Scummy transients FOUND ON MARS by NASA rover Hard on the heels of news from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that Mars could have extensive sub-surface glaciers, Curiosity Rover has gone a step better and found evidence of “transient” liquid water. It's neither pure enough nor (as a liquid) plentiful enough to support life, but it's still enough to get the boffinry …
This post has been deleted by its author
We've also learnt that any attempt to send humans to Mars is much easier than we thought. All that lovely water for breathing, drinking and storing energy. Mars One are going to have to update their mission plan - mining a glacier will be simple compared to cooking soil to collect water.
This post has been deleted by its author
Far from improving my self-esteem, it's made me feel rather guilty. My intention was to conform to the Reg posting style, which usually has much in common with the fish-slapping dance.
I hope your cold gets better soon.
... making the Mornington Crescent move before actually declaring "the game has begun" results in The Lovely Samantha incinerating the potential gamer with her steely glare.
Shall we start from scratch? Farringdon. (Ferns are proto-plants, after all ;-)
"Its also a good herbicide, so forget any thoughts of plant-like life"
I think any thoughts of plant like life on mars were pretty much dispelled when the first probes did a flyby back in the 60s.
Anyway, just because a chemical is poisonous to earth life doesn't mean it'll be poisonous to alien life. In fact any alien life evolving in a perchlorate saturated enviroment would probably end up using them in their biology and would find earth soil at best pretty useless and at worst toxic in return.
@boltar and generally,
What puzzled the people who before ca 1930 speculated on the origin of life on Earth was, how could life get started in an oxidising environment?
Then astronomers realised the universe was mostly hydrogen - had to be to explain our sun - and people realised that life here began in a reducing or at least neutral environment.
I cannot see how any kind of life could survive a perchlorate environment, unless it is at most a trace component.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
