Scientists see evidence of recent water on Mars

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

A provocative new study of photographs taken from orbit suggests that liquid water flowed on the surface of Mars as recently as several years ago, raising the possibility that the Red Planet could harbor an environment favorable to life.

The crisp images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor do not directly show water. Rather, they show apparently recent changes in surface features that provide the strongest evidence yet that water even now sometimes flows on the dusty, frigid world. Water and a stable heat source are considered keys for life to emerge.

Until now, the question of liquid water has focused on ancient Mars, and on the Martian north pole, where water ice has been detected. Scientists have long noted Martian features that appear to have been scoured by water or look like shorelines, and have tried to prove that the Red Planet had liquid water eons ago.

"This underscores the importance of searching for life on Mars, either present or past," said Bruce Jakosky, an astrobiologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who had no role in the study. "It's one more reason to think that life could be there."

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Wow. I don't really have much to say about this that the excerpt doesn't already say, but this blows me away: there is a distinct possibility that there is liquid water on the red planet right now!!!!! That means that there may very well be life on Mars even while I type these words. Probably not intelligent life, I know, much more likely that it's microscopic in nature, but who cares? There's a damned good chance that we may soon discover that we are not alone! At the very least, the possibility of colonizing the fourth planet, in our lifetimes, has just increased astronomically.

I'm a geek, yeah, but this really is a big deal.

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