In outerspace news, the Curiosity Rover just beamed back some pictures to earth that scientists are saying provide proof-positive evidence that flowing water once existed on the red planet. Cool, now maybe if we time traveled back a billion years we could drink it.
Scientists are studying the images of stones cemented into a layer of conglomerate rock. The sizes and shapes of stones offer clues to the speed and distance of a long-ago stream's flow.
"From the size of gravels it carried, we can interpret the water was moving about 3 feet per second, with a depth somewhere between ankle and hip deep," said Curiosity science co-investigator William Dietrich of the University of California, Berkeley. "Plenty of papers have been written about channels on Mars with many different hypotheses about the flows in them. This is the first time we're actually seeing water-transported gravel on Mars. This is a transition from speculation about the size of streambed material to direct observation of it."
Damn, they even calculated how fast the water was moving! That's science right there. SCIENCE, BROBRO. I love that stuff. E equals McSquares and all that.
Hit the jump for a closeup with the head of a peen-shaped rock circled for good measure.
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