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Martian Sea Discovered

Posted by timothy on from the martian-ice-cube-you-mean dept.

mpesce writes "New Scientist is reporting that a large sea of frozen ice (between 800 and 900 km in size and 45 m deep) has been discovered by the ESA's Mars Express Probe. Here's the kicker: the sea of block ice is only five degrees away from the Martian equator. New Scientist also links to a PDF of a paper to be presented next month about the finding." Update: 02/21 15:30 GMT by T : Note: that's 45 meters deep, not 45 kilometers deep.

5 of 508 comments (clear)

  1. Water is Life by Fox_1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Woot!
    err maybe not, still not enough information but I tell ya all those stories I read growing up seem a little closer now - Edgar Rice Burroughs maybe was a little off in his vision of the planet - but Kim Stanley Robinson or Aurthor C. Clarkes visions may be in reach now. With water on the planet , and it being accessible to us gives any future mission to mars a valuable resource.
    I'm 'pumped' so to speak.

    --
    The rock, the vulture, and the chain
  2. Re:nothing of the sort by essreenim · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The interesting point is that's its ice close to MArs equator albeit underground. This is significant if true as that far down there are sure to be thermal vents from volcanoes keeping the water above zero and hence providing a greater probability of simple organic life.

    FUCK Roland Piquepaille's blog articles, devoid of content. Copy this sig if you agree!

    Yeah! Screw'em

  3. Makes you wonder about the guys at Science... by gloth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It wasn't too long ago that the guys from the Science magazine compiled their list of the 10 most important breakthroughs of 2004. Ranked 1 were the Mars rovers. For all I remember, Mars Express delivered probably at least as many new insights, if not more, but it was notably missing in that list. Why's that? Just because it doesn't have wheels to drive around, or is it the lack of an american flag on its side? Or what exactly is it that puts the rovers into a league of their own?

  4. tres errrores by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "New Scientist is reporting that a large sea of frozen ice (between 800 and 900 km in size and 45 km deep)

    It's amazing to me that the submitter could make three errors in the first half of the first sentence of his submission.

    It's not between 800 and 900 in size, it is 800 by 900.
    It's 45 meters deep, not km.
    Frozen ice? Well, duh.

    it's powers of observation and recounting as keen as these that make eye witness testimony so compelling.

  5. Just frozen ice? by ehiris · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FTA: Images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera on Mars Express show raft-like ground structures - dubbed "plates" - that look similar to ice formations near Earth's poles, according to an international team of scientists.

    If it is indeed frozen H2O like in Antarctica, there is a possibility that it also contains liquid water within the ice. To the surprise of explorers, that was found in Antarctica.

    I tried to find a link to that information but I couldn't find anything good. My source is this Antarctica documentary

    I wonder what the temperature variation is on the Mars equator. Theoretically, how would that temperature variation affect a body of water of that size?