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Mars Space Science

Martian Sea Discovered 508

Posted by timothy 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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Martian Sea Discovered More

Martian Sea Discovered

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  • Wow... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MalaclypseTheYounger ( 726934 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:01AM (#11735376) Journal
    A large sea of frozen ice??

    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)

      by puiahappy ( 855662 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:07AM (#11735411) Homepage
      Maybe in a few years we will be able to choose from 3 diffrent tipe of water : 1. Mineral 2. Natural 3. Martian ;)

    • Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)

      by TykeClone ( 668449 ) <TykeClone@gmail.com> on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:16AM (#11735471) Homepage Journal
      And eventually ruin that planet as well. :)

      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!

      • Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)

        by mwood ( 25379 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:18AM (#11735952)
        Actually, I think that the Earth of 3.5 billion years ago is its "natural" state. All this oxygen and these invasive species (all plants, animals, and basically anything other than anaerobic bacteria) must go! :-)

      • spare us your sarcasm (Score:5, Insightful)

        by idlake ( 850372 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @12:02PM (#11736818)
        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!

        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.
        • ...since there's nothing there to get put out by any mistake, except dust, rocks, and wind.

    • Fear and Loathing in Mars... (Score:5, Funny)

      by pVoid ( 607584 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:18AM (#11735484)
      And eventually ruin that planet as well.

      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!

      • Office of Redundancy Department (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Engineer-Poet ( 795260 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:24AM (#11735541) Homepage Journal
        the whole attraction of mars is that people can go there, terraform it, and then greenhouse the shit out of it...
        Except that terraforming it involves greenhousing the shit out of it first. ;-)
      • As long as there are hookers and blackjack, people will vacation there in droves.

        I think we should use the moon as our garbage dump. Save Mars as a possible 2nd home when that big asteroid finally smashes into Earth and makes it uninhabitable for a few decades/centuries/eons.

        Funny how greenhouse gases are supposed to 'save' Mars and make it hospitable though, but are destroying our own planet. I guess that means I get to use my old aerosol hairspray and put leaded gasoline in my car, and use the old RJ-
        • I guess that means I get to use my old aerosol hairspray and put leaded gasoline in my car, and use the old RJ-12 Freon when I eventually migrate to Mars.

          Well...I do miss the 80s...maybe there is hope. As long as we can redo the 80s without Michael Jackson...

        • Well, since Earth is having trouble keeping the huge sheets of ice at the poles intact, while Mars has ice in the tropics, it's not hard to se that gloabl warming on Earth to make it more like Venus would be bad, while global warming on Mars to make it more like Earth would be good, at least as far as the ability for humans to survive is concerned.

          Of course, I think the distance from the Sun seems like a much bigger barrier to getting Mars to be warm enough to be habitable than the atmosphere. I'd think e

          • Seriously though, one problem with making mars habitable enough to live on without domes or breathing equipment is exceedingly hard to beat. That is mar's mass isn't high enough to generate a gravity well large enough to sustain enough atmospheric pressure to live on the surface.
            Even with a gradual depressurisation (of people wanting to survive on the surface without a complete space suit including some form of counterpressure) to martian pressure would be a killer.
            As far as i am aware the planet's atmosph
        • So lets just keep making greenhouse gasses here, but instead of putting them in the atmosphere, bottle them and send them to mars. Two problems solved.
          • bottle them and send them to mars.
            That's a rather expensive solution a bit cheaper would be to
            1. make torpedoes out of water ice,
            2. pour in the liquid CO2
            3. vent the torpedoe to freeze the CO2
            4. cap the torpedoe with water
            5. drop the torpedoes into the ocean over a deep trench

            The torpedoes would of course disolve/melt and the CO2 would stay liquid in the high preasure and cold sea bed and flow into the ocean bottom sediments and react with the minerals there.
            This would be much less expensive than lifting

    • Re:Wow... (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by gr8_phk ( 621180 )
      "And eventually ruin that planet as well"

      Imagine living on a planet where you get tax breaks for driving big inefficient vehicles that produce greenhouse gases. It's Bushs' dream. Burning fossil fuels would be a requirement to keep the planet from freezing again. Oh wait - there are no fossil fuels on mars. $h|t.

    • Re:Wow... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cinnamon colbert ( 732724 )
      I suppose if u had super small (~ 100 nanometer) particles of ice, you would have a stable suspension in air - so it wd be sort of gaseous ice

    • Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DogsBollocks ( 806307 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:26AM (#11736528)
      A new perspective.

      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.

    • Earth First! (Score:4, Funny)

      by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @12:18PM (#11736958) Journal
      We can strip mine the rest later!

  • Many are cold, but few are frozen. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:03AM (#11735385)
    ... of frozen ice ...

    Not like the kind we get here, then.

  • 45 *meters* deep (Score:5, Informative)

    by pfdietz ( 33112 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:03AM (#11735386)
    That's 45 meters deep, not kilometers.

  • How many kilometers? (Score:5, Informative)

    by dorward ( 129628 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:03AM (#11735387) Homepage Journal
    That's 800km by 900km (i.e. 800km wide and 900km long). It isn't between 800km and 900km!

    • Re:How many kilometers? (Score:4, Funny)

      by The-Bus ( 138060 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:17AM (#11735480)
      How many Libraries of Congress squared is that? Or is the measurement more like LoC / VW because of the Martian moon rocks?

      No, seriously. That's like really small right? Like 1/100ths of an inch?
      • You've got your units messed up. The ice field it's 5.166677 × 10^15 football fields For your reference, here's a handy chart of the Internation Press Unit System:
        • Area: Football Fields. Defined as 60x100 square yards, or 501.6 square meters. The European equivalent is the tennis court, which is 668.9 square meters.
        • Volume: Volkswagen Beetle. Defined as 9.75 cubic metres.
        • Information: Library of Congress. Defined as 10 terabytes.
        • Length: One marathon. Defines as 42.5 km.
        • Length: One hair. Defined

        • Re:How many kilometers? (Score:5, Informative)

          by cdrudge ( 68377 ) * on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:40AM (#11736089) Homepage
          Area: Football Fields. Defined as 60x100 square yards, or 501.6 square meters. The European equivalent is the tennis court, which is 668.9 square meters.
          You don't happen to be a NASA scientist by chance, are you? You are off on your order of magnitude on your yards to meter conversion. 6,000 sq yards is ~5016 sq meters [google.com].

          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.

  • nothing of the sort (Score:5, Informative)

    by SkunkPussy ( 85271 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:04AM (#11735390) Journal
    they have not detected any form of frozen sea, they have merely found some peculiar formations that they hyopthesise may be blocks of ice covered in volcanic ash (which has prevented it subliming into the atmosphere). Another hypothesis is that these formations may have been caused by lava flows.

    • Re:nothing of the sort (Score:5, Interesting)

      by essreenim ( 647659 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:11AM (#11735443)
      The interesting point is that's its ice close to MArs equator albeit underground. This is significant if true as that far down there are sure to be thermal vents from volcanoes keeping the water above zero and hence providing a greater probability of simple organic life.

      FUCK Roland Piquepaille's blog articles, devoid of content. Copy this sig if you agree!

      Yeah! Screw'em

      • Re:nothing of the sort (Score:4, Informative)

        by enosys ( 705759 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:27AM (#11735566) Homepage
        All volcanic activity on Mars has ceased [ucar.edu]. Could there be any vents?

  • Water is Life (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fox_1 ( 128616 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:04AM (#11735391)
    Woot!
    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)

    by BlacKat ( 114545 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:05AM (#11735397)
    "(between 800 and 900 km in size and 45 km deep) "

    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)

    by frdmfghtr ( 603968 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:06AM (#11735407)
    I didn't think so either...

    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)

    by bobdotorg ( 598873 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:06AM (#11735408)
    ... is a bewildered and gasping Arnold Schwarzenegger waiting for the nuclear heating coils to kick in.

  • In other news.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by LittleGuernica ( 736577 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:09AM (#11735424) Homepage
    In other news, Michelle Kwan has announced she will be training for the 2006 Olympics on a secret "remote" location, devoid of paparazzi.

    Insiders say she also aquired a new sponser, an undisclosed candy bar manufacturer..

  • Excellent for setting up a Mars colony... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wonderkid ( 541329 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:09AM (#11735426) Homepage
    ...if we melt the water. And my tounge in cheek Mars Hydro [marshydro.com] website may well fortell a commercial future too? :-)
    • "No one would have believed in the first years of the 21st century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than Martians' and yet as mortal as his own; that as Martians busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a Martian with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency Martians went to and fro over this globe about their l

    • Re:Excellent for setting up a Mars colony... (Score:5, Funny)

      by SnapShot ( 171582 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:25AM (#11735984)
      Don't stop there. Mars is a gold mine! Think of the patent opportunities:
      • Single-click purchase ON MARS
      • Hyperlinks ON MARS
      • Huffman compression ON MARS
      • Laser pointer as a cat excersize tool ON MARS

      There's money to be made, my friend, on the new frontier.

  • Sea? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:13AM (#11735454)
    Here's the title of the article:

    'Pack ice' suggests frozen sea on Mars

    Here's the summary of the ./ posting:

    ...that a large sea of frozen ice (between 800 and 900 km in size and 45 km deep) has been discovered...

    Do ./ poster even RTFA?

  • Great! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Netsensei ( 838071 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:15AM (#11735466) Homepage
    Now astronauts (or kosmonauts or taikonauts or whatever gets first over there) don't have to take ice with them if they want to have a whisky on the rocks.

    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)

    by mmkkbb ( 816035 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:18AM (#11735483) Homepage Journal
    He's just colonizing in the name of the Drexciyan Wavejumpers. [discogs.com]

    RIP James.

  • Gary Larson cartoon (Score:3, Funny)

    by Redwin ( 805980 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:19AM (#11735500)
    I could just picture first detailed images of the sea coming back with a frozen martian with a slightly suprised look on its face frozen under the ice. :-)

  • Makes you wonder about the guys at Science... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gloth ( 180149 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:23AM (#11735527)
    It wasn't too long ago that the guys from the Science magazine compiled their list of the 10 most important breakthroughs of 2004. Ranked 1 were the Mars rovers. For all I remember, Mars Express delivered probably at least as many new insights, if not more, but it was notably missing in that list. Why's that? Just because it doesn't have wheels to drive around, or is it the lack of an american flag on its side? Or what exactly is it that puts the rovers into a league of their own?

    • Re:Makes you wonder about the guys at Science... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Its because they mistitled their list, due to not feeling that "top ten [science] things we got a hard-on for this year" had the required gravitas...
    • On one hand we're talking about mars express, a probe, and on the other hand we're talking about throwing two remote-controlled cars at a planet, airbraking them using big balloons, bouncing them around Mars, and opening them up, then driving around the planet's surface collecting high-resolution images of anything we care to look at... so long as it's not very high off the ground. I'd say that puts them in a league of their own.
  • Seen the movie Total Recall?

    looks like someone needs to activate the martian oxygen maker thing.

    Arnie Quotes
    "Consider that a divorce!"
    "Get your ass to Mars...get your ass to Mars..."
    "MY NAME IS NOT QUAID!"
    "If I'm not me, who da hell am I?"
    "That's the best mindf___ yet."

  • Some calculation (Score:5, Informative)

    by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:32AM (#11735597)
    From some random site [hypertextbook.com], the volume of Earth's oceans is 1.3*10^9 km^3. That's roughly 40,000 times as much water as what was just found on Mars. Inferring the existance of even more water on Mars, and taking into account the fact that Mars is smaller than Earth (surface area of Earth is ~ 6.65 times that of Mars?), you might say the avearge ocean depth of Earth is at most 6000 times greater than that of Mars. Not too friggin bad, let's terraform this sucker.

    • Re:Some calculation (Score:3, Informative)

      by PMuse ( 320639 )
      So, how much water are we talking about? This Martian block ice is 800-900 km in size, 45 m deep. If surface area = (800/2)^2*pi= 500000 km^2, then volume is 500000*(45/1000) = 23000 km^3 (using these very rough data). By comparison, these terrestrial lakes have similar volumes, areas, or depths.

      Caspian Sea (Eurasia), vol 78200 km^3, area 374000 km^2, depth 209 m
      Lake Baikal (Eurasia), vol 23000 km^3, area 31500 km^2, depth 730 m
      Martian Block Ice (Mars), vol ~23000 km^3, area ~500000 km^2, depth 45 m
      Lakes

  • tres errrores (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:33AM (#11735601)
    "New Scientist is reporting that a large sea of frozen ice (between 800 and 900 km in size and 45 km deep)

    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)

    by bryan1945 ( 301828 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @09:34AM (#11735609) Journal
    I wonder if Martians can ice skate? If so, perhaps we could import them here and have a hockey season. Imagine ESPN's ratings for the Mars Cup!
    • Good point, must be about time that the US expanded the baseball to become the Universe Series, doesn't matter if the rest don't play it'll be just like the World Series now ;)
      • must be about time that the US expanded the baseball to become the Universe Series, doesn't matter if the rest don't play it'll be just like the World Series now ;)

        Baseball on planets will a lesser mass might be fun. Play baseball on a really small moon or big asteroid and you will hear the announcer truthfully exclaim: "He put that one into orbit..."

  • Mirror to the PDF. (Score:5, Informative)

    by tetrahedrassface ( 675645 ) * on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:04AM (#11735827) Journal
    Here is a mirror to the PDF.

    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!

  • The whole Mars thing... (Score:3, Funny)

    by GNUThomson ( 806789 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:07AM (#11735851) Homepage
    Who came with that stupid idea to name a planet after candy bar, anyway? That's outrageous!

  • Imperial vs. metric units (Score:3, Funny)

    by johannesg ( 664142 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:18AM (#11735947)
    I'm sorry to see the slashdot editors cling to the obsolete imperial meter, which is clearly a very different unit from the metric meter which is used in the actual article. You see, the article refers to a sea that is 45 meters deep (this is presumed to be metric meters), which evidentally translates to a sea that 45 kilometers deep in imperial meters.

    So one imperial meter is the same as a metric millimeter. I gotta remember that...

  • About Terraforming... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tylo ( 837699 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:28AM (#11736015)
    If we could terraform Mars, do you really think it would be hospitable? There's more to Earth than water and oxygen that makes it possible for life to live here. The moon, for instance, is just in the right position to affect our tides so they aren't out of control. And the magnetic field that helps move that nasty radiation around us... I wonder what it would mean for Earth if we terraformed Mars, changed it's magnetic field. It might even effect life here. I say we leave Mars alone before we kill ourselves.

    • Re:About Terraforming... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vidarh ( 309115 ) <vidar@hokstad.com> on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:37AM (#11736073) Homepage Journal
      The thing is that when people mention terraforming a lot of people automatically assume the only goal that would be sufficient to be useful is to make it possible for humans to live entirely without any form of support.

      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.

    • Re:About Terraforming... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Xyrus ( 755017 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @01:48PM (#11737751) Journal
      "The moon, for instance, is just in the right position to affect our tides so they aren't out of control."

      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~

  • A Little More Info... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Doesn't_Comment_Code ( 692510 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:33AM (#11736042)
    Here's the kicker: the sea of block ice is only five degrees away from the Martian equator.

    I have to admit I don't know a lot about this yet... but why is it such a "kicker" that the ice is so near the equator?
    • I guess it implies that it will be relatively easy to melt if we plan to warm the place up.

      -matthew

    • Warmer near the Equator (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      1st it is warmer near the equator, so... so that would be a nicer place to live.

      2nd if it can exist near the equator, it might also be found in the colder areas.

    • Re:A Little More Info... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:27AM (#11736533) Journal
      I assume they said that because the article states that any water that close to the equator should have melted by now, unless it was covered by some insulating material such as volcanic ash.

      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

  • rough calculation of volume... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:35AM (#11736060) Homepage
    Mars isn't flat, and the area of the sea surely isn't square, but a very rough estimation of the volume would be: 800,000 meters * 900,000 meters * 45 meters = 32,400,000,000,000 cubic meters = 8,559,174,460,226,494 gallons or in words 8.6 quadrillion gallons or 32.4 quadrillion liters.

  • What I find interesting was the tidbit (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bruha ( 412869 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:49AM (#11736146) Homepage Journal
    about the age of the ice pack. Estimated at 5 million years by crater impact aging. If Mars had water 5 million years ago on the surface then it may had a atmosphere then also. And if it had a atmosphere just as long as earth did until 5 million years ago then there could of been life on the planet and advanced life at that. We've seen microbes on ancient mars rocks so it's entirely possible there was life on mars but to what extent we cant see. Maybe storms or whatever stripped mars of it's atmosphere erased any visible signs from the surface such as vegetation.

  • Just frozen ice? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ehiris ( 214677 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @10:53AM (#11736199) Homepage
    FTA: Images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera on Mars Express show raft-like ground structures - dubbed "plates" - that look similar to ice formations near Earth's poles, according to an international team of scientists.

    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?

  • Waiter... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:15AM (#11736427) Homepage Journal
    850m^2 * pi * 45m is 102,141,031m^3, which is 2.7E10 gallons [google.com]. Ice is 107.5% the volume [edinformatics.com] of its water mass, 2.5E10 gallons. Which is about 15-20% the size of only one of the NYC upstate reservoirs [catskillcenter.org]. Perhaps documenting the process by which this ice collected and buried will explain whether there was any other water, and where it went.

  • "maybe" "suggest" sort of kinda..... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21, 2005 @11:33AM (#11736585)
    As exciting as the discovery is, The Slashdot summary reads like it's a done deal.

    Actually, the article linked starts out with this (note the word "may" in the 1st sentence):

    "A frozen sea, surviving as blocks of pack ice, may lie just beneath the surface of Mars, suggest observations from Europe's Mars Express spacecraft. The sea is just 5 north of the Martian equator and would be the first discovery of a large body of water beyond the planet's polar ice caps.

    Images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera on Mars Express show raft-like ground structures - dubbed "plates" - that look similar to ice formations near Earth's poles, according to an international team of scientists."

  • Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jsimon12 ( 207119 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @12:17PM (#11736946) Homepage
    I thought they had deployed the radar boom and discovered the Ice, but it turns out these are theorized findings from visible light photos. And it appears NASA doesn't agree totally with this. WTF? Why do the Euro's argue with us on every damn Mars thing? I mean how many times have they been to the Red Planet, oh I forgot, this is like their first FREAKING time.

    When they deploy the MARSIS boom and verify this stuff, then I will crack the bubbly.

  • Good News (Score:3, Informative)

    by polyp2000 ( 444682 ) on Monday February 21, 2005 @01:56PM (#11737817) Homepage Journal
    The confirmation that a large body of frozen water exists on Mars is excellent news for any future manned missions to the planet. Its presence means that Human beings could sustain themselves for much longer periods of time without the need to transport gallons of water for use when they get there. With the addition of green houses it is even possible that water might be of vital use in growing food for consumption on the surface of Mars.

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