Water On Mars Research Paper

Although we’ve known for a long time that Mars had water, last week NASA confirmed that evidence showed it flowed on its surface. Perhaps the first thoughts of many after this was; Does this mean there is life on mars then? As said often, water is life. It is a component long associated with life and its abundance on earth is what makes life here so diverse and successful.

Well, short answer is that it doesn’t confirm anything. The water is so saturated with salt that anything that could survive would have to be an extremophile. This isn’t hard to imagine considering on earth we are aware of bacteria living in hydrothermal vents and radioactive waste disposal sites.

It certainly is an exciting discovery, but like most great scientific breakthroughs,

Its warm and moist environment could of certainly spawned and be a prime habitat for microorganisms. Most of the water now is frozen in ice caps, in a gaseous state in Mars' summer, and in rarer instances found flowing on warm, steep slopes. (Redd, 2015)

History of water on Mars. Numbers represent how many billions of years ago (Source)

As this blog is concerned with the future of water I will take this opportunity, in light of the new Mars discovery, to relate this to our water filled earth. Some might ask if the Mars of today could be the possible earth of the future. This is very unlikely as Earth is much bigger than Mars, its gravity is also much stronger than that of Mars, as well as, its atmosphere is much thicker. In the case of Mars, the liquid water on its surface evaporated, and with an inadequate means for its atmosphere to hold on to it, water escaped into space and was not allowed to fall back onto its surface. (Redd, 2015)

The earth itself is effective at managing its water supplies so much so in fact it continues to circulate a similar amount "since well before the dinosaurs roamed the planet."(Childs, 2015) It is suggested that the earth will continue to have its water well into the