Ditto your thoughts on this Chris. To me, it would be more surprising if there were no evidence of water once present or extant on Mars. The stuff seems to be or have been everywhere except (maybe) where it's too darn hot to stay for long, like Venus and Mercury. Those comets do get around.
Also, my hat's off to those planetary geologists generating a lot of data for past Martian climates from mostly textural evidence plus some minor chemical backup. As geochemists, we tend to belittle the more descriptive sciences, but there is a lot to had there from careful, insightful analysis.
Gary
There is always room for skeptics, and, in planetary science where data are few, lots of room. Planetary scientists sometimes forget the tenuousness of their postulates, and accept theory as fact. We see this whenever we hear the "our model proves ...." statement. When a model is generally accepted, the skeptics become troublemaking iconoclasts.
I "believe" there was water because we have lots of water from the outer solar system to the Earth, with most of the small outerplanetary bodies being about half water, Europa being a little leaner. Nonetheless, it is annoying when the Mars folks use the term "visual evidence of water" when they are interpreting the MGS photos.
Chris
Michael Turner wrote:Not to be the killjoy troublemaker (who, me?), but what I mainly see in this announcement is evidence of *liquid* movement. Isn't "standing body of liquid" the safer hypothesis?
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