Swimmin' on Mars

There's water on Mars. Lots of it, in fact. A bunch of old NASA guys used some infrared technology to track down a huge lump of ice at Mars' south pole. They're estimating there's enough water there to flood the entire Martian surface in 30 feet of water if the whole chuck were to ever melt.

Translation: humans shouldn't live on Mars. We have a tendency to pollute planets until they're broken and overheated. At least on Earth if we melt all the water, not all the land would be submerged. Despite what a bunch of panicky naive tabloid readers will tell you, the vast majority of Earth would stay dry. Yes, a lot of it would be wiped out, but life could still go on.

No so on Mars, however. Now I know that moving humans to Mars is still a long ways away, but if they want to do it, they're really going to have to get this whole "Global Warming" thing figured out first... or all that money NASA putting into this Mars jazz is all going to be flushed down the crapper.

On a somewhat related note, on December 18th, 2007, Mars will reach its closest points to Earth in years. Because Earth and Mars both orbit the sun in elliptical orbits (non-circular), they are at varying distances from each other. So, if you ever wanted to get a good look at Mars, break out your telescope on December 18th. They're saying that you should be able to see surface features and everything even with a normal department store telescope. Neat.