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Comment by bootload | Hacker News Reader

"... NASA's Curiosity rover mission has found evidence a stream once ran vigorously across the area on Mars where the rover is driving. There is earlier evidence for the presence of water on Mars, but this evidence -- images of rocks containing ancient streambed gravels -- is the first of its kind ..."

Why isn't this front page, the implications are staggering.

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Part of the reason may be that NASA has been crying wolf before. The 'arsenic life' announcement wasn't that long in the past. So people may be a bit wary until the images have been independently analysed.

"... So people may be a bit wary until the images have been independently analysed...."

Good point. The theory of a flowing river should support all types of evidence at large & small scale: alluvial fans,

"... The imagery shows an alluvial fan of material washed down from the rim, streaked by many apparent channels, sitting uphill of the new finds. ..."

to pebbles and rate of flow of liquids,

"... From the size of gravels it carried, we can interpret the water was moving about 3 feet per second, with a depth somewhere between ankle and hip deep... This is the first time we're actually seeing water-transported gravel on Mars. This is a transition from speculation about the size of streambed material to direct observation of it. ..."

All directly observable evidence, each piece confirming the conclusion.

I guess I'm missing the staggering implications. It's cool, and these particular rocks are fascinating, but what are the implications that are surprising?

Water has always been supposed to have played a role in the state of Gale Crater, and it must have been moving water at some point...

The staggering implication, as someone mentioned in another reply, is that it brings us one step closer to answering whether the existence of water led to existence of lifeforms, alive or dead.

Yup. And in order for there to be flowing water on Mars, conditions had to be much much warmer on the red planet in the past. Warm enough to support Earth-like life.

If life came to Earth aboard a comet (as opposed to developing here), it most likely arrived on Mars as well. In that case, the early solar system was probably teeming with life (seeds), and in that case, it could be very common elsewhere.

Quite so. It means that flowing water existed in this one spot for long enough to lay down conglomerate rocks. That's a pretty damn long time. And that just strengthens the possibility of their being conditions suitable for life that much more.

Also, if there was ever a significant amount of organic matter in that stream, we may be able to find out about it through the SAM instrument. It turns out someone was planning ahead and shipped a gas chromatagraph with a mass spectrometer and laser spectrometer attached. You know, just in case we wanted to pick up some dirt and figure out what the heck sort of complex chemicals are in it. Which we do!

Strong agree.

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