No Lakes on Mars,

But there might be seas.

That, of course, is a hyperbole but it illustrates a newly found piece of information concerning the ever lusted after martian water. Untill recently it was assumed that liquid water couldn't exist on mars due to the extremem temperatures and the lower atmospheric pressure. It was postualted that there could certainly be liquid water on mars, but the problem is that it doesn't stick around long enough for us to find it. The water spends almost no time in the liquid state; rather, it goes nearly directly from solid to gas.

However, reshearchers at the University of Arkansas have been testing salt water brines in martian conditions in a planatary atmosphere chamber and have found that salt water can stay liquid at much coler temperatures and this means that it has a bigger chance of being found. It's interesting that people didn't think of this earlier seeing as the majority of the water on earth is salt water. So it isn't out of the realm of reasonability that there might be similar distrobutions on mars. This just gives us little more hope in finding liquid water on mars which can be used by future explorers and possibly contains life.

Check out the artical at space.com "Water Could Stay Liquid on Mars" url: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/051115_science_tuesday.html