Slashdot Mirror
Massive Martian Glaciers Found
Kozar_The_Malignant writes "Scientific American is reporting that 'data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter point to vast glaciers buried beneath thin layers of crustal debris.' Data from the surface-penetrating radar on MRO revealed that two well-known mid-latitude features are composed of solid water ice. One is about three times the size of the City of Los Angeles. This certainly makes the idea of establishing a station on Mars far more plausible."
And it's about time. Now we just need to get some "volunteers" to get on a spaceship...
I just don't get... eh, ugh... never mind. This post wasn't worth the research I put into it.
What's interesting to me, is that they mention in TFA that this ice can't have formed recently. The current Martian climate won't allow it. Meaning that the glacier was laid down ages ago when such formations were still possible, got buried beneath the debris, and has basically been sitting there since.
Forget water harvesting, I'm more interested in studying the ice in situ. If there ever was life on Mars (which is independent of the question of whether there's life there now), the odds are good we'd find evidence of it frozen in the glacier. Cold preserves, objects frozen in ice erode slowly, and the living things generally need water to survive.
Of course, anything that ever lived on Mars would likely have been microscopic. I doubt we'd find anything as big as a terrestrial animal. It'd still be the first evidence of life outside of our own planet though, which is a pretty frickin' huge deal.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
(American Scientist is much better)
The original NASA press release is at
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro-20081120.html
because scientists don't like to use vague and imprecise language.
if "ice" means "water ice," then what do you say when you just want to refer to ice of any kind?
LoCs are data size. CoLAs are a measure of land area.
Everyone knows that - it's taught to kids before they are even 30 shark nipples high.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I wonder if this discovery had been made a few months earlier if they would have altered the course of the Phoenix lander to try to touch down on the glacier. Or is the crust on top of the glacier too thick for Phoenix to get through? This seems like a prime target for future missions to analyze the ice and look for signs of life.
I think we need to send Bruce Willis and a crack team of oil rig workers to do some drilling on Mars...
...so that's where they went? To mars?
we can put mammoths there
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Ice" and "metal" have different meanings in planetary science than regular old chemistry. "Ice" can refer to any solid "volatile" substance (water, ammonia, methane, hydrogen...) and "metal" (IIRC) refers to other solids (carbon, silicon, iron...). Since lots of carbon dioxide ice has been found on mars in the past, it's worth making the distinction.
Also, when you're talking about the makeup of stars, "metal" refers to everything other than hydrogen or helium.
IANA astronomer, planetary geologist, etc.
Since we're on the subject of Total Recall, and I the only one who noticed that Indiana Jones IV completely ripped their ending off Total Recall?
The better question is why haven't you had a memory block installed for IJ4 like the rest of us?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
So find some ice-filled underground caverns and make the first colonies there. Build some large graphene "world domes" above them, as greenhouses to grow crops in. Mars is very geologically stable, so humans can expand their presence underground like an expanding ant colony, while building large graphene bubbles topside for agriculture.
If "IJ" means Indiana Jones, as I think it does, this whole argument is flawed as there have only been three Indiana Jones movies. The original Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, and Last Crusade.
IJ4? Sheesh. Like that'll ever happen.