Thursday, September 27, 2012

Mars Curiosity Rover Finds Ancient Water Evidence

NASA MSL
NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover has found evidence of ancient water on the surface, as shown in the image above.

The circled part of the image is assorted bedrock, called sedimentary conglomerate in the geological world. The area, named 'Hottah' for Hottah Lake in the Northwest Territories in Canada. Hottah has pieces of gravel that are shaped in a formation that is round, indicating kind of a sanding-down of the material. Similar to when you see a rock that is round and smooth, these pieces of gravel are also smooth. This smoothless and round shape indicates that a water stream did affect these pieces of gravel.

This is a crucial piece of evidence, that may very well lead to another significant discovery on Mars.

Andrew

Watch For Strong Trough In West Coast

The latest GFS model is projecting an extremely strong trough to hit the West Coast in the beginning of October, continuing the unusual-ness to this weather year.

This is indeed long range, and should be taken as such. However, should this system happen to strike, we could be seeing very unusual weather in these regions. Looking at the same timeframe, it has come to my attention that a small air mass suitable for snow will be over the waters to the west of California. This does NOT mean snow will fall, but does mean that, if the surface were colder, snow could fall there.