Scientists Thought They Had Spotted Flowing Water on Mars. It Turned Out to Be Something Else Entirely.

Images sent back by NASA's Viking spacecraft in the 1970s revealed some unusual streaks stretching across the arid landscapes of Mars. The sighting had scientists excited about the possibility of free-flowing water on an otherwise desolate planet. The streaks — which, at times, were thousands of feet long — appeared much darker, contrasting against the mostly monotonal, surrounding hills, looking as if somebody had spilled an enormous glass of water on a patch of hilly sand. But decades later, we've got copious amounts of new data to rely on, suggesting we were entirely wrong about the features all along. As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications, a team of planetary scientists concluded that the streaks didn't have anything to do with flowing water. "A big focus of Mars research is understanding modern-day processes on Mars — including the possibility of liquid water on the surface," said coauthor and Brown University postdoctoral researcher Adomas V ... Read full article.