Lake on Mars

Hey lookit, Italian scientists have discovered a lake on Mars! The find raises the likelihood that Mars may harbor life and further cements the need for us to get serious about exploring our solar system's fourth planet.

What? Lake on Mars? Like Life on-no? Fine...

"Um...ciao..."

-Some scientists

Super-cool discovery, right? Well, yes. So now's the part where we walk it back a bit. Technically the scientists used ground penetrating radar to detect evidence of water and detect evidence it did, although it's not so much a lake as it is a possible subterranean...or sub-martian? Sub-martian reservoir of liquid water. So to rephrase, scientists have uncovered evidence that suggests that there may be liquid water about a mile beneath a glacier on Mars. But the scientists are definitely Italian.

Maybe she couldn't resist the allure of
the film and television wing? I mean,
they've got Archie Bunker's chair.

But we should hear from an American on this one, I mean, we own space, right? According to Ellen Stofan, the former Chief Scientist of NASA and former member of the ground penetrating research team that made the find:

"I think this is extremely strong evidence that there is liquid water beneath the poles...which is extremely exciting."

-Ellen Stofan, former Chief Scientist of NASA

and now she works at the Smithsonian...huh...

NASA released this artist's rendering of
what we're likely to find on the red planet.

Yes, exciting is the word...a little too exciting, but Stofan, in her interview with NPR then doubled down on the possibility of Martian life saying:

"...because life here on Earth evolved in Liquid water...as we go outward from the Earth, looking for evidence of life beyond Earth, we're always looking for liquid water."

-Stofan, still raising 

everybody's hopes

Pictured: Ellen Stofan, head of the
Smithsonian National Air and Space
Museum and noted crusher of dreams.

Wow...so like, so far so good? Usually when some science news like this breaks it sounds all Earth-shattering as a headline, but then gets chipped away at until all we're left with is the harsh reality that we're decades or maybe centuries away from finding real evidence of life elsewhere in the solar system-huh? Salty you say? Otherwise it would freeze? And the salts are deadly to-oh...yeah, there it is. As quickly she gave them, Stofan went ahead and crushed our hopes and dreams saying that the sub-glacial lake is almost certainly full of a kind of poisonous type of salt. Sigh.

Gee Roberto, if you're looking for water
on Mars, why not just find a unicorn and
ask them where they like to frolic?

But Roberto Orosei from the University of Bologna, who wrote the study released today was more hopeful-one might say naively optimistic in the light of Ellen Stofan's sober adherence to science's insistence on verifiable facts, but still, hopeful:

"This is just one small area. It is an exciting prospect to think there could be more of these underground pockets of water elsewhere, yet to be discovered."

-Roberto Orosei, weaver of dreams and wonder

But regardless of whether you demand cold, objective evidence or prefer to subsist on hope and whimsey, this is still big news and will hopefully generate public interest in space exploration. Which is something we're seriously going to need because the way things are heading now, Mars is going to be little more than the cold, airless wasteland upon which Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos will ride out Earth's nuclear wars and ecological devastation. Well, that or a Dutch reality show...

Because for real, if anyone should be left to face the mutant warlords and
highway gangs of post-apocalyptic Earth it should be Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.