Hi,
Ok, now I understand. Apologies, but all your previous posts kept mentioning direct evidence of
life, not water on Mars, so that's why I got confused.
To be honest, I have not thought about this answer choice very deeply because I had no doubt about this being the correct answer for two reasons:
1. All other answer choices can be inferred without doubt. If you notice, they all have moderate tone and you don't need to make too many assumptions to infer them.
2. The way the last paragraph finishes ("substantially bolster claims...") gives an indication that there is strong support for historical presence of water.
Now that you have raised the question about direct vs indirect evidence, I have had to think a little about this issue. The analogy I can think of is Dinosaurs. The
geological evidence of their existence is the fossils, bones etc. Would you classify these as direct or indirect evidence? I think it is direct evidence. We don't have to make any underlying conclusions before we can infer that the fossils represent the existence of dinosaurs.
But I have used the above explanation to try and explain the point. Remember, the better way to approach this is by eliminating the incorrect answers and using the tone of the sentences or the paragraph.
Hope this helps
Regards
Sunil