Free Republic

NASA is funding a group of scientists to investigate the strange structures called "microbialites" on the bottom of Pavilion Lake, British Columbia. Read the article at the link. Weirdly, while they think that they are bio-geological formations like stromatolites, they might not be. Here's are a couple pictures of them. Here's what the lake looks like; somewhat akin to a fjord. Link to the project Web site: Pavilion Lake Research Project

Researchers using a powerful instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have found a long sought-after mineral on the Martian surface and, with it, unexpected clues to the Red Planet's watery past. Surveying intact bedrock layers with the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM, scientists found carbonate minerals, indicating that Mars had neutral to alkaline water when the minerals formed at these locations more than 3.6 billion years ago. Carbonates, which on Earth include limestone and chalk, dissolve quickly in acid. Therefore, their survival until today on Mars challenges suggestions that an exclusively acidic environment later dominated the planet....