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Martian Sea Discovered
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Feb 21, 2005 08:57 AM
from the martian-ice-cube-you-mean dept.
from the martian-ice-cube-you-mean dept.
mpesce writes "New Scientist is reporting that a large sea of frozen ice (between 800 and 900 km in size and 45 m deep) has been discovered by the ESA's Mars Express Probe. Here's the kicker: the sea of block ice is only five degrees away from the Martian equator. New Scientist also links to a PDF of a paper to be presented next month about the finding." Update: 02/21 15:30 GMT by T : Note: that's 45 meters deep, not 45 kilometers deep.
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Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
As opposed to the other kinds of ice, like liquid ice or gaseous ice?
Here's your sign...
Awesome, though. I can't wait for us to terraform Mars, and start our new civilization there.
And eventually ruin that planet as well.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Wouldn't terraforming Mars ruin it - at least in respect to its natural state?
Everyone knows that nature is static, and how things were 50, 100, or 1000 years ago are the way that they should be today, tomorrow, and forever!
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Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
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spare us your sarcasm (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason why large scale or long-term changes to the environment are so risky is not, as you mistakenly state, that nature is static. Rather, it is that nature is highly dynamic on time scales spanning millennia and we don't understand the dynamics yet. A significant change that we think produces benefits may, in the long term, have devastating consequences.
Once we understand natural systems sufficiently well to be able to predict the consequences of our actions in the long term, then we can engage in deliberate planet-wide engineering efforts, here on earth on on Mars. Until then, anything that alters our atmosphere, oceans, or ecology significantly is Russian roulette.
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Re:spare us your sarcasm (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have to know how to land an airplane in order to figure out that the consequences of doing it wrong are bad?
because I too fear playing around with the environment might cause destruction of a magnitude we cant even imagine. There seem to be some indications that this is possible, but I havent seen any proof yet. But until it's not disproven I's rather be safe.
Actually, we do know some of the consequences. Numerous human civilizations have been wiped out by self-inflicted ecological disaster. We know how sea levels have varied over time. We know of species that have disappeared because they inflicted ecological disaster on themselves (of course, they couldn't reason about their own behavior). And there are indications that global weather patterns can be pushed into various fairly stable states, some of which are highly unfavorable to human life and civilization.
So, we know all sorts of bad things can happen. We don't know what effects our actions will have, but we do know that current conditions are pretty good for us, so we should avoid doing things that might change them until we know what we are doing.
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Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Here's your sign.
Parent
Fear and Loathing in Mars... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you see, the whole attraction of mars is that people can go there, terraform it, and then greenhouse the shit out of it and say "Well it was a barren waste land anyways".
Mars will be the Las Vegas of environmental concerns!
Parent
Office of Redundancy Department (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
I spent several years working in and around the small northern communities in Canada's Arctic.
The Inuit population there refer to water as "molten ice", because ice is the most common state.
Were as we southerners (south of the arctic circle) consider ice as frozen water.
Oh well, I thought it was funny.
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Re:Wow... (Score:5, Informative)
The proper term is "water ice" as opposed to "dry ice" which is frozen carbon dioxide.
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Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, we ALREADY DO.
SUV, truck owners get a big tax break [detnews.com]
CONs of the SUV Tax Break [about.com]
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Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
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Many are cold, but few are frozen. (Score:5, Funny)
Not like the kind we get here, then.
45 *meters* deep (Score:5, Informative)
Re:45 *meters* deep (Score:5, Funny)
And it's not actually near the Martian equator, but in Canada.
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Re:45 *meters* deep (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Editors who don't Edit
The jury is still out as to whether it's really ice or not. Still, the possibility is enticing. Not only would it be a much needed resource for manned exploration, but it also would greatly increase the chances of life existing there.
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Re:45 *meters* deep (Score:5, Insightful)
-matthew
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And isn't known to be water (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't the much more important mistake that they don't actually know that it's water?
Parent
How many kilometers? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How many kilometers? (Score:4, Funny)
No, seriously. That's like really small right? Like 1/100ths of an inch?
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Re:How many kilometers? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:How many kilometers? (Score:5, Informative)
And what type of tennis do you play? 668.9 sq meters? Good grief. A US doubles court is 36 feet x 78 feet (~261 sq meters [google.com]). Unless you are also including in the areas around the court, I can't see where your 668.9 sq meters came from.
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nothing of the sort (Score:5, Informative)
Re:nothing of the sort (Score:5, Interesting)
FUCK Roland Piquepaille's blog articles, devoid of content. Copy this sig if you agree!
Yeah! Screw'em
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Re:nothing of the sort (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:nothing of the sort (Score:5, Informative)
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Water is Life (Score:5, Interesting)
err maybe not, still not enough information but I tell ya all those stories I read growing up seem a little closer now - Edgar Rice Burroughs maybe was a little off in his vision of the planet - but Kim Stanley Robinson or Aurthor C. Clarkes visions may be in reach now. With water on the planet , and it being accessible to us gives any future mission to mars a valuable resource.
I'm 'pumped' so to speak.
Meters not Kilometers... (Score:5, Informative)
According to TFA the depth is 45 METERS deep, not 45 KILOMETERS.
There is quite a difference between the two...
45km deep? (Score:4, Informative)
The team of researchers, led by John Murray at the Open University, UK, estimates the submerged ice sea is about 800 by 900 kilometres in size and averages 45 metres deep.
And that little speck off to the left... (Score:5, Funny)
In other news.. (Score:5, Funny)
Insiders say she also aquired a new sponser, an undisclosed candy bar manufacturer..
Excellent for setting up a Mars colony... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Excellent for setting up a Mars colony... (Score:5, Funny)
There's money to be made, my friend, on the new frontier.
Parent
Sea? (Score:5, Informative)
'Pack ice' suggests frozen sea on Mars
Here's the summary of the
Do
Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm... maybe I could start a first "bar galactica" and make tons by selling spacetourists stiff drinks at high rates.
"Joe, one lump of frozen ice in my drink if you please!"
James Stinson ain't dead (Score:4, Funny)
RIP James.
Makes you wonder about the guys at Science... (Score:5, Interesting)
Some calculation (Score:5, Informative)
tres errrores (Score:5, Interesting)
It's amazing to me that the submitter could make three errors in the first half of the first sentence of his submission.
It's not between 800 and 900 in size, it is 800 by 900.
It's 45 meters deep, not km.
Frozen ice? Well, duh.
it's powers of observation and recounting as keen as these that make eye witness testimony so compelling.
Does anyone know? (Score:5, Funny)
Mirror to the PDF. (Score:5, Informative)
http://209.235.176.54/1741.pdf [209.235.176.54]
Its temp webspace for www.foxcheck.org. Have fun. And we want to live in peace with our /. overlords!
Just frozen ice? (Score:5, Interesting)
If it is indeed frozen H2O like in Antarctica, there is a possibility that it also contains liquid water within the ice. To the surprise of explorers, that was found in Antarctica.
I tried to find a link to that information but I couldn't find anything good. My source is this Antarctica documentary [amazon.com]
I wonder what the temperature variation is on the Mars equator. Theoretically, how would that temperature variation affect a body of water of that size?
Re:wow (Score:5, Informative)
The
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Re:How is it possible (Score:5, Informative)
In other words the sae was frozen and had a lot sediments in it. As the surface evaporated the sediments were left on top. The sediments in conjunction with vlocanic ash effectively inusulates the sea underneath it.
Its kinda like an aquifer, except that in this case the aquifer is frozen!
Parent
Re:About Terraforming... (Score:5, Insightful)
But even a minor increase in atmospheric pressure would have a massive impact on the feasability and safety of large domes, for instance, because it would even out the pressure difference between the outside and inside of a habitable dome.
Just getting to a temperature and atmosphere where humans won't die instantly without a suit, or can work/survive outside in warm clothes and an oxygen mask will have a dramatic impact on how easy it will be to have a sustained presence, and the safety of a colony that would otherwise have to have massive safeguards against damages to habitats.
Keep in mind that there are many areas on earth that are extremely inhospitable. While it would be great if Mars could once be as hospitable as the more pleasant areas of the earth, that doesn't mean that less won't still make it possible (or even interesting) to live there.
Humans are quite resilient.
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Re:About Terraforming... (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. We have tides because we have a moon. Without the moon, only the influence of the planets and the sun would affect our tides, which wouldn't amount to much.
The moon does act as a sort of gyro stabilizer. Because of it's influence, the axis of our planet wobbles in a fairly regular pattern, giving us seasons. Without the moon, that would become more erratic. Indeed, Earth could theoretically be spinning in all thre axes at once, which would make for some interesting weather patterns.
"I wonder what it would mean for Earth if we terraformed Mars, changed it's magnetic field. It might even effect life here."
Not likely. Mars at it's closest point is still 40 million miles away. Even if we possesed the technology to give Mars a stronger magnetic field (which we don't), the field strength drops of with the inverse square of the distance. And with the solar wind, that field would be infintismally small by the time it could reach Earth.
Short of blowing of a large chunk of Mars and sending it crashing into Earth, we're not going to affect our planet.
"I say we leave Mars alone before we kill ourselves."
I say we are far more likely to kill ourselves before we even make it to mars. But that's just my opinion.
Assuming we don't practice the great art of self-annihilation, we won't have much of choice of going to Mars in the relatively near future. Our planet is filling up. We have limited resources. We'll have to do something about that at some point.
There isn't anything we could do to Mars that would end up affecting this planet. We've already made enough of a mess of it already.
~X~
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Re:A Little More Info... (Score:5, Informative)
However there is an advantage to finding ice near the equator. If we wish to launch spacecraft from Mars the equator would be the best launching point, for the same reason we launch spacecraft from Earth as close to the equator as possible.
The water could be a potential source of fuel, thus it (assuming it is water) lying close to the equator would be advantageous for that reason.
Dan East
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