Curiosity Finds Evidence of An Ancient Streambed on Mars

[n2doc]

NASA’s Curiosity rover found evidence for an ancient, flowing stream on Mars at a few sites, including the rock outcrop pictured here, which the science team has named “Hottah” after Hottah Lake in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech

The Curiosity rover has come across a place in Gale Crater where ankle-to-hip-deep water once vigorously flowed: an ancient streambed containing evidence of gravel that has been worn by water. At a press briefing today, members of the Mars Science Laboratory team said the rover has found “surprising” outcrops and gravel near the rover landing site that indicate water once flowed in this region, and likely flowed for a long time.

“Too many things that point away from a single burst event,” said Curiosity science co-investigator William Dietrich of the University of California, Berkeley. “I’m comfortable to argue that it is beyond the 1,000 year timescales, even though this is very early on in our findings.”

“Hottah looks like someone jack-hammered up a slab of city sidewalk, but it’s really a tilted block of an ancient streambed,” said Mars Science Laboratory Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology.

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/97620/curiosity-finds-evidence-of-an-ancient-streambed-on-mars/

[hollysmom]

1. I saw it on the news, the anchors were so excited it actually touched me

Yay day for nerds like me (us?)

[Aeroette]

2. That's just amazing! n/t

[UnrepentantLiberal]

3. Cool.

Is it possible that mars once had a magnetic field?

Edit -

"Supergiant" Asteroid Shut Down Mars's Magnetic Field

By Ker Than
National GeographicNews
May 11, 2009

A "supergiant" asteroid several times larger than the one that likely killed the dinosaurs struck Mars with such force that it shut down the planet's magnetic field, scientists say.

Based on the number of largecraterspresent, scientists think very early Mars suffered 15or so giant impacts within a span of about a hundred million years.

Now a new computer model suggests Mars's magnetic field may have been slowly weakened by four especially largeimpacts and then snuffed out completelyby a fifth and final blow.

That impact created the 2,000-mile-wide (3,300-kilometer-wide) Utopia crater, which dates back roughly4.1 billion years,said study team member James Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Maryland.

More: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090511-mars-asteroid.html

[littlemissmartypants]

4. "...gravel that has been worn by water..."

no other fluid...? This is so wonderful! Thank you.

[deutsey]

5. Living in such awe-inspiring times when it comes to space exploration