Hard Evidence Of Liquid Water On Mars Today
Wash areas, geyser vents, wet soil- and ice!
The most important evidence we can present here is from the NASA web site- and I have to overcome one major objection that some have made first. I have been told that "this is just pictures- you can't tell anything from that!" To those critics I have to say this- if the pictures are not to be trusted, why are there cameras on the Rovers? What are those pictures for?
The answer is this- if we trust our eyes, and we use the data of the cameras, then we cannot discount what we see- we have so many examples to compare the images to and we cannot ignore what the images tell us just because this is Mars. The physics and chemistry is the same. With that in mind, have a look at these images.
| I will start out at the
end- the pictures of actual geyser vents and the runoff channels from
them. This will establish the context that everything will be
presented in.
The lower left of this image shows a rock with a deep slot near it. That is a geyser vent. To the lower right, you can see water runoff has formed the soil exactly as it would on Earth. The water has run downhill (to the right) and into Endurance Crater. The washout area is very clear here; the pinker soil is in a line along the rock, the dark mixture of soil and granules is around it, and the larger (and harder to move) fossils are stuck in the mud in the center of the image. Most important, note that they are covered in a thin layer of pink mud- but the fossils on top of the rocks are dark blue-gray- washed clear of the mud. When the geyser erupts, the water sprays out and washes some spheres clean, while the mud it produces coats the spheres stuck in the soil. Click the image for a full sized view. These are all from Opportunity Sol 118 at the NASA web site. |
 |
|
| Here is the
close-up shot of the geyser vent. This is from Sol 117 and shows no
color but it is a very good image of the vents and how deep they are.
The runoff is even more clear here in how the materials in the mud show radial wash lines extending away from the geyser itself. The presence of the mud is obvious and how it has washed out of the hole is also obvious. I have assembled a stereo anaglyph of the geyser itself so you can see how it extends under the ground and below the rocks. Click here to see the stereo anaglyph. The original images are here at the NASA web site. |
 |
Here is a cross-eyed stereo view of the geyser vent. Sit back from the screen and cross your eyes to view it.
Here I have overlapped four images from Opportunity Sol 117 to create a larger image map showing the geyser vents, the runoff channels, and the erosion of water in the last few days as it appears in the form of channels running around the rock slabs. To see a very large scale image map of this, click here or click the picture. NOTE: large image, of about 660kb.
How large is this geyser vent? If we assume that the spherules are 3mm (a typical size stated by NASA and confirmed by the frame size of the microscopic imager) then we see that each pixel represents about 0.3 mm in the NASA raw images. Given that, the largest vent is 55 mm across (about 2.2 inches). This makes the fumarole above stretch about 110 mm or 4.2 inches.
You can see the wash areas and runoff channels around rocks in this image. The geyser vents (center) erupt and water sprays over the area, cleaning off fossil spherules on the rock surfaces. But mud created by this water washes over the spheres in the channels, covering them. To the upper left center, there is a clear washed out channel around the point of the rock. To left center is a pocket where muddy water dried up, and more wash patterns around the stones. Virtually all the stones are outlined by the passage of liquid water.
From these images we can see what is without a question the action of liquid water on Mars. But can we be certain that this is recent? Yes. Here is why.
Sandstorms are seasonal on Mars and the dust and high-speed winds will quickly cover or remove signs of water unless they are recreated regularly. Knowing about the sandstorms, we have to admit that these signs cannot be more than a few months old. And, seeing the next data, we will be forced to admit that they cannot be more than a few days old, because there is direct evidence of very recent water presence in the following images. In other words, water is present on Mars in liquid form at this moment, and it might erupt from these geysers or beneath other rocks at any time.
So, are there any pictures of water erupting from below a rock recently? Yes. See the next page.