Underground Water on Mars?

WaltonNews wrote in with a story about possible underground water on Mars. The article begins: "The Mars Express spacecraft, from the European Space Agency (ESA), has indicated to scientists that the dry atmosphere and surface on the planet Mars does not necessarily mean Mars is dry underneath the surface. In fact, a huge storehouse of water and carbon dioxide could be found in underground reservoirs."

Comments

404

[Any Web Loco]

No water after all?

Try this link...

[aapold]

Mars Express scientists think Mars might have plenty of water underground.

I'm sure they'll fix the article soon. But tossing the quoted section into a news.google search provides this.

Re:Try this link...

[Cimon Avaro]

I'm actually starting to get a little paranoid. It almost seems like WMD-II. "There's water on Mars — we must go!". I'm beginning to wonder if someone's got a real reason for wanting to go, and it's got nothing to do with water.

Happens to me often. I hear flowing water, and I have to go.

Old News

[celardore]

This was discovered some time ago.

Article link?

[Anonymous Coward]

Got a link to the article? Or do I have to go to Mars and see it for myself? I'll pack thermal underwear and a shovel.

Re:Article link?

[JustOK]

Don't forget your towel

Not a new result

[amightywind]

This is not news worthy in the least. It has been several years since groundwater seeps have been observed by the MOC camera on Mars Global Surveyor.

Re:Not a new result

[nwbvt]

I think the point of the research being referenced (though the link is bad, so its hard to tell) is that new experiments show the water loss rate should be much lower than they previously thought, which means all that water that used to be there must have gone somewhere.

The desert planet

[iiii]

Beneath the surface of the desert planet we will find huge stores of water and the spice melange, which will allow us to see into the future, which will enable us to travel among the stars. It's actually the poop of some giant monster worms creatures, but who cares, let's eat it anyway.

Speculation...

[ilovegeorgebush]

Why does this make news? It's speculation. Can I make the /. frontpage by saying "There might be miniture Giraffes under the surface of mars"?

It'd be a fascinating article if they had found water under the surface, but this?...Come on...

MARSIS

[Nuffsaid]

Don't know where the link was supposed to go, but some (not really new) information can be found here, along with a nice section of Mars North Polar Cap obtained with the remarkable Italian MARSIS instrument. Nice to see another world studied by geologists with just the same techniques used here on Earth.

Did I miss something, or did they?

[Speed Pour]

Seriously...there's been a decent number of sightings of ice water on Mars including European Space Agency and again recently with NASA.

There's nothing new here. Stating a theory that perhaps less water has disappeared than previously thought? What's expected? Ice is known to have a lower planetary dispersion rate.

To add to all of this, it's scientifically reasonable to assume there should be fairly large quantities of water under the surface. Logic applies, we've seen landforms that support the belief of water having once been on mars, and we've got recent pictures to show some (likely a lot) is still there. Guess what, anybody who knows anything about dessert geography also knows that water naturally burrows below the surface. This is just putting 2+2 together.

What are they going to report on next, the discovery of Magnetic Fields and how they might exist on other planets?

Re:format

[Paulrothrock]

I'll take a one-way mission, too. Hell, imagine never having to wear bug spray anymore. No more poison ivy. No more dimwits trying to push their religion on you by force if necessary. And you'd be spending your life building a new world. That would be a wonderful place to die.

Re:format

[OriginalArlen]

I have a deeply unpopular opinion round here which is that, even if humans actually walk on Mars in our lifetimes (I'd put the chances of that at 5/1), the chances of any permanent settlement are nil, zip, zilch, nada. You have to understand how much it would cost, and that there would be no economic benefits at all apart from the teflon/tang/spacepen type spin-offs; and if that's the aim, there are plenty of much more useful projects that could be run which would have just as many technological spin-off benefits. You have to understand how hard it would be to get there and maintain life support in such a hostile environment. How long would the US settlers have lasted if they'd had no natural resources apart from lots of very very salty / acidic dusts and regolith, a dim sun, low gravity, and had faced instant death in the event of a loss of air pressure / failure of any of several thousand literally "mission-critical" systems? Oh wait, for some of those failure modes, death would be slow, lingering, and unpleasant. And we'd all have to watch it on TV every night. *shudder* no, thanks.

See, I said it was unpopular. Bye-bye karma, I barely knew ye ;)

Re:soda!

[CptNerd]

So, all we have to do is drill holes all over Mars and drop huge Mentos candies down the shafts, and voila! Instant atmosphere and oceans! Plus, if we time the drops right, we might be able to nudge Mars into an orbit closer to the Sun!