Phoenix Finds Liquid Water on Mars

Rick Sterling, one of our readers (and a frequent source of “heads-up’s” from his constant data mining of the internet) recently sent us a copy of a paper that declares that globules photographed on one of struts of NASA’s Mars Phoenix lander are in fact liquid water. As anybody who reads this blog (or Dark Mission) knows, my co-author and I have long argued that Mars is suitable for liquid water, even in its currently dormant icy state.

Not only did we successfully predict exactly where NASA would find subsurface water ice based on our steadfastly ignored Mars Tidal Model, we have long held that dark streaks frequently photographed on the Martian sands are from bursting pockets of liquid water.

NASA has maintained that Mars cannot support water in a liquid state since water vapor in the Martian atmosphere was measured by the Viking Orbiter Mars Atmospheric Water Detection instrument. The findings indicated the planet’s atmosphere was too thin and its temperatures too low to allow water in a liquid state. However, Dr. Gil Levin, the principal investigator on the Viking Labeled Release experiment, has argued for years that NASA’s assessment is based on a faulty assumption: namely that the planet’s thin layer of water vapor is evenly distributed throughout the atmosphere. Levin argues that it is far more likely that the water is concentrated in lower three feet of the atmosphere, creating an environment where pressure and temperatures can exceed the triple point of water, at least some of the time. This conclusion supports his long held contention that the positive life signs detected in the LRE were legitimate indications of current microbial life on the Red Planet.

Liquid water is of course crucial to the existence of life in any environment, and NASA has dragged its feet for years on reaching the conclusion that should now be obvious: Mars not only has liquid water at the surface; it has life. However, it also clear that such an admission is now only a matter of time as we follow the “timed release aspirin” model of such revelations that the Brookings Report recommended.

One other aspect of this paper that Rick pointed out was this statement:

“… brines have a large dielectric constant that can cause attenuation of radar signals as that measured by Mars orbiters…”

Now that’s really interesting, because we didn’t know that there were radar signals measured by the Mars orbiters. I wonder; what else might this radar data show?

We’ll see.

So once again, we see there is no discovery about Mars that we can’t figure out years before they’ll admit to it.

Now, when will they get around to admitting Mars was once a moon of a long missing planet? At this rate, not for decades, if ever.

Here’s a link to the Space.com article.