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Massive Martian Glaciers Found

Posted by timothy on from the could-be-a-trick dept.

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."

11 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Time to move... by kainewynd2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And it's about time. Now we just need to get some "volunteers" to get on a spaceship...

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    I just don't get... eh, ugh... never mind. This post wasn't worth the research I put into it.
    1. Re:Time to move... by symbolset · · Score: 5, Funny

      Valentine Michael Smith?

      Weren't you born there?

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      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    2. Re:Time to move... by SirLurksAlot · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Me first!

      Yes indeed, you first! I'll be satisfied to have myself cryogenically frozen (Did I happen to mention you first for that too?) and thawed out in a generation or three when the colonization effort is well under way. Guess I'm not much for a.) getting slowly cooked by solar radiation b.) constantly worrying about a hole the size of a pinprick sucking all the atmosphere out of the ship, c.) either losing my sanity in the confines of ship I can't leave for months on end or waiting for my fellow shipmates to do the same and d.) finally arriving at my destination which is even less hospitable and almost certainly more dangerous than life on the ship.

      Seriously, the first people to go to Mars would almost have to have a deathwish to do so.

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      God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
    3. Re:Time to move... by Idiomatick · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "Seriously, the first people to go to Mars would almost have to have a deathwish to do so."
       
        Replace mars with the new world and it holds true. Your points a, c and d also hold true. For b if you change it to sinking then you are right there too. I'm pretty fucking sure the first people on mars will be remembered as heroes for a loooooong time.

    4. Re:Time to move... by egr · · Score: 5, Funny

      if you make spaceship look like a basement some wouldn't even notice that they were going to Mars

    5. Re:Time to move... by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Funny

      Having been here since 1965 I now want to go back.

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      http://michaelsmith.id.au
  2. Fossil water by RsG · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
  3. SciAm sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    (American Scientist is much better)

    The original NASA press release is at

    http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro-20081120.html

  4. Re:Three times the size of City of Los Angeles? by MightyYar · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

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    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  5. Phoenix mission a waste? by Dr_Banzai · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

  6. Re:Why? by hkmarks · · Score: 5, Informative

    "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.