Salty Martian Water Could Have Enough Oxygen to Support Life Article link: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.space.com/42210-mars-brines-oxygen-support-life.html Pockets of salty water just beneath the Martian surface may contain enough oxygen to support life — in some places, even complex multicellular life such as sponges, a new study suggests This surprising conclusion could help reshape scientists’ understanding of the Red Planet’s habitability, both past and present, study team members said. “We live in exciting times,” said lead author Vlada Stamenković, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “Especially as there is so much more work still needed to better understand the Martian habitability, I hope this creates excitement in the [scientific] community, in the world, to think of Mars as a potential place for life to exist maybe even today.” The researchers found that Martian brines could hold a lot of oxygen — enough to support aerobic microbial life pretty much everywhere, if the requirements of these hypothetical Mars bugs mirror those of Earth. And the models showed that dissolved-oxygen capacity varies greatly both over time and from place to place, because it depends on temperature and, to a lesser extent, pressure. Colder temperatures promote greater oxygen entry into brines. So, especially frigid pockets near the Martian poles could potentially be oxygen-rich enough to support complex multicellular organisms such as sponges, the researchers determined. Both NASA and the European Space Agency (in partnership with Russia) aim to launch life-hunting rovers toward Mars in 2020. But both of those robots will be hunting for signs of past life. The last, and so far only, spacecraft to look for present-day Red Planet organisms on the Martian surface were NASA’s twin Viking 1 and Viking 2 landers, which touched down in 1976. Show Stuff TeePublic Store – Get your UBR goodies today! http://tee.pub/lic/2GQuXxn79dg UBR Trurh Seekers Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/216706068856746 Manny Moonraker: https://www.facebook.com/MannyMoonraker/ UFO Buster Radio: https://www.facebook.com/UFOBusterRadio YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCggl8-aPBDo7wXJQ43TiluA Google Plus Manny’s Updated Google+ Profile: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+MannyMoonraker To contact Manny: manny@ufobusterradio.com, or on Twitter @ufobusterradio Call the show anytime at (972) 290-1329 and leave us a message with your point of view, UFO sighting, and ghostly experiences or join the discussion on www.ufobusterradio.com For Skype Users: bosscrawler