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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.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/20/026241
First against the wall when the revolution comes
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.
Neat!
Sorry - it's a Scotch joke.
It was at the bottom of a trench. Plus, wind doesn't selecticely blow white rocks away while letting the rest of the scene untouched. Plus, you can also see some white areas at the end of the trench getting smaller.
It's ice. Definitely.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Could we have this important information in units used by, I don't know, the rest of the world?
No, martian air is way too dry to form snow. There is water in the athmosphere, but IIRC it is something like a layer 1mm thick if all the water would condense on the ground. What happens is that some of that water freezes to/in the ground if it gets cold enough.
What I learned from following the press conferences online, is that since mars doesn't have a large moon, the axis of rotation changes much more than earth does, so if it is directed towards the sun, the ice could actually melt.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
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.
water sublimation doesn't need to be exotic; it happens in your freezer all the time.
you know how ice cubes gradually lose their sharp edges and finally become just little puddle-shaped lumps in the bottom of the ice try ? that's sublimation too.
Pretty much anything can sublimate under the proper conditions. But when you say "a white solid that sublimates at -70 degrees F and martian surface pressure and is found in macroscopic quantities naturally" you narrow down the field quite a bit. In this case, to exactly one reasonable possibility.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
Yep, Vodka.
To quote wikipedia: This can occur if the atmospheric pressure exerted on the substance is too low to stop the molecules from escaping from the solid state.
Atmospheric pressure is not as important as the partial pressure of the substance at its surface. That is, in this case, the vapour pressure of water which is practically zero on Mars. Therefore water, if it is not locked down in crystalline form, cannot exist in liquid form because it cannot form an equilibrium with its surroundings to form a 'triple point' (solid/liquid/vapour phase temperature).
It also depends, as far as I understand, on the interaction between molecules of the substance. If it is too weak, the range of temperatures at which the substance can be liquid is narrow (or practically zero). It's a fairly wide range for water, though.
I didn't study the topic beyond that and it was years ago.
PS. Iodine is another substance that sublimates.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
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.
Neither, because NASA only hires smart people.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
I thought this Wired quote about why the water sublimates on Mars is interesting:
"Just like dry ice does here on Earth, water ice goes from solid to gas when the pressure is below 6.1 millibars and it gets heated (like it does in the Martian sun). It can also go straight from solid to gas above 6.1 millibars when the vapor pressure (amount of water vapor in the air) is low enough. This is because the molecules of water in solid form and gas form are not at equilibrium."
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/answering-mars.html
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