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Vast Subsurface Martian Ice Discovered
The Fun Guy writes to tell us New Scientist is reporting that deep-scan radar results from ESA's Mars Express spacecraft have revealed vast amounts of subsurface ice. From the article: "Intriguingly, the signal reflected from the bottom of the crater is so strong and appears so flat that it may be liquid water. 'If you put water there, that's what the signal might look like,' Johnson told New Scientist. But he cautions the data is based on only one pass over the region and could be caused by another material."
also found was John Carter, slightly the worse for wear.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
like.... months ago?
Underground water park!
Post-rock/Ambient/Drone and other noise.
To anyone in the know, what implications would this have on the possible terraforming of mars to have a hospitable atmosphere?
And people say that Hollywood doesn't make realistic movies!
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/"and could be caused by another material"
WTF?! Sending an expedition to Mars, to find water (supposedly with the correct equipment to do so), and then come up with that, erm, statement. As an armchair astronomer, I find that a bit weak.
In other news, martians now believed to be aquatic.
...a mass noun. 'Vast' doesn't really work with mass nouns.
More detailed analysis of the radar image indicates that the shape of the flat region actually appears to be almost perfectly rectangular, with an aspect ratio of 4:9. Nobody is quite sure what to make of that.
Nasa found water years ago http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2009318.stm
-everphilski-
This is a big deal. You don't find raw metal much on Mars; most of it is tied up with oxygen. Raw metal has many implications: if it is common, it can be a great source of base building. If the metals are rare on Earth as well, and they're common on Mars, they could provide a potential export source. If it is a meteor, and they're common, it could affect our models of how often Mars gets struck by meteors. Since the rock isn't buried, it could provide clues as to how long it's been on Mars, how fast Meridiani Planum is eroding, and give us dataon how metals wear over time on Mars.
Any time you find something you've never found before, it's a big deal. Honestly, to people who've been following the mission, it looked like Opportunity was pretty much wrapping things up. It just left a geological treasure trove and there isn't much more "on the map", so to speak. It's neat to see it continue making nice finds.
Check out my website: Playfully Clever
When are we going to send a manned mission to Mars? We understand so much about the Universe, we can see millions of light years away using these amazing telescopes, but we STILL haven't set foot on the next planet over.
Maybe if we used tax money for space exploration instead of bombs this wouldn't be an issue; I think we could have been there a long time ago.
Quaaaaaaaaid... Start the... reeeaaaaccctoooorrr....
The implications is that to release the water you need to drill down 1.5km or possibly 2.5 to get to the liquid.
Doing that on another planet would probably cost more than another iraq war.
With no oil at the end.
Actual Scientist - If you put water there, that's what the signal might look like.
newscientist.com - Radar reveals ice deep below Martian surface
Slashdot.com - Vast Subsurface Martian Ice Discovered
The headlines gets better and better!
The surface of Mars is quite obviously a redistribution of dirt over the surface of oceans made solid by the ill fated use of ice-9 long ago in the Martian past.
RFC2119
To terraform you need to make an atmosphere. You need greenhouse gasses to do this. Water generally doesn't factor into the equation. A good reference is "The case for Mars" by Robert Zubrin (although I don't totally agree with him)
-everphilski-
Everyone knows that to detect water in a deep crater you drop a stone in it and wait for the plopping noise.
Jeez, and these guys call themselves scientists!
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
This sounds very interesting!
Click here for an audio interview about the finding.
If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
They shoulda used a spectrometer and not radar :)
(resists urge to take a pot shot at ESA)
-everphilski-
I wonder how long till we see a martian branch of the polar bear club.
What would an Internet domain for Mars be? www.foo.com.mars? Or extrapolating.... www.one.huge.com.uranus? Then there's www.iwork.ie.io. I could go on but you get the idea. The Internet is too earth-centric. pdxguy -at- rainpuddle.com.p3-575
Where's the astronaut with the dousing rods?
All this moaning about the ice caps melting, lets just nip over there and bring some back!
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
Its too thin. That's the problem, trying to make the atmosphere thicker. You basically have to import gasses one way or another. Gasses are bulky though, there are better ways to do it, like plants, biomass, etc. that can break down matter from a solid state into gas. Martian rock is actually rather rusty and carbonaceous (sp?) if you had a good cheap source of heat you could heat it up and get some carbon dioxide and oxygen off of it... its not an easy problem to tackle. Other methods that have been suggested have been bombarding the surface with asteroids from the asteroid belt (many of them have a lot of solid gasses on them) or detonating nuclear bombs (bad idea IMO).
-everphilski-
From ESA:
For the first time in the history of planetary exploration, the MARSIS radar on board ESA's Mars Express has provided direct information about the deep subsurface of Mars.
First data include buried impact craters, probing of layered deposits at the north pole and hints of the presence of deep underground water-ice.
The subsurface of Mars has been so far unexplored territory. Only glimpses of the Martian depths could be deduced through analysis of impact crater and valley walls, and by drawing cross-sections of the crust deduced from geological mapping of the surface.
With measurements taken only for a few weeks during night-time observations last summer, MARSIS - the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding - is already changing our perception of the Red Planet, adding to our knowledge the missing 'third' dimension: the Martian interior.
First results reveal an almost circular structure, about 250 km in diameter, shallowly buried under the surface of the northern lowlands of the Chryse Planitia region in the mid-latitudes on Mars. The scientists have interpreted it as a buried basin of impact origin, possibly containing a thick layer of water-ice-rich material.
To draw this first exciting picture of the subsurface, the MARSIS team studied the echoes of the radio waves emitted by the radar, which passed through the surface and then bounced back in the distinctive way that told the 'story' about the layers penetrated.
These echo structures form a distinctive collection that include parabolic arcs and an additional planar reflecting feature parallel to the ground, 160 km long. The parabolic arcs correspond to ring structures that could be interpreted as the rims of one or more buried impact basins. Other echoes show what may be rim-wall 'slump blocks' or 'peak-ring' features.
The planar reflection is consistent with a flat interface that separates the floor of the basin, situated at a depth of about 1.5 to 2.5 km, from a layer of overlying different material. In their analysis of this reflection, scientists do not exclude the intriguing possibility of a low-density, water-ice-rich material at least partially filling the basin.
"The detection of a large buried impact basin suggests that MARSIS data can be used to unveil a population of hidden impact craters in the northern lowlands and elsewhere on the planet," says Jeffrey Plaut, Co-Principal Investigator on MARSIS. "This may force us to reconsider our chronology of the formation and evolution of the surface."
MARSIS also probed the layered deposits that surround the north pole of Mars, in an area between 10 and 40 East longitude. The interior layers and the base of these deposits are poorly exposed. Prior interpretations could only be based on imaging, topographic measurements and other surface techniques.
Two strong and distinct echoes coming from the area correspond to a surface reflection and subsurface interface between two different materials. By analysis of the two echoes, the scientists were able to draw the likely scenario of a nearly pure, cold water-ice layer thicker than 1 km, overlying a deeper layer of basaltic regolith. This conclusion appears to rule out the hypothesis of a melt zone at the base of the northern layered deposits.
To date, the MARSIS team has not observed any convincing evidence for liquid water in the subsurface, but the search has only just begun. "MARSIS is already demonstrating the capability to detect structures and layers in the subsurface of Mars which are not detectable by other sensors, past or present," says Giovanni Picardi, MARSIS Principal Investigator.
"MARSIS holds exciting promise to address, and possibly solve, a number of open questions of major geological significance," he concluded.
If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
"The entire core of Mars is made of ice. The reactor melts it, and it makes air!" - arnie
now, let's see if we find some alien artifacts...
...real perpetual motion machine is built...but it may not work.
Don't ya hate it when the correct spelling of your favorite screen name is taken?
Anonymous Coward - But why would the martians leave behind such a big clue to mislead us?
Title: Vast Subsurface Martian Ice Discovered
Description: Intriguingly, the signal reflected from the bottom of the crater is so strong and appears so flat that it may be liquid water.
So in fact, subsurface ice was not discovered but we have a good idea that it might. Not only that, but the title says ice, the description says liquid water. Wow.
Are you intolerant of intolerant people?
For disinformation!
-everphilski-
Every time NASA feels it's missing from the public eye, and needs to beg for more money, they amazingly find water on mars.
So, you think that the ESA is part of NASA? From this we know that we can disregard everything that you say.
(thanks for playing)
What! Jimmy Hoffa! that's where he's been all these years!
so many posts and no total-recall-like-ones!!! come on you guys...
X~
~Futurama~
-everphilski-
"But he cautions the data is based on only one pass over the region and could be caused by another material."
Of course that didn't stopped the Slashdot editors from giving the story the cocksure "Vast Subsurface Martian Ice Discovered" title.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
...It's really just a copy of the Sony rootkit lurking beneath the surface.
Now we just need to start building some real (nuclear) spaceships.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
The way I read it was that it is pretty clear that there is lots of ice. The thing that is speculative is the presence of a liquid layer.
If there is water, there might be life!
Actual Scientist - If you put water there, that's what the signal might look like.
newscientist.com - Radar reveals ice deep below Martian surface
Slashdot.com - Vast Subsurface Martian Ice Discovered
Slashdot User: "Life descovered on Mars!"
Your right. We haven't drank the water yet. But gamma ray spectrometry is the best tool we have (and beats the crap out of radar) What else would give a positive hydrogen signature like that? Methane? No. Not cold enough. Peroxide? We could only wish but no, not stable enough. Seriously, what else has that strong a hydrogen signature?
-everphilski-
So people are talking about us now trying to go to Mars because of this?
Hello? We have TONS of water already!
THINK, people!
But you'd need to heat up the surface first. Which requires a *lot* of greenhouse gasses first, to trap the heat. You can't just boil a big pot of water, it will just condense on the surface.
-everphilski-
In fact, there's a RFC out there covering the IP adressing issues. Have fun.
This isn't the first evidence they have found of water on mars, see this article
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"Open your mind, Quaid!!! Start the reactor!!!"
/oblig...or at least it should be.
Arschloch
The problem with radar alone is they will never know for sure. And looking that deep, the water is virtually useless for anything but an advanced permenant settlement. Have you seen the rigs it takes to drill for oil that deep? Not to mention we don't even know if its water or a solidified magma flow.
-everphilski-
Subsurface sounding of Mars is a great result in itself. It is unique to Mars exploration so far. The idea of looking at the equivalent of a seizmic profile on another planet blows my mind. No need for additional hyperbole or speculation. By the way, the results suggest subsurface water, not ice. Too bad they didn't provide an estimated depth legend. To the poster, RTFA.
an ill wind that blows no good
It is all falling in place, now if we can just get Arnold up to Mars to thaw the ice and creat an atmosphere (a la Total Recall).
"It's not a tumor!!!"
wait, wrong movie.....
The gun is good - Zardoz
"could be deduced"
"have interpreted it as"
"possibly containing"
"could be interpreted as"
"what may be"
"the intriguing possibility"
"prior interpretations"
"scientists were able to draw the likely scenario"
"but the search has only begun"
Ahh yes, science. Where shades of gray run screaming from the cold hard face of objective facts!
Douglas Quaid will release all of that frozen water and create an atmosphere on Mars. Then all the mutants will be happy.
Contact Gillware for all your Data Recovery Needs! Data Recovery
While it is from a website full of pseudoscience and unconvincing "fossil" photographs, I found this stereophoto (view with crossed eyes for 3d view) very interesting:
http://xenotechresearch.com/geyop122.htmI can't think of any possible explanation for this kind of geology other than water erosion. If there's liquid water below ground, maybe it's possible for it to reach the surface and remain liquid long enough to produce this feature.
Why don't we go kidnap the Martian Santa Claus and get ourselves two batches of presents this year? YEAH!
Scientific dogma says that until an astronaut has mud on his boots and samples prove to be water it must be something else. It's odd to me that conclusions are made about Jupiter's moons yet Mars water is looked at with such skepticism. No one questions water on Europa but Mars traditional has been viewed as dry so it's held to a much higher standard. Over a year ago I saw a lander photo that clearly showed a puddle of what seemed to be liquid water next to a track and yet there are still people at NASA that are fighting every sign of water and liquid water is viewed with the same skepticism that a little green man would be. Why is it so difficult to accept. A recent test proved liquid water could exist for a time on the surface under it's present condition. Far more energy seems to be expended in disproving water than proving it. I'm really not sure life on Mars will be accepted in my lifetime for the same reasons. There was evidence of it from the first Viking lander yet the the official word was no sign of life. The evidence wasn't strong or compelling but it was there. Being skeptical is a good thing but head in the sand dogma is hurting not helping the science.
The latest leaked memo from Downing Street indicates that George Bush wanted to invade Mars as early as 2003 and may have cooked the Intelligence coming from NASA to indicate WMD (Water, Mostly Dirt) on the Red Planet. Meanwhile the Martian Ambasador has been entirely absent from the UN preventing any reasonable discussion of the situation. The Chinese have planned their own invasion of Mars but claim they were invited to help stabilize the government by the Peoples of Mars. John Kerry is backing the plan to go to Mars, once all attempts at negotiated settlement have been tried. Oh, wait, now he is against it. No, hold on, he's for it now. Oh, hold on, now he's against it... More on that as it develops.
Some plans believe that they could make a marginal atmosphere (cold, low oxygen, but breathable) within a hundred years or so. Sure, the atmosphere might float off, but that takes hundreds and thousands of years. I would say it is a pretty safe bet that barring the collapse of civilization, we can probably replace whatever is lost. Sure, it might mean that there is always equipment running on mars to keep the atmosphere from floating off, but that seems like I small price to play to gain control over an entire planet.
I have always been under the impression that it is a greenhouse gas, probably one of the most popular ones at that.
I would go find some good sources but will settle for Wiki...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Being skeptical is a good thing but head in the sand dogma is hurting not helping the science.
How, exactly? Suppose, for giggles, that the scientists decided to be less skeptical and run shouting in the streets, "There's water on Mars! And two of three Viking tests showed that there's life on Mars! Yay!" And then...
Then what, exactly? We don't really know anything more than we did this morning; we've just decided to reinterpret the data more optimistically.
Maybe you're just suggesting that the public would be more behind additional scientific research if they thought there was something extraordinary like life on other planets to find there. But that's public relations, not science. Science is about knowledge, not opinion.
It is only by building piece of evidence upon other pieces of evidence that science proceeds. That's dogmatic, perhaps, but it's an extremely successful way of looking at the world. When you start to accept speculation and extrapolation as fact, you gradually introduce more and more errors until you don't really know anything any more.
And I wouldn't call water on Europa an accepted fact, though you wouldn't necessarily know it from reading Slashdot, where the best information on Europa seems to come from the movie 2010. Water on Europa is looked at by astrophysicists in exactly the same way as water on Mars: there is tantalizing evidence but no proof, yet. It won't take muddy boots; it'll just take more probes and more analysis of the existing evidence to rule out other possibilities.
Only when there's no other interpretation of the data can you grant something the status of "fact". And the more you want something to be true, the harder you'd better double-check that it's not just wishful thinking. That's brought down more than one good scientist in the past.
Additional work will continue to be done on the most likely hypotheses. Tantalizing evidence for water on Mars allows us to build machines that will be able to look for it in more detail because we know where, what kind, etc. to look for. Our time and money are limited, so we limit ourselves to the most likely hypotheses. That's why announcements like this are celebrated, but cautiously.
The biggest argument against liquid water on mars is this little thing called physics. Water on earth and water on Mars, both being made of H20, behave the same. Since we're aware of the temperature of Mars, liquid water on the surface NOT existing is pretty much a forgone conclusion. The average surface temperature on Mars is MINUS 63 Celcius. Considering that water freezes at 0 degress celcius, I hardly think that it's dogma to insist that the "puddle" you saw was something else besides liquid water.
The other argument against it is another little thing called vapor pressure. Since the atmosphere of Mars is considerable thinner than that of Earth. The atmospheric pressure on Mars is 0.0056 that of Earth's. Given the temperature there, any water would move directly from a solid (ice) to gaseous (steam) state. Liquid simply isn't physically possible.
Since it's really not possbile, the dogmatics are the ones who insist that it exists despite every bit of scientific evidence to the contrary. Unless of course you're proposing the Mars is actually an alternate universe with complete seperate physical laws. Or perhaps you're advocating "Intelligent Design" on Mars????
Seriously, don't take my word for it. Dave Soper has posted a really nice article about it here - http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/Mars/water.html
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
First we blast it with asteroids to raise the mass and warm it up. Then we drop water comets, to start a greenhouse effect. Finally, we wrap it around with one sodding big orbiting elecromagnet, and jumpstart the magnetic field. Then we can get down to the funky business of oxygen farming, soil improvement etc. It's all totally trivial.
It's a joke! Fucking clueless moderators...
Finding water on Mars is no big deal. People have known itwas there for centuries. They saw canals (wrong) a long time ago and erosional features more recently.
Perhaps the Europeans (ESA) are little behind in their reading.
We sit here, discussing about how to make an alien world suitable for our own needs, as if it belonged to us or something like that. How would we feel if we found out that, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a bunch of hairy little green men, looking at this blue grain of dust traveling around a smallish nondescript star, discussed and moved to "tatooineform" it, ignorant or oblivious to our presence?
I feel very uncomfortable talking about (possibly) someone else's world like this. It seems as if we were talking about taking posession of a seemingly abandoned house.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
All the probes that went missing... they were all in that region, weren't they? Would the magnetic anomoly in the region be sufficient to have confused them? :)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Technically, the "next planet over" is Venus. It's generally closer to us than Mars and takes less time to get there. But we ain't ever setting foor on Venus, I'll wager.
-- Dave
Making fun of dumb people since 2009
Surface terraforming is unlikely - especially as the dust devils & storms would destroy any large structure. Subsurface teraforming is possible. Given the situation, the most likely solution would be to melt the ice underground, then use the bases normally used for undersea research. No problems with the surface conditions, then, and the water would provide a degree of protection from radiation.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It could be OIL!!! All we need now is to find some destitute tribesmen to give it to and then spend the next hundred years kissing their ass!
You do not have to import gasses. In fact there is plenty there. The issue is how long it will take.
He suggested bringing in ammonia based comets to create more N2 in the atmosphere (thickening) combined with local CO2, H2O, and some CFCs. As to the CO2, there is plenty of it. Problem is that it is solid at the poles. Once the atmosphere is heated about 3 degrees, then the CO2 will sublimate and there will be plenty of gas.
He also suggests bringing in ice chunks for water for the planet.
Quaid!!!
http://imdb.com/title/tt0100802/
Saline water's freezing point decreases 1/2 of one degree Farenheight for each 5 parts per thousand increase in salinity. In converting celcius to Farenheit the average temp for Mars is -81.4 degrees. This means that you have to drop the freezing point of water for a total of 113.4 degrees. 113.4 x 2 = 226.8 which yields the number of 5 parts per thousand that you'd have to add to your theoritical liquid water on the surface of Mars. Now if you're actually capable of doing math, you'll quickly realize that 226.8 x 5 is a actually 1134 which is more than 1000. Since it's physically impossible to have 1134 parts per 1000, you're still stuck without liquid water.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
I know this is how science works, slow and deliberately, but who among us doubts that there is at least microbial life and plenty of subsurface water on mars? Its so anticlimactic when we've been staring at photos for years the show formations that are clearly formed by liquids and years ago meteors were found from mars that contained microbial structures. Yes, there is room for dispute of both of those, but I tend to settle on the more likely, more obvious side of such issues and its seems obvious to everyone at this point that Mars was once a thriving planet before great great great great great great great great ...100 more times... grandfather Bush became president of mars and destroyed the planet with his policies.
Are we going to discover that mars is a mostly-dead replica of earth in time to convince the lame-brains who still think that a planets atmosphere makeup has nothing to do with its temperature that we need to take global warming seriously? I think if the rovers found a monument on the surface of mars that described how it died due to changes in the gases of the atmosphere tomorrow it still wouldn't convince anyone to take it seriously.
But honestly, why should we when were statistically due to be wiped out by a major meteor strike. That will have a pretty devestating effect on the atmosphere.
Aren't you glad we only live 80-100 years anyway. It kind of makes you feel at one with the Earth knowing it probably won't be around in the same form for much longer anyway.
There are large swaths of Olivine on the surface of Mars. Olivine weathers rapidly in water. It'll dissolve on the order of 10,000 years. These deposits appear to be 3.5 billion years old. The amount of olivine on Mars puts an upper limit to the amount of liquid water Mars could have had. I don't know how quickly or slowly Olivine weathers under ice like say a glacier. I've also read speculation that a lot of erosion features could have been caused by glaciers and not by running water. These erosion features on Mars are simliar to known glacial erosion features found in places like Canada.
At least one Mars Rover scientist did say we didn't go to Mars looking for evidence of water because that would be the wrong objective. That they found evidence was icing on the cake. We should explore Mars because it is different than the Earth. And should we find similarities that's then so be it.
It is possible the Olivine a volcanic rock was deposited in those regions after most of the water disappeared. So there could be regions of Mars that had lots of water, but that was a long, long time ago. And there is probably more ice on Mars than we can guestimate, but less than what has been hyped about in the press. We are only now beginning the real exploration of Mars. We have a lot of tantalizing clues. So keep those probes, landers, and orbiters coming and let's find what we'll find.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
I don't know about you guys and gals, but it looks to me like they just discovered Martians knew how to tye-dye. Groovy, baby!
I don't moderate anymore. Karma penalty for 90% fair mods? Can I mod that unfair?
Right. Sorry. 9 x 4 x 1 x 0 x i. Happy? :-)
Now its volume is both zero and imaginary.
Even on the lowest parts of mars the atmospheric pressure is
far too low for liquid water to exist (even in brine form).
A lake that size would have boiled away eaons ago. Its either
solid ice or something else entirely.
We want to bottle that water and sell it here under the exclusive 'God of War' label for 2 bucks a pop.
---
Coca Cola
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Garrett, NASA is working on a very lightweight spacecraft now. Maybe they'll stop lifting off with heavy fuels & heavy tanks that contain the heavy fuel, use an engine based on this principle > http://www.newpath4.com/millenialdawnpowerandlight secure21.htm . Time of Mars arrival does not have to take 9 months. 9 weeks or 9 days is more like it. Meantime, keep a close watch on the weather > http://www.newpath4.com/WorldwideClimateEngineMsg. htm . The sooner and further we get away from heavy spacecraft, the sooner we beat Gravity and get out there... thataway! Riley