Slashdot Mirror
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."
...a mass noun. 'Vast' doesn't really work with mass nouns.
Nasa found water years ago http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2009318.stm
-everphilski-
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-
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?
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...
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.
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
That still wouldn't explain day variation. It would be the same whether we orbited the sun or it orbitted us since it is caused by the tilt of the earth. Despite what many people think, there actually wasn't overwhelming evidence back then to point towards heliocentrism for a long time and not even Galileo could find any flaws in Brahe's geocentric model. It isn't like now where we have all this evidence supporting something and the religious are up in a knot about it.
Put a superconductive wire along the equator and run some current through it. Better yet, make it a mesh, so that breaking a wire doesn't release huge amounts of energy at once.