Buzz Aldrin: from Milano to Mars

Yesterday Buzz Aldrin was in Milano for the Wired Next Fest. The conference room was full of people, and I cannot enter in it. So I see Buzz's conference from the large screen outside in front of the stage. Even if mediated in this way, I could perceive the power of the character, the charisma, the magnetism of a man who goes by now for the nineties but who is not tired yet to point his eyes to the sky. Towards Mars, for precision!

Life on Mars

Mars by Étienne Léopold Trouvelot

This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.
We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some--perhaps many--may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:
This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.
Jimmy Carter

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The IAU firmly opposes any discrimination based on factors such as ethnic origin, religion, citizenship, language, and political or other opinion and therefore expects U.S. officials to not discriminate on the basis of religion.
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Water on Mars

"Our quest on Mars has been to 'follow the water', in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we've long suspected. This is a significant development, as it appears to confirm that water -- albeit briny -- is flowing today on the surface of Mars."

John Grunsfeld from the press release. The abstract of the paper follows:

Determining whether liquid water exists on the Martian surface is central to understanding the hydrologic cycle and potential for extant life on Mars. Recurring slope lineae, narrow streaks of low reflectance compared to the surrounding terrain, appear and grow incrementally in the downslope direction during warm seasons when temperatures reach about 250–300 K, a pattern consistent with the transient flow of a volatile species. Brine flows (or seeps) have been proposed to explain the formation of recurring slope lineae, yet no direct evidence for either liquid water or hydrated salts has been found4. Here we analyse spectral data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars instrument onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter from four different locations where recurring slope lineae are present. We find evidence for hydrated salts at all four locations in the seasons when recurring slope lineae are most extensive, which suggests that the source of hydration is recurring slope lineae activity. The hydrated salts most consistent with the spectral absorption features we detect are magnesium perchlorate, magnesium chlorate and sodium perchlorate. Our findings strongly support the hypothesis that recurring slope lineae form as a result of contemporary water activity on Mars.

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Ojha, L., Wilhelm, M., Murchie, S., McEwen, A., Wray, J., Hanley, J., Massé, M., & Chojnacki, M. (2015). Spectral evidence for hydrated salts in recurring slope lineae on Mars Nature Geoscience DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2546