[extropy-chat] brine on Mars might have been found

[Brett Paatsch]

Damien Broderick posted:

> http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/22/1074732523467.html
> 
> By John von Radowitz
> January 22, 2004 - 2:29PM
> 
> Pictures from NASA's roving Mars buggy have astonished 
> scientists by indicating that it may have landed in mud.

Interesting stuff. But I'm a bit surprised that there is not some
process whereby water or the water in brine could not quite
quickly be determined by means better than a visual (i.e. "it
looks like mud"). Perhaps it can but they just haven't done
it yet?  What non-visual test small enough to be carried out by
the buggy would prove the presence of water? 

> The presence of water in the Martian soil could even mean that
> the Viking Mars landers really did detect life on the planet in 1976.

Neat but...

> 
> Positive results from the Viking experiments were dismissed when
> it was realised they could have been produced by an inorganic 
> chemical process. 

>... mud on Mars would rule out this explanation for the strange
> findings. 

Why would this be so? 

Could there not be both a reading from an inorganic chem process 
AND water (perhaps in brine/"mud") as well?
 
This Mars stuff is cool. Just finding some life on another planet
of *any* form would imo be a *very* big deal.  I sometimes wonder
if with all the tech entertainment and speculation if folk can still be
impressed by things that have that extra element of being real rather
than imaginary. Actual rather than speculative. 

What in human history would rival finding life on another planet for 
the first time? Perhaps learning that the earth wasn't flat? That the
sun didn't rotate it? That the earth wasn't the centre of the universe?
That man is biologically an animal? 

It would be interesting to see for real rather than just imagine through
fiction what the worlds cultures and religions would say in response
to the discovery of life (even the simplest life) on Mars. 

Regards,
Brett