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Enormous Amount of Frozen Water Found on Mars

schweini writes "Space.com is reporting that the Mars Express probe's MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding) experiment has detected and measured an enormous amount of water ice near Mars' south pole, which would be sufficient to submerge the whole planet's surface underneath approximately 10m of water on average."

4 of 442 comments (clear)

  1. We're the ocean planet by nut · · Score: 4, Informative

    Facts about the Oceans:

    Area: about 140 million square miles (362 million sq km), ore nearly 71% of the Earth's surface.

    Average Depth: 12,200 feet (3,720 m).

    http://www.mos.org/oceans/planet/features.html

    --
    Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
  2. Liquid water by Rix · · Score: 4, Informative

    They've been looking for signs of liquid water, primarily in the distant past.

  3. Re:Not by Chatsubo · · Score: 4, Informative

    TFA states that there's that amount of water in one deposit.

    There's probably other deposits, with much, much more....

    "There's evidence that about 10 times or maybe even 100 times that much water has flowed across the surface of Mars to carve the various channels, the outflow valleys and other features we see in the images and topography data"

    They're just saying that, they've found where a bunch of that water IS, but they still have to find where the rest of it is. If it's there.

    --
    > no, yes, maybe (tagging beta)
  4. A Blue Mars Map by gobbo · · Score: 4, Informative

    I also found it an odd measure. I'd much rather see an image of where the lakes/oceans might be if all of it was melted, perhaps with depth maps.

    It's one of those statements meant to boggle, like "if you stacked all the books ever printed, they would reach the moon" [that's bunk, just made that up].

    Anyway, you asked for a sea level map of Mars, so here ya go.