Thanks, Nick, for the clarification. I'd start burbling about "aqueous solutions" if I thought it wouldn't confuse things even more. Water, water everywhere but drink it and you'll die. A painful, horrifying death.
Our problem, perhaps, is that all these other chemical species are relatively rare on Earth, so we don't think about them in connection with Water on Mars. And yet there are so many signs that liquid water as we know it is and has always been rare on Mars. Not absent, and fairly common as ice and permafrost. But as a liquid water is and has probably been very rare, sulfuric and other acids possibly being more common due to the chemical structure of Mars itself.
If we propose something other than "water" as the liquid that has undoubtedly coursed and flooded and ponded across the surface of Mars many times over long ages, it's going to change a lot of thinking, particularly about life on Mars. It doesn't mean there hasn't been or can't be or isn't life on Mars. But if it is or has been there -- anywhere -- it's probably not going to fit expectations.
Space/Science » in reply to Ummm...
Volatiles
The whole thread (29 posts)
- Ancient Mars was wet and diverse....
- Wet yes, but wet with what?
- re: Wet yes, but wet with what?
- re: Wet yes, but wet with what?
- Unfortunately
- re: Wet yes, but wet with what?
- re: Wet yes, but wet with what?
- all still too early
- Rivers flowed WHEN it rained *
- re: Ancient Mars was wet and diverse.... to Marsbug below:
- Wet yes, but wet with what?