There be Canali?

There be Canali?:

Curiosity finds a dry streambed? Click for larger. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

I’ve lately been wondering about how Percival Lowell would be feeling about the exploration of Mars and beyond that the New Horizon’s mission to Pluto if he was still with us. For now I’ll stick to Mars.
Lowell of course conjectured there was life on Mars, not just life, but intelligent life due to the nature of “canals”. Some of his thoughts were based on his observations and those of Giovanni Schiaparelli in the 19th century, of what he determined to be vegetation growing along the waterways.


Lowell also determined the “canals” he was seeing was a last ditch (no pun intended) effort by the civilization on Mars to save the planet. Because Mars was smaller it obviously had to develop more quickly than here on Earth and .that also means it would go into decline quicker too.
Now wouldn’t it be grand if Curiosity added to the story?
No snarky comments about the then Martians not being any brighter than we are now. . . .ah never mind. Just never say never
Here’s the press release/caption for the image above from NASA.

NASA’s Curiosity rover found evidence for an ancient, flowing stream on Mars at a few sites, including the rock outcrop pictured here, which the science team has named “Hottah” after Hottah Lake in Canada’s Northwest Territories. It may look like a broken sidewalk, but this geological feature on Mars is actually exposed bedrock made up of smaller fragments cemented together, or what geologists call a sedimentary conglomerate. Scientists theorize that the bedrock was disrupted in the past, giving it the titled angle, most likely via impacts from meteorites.

The key evidence for the ancient stream comes from the size and rounded shape of the gravel in and around the bedrock. Hottah has pieces of gravel embedded in it, called clasts, up to a couple inches (few centimeters) in size and located within a matrix of sand-sized material. Some of the clasts are round in shape, leading the science team to conclude they were transported by a vigorous flow of water. The grains are too large to have been moved by wind.
A close-up view of Hottah reveals more details of the outcrop. Broken surfaces of the outcrop have rounded, gravel clasts, such as the one circled in white, which is about 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) across. Erosion of the outcrop results in gravel clasts that protrude from the outcrop and ultimately fall onto the ground, creating the gravel pile at left.
This image mosaic was taken by Curiosity’s 100-millimeter Mastcam telephoto lens on its 39th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Sept. 14, 2012 PDT/Sept. 15 GMT).