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Lots of Pure Water Ice At Mars North Pole
brink2012 writes "Planum Boreum, Mars' north polar cap contains water ice 'of a very high degree of purity,' according to an international study. Using radar data from the SHARAD (SHAllow RADar) instrument on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), French researchers say the data point to 95 percent purity in the polar ice cap. The north polar cap is a dome of layered, icy materials, similar to the large ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica, consisting of layered deposits, with mostly ice and a small amount of dust. Combined, the north and south polar ice caps are believed to hold the equivalent of two to three million cubic kilometers (0.47-0.72 million cu. miles) of ice, making it roughly 100 times more than the total volume of North America's Great Lakes, which is 22,684 cu. kms (5,439 miles).
The study was done by researchers at France's National Institute of Sciences of the Universe (Insu), using the Italian built SHARAD radar sounder on the US built MRO. SHARAD looks for liquid or frozen water in the first few hundreds of feet (up to 1 kilometer) of Mars' crust by using subsurface sounding. It can detect liquid water and profile ice.
Mars southern polar cap was once thought to be carbon dioxide ice, but ESA's Mars Express confirmed that it is composed of a mixture of water and carbon dioxide.
The study on Mars north polar cap appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union."
Yea just look what the salt industry did to our oceans, we can't even drink of the ocean anymore.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Sufficient Gravity - Check
Sufficient Sunlight - Check
Friable surface (soil) - Check
Sufficient Source of water - check
Sufficient Atmosphere - ummmmm
Sufficient Magnetosphere - uh oh
Cigar - Nope.
Close, but no cigar.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
Martian Water!
4 billion years old, untouched by mankind!
Unique solar system chemistry boosts your base DNA!
Live longer!
Improve your love life!
Martian Water: Now only $1,000 a liter!
This is my sig.
We have a name for a mixture of water and carbon dioxide. It's called "seltzer water". With added impurities, it's sold as "soft drinks".
Mmmm ... Martian dust cola. Satisfies your body's need for hundreds of trace minerals.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Who cares about water ?
Just discover petroleum on another planet, and there will be a tough competition to get there !
The salty Caspian Sea is the world's largest land-locked body of water. It contains approximately 18,900 cubic miles of water (78,700 cubic kilometers).
Lake Baikal is the world's largest freshwater lake in terms of volume. It contains about 5521 cubic miles of water (23,000 cubic kilometers), or approximately 20% of Earth's fresh surface water. This is a volume of water approximately equivalent to all five of the North American Great Lakes combined.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
There is a widespread urban myth that distilled water is harmful. I've heard it all my life. Look at all the discussion at these sites. Some say there are benefits, some say it'll kill you. Too bad KiwiCanuck didn't "research a little more."
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
So the water is 95% "pure" - what's in the 5%? For comparison Earth's oceans are about 96.5% "pure" so the water on Mars certainly would not be drinkable without processing but that's fairly easily done, I think.
Nate
What's even crazy is the FISH.
Get this: the fish breathe the water, they poop AND pee in the water, they drink the water and they eat other things that also live in the water.
I mean, they basically live their entire lives in the water they crap in.
Yeast are like that, too.
Anyhow, I'm gonna go grab me a tall, frosty mug of yeast shit infested water.... I mean beer...
Since Mars's Surface Area = 144 million km^2, this implies (for 2.5 million km^3 of ice) that ice caps are enough to supply a water layer 17 meters deep over the entire surface, or maybe 50 meters deep in Hellas and the Northern lowlands, if it was all melted. (If the polar caps entirely melted, that alone would raise the surface pressure above the triple point of water, so liquid water would be possible. The Hellas Basin is deep enough that the pressure is above the triple point now, and it definitely could have liquid water in it if the climate warmed some.)
Note that the polar caps show very clear signs of layering, presumably caused by the long period obliquity oscillations, and are in general very young geologically, so it is not beyond belief that, say, the Hellas basin fills up with water on a regular basis, every 500,000 years or so.
The last time I posted on this - pointing out that so far 100% of the actual planets we've explored have been inhabited - someone replied repeatedly emphasising the words "on Earth" - whereas my entire point was that this view is "Earth exceptionalism". Other than a few vague words in a book written over 2000 years ago by one small Middle Eastern tribe, we have no written statement on the subject (while most Indians religions support a plurality of worlds.)
Mars may not be inhabited by life, it may never have been - but we are now seeing a lot more water than previously believed, and evidence of methane generation. The probability must be assessed as non-zero.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
A cow could die upstream and wipe out a village.
Seriously, people drank beer and wine for a very good reason. It was sanitary and wouldn't kill you like the water would.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
A cow could die upstream and wipe out a village.
Seriously, people drank beer and wine for a very good reason. It was sanitary and wouldn't kill you like the water would.
Also, if you drink enough of it, you stop caring about all the cow corpses lying around!
I know from experience that de-ionized water will rust stainless steel. I couldn't remember which minerals, but I found them in the WHO report. The minerals are calcium & magnesium. See page 17, http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutdemineralized.pdf So people who drink pure water should takes multi-vitamins to compensate. Or drink a couple of glasses of milk a day.