On Monday, September 28, NASA announced that it had found evidence for very salty liquid water on Mars, increasing hopes in the search for alien life.
These dark streaks on the edge of the Garni Crater on Mars are called recurring slope lineae, abbreviated as RSL. They are a few hundred meters long. They are more prominent and “appear to flow” during warm seasons, and diminish during colder seasons. A spectrometer analysis shows evidence of hydrated salts at RSL locations, but only when the streaks are thicker. This suggests that the streaks are caused by salty water. The discovery of water on Mars means that it is even more likely that there is microbial alien life on Mars. "With salty water flowing every Martian year, it is very reasonable that there is something alive there, or still alive from when Mars was a very wet world," says Bill Nye. "If we were to discover evidence of ancient life, or stranger still, something living there now, some sort of Martian microbe, or 'marscrobe,' it would change the way every one of us feels about being alive, about being a living thing in the cosmos." Works Cited: Freeman, David. "Why Bill Nye Is So Pumped About The Mars Water Discovery." The Huffington Post. 30 Sept. 2015. Web. 30 Sept. 2015. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-bill-nye-is-so-pumped-about-the-mars-water-discovery_560af3f6e4b0dd85030995fa>. "NASA Confirms Evidence That Liquid Water Flows on Today’s Mars." NASA. Ed. Gina Anderson. NASA, 28 Sept. 2015. Web. 30 Sept. 2015. <https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars>.
