Wet Mud In Endurance Crater Today
Active geysers are spouting within hours of these pictures - here is proof
This is a clear confirmation that there is liquid water on Mars as we speak. This is the result of the RAT being applied to the rock "Tennessee" just inside the lip of Endurance Crater scant hours ago. This Sol 138 image shows that the soil is muddy- we have wet sand, flow lines around some of the fossil spherules, and a compression that resulted in the mud bulging up as the tool applied pressure.
| This is a scene that any
beachgoer knows- the water has washed over the soil and left flow lines
behind lodged obstacles. See how the water has swept past the
spherules? There are clear flow lines trailing them and depressions
as they started to wash out.
Also see how the RAT dislodged and threw the soil about? It stick and clumps, exactly like wet sand. The soil experiments page will show this is a phenomenon that only wet soil can exhibit. Now look at the flow lines at the edges of this washed out sand mass. They show the characteristic layering and curving that wet sand under a flow of water produces. The spherules and smaller fragments have been sorted- water does this. This is wet mud and if you accept that Mars' atmosphere forces rapid evaporation of water due to low pressure, then you must admit that this water was applied within hours of this image. This could not have been done months or years ago, it had to happen only hours ago. Note that water in soil will resist evaporation far longer than water in the open. |
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| Here is another excellent
image, this time from Sol 123. It shows where the arm has pressed
one of its instruments into the wet mud and left a bulging print.
The shiny ring is the reflection in the wet mud from the metal ring on the outside of the arm. The original image is here at the NASA web site. |
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| Now here is the close up
view, and this makes it very clear. You can see the mud has
"squished" and bulged when pressure was applied. There is
a clear flow line of water to the right (the ridge) and the fossil
spherules have been sorted by size by the flowing water.
See how the spherules are embedded in the mud? The ones on the rock surface are clean and sharp, but the ones in the mud are sunk in and the mud flows up onto them, forming a meniscus. In other words, this only happens when liquid water sloshes the mud up against a wetted surface. |
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