It was announced this morning (September 25) by NASA that they are planning a major announcement of a discovery on the planet Mars. And while no one outside of the research group knows exactly what it will be, that has no stopped rampant speculation. Not being one to avoid a good bit of science speculating, here is my prediction for what the announcement will be.

The most obvious and debated would be some sign of life. Not little green men walking around and building things of course, but rather tiny microbes or bacteria that are living on the surface or just beneath it. However I don't think that this will be the announcement, because extraterrestrial life would be such a huge discovery that I do not see them delaying it over the weekend. I think the risk of leakage of this news would just be too great, and so they would have announced it immediately.

My prediction is that it will be the only slightly less astonishing discovery of liquid water. I think that the robotic rover that they are driving across the Martian surface has found some form of pond or underground river, or perhaps simply an aquifer. This would be a major discovery, and in keeping with the predictions of microbial life it must be mentioned that every accumulation of liquid water on Earth, no matter how extreme in location or temperature, has contained some form of life. If Mars does indeed contain liquid water, it would suddenly become much more likely that it does support life.

However as with the rest of the scientific community I can only speculate. We will have to wait until Monday morning to find out just what great discovery NASA has made. Until then, let the speculation and debate continue!