Silicon Valley's Moon Express Inc said it has signed up Lockheed Martin-backed Rocket Lab to launch its robotic spacecraft as it seeks to become the first private venture to reach the moon.
The deal increases its chances of winning a $30 million Google Inc prize for the first privately funded lunar landing. Moon Express was awarded $1 million by Google this year as the only team shooting for the moon to flight test a prototype of its lander.
Under the launch services contract, Rocket Lab, which was founded in New Zealand but is now headquartered in Los Angeles, will use its Electron rocket system to launch three missions of Moon Express' MX-1 lunar lander spacecraft, starting in 2017.
The launches will take place either from New Zealand, where Rocket Lab is building a South Island launch site, or from an American range.
Rocket Lab uses battery-powered rocket engines that are cheaper than traditional engines and are quickly created using 3D printers.
Private companies, including Elon Musk's Space X and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, are increasingly entering the space business following cuts to funding by U.S. space agency NASA.
(The story was refiled to remove extraneous words in paragraph three)
(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Jane Wardell and Edwina Gibbs)
Based on commercials for nutritional supplements, or even a trip down the supermarket aisle, you might get the impression that your food just isn’t nutritious enough. Why just stick to eating fruits and veggies when you can get an extra boost from supplements that put good things like antioxidants into a handy pill?
And that seems like it should be a good idea. If the antioxidants that occur naturally in our food, like broccoli and carrots, are good for us, a supplement with the same thing must also be good. But that’s not quite true.
Antioxidants can help stop damage to our cells
Antioxidants are touted as protectors of our health because they eliminate free-radicals that damage molecules in cells and tissues by grabbing electrons from them, making those molecules, in turn, unstable.
This process can then snowball until a cell dies or even a whole organ collapses, such as in liver failure or heart failure. An antioxidant should stop the electron-grabbing radicals, and keep us healthy.
On this basis, a group of scientists proposed in 1981 the creation of a nutritional supplement to fight free-radicals. They reasoned that since many observational epidemiological studies had shown that people who eat lots of vegetables are at lower risk of colon cancer, heart disease and many other bad conditions, then the “active” ingredient should be identified and put into a pill. They thought that it must be beta-carotene, which helps make carrots orange, because it’s an antioxidant.
But it’s not that simple. The constant interplay between electron acceptors (radicals) and donors (antioxidants) is a finely balanced and very complicated biochemistry at the core of how living cells survive and grow. When there is too much of either acceptors or donors, the system is out of balance, and damage can occur. So extra antioxidants aren’t necessarily a good thing.
But in the late 1980s, two intervention trials, one in Seattle and the other in Finland, started. Interventions trials are hugely expensive to do well, and these were no exception.
For the Seattle trial, approximately 18,000 men and women were randomized in 1988 to receive either a tablet containing beta-carotene or a tablet containing no active ingredient, which is the famous placebo. The plan was to follow the men and women for 10 years; the researchers hypothesized they would observe a lower lung cancer risk in the beta-carotene tablet group, hopefully much lower. But the opposite happened and the trial had to be stopped early because the beta-carotene group suffered significantly more cases of lung cancer than the placebo group. The same thing was seen in the Finland trial.
Importantly, the amount of beta-carotene in the tablet was much higher than occurs naturally in the body in both trials. The researchers assumed that if a little is good, more must be better. They were wrong.
‘Antioxidant’ supplements in general are harmful
And the evidence that when it comes to antioxidants, more isn’t necessarily better, keeps mounting. In 2007 a combined analysis of 68 randomized trials of any antioxidant supplements showed a statistically significant 5% increase in risk of death in the groups taking the supplements compared to the groups taking placebo pills.
When the outcome is total deaths, a 5% increase is huge. The findings were a shock and disconcerting to the research community; the first edict in medicine is to do no harm, yet these trials clearly did harm. The results showed that when individual antioxidant tablets were supplemented with beta-carotene, vitamin A and vitamin E, each significantly increased risk of death. In addition to their role as vitamins, A and E are also antioxidants. Vitamin C and selenium supplements had no effect one way or the other on risk of death.
For otherwise healthy persons, taking antioxidant supplements doesn’t seem to do good, but rather can do harm. However, there might be an exception to this rule.
What happens if you take a low dose?
But are all antioxidant supplements really bad?
A recent multivitamin study that was part of a large trial of physicians called the Physician’s Health Study II based at Harvard offers a clue.
The study began in 1997 with almost 15,000 male doctors who were randomly assigned to take one of four kinds of pills. One was a placebo and the others were either vitamin E, vitamin C or a multivitamin that contained some antioxidants such as a low dose of vitamin E. Because the researchers wanted to use a product available to the public, they decided to use Centrum Silver, a brand of multivitamin manufactured by Pfizer. Other than providing Centrum Silver, Pfizer evidently played no role in the study.
By 2011, about 2,700 of the 15,000 participants had been diagnosed with cancer. The vitamin E and C pills had no impact on risk of cancer in this trial, but the multivitamin group showed an 8% lower risk. The multivitamin contained no iron, which is a good thing. It also contained far less of the nutrients that you tend to find in supplements. For instance, Centrum Silver contains much less vitamin E than what you would find in a typical vitamin E supplement (45 International Units compared to 400 IU).
Just eat your veggies
This highlights a serious problem with all the attempts to put good food in pill form: the dose has been far in excess of what is in the actual foods. For example, wheat germ has the highest concentration of vitamin E tested, yet the tablets used in the trials of vitamin E had more than 10 times this amount. The Western medicine paradigm of “if a little is good, more must be better” is almost never true; for example, water is a good thing, right? But drink too much water in a short time, and you’ll drop dead.
The vegetables that are linked to lower risk of disease contain many nutrients in addition to antioxidants such as beta-carotene. The combination of all these nutrients in a natural source may be the key to their effectiveness and thereby not amenable to a reductionist splitting into one “active ingredient” that can be put into a pill.
I prefer to eat the foods, but if you must take a pill, make it a low dose multivitamin and hold the iron.
Allow us to turn this around and ask, What are you in the mood for? And, more importantly, What makes you feel good throughout the day?
Because, really, that’s what should inform your breakfast decisions.
But can we start somewhere, with real guidelines?
Sure.
“You want to aim for a breakfast that combines good carbs and fiber with some protein and a little healthy fat,” says Kimberly Diamond, MS, CNS. “This first meal gives you a chance to jump-start your nutrition intake for the day, as well as refuel after an eight hour fast.”
(Of course, this assumes you eat breakfast. Not everyone does, and we’re not saying you must.)
How does that translate into food options? Here’s what forms the core of a healthy breakfast:
Whole Grains such as oatmeal, or whole grain bread, pancakes, waffles or muffins. Look for “100% Whole Grain” or “100% Whole Wheat” on the packaging. Or, better yet, make something healthy and scrumptious from scratch.
Low-Fat Dairy like milk or plain yogurt, cottage or other natural cheese.
Fruits and Vegetables — fresh or frozen. For example, top your cereal with berries or add them in to a smoothie; have a glass of unsweetened juice. Veggies can be tossed into an egg scramble or omelet.
Lean Protein, including eggs, peanut butter, lean meat, poultry or fish.
“A mix and match combination of complex carbohydrates (fruits and veggies), fiber (whole grains), protein and a small amount of fat is not only nutrient-dense but keeps you feeling full for hours,” says Diamond.
Research has shown that a high-protein breakfast does a better job of decreasing levels of “the hunger hormone” ghrelin later in the day than one that’s high in carbs. However, if you feel fantastic fueling up on a stack of pancakes, have at it.
With so many options, it sounds like there are no bad choices.
Not so fast. Highly processed cereals that shall go nameless — but are made with white flour, sugar and plenty of unrecognizable ingredients — are probably not a great idea. They can spike your blood glucose levels.
“That’s not only bad for your health, you’ll probably end up with hunger pangs, and an energy crash, soon after eating,” says Diamond. And parents, please note: Legit studies have linked the food dyes in brightly colored cereals and ADHD in kids.
Bagels and doughnuts also shouldn’t be your go-to first choice for pretty much the same reasons.
Fine by me. I love bacon more than bagels.
Well... Many processed breakfast meats, such as bacon and sausage, are high in saturated fat and sodium. Those with cardiovascular issues — or anyone trying to drop a few pounds — should proceed with caution and in moderation. If you need another reason to pass on the Oscar Mayer Thick Cut slices, consider that cured meats have been linked to COPD; and, the nitrates and nitrites in sausage and other red meats have been linked to an increased risk of cancer.
From avocado toast to breakfast tacos or even an apple sandwich, there’s no good reason for a strawberry Pop-Tart to appear on your breakfast table ever again.
This article originally published by Van Winkle’s, vanwinkles.com, the editorial division of Casper Sleep
But, as important as those things are, they are not the main concern of many families who choose homeschooling. According to the surveys conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, 91% of homeschooling parents are more concerned about the environment of schools and want to offer a religious (64%) and/or moral (77%) alternative.
Smaller-scale studies of parental attitudes have found the same thing, from the conservative fathers who try to form a moral cocoon around their children, to African-American families who want to foster a sense of racial pride in their children, to “quiverfull” families trying to have enough children to Christianize the United States by demographic transformation.
Does homeschooling help parents achieve what they want?
Broad social trends
Let’s first look at the broader findings about the success or failure of passing on religious and political beliefs to children.
Given these trends, many conservative religious families have turned to homeschooling as a way to better ensure that their children will grow up to be like them.
Since the publication of my book on the history of the homeschooling movement, I have been publishing weekly reviews of new research about homeschooling. Six recent studies bear directly on the question of homeschooling’s effectiveness as a strategy for passing on belief – three of them based on data drawn from surveys of several thousand people, and three of them based on careful, intensive studies of a smaller group of subjects.
What do the data show?
Baylor University sociologist Jeremy E Uecker found through his analysis of data from the massive National Study of Youth and Religion that the key factor in transferring religious commitment was the level of religiosity of the parents and not the sort of schooling children received.
On average, homeschooled young adults were no more religious than demographically similar young people who attended public or private schools.
Another large-scale study, the Cardus Education Survey, conducted in 2011, likewise found that parental religious devotion is the most important factor for young adult religious commitment.
The Cardus Survey found that homeschooled young adults were not noticeably different in their religious lives from their peers who had attended private religious schools, though they were more religious than peers who had attended public or Catholic schools.
Interestingly, homeschoolers were less political overall.
Cardus researchers David Sikkink and Sarah Skiles’ analysis, based on a second round of the Cardus Education Survey conducted in 2014, found that while adults raised in a Christian homeschool context were a bit more likely to hold conservative theological views, they were less likely to have an active religious life or to be deeply involved in a religious congregation than demographically equivalent public and privately schooled young adults.
Observations of homeschooling families
Indiana University professor Robert Kunzman, in his careful study of six homeschooling families, found that, at least for his sample, homeschooled children tended to become more tolerant and less dogmatic than their parents as they grew up.
Southern Methodist University doctoral student Braden Hoelzle’s case study of four homeschooled college students found that, at least for the students he studied, going to college liberalized homeschoolers raised as conservative Protestants.
He found that the more authoritarian the parenting style, the more pronounced the liberalization tended to be.
Albert Cheng, a doctoral student at the University of Arkansas, found in his study of students at a Christian university that homeschoolers were a bit more tolerant of other views than graduates of private and public schools attending the same university.
In general, both the quantitative and qualitative studies have found that most homeschooled Christian children continued in their faith when they grew up, as did most Christian children who attended public and private schools.
The type of schooling did not really make a lot of difference, especially not the sort of transformative difference many parents who choose it hope for.
If anything, homeschooled children, especially those raised in very conservative homes, tend to liberalize over time, especially if they went on to college.
Beware of the anecdote
These studies are among the most compelling on the question of the religious outcomes of homeschooling. Unfortunately, however, the best studies are not those that are most widely circulated on the internet.
Readers need to be aware that there are more partisan studies that exist.
On the other hand, a poorly designed survey by a critic of unregulated homeschooling found that most former conservative Christian homeschoolers had liberalized significantly, and a substantial minority had jettisoned their families’ religious and political views completely.
So what does it all mean? Anecdotes and biased studies aside, it seems from this emerging body of work that homeschooling itself will not automatically produce adults who share the conservative political, religious and moral beliefs of their parents.
The data also suggest that family climate, especially faithful religious devotion by both parents, delivered in a context of loving nurture, is far more important than where a child goes to school.
Scientists have warned for decades that the overuse of antibiotics leads to the development of drug-resistant bacteria, making it harder to fight infectious disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that drug resistant bacteria cause 23,000 deaths and two million illnesses each year.
But when we think of antibiotic overuse, we don’t generally think of allergies. Research is beginning to suggest that maybe we should.
Allergies are getting more and more common
In the last two to three decades, immunologists and allergists have noted a dramatic increase in the prevalence of allergies. The American Academy of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology reports that some 40%-50% of schoolchildren worldwide are sensitized to one or more allergens. The most common of these are skin allergies such as eczema (10%-17%), respiratory allergies such as asthma and rhinitis (~10%), and food allergies such as those to peanuts (~8%).
This isn’t just happening in the US. Other industrialized countries have seen increases as well.
This rise has mirrored the increased use of antibiotics, particularly in children for common viral infections such as colds and sore throats. Recent studiesshow that they may be connected.
Antibiotics can disrupt the gut microbiome
Why would antibiotics, which we use to fight harmful bacteria, wind up making someone more susceptible to an allergy? While antibiotics fight infections, they also reduce the normal bacteria in our gastrointestinal system, the so-called gut microbiome.
Because of the interplay between gut bacteria and the normal equilibrium of cells of the immune system, the gut microbiome plays an important role in the maturation of the immune response. When this interaction between bacteria and immune cells does not happen, the immune system responds inappropriately to innocuous substances such as food or components of dust. This can result in the development of potentially fatal allergies.
Exposure to the microbes at an early age is important for full maturation of our immune systems. Reducing those microbes may make us feel cleaner, but our immune systems may suffer.
Do more microbes means fewer allergies?
Research done in Europe has shown that children who grow up on farms have a wider diversity of microbes in their gut, and have up to 70% reduced prevalence of allergies and asthma compared to children who did not grow up on farms. This is because exposure to such a wide range of microbes allows our immune systems to undergo balanced maturation, thus providing protection against inappropriate immune responses.
In our attempts to prevent infections, we may be setting the stage for our children to developing life-threatening allergies and asthma.
For instance, a study from 2005 found that infants exposed to antibiotics in the first 4-6 months have a 1.3- to 5-fold higher risk of developing allergy. And infants with reduced bacterial diversity, which can occur with antibiotic use, have increased risk of developing eczema.
And it’s not the just the antibiotics kids take that can make a difference. It’s also the antibiotics their mothers take. The Copenhagen Prospective Study on Asthma in Childhood Cohort, a major longitudinal study of infants born to asthmatic mothers in Denmark, reported that children whose mothers took antibiotics during pregnancy were almost twice as likely to develop asthma compared to children whose mothers did not take antibiotics during pregnancy.
Finally, in mice studies, offspring of mice treated with antibiotics were shown to have an increased likelihood of developing allergies and asthma.
More prescriptions for antibiotics might mean more allergies.
Gary Cameron/Reuters
Why are antibiotics overused?
Physicians and patients know that overusing antibiotics can cause big problems. It seems that a relatively small number of physicians are driving overprescription of antibiotics. A recent study of physician prescribing practices reported that 10% of physicians prescribed antibiotics to 95% of their patients with upper respiratory tract infections.
Health care professionals should not only be concerned about the development of antibiotic resistance, but also the fact that we may be creating another health problem in our patients, and possibly in their children too.
Parents should think carefully about asking physicians for antibiotics in an attempt to treat their children’s common colds and sore throats (or their own), which are often caused by viral infections that don’t respond to them anyway. And doctors should think twice about prescribing antibiotics to treat these illnesses, too.
As we develop new antibiotics, we need to address overuse
As resistant bacteria become a greater problem, we desperately need to develop new antibiotics. The development process for a new antibiotic takes a considerable amount of time (up to 10 years), and drug companies have previously neglected this area of drug development.
Congress has recognized that antibiotic overuse is a major problem and recently passed the 21st Century Cures bill. This bill includes provisions that would create payment incentives from Medicare for hospitals that use new antibiotics.
But this approach would have the perverse effect of increasing the use of any new antibiotics in our arsenal without regard for whether bacterial resistance has developed. This would not only exacerbate the problem of resistance, but potentially lead to more people developing allergies.
Congress should consider more than just supporting increased development of new antibiotics, but also address the core problem of overuse.
This may stave off the further development of antibiotic resistant bacteria and reduce the trend of increasing development of allergies.
US physicist Lawrence Krauss is spreading the gospel of science to Iranians via an outlawed satellite TV network.
Krauss, a professor at Arizona State University and outspoken atheist, recently appeared on the Bread and Roses show to discuss the beauty of science, and the differences between science and religion.
The Farsi/English program is broadcast on New Channel, an outlawed 24-hour TV station that reaches Iranians via satellite TV and the Internet. Bread and Roses explains on its crowdfunding page that while their show is officially banned in Iran, many Iranians "can still access it because 40-60 percent of the population have satellite dishes."
During an interview on Bread and Roses, the physicist pointed out a fundamental difference between science and faith.
"Not knowing is fine," Krauss said. "In fact, it is a central part of science, so it makes it different than religion, because you don't make these assertions about things you can't test, nor do you claim to have absolute knowledge. We learn about the universe, and it keeps surprising us. But the Big Bang really happened... we can measure so many aspects of our universe and it was once smaller and smaller and smaller. We can go back to [the very beginning], but we can get very close."
Krauss also said humans are lucky they can understand the universe at all.
"Quantum theory is weird, but the universe is weird. That's OK. It's not surprising. In some sense, it is surprising that we understand anything about the universe, because the universe isn't created to please us. And, moreover, we evolved in the Savannah and Africa to learn how to escape lions, not to understand quantum mechanics. So it is amazing that we have been able with our brains and the techniques of modern science to learn enough about the universe to discover that at fundamental scales the universe behaves in ways that appears to be crazy."
"But, again, that's the case not because we want it to be the case, but because we measure and that is the case. And the universe is the way it is whether we like it or not," Krauss said. "I think some people find that worrisome but I find it incredibly exciting because it means we can open our mind and be surprised and learn that our myopic picture of what is supposed to be case is not always the case.
"It's not just true for physics, it's true for our ideas of society," he continued. "What we may think is right or wrong based on something people wrote thousands of years ago, we find that now we understand the universe better, those ideas are simply wrong."
Throwing open the doors to the hallowed halls of science, stumped researchers welcomed help from the public Wednesday in solving a number of nagging mysteries about dwarf planet Ceres.
NASA's space probe Dawn, which travelled seven-and-a-half years and some 4.9 billion kilometres to reach Ceres in March this year, is the first to orbit a dwarf planet.
The probe is seeking to learn more about the structure of Ceres, which circles the Sun between Mars and Jupiter, in a bid to better understand the formation of Earth and other planets.
But many of the features of Ceres have left researchers scratching their heads -- including a six-kilometre (four-mile) high protrusion they have dubbed "Lonely Mountain".
"We're having difficulty understanding what made that mountain and we have been getting many suggestions from the public," Dawn's principal investigator Christopher Russell told reporters at a space conference in Nantes, western France.
One fan of the probe sent Russell an email saying the mountain reminded him of some ice structures he had seen in the woods years earlier while living in the US state of Arkansas.
"These ice structures started just poking out (of the ground). Each one of them had a rock or something like that protecting the surface, keeping it cool," Russell said in describing the ice.
"Maybe our lonely mountain was some sort of ice construct," the scientist said, adding: "We're taking suggestions like this very seriously."
Russell said "many suggestions" have poured in from the public but did not provide an exact number.
First classified a planet, then an asteroid, then a "dwarf planet" with some traits of a moon -- the more scientists learn about Ceres, the weirder it becomes.
"We have absolutely no idea what that... is due to," Russell said as he pointed to a blue ring on a map of the planet.
Later, of another unexplained attribute: "Again, I apologise, we haven't solved the source of this white material. We think that it's salt."
Scientists hope to learn more when Dawn moves in closer -- starting in October and into December -- as the spacecraft will descend to its lowest and final orbit at an altitude 375 kilometres.
The probe will continue capturing images of Ceres and collecting higher-resolution data.
The search for extra-terrestrial life just got a big boost from NASA's stunning announcement that it now has its strongest evidence yet of liquid water on Mars.
So did the prospects for human exploration of the red planet because the presence of flowing water could help sustain future manned missions, NASA scientists say.
"We now have great opportunities to be on the right locations on Mars to fully investigate the existence of life on Mars," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science missions.
The evidence advanced by the space agency Monday centers on some unusual streaks found on steep slopes on the Martian surface.
A team of experts concluded in a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience that water played a vital role in the formation of the lines because of the presence of hydrated salt minerals, which contain water molecules.
NASA said the findings "provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars."
"The exciting thing about this announcement is the confirmation of what we suspected -- that this is due to some kind of water feature," Grunsfeld said.
- Viable experiments -
Some day, he said, a manned mission will go to Mars and retrieve samples from the area where the streaks were found by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The former astronaut said he expected NASA's engineers and scientists in the meantime will use their ingenuity to come up with viable experiments to detect the presence of life.
"We have the capability to go there, ask these questions of life on Mars and answer it," said Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science. "Not an abstract question but a concrete one."
Even before Monday's announcement, scientists believed chances were great that microbial life forms exist below the Martian surface, possibly in subterranean aquifers.
"To me the existence of microbial life in the subsurface of Mars has been very high," said Alfred McEwen, a University of Arizona researcher who is the principal investigator for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRise), the powerful camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Life forms probably could only survive below ground because the surface of Mars is so inhospitable, bombarded as it is by ultraviolet rays from the sun that would destroy all life as we know it, say experts, who note that Mars' thin atmosphere would offer little protection.
Michael Meyer, the lead scientist for NASA's Mars exploration program, emphasized that the source of the water that apparently caused the streaks on Mars's surface is not known.
The streaks appear during periods that are less cold and then disappear again when temperatures plunge, a phenomenon that was first observed in 2011.
- Growing plants -
The water could come from below the surface, so it is "imperative" to find other, more accessible places on the planet where the same phenomenon occurs and to look there for subterranean sources of water, Meyer said.
"We only suspect those places exist and we have some kind of scientific evidence that they do," Grunsfeld said. "That is going to be a very exciting area of exploration in the future."
If there is water on Mars in sufficient quantity then it would be possible to grow plants in inflatable greenhouses, he predicted.
Since plants take in carbon dioxide, which is plentiful in Mars, and put out oxygen, they could serve to produce food while at the same time creating breathable environments, he said.
NASA officials are confident that over the next five years they can unlock some of the planet's secrets and thereby help to set the stage for future manned missions to Mars.
In March 2016, NASA will launch a Mars lander called InSight, which for the first time will be able to peer below the Martian surface.
The European Space Agency, as part of its ExoMars program, plans to launch a Mars orbiter in 2016, followed by a robot and exploration platform on the planet's surface two years later, in collaboration with Russia.
The objective of these missions is to detect methane and other signs of biological activity.
Finally, in 2020, the United States will send a new robotic rover similar to but more sophisticated than Curiosity to take Martian soil samples and bring them back to Earth.
The US space agency envisages its first manned mission to Mars in the 2030s, if not sooner.
Religion could be influencing the course of human evolution, atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said in an interview published Tuesday.
Dawkins was discussing memes – a term he coined in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene to describe “unit of cultural transmission” – during an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
Dawkins said that memes spread from one brain to another in a similar way to how genes spread from one body to another.
Cultural memes like religion could also influence the spread of biological genes, he told the Wall Street Journal, and therefore have an impact on human evolution.
"I think what you’re asking is whether [religion] also contributes to genetic evolution – whether the fact that we are evolving in an environment dominated by religion does actually affect gene survival," Dawkins remarked.
"Well, I suppose that if there is a meme that says don’t use contraception or don’t use contraception that works, then that does tend to affect gene propagation, obviously. So that’s the kind of thing that might be going on. But remember that genetic evolution is a very slow process… compared to culture evolution, so we are dealing with two rather disjointed timescales here."
We’ve known for a long time that there’s water on Mars. Now we know – thanks to NASA’s latest announcement – that some of it is at the surface.
Features called recurring slope lineae – dark lines that appear on Mars seasonally – have been shown to have salts from briny water associated with them. It means that water is in its liquid form and is flowing at the surface of Mars today.
According to NASA, the probable mechanism enabling liquid water to exist is a process called deliquescence, where the salts absorb water from the atmosphere and then release it periodically.
But what does this mean for the prospects for life on Mars? The surface of Mars is a rotten place for life, being exposed to ultraviolet radiation that will kill anything pretty quickly. So it all depends on where the water that life requires comes from.
In this case, the water cycle is all at the surface. So any life would be trying to cling on in a very harsh environment. But another option is that it could be from acquifers, the plumbing system in the rock that feeds these seasonal streams.
If so, there might be regions near the surface where the conditions for life exist, which are protected from radiation. Suddenly the prospects for life gets a lot better. And even though the water on Mars appears to be very salty, we do know of extremophiles that are able to live in incredibly salty environments.
We won’t really know until a Mars probe goes to these lineae to have a look what’s there. The Curiosity rover might even be able to do this.
Curiosity landed in Gale crater three years ago and is currently climbing the 5km mountain in the middle of that crater, called Mount Sharp. That mountain contains a layered rock record of Mars' history. Every time the rover stops and analyses a rock, we could learn something that revolutionises our understanding of the history of Mars.
Humans on Mars
The larger implications of this week’s announcement may not relate to life. Water is a precious resource. Having access to it at the surface is a game changer when it comes to human exploration.
Astronauts need it to drink. Separate the oxygen and they can breath it too. And oxygen and hydrogen are the components for rocket fuel. Every kilogram of anything you take to Mars costs around A$3 million.
So having drinking water, oxygen and fuel accessible at the surface suddenly means you have much cheaper options for Mars missions. Future missions will carry further instruments and test technologies that will let us answer these questions.
The Mars 2020 mission is due to launch in 2020 and will involve another big rover – like Curiosity – able to travel large distances over difficult terrain, and with a massive array of analytical tools. One of those experiments is specifically designed for resource utilisation: it will take in the Martian atmosphere and extract oxygen from it.
The tools on this rover will open up even more exciting possibilities relating to life because they’ll be able to see beneath the surface. If there is still life on Mars, that’s where we’ll find it.
Beneath the surface of the red planet
NASA’s InSight mission, launching next year, is the first probe to carry geophysical instruments. The Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) is an extremely sensitive seismometer, built by the French Space Agency.
It is so sensitive that it will be able to detect tidal forces in Mars’ crust generated by its tiny moon, Phobos. It’s the first look we’ll have into the interior of Mars.
SEIS is looking deep. We’ll get better resolution into the near-surface with Mars 2020. One of the headline instruments is a minitiarised ground-penetrating radar package, built by the Norwegian Space Agency.
It will provide centimetre-scale images of the Martian sub-surface, areas accessible to the rovers' drill. And you don’t have to get too deep to get to regions that might sustain life.
So NASA’s latest discovery is exciting, but there are still plenty of questions that need answering from current and future missions to the red planet.
If you’d like to know a bit more about what missions to Mars might look like, Hollywood can takes you there this week in the movie The Martian, staring Matt Damon and directed by Ridley Scott, based on Andy Weir’s novel of the same name.
Damon’s Martian might find it a lot easier to live there than we thought before this week’s announcement.
Later this week on The Conversation, Helen Maynard-Casely will review the movie The Martian. What did she make of the science depicted in the movie: fact or fiction?
Standing before the majestic gold, ochre and white frescos of Tutankhamun's tomb, British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves on Monday passionately defended his daring theory that Nefertiti is buried in a secret chamber.
With the help of a sophisticated radar, Reeves aims to prove Nefertiti is buried there in a hidden chamber of the young pharaoh's underground tomb that long hid the most fabulous treasure ever discovered in Egypt.
Archaeologists have never discovered the mummy of this legendary beauty who played a major political and religious role in the 14th century BC.
Nefertiti actively supported her husband Akhenaten, the pharaoh who temporarily converted ancient Egypt to monotheism imposing the single cult of sun god Aton.
Reeves's theory is that Nefertiti is buried in a room adjacent to the tomb of Tutankhamun, the son of Akhenaten.
According to Reeves, the boy king, who died unexpectedly at 19, was buried in a rush in an underground burial chamber that was probably not intended for him.
His death would have forced priests to reopen Queen Nefertiti's tomb 10 years after her death because the young pharaoh's own had not yet been built, Reeves said at Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, southern Egypt.
In the burial chamber, just a few steps away from the darkened mummy of the boy king who died in 1324 BC after just nine years on the throne, the archaeologist pointed to a fresco representing Tutankhamun and his successor Ay.
- Radar to scan the walls -
Circled by archaeologists and officials from Egypt's antiquities department, Minister of Antiquities Mamduh al-Damati listened attentively to the expert from the American University of Arizona as Reeves said the frescos in the chamber could conceal two secret doors.
"The theory is a very good theory but it doesn't mean it's true. The best theories don't always work," he added with caution, in the midst of the Valley of the Kings where on November 29, 1922 another British Egyptologist, Howard Carter, discovered Tutankhamun's tomb.
"But I think it's definitely worth checking because we can check easily and without damage," the archaeologist said, explaining that with a radar being brought in from Japan he will be able to scan the chamber's walls.
"I hope we can do some radar and find out whether there is a hollow," Reeves said, aiming to start the tests in late November.
"You have to get security clearance and that always takes time," he said.
Reeves has been on a visit to Egypt, ending with a press conference in Cairo on Thursday, to discuss his theory with Egyptian colleagues and for preliminary research in the field.
"I am now 70 percent certain that we are going to find something," said Damati, the minister, as he stepped out of the tomb.
Experts from his ministry would have to approve more advanced excavations, which could take between one and three months, to ensure the radar can scan the walls "without damaging them", he said.
But the minister was not so sure that Nefertiti's tomb would be discovered.
He speculated they could find the tomb of Kiya, another of Akhenaton's wives, or even another royal family member whose tomb would have been extended to make room for Tutankhamun.
"If another wing to this tomb or one that predates it is found, that alone would be a major discovery," Egypt's antiquities minister said.
Liquid water runs down canyons and crater walls over the summer months on Mars, according to researchers who say the discovery raises the odds of the planet being home to some form of life.
The trickles leave long, dark stains on the Martian terrain that can reach hundreds of metres downhill in the warmer months, before they dry up in the autumn as surface temperatures drop.
Images taken from the Mars orbit show cliffs, and the steep walls of valleys and craters, streaked with summertime flows that in the most active spots combine to form intricate fan-like patterns.
Scientists are unsure where the water comes from, but it may rise up from underground ice or salty aquifers, or condense out of the thin Martian atmosphere.
“There is liquid water today on the surface of Mars,” Michael Meyer , the lead scientist on Nasa’s Mars exploration programme, told the Guardian. “Because of this, we suspect that it is at least possible to have a habitable environment today.”
[caption id="attachment_728601" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Streaks of salt on Mars (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)[/caption]
The water flows could point Nasa and other space agencies towards the most promising sites to find life on Mars, and to landing spots for future human missions where water can be collected from a natural supply.
Some of the earliest missions to Mars revealed a planet with a watery past. Pictures beamed back to Earth in the 1970s showed a surface crossed by dried-up rivers and plains once submerged beneath vast ancient lakes. Earlier this year , Nasa unveiled evidence of an ocean that might have covered half of the planet’s northern hemisphere in the distant past.
But occasionally, Mars probes have found hints that the planet might still be wet. Nearly a decade ago, Nasa’s Mars Global Surveyor took pictures of what appeared to be water bursting through a gully wall and flowing around boulders and other rocky debris. In 2011, the high-resolution camera on Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured what looked like little streams flowing down crater walls from late spring to early autumn. Not wanting to assume too much, mission scientists named the flows “recurring slope lineae” or RSL.
Researchers have now turned to another instrument on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to analyse the chemistry of the mysterious RSL flows. Lujendra Ojha , of Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, and his colleagues used a spectrometer on the MRO to look at infrared light reflected off steep rocky walls when the dark streaks had just begun to appear, and when they had grown to full length at the end of the Martian summer.
Writing in the journal Nature Geosciences , the team describes how it found infra-red signatures for hydrated salts when the dark flows were present, but none before they had grown. The hydrated salts – a mix of chlorates and percholorates – are a smoking gun for the presence of water at all four sites inspected: the Hale, Palikir and Horowitz craters, and a large canyon called Coprates Chasma.
“These may be the best places to search for extant life near the surface of Mars,” said Alfred McEwen, a planetary geologist at the University of Arizona and senior author on the study. “While it would be very important to find evidence of ancient life, it would be difficult to understand the biology. Current life would be much more informative.”
The flows only appear when the surface of Mars rises above -23C. The water can run in such frigid conditions because the salts lower the freezing point of water, keeping it liquid far below 0C.
“The mystery has been, what is permitting this flow? Presumably water, but until now, there has been no spectral signature,” Meyer said. “From this, we conclude that the RSL are generated by water interacting with percholorates, forming a brine that flows downhill.”
John Bridges , a professor of planetary science at the University of Leicester, said the study was fascinating, but might throw up some fresh concerns for space agencies. The flows could be used to find water sources on Mars, making them prime spots to hunt for life, and to land future human missions. But agencies were required to do their utmost to avoid contaminating other planets with microbes from Earth, making wet areas the most difficult to visit. “This will give them lots to think about,” he said.
For now, researchers are focused on learning where the water comes from. Porous rocks under the Martian surface might hold frozen water that melts in the summer months and seeps up to the surface.
Another possibility is that highly concentrated saline aquifers are dotted around beneath the surface, not as pools of water, but as saturated volumes of gritty rock. These could cause flows in some areas, but cannot easily explain water seeping down from the top of crater walls.
A third possibility, and one favoured by McEwen, is that salts on the Martian surface absorb water from the atmosphere until they have enough to run downhill. The process, known as deliquescence, is seen in the Atacama desert, where the resulting damp patches are the only known place for microbes to live.
“It’s a fascinating piece of work,” Bridges said. “Our view of Mars is changing, and we’ll be discussing this for a long time to come.”
Liquid water has been observed on the planet Mars, the US space agency NASA said Monday.
"Mars is not the dry, arid planet we thought of in the past," Jim Green, NASA's planetary science director, told a press conference.
"Under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found on Mars."
Scientists have long believed that water once flowed freely across the red planet and was responsible for forming its valleys and canyons.
Major climate change about three billion years ago is believed to have changed all that, Green said.
"Today we're revolutionizing our understanding of this planet," Green said.
"Our rovers are finding there's a lot more humidity in the air."
The rovers searching the planet's surface have also found that the soil is much more moist than anticipated.
Dark streaks running down slopes on the Martian surface were observed about four years ago.
Scientists did not have proof, however, that these streaks -- which would form in spring, grow by summer and then disappear by fall -- were actually water.
But after careful study and analysis, they are ready to say that these streaks are, in fact, water.
Streaks of salt on Mars (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)[/caption]