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Mars Express Begins Search for Water on Mars
H_Fisher writes "The BBC reports that the Mars Express spacecraft team is ready to deploy a radar antenna to search for traces of water and ice beneath the Martian surface. The deployment has been delayed for a year due to concerns that the unfurled antenna might damage the spaceship. Mission controllers are optimistic; perhaps the ESA will be the next to make an important discovery about the red planet?"
Close but no cigar. I think you were looking for the article before this, but maybe I'm wrong.
AFAIK, all the "water" finds on Mars have been indirect - albeit very convincing - evidence of surface water in the past.
But the radars on this puppy might just punch down - maybe only a few feet - and get a hard f*ing ice reflection, which would put paid to all the surmise and deduction. Then we would know its still there.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
To quote Agent Smith, "They're not out yet."
In this case, it's the antennas for the survey instrument that aren't out yet. While the engineers seem very optimistic that the antenna deployment will go well and allow the survey to begin, there also seems to be some trepidation that the deployment could seriously damage the spacecraft.
Wait another two weeks, then celebrate the start of the search.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Well, I don't know if I would mod you arrogantly misleading, but perhaps grossly simplifying.
I mean, take hydrogen, oxygen, two very abundant elements in the solar system, and bam!, you have water.
It's not this easy. As I look around the room, I see gads of oxygen and hydrogen molecules. (Yes, I have very good eyesight!) I have bammed many times tonight, and yet still no water. Okay, some sweat on my Coke can--oh, and in my Coke--but that was water already formed; it doesn't count.
It's not like water just automatically spontaneously forms from hydrogen and oxygen (that whole entropy thing), it only happens under a specific set of circumstances as a specific reaction. Most of the hydrogen and oxygen in, on, and around the Earth is not water, although a lot of it is. It's contained in other molecules such as O2 (what we breathe in), CO2 (what we breathe out, of which there is LOTS on Mars), H2 (potential fuel panacea and, oh, what also blew the Hindenburg up), SiO2 (sand, of which we have plenty), and so on.
And we're not talking about looking for just a few free-floating water molecules. It's generally accepted (okay I admit, only by everyone I've asked, which is a group composed entirely of myself currently) that when one talks about "water on Mars," he or she is referring to a rather large collection of the stuff, such as in a lake, an icecap, or even an ice cube.
So no, I don't think it's so readily apparent that there is water on Mars, otherwise I have a tough time believing that scientists are so gung ho to spend billions of dollars to prove something that everyone knows is so painfully obvious.
"There's ice on the moon you know. Yes. The Moon. The moon was part of the Earth once, so you can be pretty sure that the moon has ice on it. Maybe not a lot, but it's there."
That is rather facile logic. By the same token we should expect life on the moon shouldn't we? After all it was "part of the earth". The Moon was formed in the fiery inferno of a planetoid collision with earth, any water that didn't volatilize off and remained after coalescence couldn't be readily held by the weak gravity and intense solar irradiation at its (relatively) close orbit to the sun. Furthermore, the only place where water has been SUGGESTED to possibly occur on the moon is at the poles in permanently shaded bottoms of craters in the form of hydrated minerals and in fine and sparse ice dust among the dirt. There is nothing absolutely certain and derministic about the presence of water on any solar system body (except earth) without examining that object first. Io (right next to europa!) has no water because its a flaming hell full of superhot volcanoes produced by the tidal flexing of its mantle; an effect from the orbits of Europa and its proximity to Jupiter. This is a completely non-intuitive phenomenon and no one really suspected it was happening until we went there with the Voyagers.
"Same goes for carbon which is why if a planet's not drenched in water, ten to one it's flooded with methane or some other hydrocarbon."
I wouldn't take THAT bet! The only place we know of in the solar system which is "flooded with hydrocarbons" is Titan. An absence of water is absolutely by no means a determinant factor in whether a world has lots of hydrocarbons! (eg. Venus, the Moon, Mercury, Io, Phobos, Neptune, Jupiter...... all have no water and NO huge amounts of hydrocarbons!) The solar system seldom lends itself to easy characterization by the application of overly simple maxims of the sort you seem to have affection toward.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
As to the h2o on mars, we know its there, just like we know there's ice on/in jupiter (maybe even in liquid form - Jupiter is more of a failed brown star than a planet.
It would be impossible for the jovian planets not to have molecular water in some form.
It's not like water just automatically spontaneously forms from hydrogen and oxygen (that whole entropy thing)
Excuse me, but you don't know what you're talking about. Entropy isn't the problem here. Entropy might not be favourable for the reaction H2 + 0.5O2 -> H2O, bit since enthalpy is very much so, the whole reaction is, at least at reasonable temperatures, very favoured.
The reason why having H2 and O2 isn't a guarantee to have water is twofold:
1) activation energy
2) existance of even more stable products
But GP is right: Water is so stable that usually you'll have at least some water when there's H2 and O2.