Water on Mars ...

[MindMover]

Mars images show signs of ancient stream

The NASA rover Curiosity has beamed back pictures of bedrock that suggest a fast-moving stream, possibly waist-deep, once flowed on Mars.

There have been previous signs that water existed on the red planet long ago, but the images released on Thursday showing pebbles rounded off, likely by water, offered the most convincing evidence so far of an ancient streambed.

There was "a vigorous flow on the surface of Mars," said chief scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology. "We're really excited about this."

The discovery did not come as a complete surprise. NASA decided to plunk Curiosity down inside Gale Crater near the Martian equator because photos from space hinted that the spot possessed a watery past.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2012/09/201292804730454884.html?utm_content=automate&utm_campaign=Trial6&utm_source=NewSocialFlow&utm_term=plustweets&utm_medium=MasterAccount

[Permanut]

1. I'd like to come back to Earth a thousand years from now..

and see if we survived, if we made it off of this planet, and if this planet survived. Oh, and also if there ever was another Republicon wacko President.

[MichiganVote]

2. All doubtful. We'll be the anonymous dust at one w/the universe like that before us.

[Art_from_Ark]

3. In the year 2525

I'm kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing

[Victor_c3]

4. I'm fairly optimistic

We definitely have our challenges, but I think we can overcome them. Human population is supposed to top off around 2050 and then start its gradual decline down. I've done a lot of reading about this. Most european countries have a birth rate that is below replacement. The birth rate for women in Latin America fell from roughly over 6 kids per woman in the 1960s to something like 2.3 kids today. Many south American countries have birth rates that are lower than the US (Brazil being one of them).

The one thing that statistically has been shown to decrease the birth rate among women is literacy. The more educated women become, the less likely they are to have a bunch of kids. So how do you promote literacy among women? Well, I think you need to feed them first. Once you have a secure source of food you suddenly have extra time and energy to devote to things like school and education.

I know that the world has more than just a problem with population growth and consumption and rising affluence is a problem too. I don't know what to do about that.

The environment is a scary thing for me too, but I have seen a huge improvement in the area where I grew up in my short life (I'm 32 years old). I grew up in the Adirondacks (waaaaay upstate NY) and I remember seeing all of the bog areas that were filled with red (acid rain killed) pine trees. There were no fish in our lakes and many of the local species were disappearing. I go back home now and I don't see any of those dead acid rain trees anymore. The fish populations are coming back, and they are having to put up moose crossing signs because the moose population has made a reappearance back in the area (I believe they were all hunted or died off in the early 1900s). There has been a huge improvement in the environmental health of my area - so we can fix the mess that we've made.