Day. Here we have a shot from a deep pit within a crater located in Noachis Terra. As the text says: "Gullies cut material that mantles the slopes of a deep pit within a crater...Gully channels seem to originate at layer outcrops in the upper walls of the pit. These may have formed by downslope movement of liquid water mixed with debris in the geologically recent martian past. Similar gullies are found throughout much of the martian middle and high latitudes."

There have been a couple of mechanisms suggested for the formation of these gullies. If the MER's actually find liquid water, I suspect one mechanism will become the front runner!

Posted by FredKiesche in Picture of the Day | Home

Previous: ESA's Aurora Program(me)
Next: Duet on Mars

Related
Another "Mechanism" Mystery (Apr 17, 2004)

Advertising

Warning: include(/include/marsshop_individual.html) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.nava/jschuur/sites/martiansoil.com/archives/001916.php on line 43

Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '/include/marsshop_individual.html' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/php5/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/.nava/jschuur/sites/martiansoil.com/archives/001916.php on line 43

Comments

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2846897.stm

this website suggests the same... only this was last year! give us something we DON'T know. :)

Posted by: joe at February 25, 2004 10:43 PM

Sure...we've had pictures and other evidence--all indirect evidence.

Now we've got "feet on the ground" (well, wheels in the sticky dust). And while I'd rather have somebody dragging their (gloved) hand through the dirt, this appears to be a pretty good way of getting confirmation of the indirect evidence.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at February 27, 2004 05:11 PM