Lots of Pure Water Ice At Mars North Pole 176
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."
What is the volume? (Score:2, Insightful)
[blockquote]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). [/blockquote]
OK, so how many libraries of congress, or Niagra Falls is this? All joking aside, how does this relate to single units of glaciers or land masses, not non-continguous lakes. For example, how many Antarctica's is this? Or how many of our own polar ice caps? Hell, just tell me how many deep Greenland would be covered in ice!
I know we need things to make volumes, sizes, distances and other units seem real but let's choose something that we all can relate to, that makes sense, eh? Great Lakes just seems really a) North American centric, b) non-sensical to most U.S.ians like myself.
Sorry for the complaint. I know you do your best with these things. Perhaps it is the lack of Vitamin D and the seasonal affective disorder amongst some of us Northern Hemispherians that make me cranky.
Re:So Close (Score:5, Insightful)
What's really not easy to deal with is water and oxygen supplies - if you have to haul every single kilo of water up the gravity well, you add a massive burden to the operation.
The fact that we have large quantities of ice to work with, means we have both water, and - by virtue of solar power if necessary, oxygen from electrolysis.
That's really the major ingredients that are needed to consider a place 'habitable' if not exactly 'comfortable'.
Oil (Score:4, Insightful)
Who cares about water ?
Just discover petroleum on another planet, and there will be a tough competition to get there !
Re:We had pure water once... (Score:4, Insightful)
Fresh water has and is contributing to the continued salinization of our oceans. Originally as water is a solvent and streams/rivers dissolved rock on its way to the ocean and left it there with evaporation, now with all the salt on the roads in the winter plus 6 billion people urinating all over the place.
I wonder if it ever have a bad effect though, considering that we use the ocean as our toilet and food source at the same time.
Re:Mineral? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a widespread urban myth that distilled water is harmful. I've heard it all my life. Look at all the discussion [google.com] at these sites. Some say there are benefits, some say it'll kill you. Too bad KiwiCanuck didn't "research a little more."
Re:Oil (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, there is this famous moon of Saturn, where it rains methane. Close enough?
Yes, the Fall into Sin of Environmental Religion (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Now, this is the plan. Get your ass to Mars. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh,
Re:So Close (Score:4, Insightful)
we have both water, and - by virtue of solar power if necessary, oxygen from electrolysis.
With water? Forget solar power. We'll do power electrolisis with nuclear fusion.
How about fission? We already know how to do it.
Re:No, oil didn't necessarily come from plants. (Score:1, Insightful)
Does food from Anons taste worse? How about if it's particularly low quality?
Re:So we're less atypical than we think? (Score:3, Insightful)
The earth IS amazingly exceptional, we just don't know how unique it is.
Frozen ice on Mars is great, and may make the Herculian job of colonising it or starting outposts later a bit easier. It still looks like its a sterile rock, raising self-sustaining colonies on antarctica and in the seas will be far easier in the short term (100 years).
In contrast earth is a full ecology with macroscopic life so large it is visible from space. There may be 1 or even 10^6 equivalent biospheres in the galaxy (we don't know) this still means terran planets are unlikely to be common or close together. This is one of the reasons we should be developing science but also conserving the uniqueness that is our biological heritage.