The NASA rover Curiosity has beamed back pictures of bedrock that suggest a fast-moving stream, possibly waist-deep, once flowed on Mars — a find that the mission's chief scientist called exciting.
There have been previous signs that water existed on the red planet long ago, but the images released Thursday showing pebbles rounded off, likely by water, offered the most convincing evidence so far of an ancient streambed.
There was "a vigorous flow on the surface of Mars," said chief scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology. "We're really excited about this."
http://news.yahoo.com/mars-rover-curiosity-finds-signs-ancient-stream-190805936.html
If Mars once had running surface water, it also had to have had a substantial atmosphere to prevent the water from simply boiling away into space. So, what happened to Mars' water and air?
Not hard to figure out. Look at the below MOLA results of the MARS surface. MOLA, the Mars Orbital Radar Altimeter spacecraft, took altitude measurements of every inch of the Martian surface.
MOLA's Mars. High altitude in reds, low altitude in deep blue.
See that huge, round area, part of the deepest terrain on Mars? That's an impact crater. Sometime in Mars' past, something very big and very nasty hit the planet. If Mars had an atmosphere and oceans when it hit, they were simply blown away into space.
If something the size of the Mars impacter was to hit the Earth, our atmosphere and oceans would suffer the same fate.
Then there would be two planets orbiting the sun that once supported life.
And here we are, all concerned about who the next president may be.
Small potatoes.
An additional thought:
If the lifeforms on MARS at the time this thing hit could cross space(you know, like intelligent), maybe they saw it coming, had no way to stop it, knew what was going to happen, so they migrated to Earth.
That would make us all illegal aliens.
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