Slashdot Mirror
Water Ice On Mars
cathector sends along a story from SpaceWeather.com on the discovery of water ice on Mars.
"Scientists have figured out the mysterious white substance unearthed by NASA's Phoenix lander on Mars. It's frozen water. The breakthrough came last week when Phoenix's stereo camera caught the substance in the act of disappearing. Bathed in martian sunlight for four days, the white substance sublimated — i.e., it transformed from solid to gas without passing through the liquid state. This is how water behaves on Mars.... Some readers have asked, how do we know the white substance is not frozen CO2 (dry ice) instead of frozen water? Answer: Phoenix's landing site is too warm for dry ice. The average daily temperature is about -70 F while dry ice requires temperatures lower than about -109 F." The animated GIF showing the ice sublimating is pretty nice too.
This is actually pretty exciting news. Hopefully they are right about it.
How do we know wind didn't blow stuff away?
Now we just need a little global warming.
So, if we sent a bunch of robot tractors to Mars and uncovered the dirty ice caps, wouldn't they all sublimate and all that water vapor would warm the planet? Are we looking at a cheap way to terraform the planet?
This is my sig.
In other news, NASA announced today that a manned mission to Mars is planned to retreive the newly found ice in time for the 2012 Kentucky Derby. NASA plans to upstage Woodford Reserve's famous $1000 Mint Julep at the race with its own $3,000,000 version of the traditional cocktail. While plans are still being firmed up, the beverage will reportedly come in a limited edition collector's glass.
Pardon my total ignorance of the subject, but does this mean that it might occasionally snow on mars? Or would the environment be too different to allow it?
Everything will be taken away from you.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/20/026241
First against the wall when the revolution comes
If I remember my chemistry classes correctly (there is a high chance I don't), water would do this under lower air pressure, I think. Correct me if I'm wrong, I just thought some kind of explanation would be better than "because it's on Mars".
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
That animation is actually cut off. The main sublimation that was observed is below the frame of that picture. There's a better one here, where you can actually see the small chunks farther down disappearing completely.
It means we finally have a suitable accompaniment for Martian scotch.
A first glance, it doesn't look to me like ice "melting" any more than salt or some other finely-grained material blowing away (no, I'm not saying it's salt -- just something that could move). Is there no wind in that area or something?
And why are we using F? This is a science article, posted on a web site for nerds.
I've noticed that almost all of the news headlines covering this are qualified statements like "Lander finds water on Mars, according to scientists". As if they're afraid to actually say something straightforward like "Water found on Mars" and they have to make it clear that they're just reporting what someone else is saying (with the implication that maybe they don't really believe it). At the same time they seem to have no problem with other headlines like "Celebrity Arrested Drunk" without the need to qualify it as "Celebrity Arrested Drunk According To Police" etc.
Maybe it's just me, but I mind it a bit irksome that so many big news outlets seem so detached from any sort of science reporting these days.
G.
Could we have this important information in units used by, I don't know, the rest of the world?
I thought the lander was loaded with scientific equipment. None of it can detect water? The best they can do is take pictures?
Have they figured out what flavor it is and can they get it back here without it melting so I can sell it in my new Mars Water Ice stores!?!?
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
"The average daily temperature is about -70 F while dry ice requires temperatures lower than about -109 F."
well, it was in the state of sublimating (melting) so I don't think that disqualifies CO2?
Here's the problem: We still don't know conclusively. Yes, we have observations which are highly suggestive, but we don't have a chemical composition of the substance, so we don't know for sure.
Science is a hard mistress; she demands proof before making such claims.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Although I agree with you in principle, I think it might be due to the anticipation of NASA's announcement, which could do away with the "according to scientists [working on the project]" caveat.
News fails to take responsibility according to one internet poster.
More at 8.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
If this is water..and it is in ice form..
and.. according to Wiki.. Sublimation of an element or compound is a transition from the solid to gas phase with no intermediate liquid stage.
umm..I think I may be stupid here... but isn't the surface temperature -70f..
Water freezes at 32..... how did it SUBLIMATE?
At first I thought it said "ITALIAN ICE ON MARS." :(
I wanted to know what flavor. :(
No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
Finding water was one of the key goals of the Phoenix mission.
That is a bizarre statement. Large quantities of ice have been observed in numerous ways already. Even the Viking lander observed water frost directly in the 1970's:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_2
http://www.solarviews.com/cap/mars/frost.htm
That frost sublimated just like this ice did.
Here are other observations:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/28may_marsice.htm
Here you can see a frozen crater lake:
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/marsexpress/210-010705-1343-6-co-01-CraterIce_H.jpg
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMGKA808BE_0.html
Not only is that ice, it may actually be an outflow.
What makes the results from Phoenix exciting is that the actual experiments that Phoenix is supposed to perform depend on having landed on ice. But finding ice somewhere on Mars is not a surprise.
According to Wiki... Sublimation of an element or compound is a transition from the solid to gas phase with no intermediate liquid stage. if it is -70f on Mars and according to my little pea brain ice freezes at 32f. How did the sublimation happen?
What time is it again?
So, we spend a few hundred million to land something on Mars, a major part of whose mission was to confirm or debunk the existence of water there, and after 24 days all we can say is "Look, it's sublimated so it's probably water!"? I'm hearing jokes about Americans forgetting to include some simple 'test for water' equipment in their 325 million 'let's see if there's water on Mars' probe.
So, is anyone else thinking 'wtf?' like me? Why are we reduced to using pictures to try and determine if the stuff is water? Where the hell are the results of the conclusive tests so we don't have to use words like 'probably', 'most likely', and 'it shure looks like watuh, don' it?'.
Come on, NASA, you're making yourselves look incompetent.
The ice could be disappearing due to sublimation. Or it could be being consumed by a life form delighted to find a precious resource totally exposed and there for the taking.
Perhaps next mission they should take along some sugar. Put it out and see if it 'sublimates' as well.
Loose lips lose spit.
Anybody else see Dan Quayle running around with his chest puffed up saying, "I Told You So".
Good for him :)
...is that I get a chance to dupe my bad joke about it being German-speaking Martians with their sun-loungers.
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)
n/t
How is this news? Haven't we known that the polar ice caps are frozen water?
First, I think the best evidence so far that this is water is not this picture, but the fact that the Mars Orbiter's spectrometer determined that that is was a lot of hydrogen in the ground near the poles.
That some white stuff vanishes is poor evidence. They need to get the white stuff in an oven and test it.
Let's assume it is water.
What really puzzles me is how clean the water is. It is covered with what would make a dirty mud if it ever melted together. Also on earth, you never have clean water if you have flash floods like what you see as a result of a volcanic eruption or meteroid impact. You only have clean water/ice in snow and still lakes/oceans.
This implies:
1. The ice has not melted after the dust blew over it.(A long time)
2. It used to be a lake/ocean or snow
So the purity of the ice might be a bigger discovery than the fact that it is ice there.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
You are correct, except that we know the pressure on the surface of Mars is lower because of the thin atmosphere. Jupiter or Venus are better candidates for what you are describing.
Yep, Vodka.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Here
How to read them
I feel that a great disservice was done to a lot of us early on with a simplistic view of the usual three phases of matter.
And yes, you're right. That is part of the explanation.
I'm sure you intended something like "Alleged Celebrity Arrested Drunk"
There, I fixed it for you.
So these two frames were taken four days apart while the sublimation was taking place. My question would be - where are the rest of the frames? Does this lander really only "look around" every few days?
It would be nice to see it at even a 1-day resolution and get a 4-frame animation of the process. Those lumps should be seen to get smaller and vanish.
Not that I'm complaining, this is still very cool (no pun intended).
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
By 'landing site' do they also mean what is under the surface?
Is it not possible that the soil would insulate the ice below it and allow for the temperature difference necessary for dry ice?
U.S needs to upgrade it's standards. A good start would to move from Fahrenheit to Celsius. After that you can move over to the metric system.
-70 F is -56 C
-109 F is -78 C
Conversion done with Google.
Furthermore, there is essentially no water vapor in the atmosphere on Mars, so how would water have gotten there in the first place? Atmospheric CO2 can condense when conditions are right. Atmospheric water can't condense if it doesn't exist.
There's some bait, lets see if anyone will bite
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4479612.stm
When I read that after several days they'd finally finished shaking a sample down into the oven, I though "well, I guess they're not looking for light organics suspended in water". I'd think they'd grab a chunk and get it in the oven quickly to detect all the organic chemicals, including the water-soluble light ones.
Am I the only one who thought that they opened a Rita's Water Ice on Mars? They seem to be opening them all over the place of late.
Anyone who posts about bad moderation are themselves off-topic and should be moderated accordingly.
there's a number of geological processes that can concentrate water like this
in areas on earth where a lot of freezing and thawing occurs on earth, rocks get concentrated neatly in rings according to size, as if someone sorted them
i'm not saying this process is anything like why the ice is so pure on mars, what i am saying is that there are plenty of natural processes out there that concentrate materials in orders that, contraintuitively, seem like it took intelligent concentration, but are in fact totally natural
i won't even begin to speculate what processes on mars could do this, but i wouldn't be surprised if someone more knowledgeable than me could describe such a natural mechanism for ice purification on mars
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That a lot of the people here see dry ice, white and solid like the stuff found on mars, and the fact that dry ice subliminates in our atmosphere, and come up with the idea that the white stuff must be solid CO2 and not water. Of course this is completely fallacious logic, as the pressure and temp in the area make it physicaly impossible for CO2 to be a solid (if temp/pressure data is correct)....
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
I believe you misplaced your exclamation point.
Snowclone is the new clich
The picture they show of this at NASA.gov shows what would be frozen liquid water but we know that it wouldn't have been deposited there as a liquid unless it came from a different planet and was deposited there by a landing craft after the trench was dug. H2O wouldn't desublimate in a form that the sheet ice in that trench takes. Even if you feel that a water desublimate on Mars could take the appearance of frozen liquid sheet ice on Earth, you'd have to believe that the robotic scoop perfectly dug the trench to clear all the dirt off the thin fragile sheet of ice without breaking it, or if it was thicker before the dig, shaved it down to a perfect millimeter thick sheet of ice. If the liquid wasn't deposited there intentionally, it was deposited there accidentally by leakage of some sort of liquid from the craft.
According to my local newspaper, Phoenix has 8 tiny little ovens to cook the stuff and analyse it. "Due to a software glitch, that could have to wait as long as two weeks." Currently, the score is therefore Eyeball 1, On-board Intelligence 0.
But this is mere hearsay. because the same report said: "Water is also a key element of Nasa's long range dreams to send humans to the planet because it not only would be necessary to sustain the first generation of pioneers but would be a source of fuel." Oh, Oh. I don't mind them calling water an element, as that is just an ambiguity of language. I don't mind the 'first generation' implying the next have evolved to not need water. But water as a source of fuel? Even if they did have tokamak fusion reactors that worked, they have to be light enough to send to Mars. Arrgh.
So RUMOUR has it that the software nerds screwed up. The good news is that scientists will get the blame. Doesn't matter if you are a NASA engineer or mbafailu (MBA from an ivy league university), everyone quotable is a scientist. That way, it's deniable. Because the fundamental theorem of science states that its not science unless it is falsifiable. (Political theory and science theory tend to meld at the high energies that run countries.)
Pardon my hideous ignorance on the subject, but I'm wondering why the ice was present in solid form in the first place if it so easily sublimated? Surely the lander didn't dig all that far into the Martian soil when it struck ice. I'm just flabbergasted that the ice could exist so close to the surface without sublimating purely from solar warming of the soil. Perhaps somebody can comment on this and clear it up.
BTW, I'm not disputing the findings at all; the evidence is conclusive they've found water ice on Mars. I'm just curious about the processes involved that would allow the ice to exist close enough to the surface that the lander could get at it, yet far enough away from solar heating to exist at all.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Cool.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
PI'm just flabbergasted that the ice could exist so close to the surface without sublimating purely from solar warming of the soil.
The soil on Mars is cold enough (say -50 C) to keep ice from sublimating below a certain depth. From the pictures I would say that depth is 50-100 mm.http://michaelsmith.id.au
You say you think it's sublimation
Well you know
that'd be out of this world
What else could explain the diminution
Well you know
that'd be out of this world
But when you talk about reduction
Don't you know ice ain't the only thing
Don't you know other substances are white [x3]
You say you got an aqueous solution
Well you know
We'd all want to see the proof
Martians might be liliputian
Well you know
Look for them if you can can
But if you want money for space probes that crater
All I can tell you is brother maybe later
Learn how to use metrics first, alright? [x4]
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I read that Mars has enough gravity to avoid water achieving escape velocity. Mars surface gravity is nearly 40% of Earth's, so if water was escaping Mars in significant amounts, then it would also be escaping Earth in significant amounts. The loss of Martian atmosphere is supposed to mainly be attributable to solar wind (Mars has no magnetosphere) and also to perhaps some past asteroid collisions that tore away its atmosphere.
Scientist have believed the Martian polar cap are water ice since 2003: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-water-science-03c.html
I thought they ran a oven a week or so ago, why no preliminary test results shown anywhere
yet? Disappearing ice is cool and all but I want to see some soil test results.
Got Code?
It seems like every week I'm reading a "new" article saying there's water on Mars, then one that says there isn't, then another that says there is.
Have they found the reactor the aliens built yet? If you start it up, it heats the ice, creating oxygen that allows everyone to breath air (not just those in the domes). The telepaths know about it. If you think about it they will know! MaQuade will start it up if you let him. All he has to do is go to Recall Inc(tm) to jog his memory, and then "get his ass to mars."
I would rather use the nukes to bring a few asteroids to impact mars. Some of those contain a load of ammonia. Ammonia is a great great house gas. Of course, that would disassociate over time, leaving N2 in the atmosphere.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
But what kind of flavors does it come in?
There is a fair bit of difference between believing and knowing!
war is with you. Return us to warm sand.
1. We find water, but it is never liquid: it is either solid or gas.
2. They suppose it is not dry ice because the temperature of the site is too high for dry ice, but they forget PV=nRT and therefore T (temperature) depends on P (pressure). PRETTY LAME, it could be dry ice because we haven't been informed of the pressure of the site.
If they are still correct despite their so many mistakes and the water can't be liquid, probably life can't survive in Mars.
hi, i'm a slashdot user/editor and it took me until Sunday evening to see this shit.
Sublimate to gas @ -70F? Very low pressure there or what?
.-.
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
But is there any word on the biker mice?
Ezekiel 23:20
Now that we learned since a few post that one can include images in the post, there are no excuses anymore to not post an image when the news is precisely about 2 frames of video.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
it was spontaneous crowds of tiny white martians who gathered to welcome the lander but when a dirty great shovel started destroying the landscape they sensibly fled.
It's just NASA who have created a small sandpit in a freezer, scooped out a couple of kilos of sand, poured in a little water, let it freeze, switch off the fridge and filmed the ice melt. If you are all falling for this rubbish then that's up to you. NASA have failed and now need to justify the billions spent by concocting this trickery.
It's just NASA who have created a small sandpit in a freeze-box, scooped out a couple of kilos of sand, poured in a little water, let it freeze, switch off the fridge and filmed the ice melt. If you are all falling for this rubbish then that's up to you. NASA have failed and now need to justify the billions spent by concocting this trickery.
Shall NASA train teenage girls to become gondoliers on the terraformed Mars?
Only happens in those that do "defrosting".
In older fridges/freezers, ice would build up and you would periodically need to defrost it by taking everything out, applying some hot water and then putting it all back in again.
Water on Mars? = LIKELY EVERYWHERE THEN! it's everywhere, it's everywhere, it subliminated up my nose!
-78C is the figure for CO2 to become solid at a pressure of one standard atmosphere. At Martian pressures, the temperature would have to be even lower to keep CO2 solid.
Interestingly, it was an identical error (failure to correct for pressure other than 1 atmosphere) that caused the NRC to falsely claim that the melted reactor at Three Mile Island was producing a large hydrogen bubble which could blow the roof off if it exploded. That error greatly amplified the fear of the public. NRC didn't acknowledge their error until long after the event.
Even Martian ice is melting. We are doomed.
Sounds a LOT like my finances.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
I thought 'water ice' was found mainly in and around Philadelphia, and that in most other regions the sweet treat is called 'Italian ice'.
Does this mean that Mars has been inhabitated by Philadelphians... or VICE VERSA?!
I'm glad someone else remembers this. For you whippersnappers in the audience, Nixon announced the Space Shuttle program in 1972, effectively destroying the existing Apollo/Saturn structures put in place by JFK. There was much fanfare about "re-usable" this and "return-to-earth" that, but in the end the Saturn V was replaced with a much-less-capable vehicle (Shuttle payload capacity is about 1/4 that of a Saturn V, and it's not capable of leaving LEO.) Disassembling JFK's legacy was a political priority for Nixon, and he used the Shuttle as a vehicle to do so [pun intended.] Folks at NASA who pointed out the lack of Emperor's Clothing were rapidly dismissed. Nixon did irreparable harm to NASA's culture, resulting in the risk-averse bureaucratic behemoth we have today.
After looking at that fascinating GIF from the summary, I'm not sure it is water. It just kind of disappears. It's probably some sort of highly advanced life form that can change its shape at will and lives beneath the planet's surface most of the time. It then just came up for a little Martian sunshine and, upon noticing our probe went back to tell its buddies that the Earthlings sent more crap to their planet and that they should expect an invasion soon. Unless they can prove to us they don't have any oil.
Well, that's what it looks like to me. Draw your own conclusions.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
Someone open a Rita's there?
It is a very illogical unit, though, it isn't even divisible by two or eight! The octal/hexadecimal system we use in America is far superior for anyone who doesn't count on their fingers. It also ties into the size of the Earth and its rotation with the nautical mile and the degree.
If that -is- water in the white bands and not hardpan and a little seasonal frost, that might explain the darker areas within the streak - some localized melting in the sun.
It is true that the average daily high at this site at this point in time is -25*, but as anyone from northern States knows, surface temperature can be quite a bit higher than atmospheric temperature, and with the various salts we know are in the soil, the actual melting point can be below that daily average high. (Just as you have to walk through puddles to get to Stuffmart when it is that cold up here, because of all the salt they put down).
As to the probable frost in the soil, things like insulation from the sun (though at 1 inch depth, that wouldn't be much) tending the temp towards the daily average, isolation from the air (again, not much at that depth) and the added pressure of the soil bringing up the boiling point, could all be factors.
Personally, I don't think that they have ruled out that it -is- hardpan held together with either electrostatic force, or by a tiny amount of frost, which did then sublimate.
They say that Phoenix can't dig into the ice layer. Say -What-? Isn't that what they sent it to do? We really need to be willing to spend an extra 10 million per launch to use heavier lifters and more robust machinery! Very cost effective compared to what it costs to lighten and miniaturize things - just ask the Russians, they know this.
I'll bet if it's cold enough, we'd find water ice up Uranus. I'm just saying.
Nobody Cares if Your Puns Were Intended
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=puns
I couldn't tell from the time lapse picture. I assume there is some way to know that the scientist have that i don't. To me it looked like the white substance could just as easily be slowly liquifying and sinking down into the dirt as subliming (there appeared to be a color change around the white substance as if perhapse it was wet). ( not sure if that changes the chemical analysis or not.)
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
"The discovery of water on Mars, one of the few success stories of the Bush administration... and it happened on another world!"
Dry Ice requires that temperature at Standard Temperature and Pressure, in other words at Sea Level on the Earth.
What temperature is required for Dry Ice at the temperature and pressure of Mars? I don't doubt the required temperature is different because atmospheric pressure is so much less.
I'm pretty new to anything space related, but the only pictures I've seen of this ice on Mars are in the track of the lander, or rover, or whatever it's called. So, how do we know we didn't bring the ice to Mars? Doesn't it seem like a pretty odd coincidence that we've only found ice in the track, and not anywhere else?
NASA has photos of water on Mars dating back over 3 years ago here
Here's what I find odd, and perhaps it's my ignorance on the subject, but carbon dioxide makes up ~95% of the Martian atmosphere while water vapor only makes up 0.03%. I understand that it's too warm for dry ice to form, but is this also true if the dry ice is insulated beneath a few inches of Martian soil? The atmospheric surface pressure of Mars is about 1% that of Earth. Wouldn't the lack of atmospheric pressure reduce conduction further insulating the buried frozen substance? If the average surface temperature is -70F and dry ice stays solid at -109F, we're only talking about a delta of 39F. That doesn't seem like a whole heck of a lot to insulate against. Also, why is it white? Wouldn't it be mostly translucent if it were frozen water?
Now, I'm no NASA scientist or chemist and maybe someone here who is more knowledgeable than I could shed some light on my questions. It just seems to me that's it's more likely to be frozen carbon dioxide than frozen H2O.
is anyone else having a total recall flashback. if we just melt all the ice we will have an atmosphere to live in! now if we can just find that alien reactor there....
So we found ice..big deal. got lots of ice here. Find a 5-headed monster on mars and you'll get my attention, otherwise, move along, nuthin to see here.
Conversion done with Google.
Which is why we're going to be able to stop worrying about things like different scales and different languages sooner or later.
Too bad it wasn't -40F.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"Scientists did a diagnostic run today that melted ice to water for Phoenix's first wet chemistry experiment. The water is part of the wet chemistry laboratory and comes from Earth."
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080623.html
I'm surprised none of you bothered to read this.