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Ice Detected Underneath Mars' North Pole
TheSync writes "A Reuters/Yahoo story says University of Arizona and Russian scientists have detected water ice uniformly distributed in the soil of Mars' north polar regions. The amount of hydrogen detected indicates ice of 80% to 90% of soil volume. Data was used from the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey." It's worth noting that their study only detected large amounts of hydrogen; so much hydrogen that ice is figured to be the only form it could be in, although I kind of like the idea of Mars' pole covering a huge pocket of hydrogen gas.
What part of "permanent" did you miss? Yes, they grow seasonally as the temperature drops enough for CO2 to freeze out. But in summertime water ice is the only candidate (barring something really exotic).
Come, this has been pretty much known since the first spectroscope was pointed at Mars, and known with confidence since the Mariner and Viking missions.
Not that it hurts to cross check to rule out oddball theories, but why act like this was a surprise? Perhaps the concept is new to Arizonans, but you'd think the Russians would be familiar with permafrost.
-- Alastair
...although I kind of like the idea of Mars' pole covering a huge pocket of hydrogen gas.
You need three things for combustion. Fuel, got that. Ignition source, sure. Oxygen, don't got that. Maybe you could process it with the CO2 in the atmosphere to make hydrocarbons, oxygen, or even alcohol, (for the astronauts of course) but that would require energy to produce and there wouldn't be enough oxygen to fully combust any of those products. Hydrogen alone isn't good for much. Maybe if you sent a factory over used solar power to generate stuff (which was part of somebody's plan to get to Mars...) it could be useful, but just hydrogen has limited usefulness. I doubt it would be worth shipping back to earth to fuel the hydrogen economy either unless we're looking for hydrogen prices like $100 per cubic meter, cubic foot, mole, or whatever. Yeah, that'll work...
Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Doesn't matter; the fact that life was sustainable on two planets opens up the possibility to doubters that there could be life on more. The counter-anthropic principle states that we aren't special in the universe anyway, so if we find evidence to back it up, then there you go.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
I would beg to differ. The largest creationist organisation in the world, namely Answers In Genesis, is based out of Acacia Ridge in Australia. This would not tend to agree with your 'united states' theory. Yet another (noticeable) victim to the idea that the world revolves around america. Actually, it revolves around the sun!
In order to be immortal you must be organize
Because it makes it easier for people to get along and not kill each other so much if they aren't always bickering over "my god can kick your god's ass!" type stuff.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
You choose to believe creationism until proven wrong. The only problem with that is it is, and will always be, impossible to prove creationism wrong. I could say I choose to believe Japanese speaking kangaroo's with badass superpowers live in black holes and I will continue to believe this until proven wrong. It's a pretty safe statement considering it's impossible to prove wrong. I am not saying creationism *is* wrong or you and others should not believe it, but I think the statement "until proven wrong" is illogical. I am not an athiest like many evolutionists, and I am also not monotheistic like most creationists. I like to think of the universe and "god" in monistic terms, that is existence as a whole is "god", not some guy on a cloud. From this point of view, IMHO, evolution is a form of creation, and in my simple mind, makes the evolution and creation debate kind of silly. To come back on track though, belief in something that cannot be proven wrong because it hasn't been proven wrong yet is not a method of choosing beliefs I would recommend to you or anyone unfortunate enough to read what I have to say.
Beware blue cats moving at
The idea that there might not be any other life out there isn't sticking your head in the sand, it's a valid theory, just working from a different philosophy. Since there's no evidence that life has formed from scratch more than once, it's not impossible that it was a incredible, once-in-a-thousand-universe chance. If we knew exactly how it happened the first time, then you could figure out how likely something like that would be, but we have basically no information about any of this, on so many different levels. We have a reasonable bet that what happens once happens again, but if you're not willing to jump on that in every situation, you want some evidence.
The thing that would really matter with life on Mars is if you could prove that it started entirely independent from earth. If you just find something that gets to a common getentic root with earth bacteria 2 billion years ago, then you proved cross-pollenation between planets, which is cool, but if you find somthing else, that would be enough for me to feel pretty confident of us finding a green guy within a few dozen light years. I just don't feel confident making assumtions based on a statistical sample of one.
Um, we've landed stuff on Venus and an asteroid called Eros
Jeff
stty erase ^H