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If you get Ojha’s voice mail, the recording tells you in a comic drawl that he might call you back, “or maybe not.” Ojha is perhaps the latest in a growing list of young space scientists like Bobak “NASA Mohawk Guy” Ferdowsi who are breaking the mold of your grandpa’s stereotypical buttoned-down, clean-shaven, pocket protector-wearing scientists.
When Ojha returns my call shortly after I leave a message on his cell phone, he’s quick to clarify that he doesn’t consider himself an astrobiologist or a planetary scientist. That’s not just because he’s only 25 years old and still technically in graduate school, pursuing a Ph.D. at Georgia Tech, but because he sees himself more as a “jack of all trades” as far as science goes. He also spends a lot of time studying earthquakes on our own planet, for example.
He walks me through how he devised a new technique to analyze photos from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and wound up finding evidence of water mixing with salts. After that, I can’t help asking about a photo on his personal website — it shows Ojha in long hair, guitar in hand, microphone in front of his mouth, belting it out with his old death metal band.
Scientists have unveiled new evidence which they say proves water could be flowing on Mars right now — a claim that could debunk the long-held belief that the Red Planet has been completely dry for billions of years. Lujendra Ojha and a number of his fellow academics at the Georgia Tech have proposed that the dark, finger-shaped features on Martian slopes which disappear and reappear as seasons change are, in fact, flows of saltwater. RT’s Liz Wahl asks Ojha if the discovery of water on Mars could one day soon lead to the colonization of the Red Planet.
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