Enormous Amount of Frozen Water Found on Mars

schweini writes "Space.com is reporting that the Mars Express probe's MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding) experiment has detected and measured an enormous amount of water ice near Mars' south pole, which would be sufficient to submerge the whole planet's surface underneath approximately 10m of water on average."

Re:Ray Bradbury and Burroughs were right!

[Anonymous Coward]

Water! Aha! Past canals! Aha! Okay, next step is, find the caves the Martians lived in. And see if you can find any preserved Martian porn!

And then what? Upload to Youtube and get sued by Viacom?

Frozen Water?

[Rie Beam]

Mars is unlikely to sport beachfront property anytime soon, but the planet has enough water ice at its south pole to blanket the entire planet in more than 30 feet of water if everything thawed out.

So how many Hummers are we talking about here?

Re:Global warming beat us there

[haakondahl]

No Sweat. We'll just send Al Gore. With all of his hot air, the temperature difference between Mars and Earth should narrow significantly.

Heh. The CAPTCHA for this post was "airbag".

Martian Water-world

[Rie Beam]

A Martian water-world is unlikely in the near future

Thank god. [wikipedia.org]

Obligatory Planet Joke

[Vulcann]

Isn't there a lot of water in Uranus

Sorry :D

Re:Just wait..

[triso]

It's already happening. TFA has a link entitled: * Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds...

Why do they blame only Sun? I think that IBM and Apple are just as guilty, if not more.

Re:Measurement Nitpicking

[Anonymous Coward]

WHOLLY FUCK DUDE!

get on the phone with nasa before its too late!

Metric System Nitpicking

[Nymz]

Martians don't measure water with the metric system, you insensitive clod!

Earth First!

[Russ Nelson]

I say that we terraform Earth first. If you've ever flown over Colorado, Nevada, or Utah, you quickly realize that Those Places Ain't Habitable.

So THAT's what

[rez_rat]

So THAT's what that giant white cap on the Martian north pole is!!! Doh!!
There go all my "Martian Cocaine" investments!!

Re:What are the chances...

[Dunbal]

Last I heard, we were doing better at killing off anything Martian we may have 'discovered'

      OMG! Already crack-pot environmentalists are trying to blame us for "destroying" mars??? Damn, I'm sorry. I killed those baby seals, but the martian baceria - NOT GUILTY! And I didn't pour the acid on Venus either!

Re:Earth First!

[Anonymous Coward]

Colorado? Are you nuts? It's the most beautiful state in the country. I say we terraform your mom's snatch. That way she'll have an excuse for it smelling like fish. There'll actually be some in there.

Re:Obligatory Planet Joke

[nacturation]

>----> Joke

You

    (0)
      |
    ---
      | /\

So the joke severed the poor bastard's body into multiple pieces?
 

Of course you know what this means...

[mrbluze]

We need to urgently plan our first colony to Mars... how shall we do it..

1. We need to build three spacecraft. (1) for the working class, (2) for the intelligencia, and (3) for middle management, politicians, salespeople, hairdressers and other absolutely essential jobs required for any new colony.
2. We should first send spacecraft number (3) as it would surely be the largest and most important craft. These people are, after all, our leaders and those whom we admire most.
3. After the people on craft (3) have worked out how to make the atmosphere there breathable, and have had enough meetings and committees to organize themselves out of existence, they can then contact Earth and send for the other two craft.
4. In the meantime, all of Earth's problems have been solved and we don't need to go to Mars anymore.

Re:Of course you know what this means...

[KDan]

That's all fine and dandy, but have you considered the possibility of mass extinction from diseases spread by dirty telephone handsets?

Daniel

Re:Let's add some heat!

[lordofthechia]

Wouldn't evaporating or boiling some of the water via nuclear reactors or orbiting mirrors increase the humidity and heat retention of the atmosphere

I can see it now... "The Simple Guide to Terraforming a Planet"

1. Bring the whole planet to a slow boil. *
2. Let planet sit until it reaches room temperature
3. Colonize!

As a side effect you would also be sterilizing the planet (at least of bacteria that can't survive boiling water, granted water would boil at a lower temp on Mars).

* For a more delicious recipe, add noodles and flavor packet after Step 1.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[pepeperes]

Just, this time, remember to keep here the public phone cleaners, or we'll all die!

Re:We're the ocean planet

[Anonymous Coward]

Facts about Man:

Man believes that there is a "God" that created the Earth for him.

71% of the Earth is covered in water.

Man has no gills.

Re:Obligatory Planet Joke

[nko321]

Uranus is full of gas!

Re:We're the ocean planet

[geoffspear]

Well, duh... God covered the planet in that much water so we'd have somewhere to dump all of our toxic waste where we don't have to look at it.

Besides, before the Great Flood only 5% of the Earth was covered with water; the rest is just leftovers.

On Mars

[RexRhino]

It would have been way more awesome if they discovered enormous amounts of frozen pizza on Mars.