Posted by
michael
on from the promising-news dept.
TheSync writes: "The BBC reports in an article that the Mars Odyssey spacecraft has detected large deposits of hydrogen at high latitudes using its neutron spectrometer. This may indicate significant water ice on the surface of Mars!"
The key word is SURFACE ice
by
skrowl
·
· Score: 4, Informative
It's pretty much already been proven that subterrainian ice exists on the red planet. Surface Ice / Water could aid us in our eventually terraforming of Mars so we can go live there after we finish messing up the earth by over use of our natural resources and pollution.
--
Prevent linux based DDOS's! http://linux.denialofservice.org/
Official Page doesn't have the news
by
hether
·
· Score: 3, Informative
So why don't they have news about this on the offical 2001 Mars Odyssey page?
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
Re:no kidding
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Informative
Well, what they've discovered is that from 55* north and south, water ice is -extremely- abundant only three feet below the surface. The cryosphere was thought to be much deeper, and not so massive.
Of course we've known for decades that there has been water on Mars (centuries, really) but this level of abundance, and this -strong- detection during a simple test of the neutron spectrometer during aerobraking was -not- expected at all, and counters the silly Whte Mars hypothesis that all the channels were carved by liquid CO2 (which could not have existed on Mars in any major model of the planet)
Re:What's the signifigance....
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Informative
This water would be much more available for fuel-generation and for water and air for crews. It was though that they'd have to drill down a kilometer, or land at the poles. Three feet is much more do-able.
When mapping orbit is achieved, they'll be able to look much more closely at lower latitudes.
They've known about water ice on mars for a while, at the poles. But what this article is about it large amounts of subterrainian ice in areas farther from the poles.
Re:Terraforming?
by
DocSnyder
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· Score: 2, Informative
Drop in a bunch of plants that don't suck up much water and let them convert the Co2 to Oxygen. Now I wonder if it would actually work?:/
One problem is the thin Martian atmosphere, due to the low gravity. Pressure is about 1/100 of the atmospherie on Earth. That might be enough for some rigid plants, but they will certainly not produce a larger amount of oxygen. Even if they did, the pressure would still be too low for anyone to breathe.
The other problem is contaminating a potentially existing Martian biosphere (tiny single-cell organisms, if at all) with "alien" life. Some micro organisms on Earth could easily stand the unfriendly life conditions on Mars and would cause an effect similiar to "Independence Day".
IIRC, a few years ago the NASA planned to land on a Jupiter moon which they suspect for having water or even some evidence of life. After realizing that they'd contaminate it badly, they threw the vehicle into Jupiter...
Oxygen doesn't mean spit
by
Spamalamadingdong
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Better than 2/3 of the mass of CO2 (dry ice) is oxygen, and there's plenty of that at the poles. A large fraction of the mass of rock is silicon dioxide, which is full of (would you ever have guessed it?)... oxygen. An oxygen detector will find it everywhere on any rocky object.
The stuff that's hard to find in accessible form off of Earth isn't oxygen, it's hydrogen. Once you've got the hydrogen it's not difficult to turn it into whatever other form you need. On a planet-like body the most likely form in which you'll find hydrogen is going to be water, though you might find traces of ammonia if it's cold enough.
The other thing about water is that it dissolves things and leaves other things. Movement of water tends to create useful ores, placer deposits of insoluble stuff like gold, and other things you could get an earful about by asking a mining engineer or geologist. Knowing where water is tells you where to look for those things.
the ice caps of Mars are believed to be frozen carbon dioxide
Re:Waiting to exhale... a waste?
by
Fenris2001
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· Score: 5, Informative
Well, not necessarily.
By melting the ice caps and driving water out of the soil, it would be possible to create a shirt-sleeve environment for humans and many other terrestrial species. I won't go into specifics, but I'm sure most/. readers are familiar with the concept: big orbiting mirrors focused on the ice caps, black dust spread on the ground to raise the temperature, artificial greenhouse gases, etc.
The point of all this effort would not be to create a stable system - that is probably impossible, due to the weak gravity and solar radiation environment. However, for a few tens of thousands of years, Mars would be habitable by almost every species on Earth.
I agree that the reality of making Mars habitable is not like the fantasies of most Mars Society members (I'm not one, though I link to them in my.sig). We can't turn Mars into another Eden, but we don't have to in order to learn a great many things & create a biological reservoir in case a truly astronomical disaster befalls our current ecosystem.
Mars is valuable in the minds of many for the opportunity it offers - truly global projects can be done that would be impossible on Earth for reasons of safety. Some of these are silly (melting the ice caps with thermonuclear weapons), others serious (building giant cables that stretch from orbit to the surface). The problem comes when, for whatever reasons, the delusions of some people crash headlong into reality.
Percival Lowell thought he saw a network of canals built by a Martian civilization, and Burroughs wrote books chronicling the end of that noble race. Neither the canals or the civilization existed.
If we approach the unknown with an open mind and a sense of wonder, then we learn much more about the way things really are. If we keep pinning our hopes and dreams on phantoms, we will forever be disappointed.
"the ice caps of Mars are believed to be frozen carbon dioxide"
No, the frozen caps are condsidered to be somewhat of a "slop" of dirt, CO2 ice (dry ice), and water ice. In addition, every summer, some of this water sublimes (we're below the triple point, for those chemists out there) and evaporates into the atmosphere. Mars isn't as completely dry as a lot of people think. The problem is that we haven't found water yet that is easily accessible. More can be found at
-- The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Re:NEUTRON Spectrometer?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Informative
This is basically the same spectrometer (part of the Gamma Ray Spectrometer experiment) that was on the Lunar Prospector. A description of how the spectrometer works can be found at Los Alamos National Labs.
The neutron spectrometer doesn't have a very high energy resolution, but it can tell the difference between high energy and thermal/near thermal neutrons. By thermal neutrons, I mean that they have a kinetic energy of about 1/40 of an electron Volt per neutron. This is the same kinetic energy as a gas phase molecule at room temperature.
The detector has two components, a plastic (hydrogen rich) scintillator doped with the Boron-10 isotope, and a gamma ray detector. The Boron dopant has a large neutron capture cross section at thermal energies. When the Boron captures a thermal neutron, it decays via alpha emission to become Lithium-7. The excited Lithium nucleus then emits a gamma ray which is detected by a separate gamma detector. (Plastics are less efficient at detecting gamma rays than, say, semiconductor based dectectors because they have a lower number density of electrons. You detect gamma rays via electron/photon collisions. Hence, the more electrons per cubic centimeter, the more likely you are to observe a collision.)
Now if a high energy neutron enters the plastic scintillator, it rattles around briefly, colliding with the hydrogen in the plastic, until is slows down enough to be captured by a Boron nucleus. These collisions produce a broad photon pulse with a long tail in the plastic. A couple of microseconds later, the neutron is absorbed by Boron and produces an alpha particle and a gamma ray. (The alpha particle also produces a scintillation in the plastic.)
If a low energy neutron enters the detector, then it is captured by a Boron-10 nucleus almost immediately.
So you can distinguish the two types of neutrons by looking for the delay between the scintillations in the plastic detector and the gamma ray detector. If they occur simultaneously, then you saw a thermal neutron. If there is a significant time delay, then you saw a high energy neutron.
It's been a few years since I've worked with this sort of thing, but I believe I have the fundamentals basically correct.
Slashdot Mirror
It's pretty much already been proven that subterrainian ice exists on the red planet. Surface Ice / Water could aid us in our eventually terraforming of Mars so we can go live there after we finish messing up the earth by over use of our natural resources and pollution.
Prevent linux based DDOS's!
http://linux.denialofservice.org/
So why don't they have news about this on the offical 2001 Mars Odyssey page?
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
Well, what they've discovered is that from 55* north and south, water ice is -extremely- abundant only three feet below the surface. The cryosphere was thought to be much deeper, and not so massive.
Of course we've known for decades that there has been water on Mars (centuries, really) but this level of abundance, and this -strong- detection during a simple test of the neutron spectrometer during aerobraking was -not- expected at all, and counters the silly Whte Mars hypothesis that all the channels were carved by liquid CO2 (which could not have existed on Mars in any major model of the planet)
This water would be much more available for fuel-generation and for water and air for crews. It was though that they'd have to drill down a kilometer, or land at the poles. Three feet is much more do-able.
When mapping orbit is achieved, they'll be able to look much more closely at lower latitudes.
They've known about water ice on mars for a while, at the poles. But what this article is about it large amounts of subterrainian ice in areas farther from the poles.
Drop in a bunch of plants that don't suck up much water and let them convert the Co2 to Oxygen. Now I wonder if it would actually work?
One problem is the thin Martian atmosphere, due to the low gravity. Pressure is about 1/100 of the atmospherie on Earth. That might be enough for some rigid plants, but they will certainly not produce a larger amount of oxygen. Even if they did, the pressure would still be too low for anyone to breathe.
The other problem is contaminating a potentially existing Martian biosphere (tiny single-cell organisms, if at all) with "alien" life. Some micro organisms on Earth could easily stand the unfriendly life conditions on Mars and would cause an effect similiar to "Independence Day".
IIRC, a few years ago the NASA planned to land on a Jupiter moon which they suspect for having water or even some evidence of life. After realizing that they'd contaminate it badly, they threw the vehicle into Jupiter...
The stuff that's hard to find in accessible form off of Earth isn't oxygen, it's hydrogen. Once you've got the hydrogen it's not difficult to turn it into whatever other form you need. On a planet-like body the most likely form in which you'll find hydrogen is going to be water, though you might find traces of ammonia if it's cold enough.
The other thing about water is that it dissolves things and leaves other things. Movement of water tends to create useful ores, placer deposits of insoluble stuff like gold, and other things you could get an earful about by asking a mining engineer or geologist. Knowing where water is tells you where to look for those things.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
the ice caps of Mars are believed to be frozen carbon dioxide
Well, not necessarily.
/. readers are familiar with the concept: big orbiting mirrors focused on the ice caps, black dust spread on the ground to raise the temperature, artificial greenhouse gases, etc.
.sig). We can't turn Mars into another Eden, but we don't have to in order to learn a great many things & create a biological reservoir in case a truly astronomical disaster befalls our current ecosystem.
By melting the ice caps and driving water out of the soil, it would be possible to create a shirt-sleeve environment for humans and many other terrestrial species. I won't go into specifics, but I'm sure most
The point of all this effort would not be to create a stable system - that is probably impossible, due to the weak gravity and solar radiation environment. However, for a few tens of thousands of years, Mars would be habitable by almost every species on Earth.
I agree that the reality of making Mars habitable is not like the fantasies of most Mars Society members (I'm not one, though I link to them in my
Mars is valuable in the minds of many for the opportunity it offers - truly global projects can be done that would be impossible on Earth for reasons of safety. Some of these are silly (melting the ice caps with thermonuclear weapons), others serious (building giant cables that stretch from orbit to the surface). The problem comes when, for whatever reasons, the delusions of some people crash headlong into reality.
Percival Lowell thought he saw a network of canals built by a Martian civilization, and Burroughs wrote books chronicling the end of that noble race. Neither the canals or the civilization existed.
If we approach the unknown with an open mind and a sense of wonder, then we learn much more about the way things really are. If we keep pinning our hopes and dreams on phantoms, we will forever be disappointed.
What the heck. It's only Karma.
---------------
Vpered na Mars!
"the ice caps of Mars are believed to be frozen carbon dioxide"
No, the frozen caps are condsidered to be somewhat of a "slop" of dirt, CO2 ice (dry ice), and water ice. In addition, every summer, some of this water sublimes (we're below the triple point, for those chemists out there) and evaporates into the atmosphere. Mars isn't as completely dry as a lot of people think. The problem is that we haven't found water yet that is easily accessible. More can be found at
More can be found at the Mars Global Surveyor Homepage
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
The neutron spectrometer doesn't have a very high energy resolution, but it can tell the difference between high energy and thermal/near thermal neutrons. By thermal neutrons, I mean that they have a kinetic energy of about 1/40 of an electron Volt per neutron. This is the same kinetic energy as a gas phase molecule at room temperature.
The detector has two components, a plastic (hydrogen rich) scintillator doped with the Boron-10 isotope, and a gamma ray detector. The Boron dopant has a large neutron capture cross section at thermal energies. When the Boron captures a thermal neutron, it decays via alpha emission to become Lithium-7. The excited Lithium nucleus then emits a gamma ray which is detected by a separate gamma detector. (Plastics are less efficient at detecting gamma rays than, say, semiconductor based dectectors because they have a lower number density of electrons. You detect gamma rays via electron/photon collisions. Hence, the more electrons per cubic centimeter, the more likely you are to observe a collision.)
Now if a high energy neutron enters the plastic scintillator, it rattles around briefly, colliding with the hydrogen in the plastic, until is slows down enough to be captured by a Boron nucleus. These collisions produce a broad photon pulse with a long tail in the plastic. A couple of microseconds later, the neutron is absorbed by Boron and produces an alpha particle and a gamma ray. (The alpha particle also produces a scintillation in the plastic.)
If a low energy neutron enters the detector, then it is captured by a Boron-10 nucleus almost immediately.
So you can distinguish the two types of neutrons by looking for the delay between the scintillations in the plastic detector and the gamma ray detector. If they occur simultaneously, then you saw a thermal neutron. If there is a significant time delay, then you saw a high energy neutron.
It's been a few years since I've worked with this sort of thing, but I believe I have the fundamentals basically correct.