Although they're not so much in the news these days, the Martian rovers, Spirit and Opportunity are still hard at work on their primary mission: discovering evidence of past water on Mars. ...

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It was the stuck wheel that stirred-up the evidence. Serendipidy baby!

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

Wherever we have standing water on Earth, diatoms, an algae, can also be found. Diatoms have tests or outer shells composed of silica (quartz). Diatomaceous earth is used for swimming pool water filters and as the abrasive ingrediant in many cleansers. NASA used diatomacous earth along with sand in creating a martian soil in their tests to free one the rovers when it was stuck. Diatomaceous earth is white to creamy, very fine grained and looks very much like the white material exposed by the rover's wheel. I believe that diatoms in martian water is the most plausable mechanism for the production of this material.

Do you have persuasive evidence for your belief, or is it just a wish? What other mechanisms have you considered to be possible? What makes diatoms most plausible?

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The "Gertrude Weise" material is non-crystalline silica, which rules out it being a sedimentary deposit from the erosion of crystalline rocks. Rhyolite often contains large amounts of opaline silica, but I've seen no evidence that any of the volcanic rocks in the area are rhyolite. Diatomite or diatomaceous earth are composed of non-crystalline silica.

The "Gertrude Weise" material is fine grained and white to cream in color. Diatomaceous earth is very fine grained and white to cream in color.

NASA suggested the possible origin as the " interception of soil with acid vapors." I do not understand the mechanism where the passing of acid vapors through a soil could produce granular "high grade" silica soil. they also suggested that it could be produced in a hot spring enviornment. Hot spring deposits are generally travertine, a calcium carbonate rock.

There is the possibility that diatoms are ubiquitous throughout our solar system.

I'm impressed. I hope you're right.

I never heard of non-crystalline silica being formed the way put forward by Nasa.
Non-crystalline are the result of temperature or the existence of life. Diatomaceous are living creatures with a non-crystalline silica skeleton. There many deposits of non-crystalline silica on earth that are diatomaceous. The question is : is this the first evidence of life on Mars?
Antonio Valadão

I dont really like mars but this is a cool topic.