PTrek’s blog

Mars1

RUST, BUT LITTLE WATER?

The latest pictures beamed back from the Mars Rconnaisance Orbiter seem to challenge the consensus among scientists that water flowed on the surface of Mars at some point.

What we have assumed were tracks left by water flow could in fact be accounted for by other phenomena, for instance dry landfall. Photography from a distance can be misleading.

Reviewing the latest findings, Richard Kerr, in-house correspondent at the Science journal, said MRO's findings should come as no surprise.

"It really falls in line with a trend of the last few years in which the surface of Mars is looking drier and drier," he told the BBC.

"Geochemists who've been looking at the colours of the surface of Mars and interpreting its mineralogical composition have been concluding Mars has indeed rusted - that's what gives you the red colour, the yellow-brown colour - but it didn't take much water.

"It was maybe damp rather than what we think of as wet."

Germs

DON'T GET SICK IN SPACE!

The simple bacteria Salmonella that cause mild food poisoning on Earth can in a microgravity environment such as space kill. The latest results of a 2006 space shuttle mission show that after 12 days in orbit, carefully packed vials contained salmonella that had grown in size and was 3 times more potent than before.

They were found to alter the way they expressed 167 genes, and the bacteria were almost three times as likely to kill infected mice compared with standard samples held on Earth.

This has major implications for future space travel and living...