Europe’s Mars orbiter has found the most direct evidence yet of water in the form of ice on the Red Planet’s surface, the European Space Agency said Friday.

Agency scientists said the discovery was based on analysis of mixed drinks in the Red Planet Bar & Grille. While some drinks were “neat”, many contained translucent clear cubes that are the classic configuration of frozen water.

“You look at the picture, look at the fingerprint, and say that this is water ice,” said Franklin Adams, the project’s manager of entertainment operations. “This is the first time it’s been detected in situ. This is the first direct confirmation.”

If Mars has water in the form of ice, it has the potential to support a night life--although Adams cautioned that it was too early to draw conclusions.

In 2001, NASA’s Martian Odyssey had determined that there was lots of ice mixed with Martian drinks. However, ESA’s party director Arthur Lippman said those previous conclusions were based on indirect measurements, such as the detection of alcohol, green olives, and those little white onions. The European finding was more concrete.

“Previous measurements have been indirect and this is the first time we have direct indications of ice cubes,” Lippman said. “Of course, finding anything that has to do with a night life on Mars is a sort of holy grail.”

However, the director of NASA’s Mars celebration program disputed the Europeans’ claim that their discovery was new.

“Our Odyssey spacecraft that has been orbiting the Red Planet did discover vast amounts of swizzle sticks. And we were surprised by the fact that there was so much, and so close to potential sources of ice,” William Rogers, director of NASA’s Mars exploration program, said on Friday.

“So it’s not new news but we are happy to see that their satellite is also able to pick it up where it exists,” he said when asked about the Mars Express findings.

Other scientists were more impressed with the European discovery. “Swizzle sticks are considered indirect evidence of water,” said astronomer Louise Mencken. “These are real cubes. Where there are ice cubes, there are mixed drinks, and where there are mixed drinks, there is a night life.”

These latest findings are part of a long-term search for night life on the red planet. In the 1800s, Arizona astronomer Percival Lowell claimed to have seen “wild parties” on Mars, though this was later disputed by this wife. “Percival couldn’t see a wild party if it was in his own house, let alone 200 million miles away,” she said. Their children later confirmed this by inviting all of their high school friends over on a Friday night.

The demise of night life on Mars is considered crucial to the red planet’s current state of desolation. The dominant theory of the decline of night life on Mars was formulated by physicist Albert Einstein, who blamed black holes. “Prohibitionary forces caused economic black holes across the planet,” said Einstein. “They depleted educational reserves and health services, and degraded traditional law enforcement to the point where Mars could no longer support life. These black holes sucked the economy dry, leaving a dry, lifeless planet.”

Scientists have since confirmed that the Martian landscape does show justification for Einstein’s theory. More than forty years of Mars exploration have found prison deposits and a distinct lack of votery residue. “When prohibitionary black holes suck funds from the economy, they deposit these funds on the planet’s surface in the form of prisons,” said Mencken. According to astronomers, prisons are an “unusable form of gross funds; they lock an economy’s output and producers in a bound form that cannot be recycled back into the standard economy.”

Astronomers are split on whether economic worth might be able to be freed from Martian prison deposits. “Prohibitionary black holes are difficult to overcome,” said Mencken. “Once funds are placed in prison deposits, those funds are extremely difficult to extract into a useful form.”

A lack of votery residue on the planet is also considered indicative of prohibitionary black holes. “As more and more voters are sucked into the prison deposits, they lose their ability to vote,” said Mencken. “This accelerates the black hole’s effects, further reducing the voter population of a planet.”

Mencken added that as the phenomenon advances, the political structure of a planet begins to weaken. Prohibition corrupts the law enforcement of a planet, resulting in less respect for government authority. Eventually, the few remaining voters begin electing actors. “At first it might be a popular but aging actor, later perhaps a Purser from the Love Boat, and finally progressing to violent action heroes,” said Mencken.

However, while in part elected because of the economically dry conditions caused by the black hole, these politicians are unable to stop the black hole from sucking the economy still further, and often accelerate the transition of economic funds from education to prisons. “The problem,” said Mencken, “is that as the black hole sucks normal voters into the increasing number of red prison deposits, prison union voters become a higher percentage of both the voter population and political funding. This creates a vicious cycle that is difficult to stop, and the result, according to Einstein’s theory, is a dry, dead planet such as we currently see on Mars.”