Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Christmas arrived early this year for astronomers. NASA revealed evidence today of water on Mars.
Jed Boal talked with the director of the Clark Planetarium about the importance of this discovery.
For more than a decade scientists have talked about the probability of water on Mars millions of years ago. Where there's water, there might be life.
Seth Jarvis always shows tremendous enthusiasm in his job as director of Clark Planetarium. Today, he's even more amped up.
Seth Jarvis, Director, Clark Planetarium: "As we speak, somewhere on mars, there's probably a gusher of water flowing down."
It's not the smoking gun; scientists at NASA call it the squirting gun.
Evidence from the Mars Global Surveyor of liquid water on Mars right now show gullies carved out by something.
Kenneth Edgett, scientist, Malin Space Science Systems: "By and large the consensus is liquid water. It could be acidic water, slushy water, but H2O is involved. "
These images show a flow on the wall of a crater that was not there in 1999. But the atmospheric pressure is so low it would boil as it flowed. How much water? Scientists say five swimming pools full of water.
Kenneth Edgett, scientist, Malin Space Science Systems: "If you've ever been in the desert in a flash flood situation in an arroyo, you kind of want to get out of the way."
This discovery obviously raises all kinds of new questions: where did it come from? How does it remain stable? Is it safe to send astronauts there? And, is it safe to bring samples back?"
Seth Jarvis, Director, Clark Planetarium: "It's very exciting. Is it weird science fiction? Maybe. But, it is good hard science? Absolutely!"
Instead of talking about the possibility of water elsewhere, scientists will talk about the certainty.
It's a certainty that it happens multiple places in this solar system, that means the odds of it happening in multiple places in the universe go way up, and where there's liquid water there's life.
And the odds of life elsewhere in the universe went way up.
Jarvis says it's time to set our sites on spacecraft orbiting Mars, and a craft to bring samples back to earth.
