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Mars Space Science

Ice Lake on Mars 374

Posted by Zonk from the esa-beats-nasa-to-the-punch dept.
DecoDragon writes "The ESA's Mars Express discovered an ice lake on Mars. The ESA has a number of images and an explanation of what was found. The lake was found in an unnamed crater. The report says it can't be carbon dioxide, because carbon dioxide ice had already disappeared from the northern polar cap at the time the image was taken." Coverage from the BBC also available. From the article: "The team has also been able to detect faint traces of water ice along the rim of the crater and on the crater walls. Mars is covered with deep gorges, apparently carved out by rivers and glaciers, although most of the water vanished millions of years ago. "
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Ice Lake on Mars More

Ice Lake on Mars

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  • Cool... (Score:5, Informative)

    by It doesn't come easy ( 695416 ) * on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:37AM (#13195864) Journal
    Nice pictures. I think the article has one thing wrong, though. It should be possible for the ice to sublimate away above -103 F on Mars. Unless, of course this particular crater never gets that hot...

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

      by Pxtl ( 151020 )
      Hmm. What I wonder is how there appears to be snow on the hillside - I mean, that suggests that the ice is blowing away (unless that's a trick of their colour retouching). Maybe that ice lake is only temporary?

    • Re:Cool... (Score:5, Informative)

      by jackelfish ( 831732 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @12:28PM (#13196319)
      I would agree with you, but I think that you assume a surface pressure of only 1 Pa. At the recorded pressures of 0.675-1 kPa for Mars' atmosphere, water remains ice until it reaches a temperature of somewhere between 240 to 275 K (-27 to 35 F). The average recorded temperatures of the surface of Mars ranges between 130-250K (-225 to -9 F) with a mean of 210K, so it is entirely possible for this ice to remain year round without sublimating, or melting at the extreme temperature (275K) and pressure (1 kPa) range. I am only extrapolating these values from a phase diagram for water, therefore the numbers are most likely off. This, of course, also assumes that the sun is not shining on the region in question, as soil temperatures of 300K (+81 F) have been reported.

  • HI-RES? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Agret ( 752467 ) <alias.zero2097@g ... om minus painter> on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:39AM (#13195881) Homepage Journal
    HI-RES JPG
    Size: 13,100 kb

    How big do you want to make it!? Good thing they are on a phat pipe or /. would've got them instantly ;)

  • Colonies? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tommertron ( 640180 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:39AM (#13195882) Homepage Journal
    Does this mean sustainable Mars colonies are possible?

    • Yes. (Score:2, Funny)

      by krell ( 896769 )
      Sustainable colonies are now possible, now that you won't have to deal with the expense of the colonists returning to Earth every winter to get in some ice fishing.

    • Re:Colonies? (Score:5, Funny)

      by khendron ( 225184 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:55AM (#13196058) Homepage
      No, just sustainable hockey and curling leagues.

    • Re:Colonies? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Pxtl ( 151020 )
      Sustainable... no, but you might be able to use this to help a small outpost last a long time.
    • Not in the long term, no. In the short term, they were already possible before this discovery. In the medium term, this might make it somewhat easier.
    • Duh. Haven't you seen Total Recall? It also means there's a giant alien nuclear reactor just primed and waiting to heat up all that ice and make air for the entire planet.

    • Re:Colonies? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by NardofDoom ( 821951 )
      Not quite yet, but it does make exploration a lot easier. The water can be used to make rocket fuel, air to breathe, hydrogen or methane for fuel, irrigate crops, flush toilets and drink.

      Considering we'd have to, at the very least, carry a lot of hydrogen along with us to do the same things, this is very, very good news.

      • Re:Colonies? (Score:3, Funny)

        by vsprintf ( 579676 )

        Not quite yet, but it does make exploration a lot easier. The water can be used to make rocket fuel, air to breathe, hydrogen or methane for fuel, irrigate crops, flush toilets and drink.

        Could you please put "drink" on the list before "flush toilets"? Thanks.

  • This is not news! (Score:5, Funny)

    by jarich ( 733129 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:41AM (#13195904) Homepage Journal
    Nasa has known this for months!

    Here's the photo: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050401.html [nasa.gov]

    ;) It's humour! Laugh!

    • Re:This is not news! (Score:5, Informative)

      by srmalloy ( 263556 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:58AM (#13196090) Homepage
      Not a joke, still from the Astronomy Picture of the Day site, is this picture [nasa.gov], which according to the page text, was actually taken back in February, and reported in the June 2005 issue [nature.com] of Nature. So while it's news, it's not new news.

      • What is NOT mentioned, though... (Score:4, Informative)

        by jd ( 1658 ) <`imipak' `at' `yahoo.com'> on Friday July 29, 2005 @12:30PM (#13196339) Homepage Journal
        ...if you look at the photograph, you will see two small impact craters in the ice and one large one. There are no others.


        Assuming that meteorites strike Mars fairly evenly, it should be possible to guess how old the ice lake is. It is certainly newer than the crater it is in (duh!) and from the lack of craters on the ice or in the crater the ice is in, there must be a very definite upper limit to how old it can be.


        There are two possible sources for the water (an issue the ESA and NASA don't really discuss on their sites): We know there's an underground ice lake, for a start. It is possible that when the impact occured, it burst through to such a lake, melting the water temporarily. The water would reach the surface and re-freeze.


        The second possibility is that the surface has indeed been warm enough for liquid water, despite evidence from those with martian meteorites. This is possible, as the meteorites may well have been from a cold part of Mars. It could well be that Mars couldn't -sustain- warm temperatures, so warm regions were geologically active regions. Water takes finite time to freeze, especially when flowing, allowing for water-formed features even outside regions that would have sustained liquid water.


        The latter explanation would be great for those looking for life, but the ice-spray on the rim of the crater, along with the bulge of land under the ice, is more indicitive of the former. Rats!

      • Well, thats the ice lake in question...
        And for missions that need year(s) to actually get there, a week or two doesnt make it old

  • When can I move there? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:41AM (#13195905)
    I'm curious about how long everyone thinks it will take before people are able to live on Mars. Now that we're pretty sure there's water there, it isn't a far stretch to believe that the planet is more than capable of supporting human life.

    • Re:When can I move there? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Moo Moo Cow of Death ( 778623 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:46AM (#13195968) Journal
      I'm curious about how long everyone thinks it will take before people are able to live on Mars. Now that we're pretty sure there's water there, it isn't a far stretch to believe that the planet is more than capable of supporting human life.

      Except for, you know...the sub zero temperatures and the lack of oxygen and all... :)
    • With or without self supplied life support?

      With, technically it could be done today. Practically speaking, it will probably take 30 plus years.

      Without, hundreds if not thousands of years. And by that time we (as a continually developing technological species) will probably outgrow the need for a planet to live on (or destroy ourselves first)...
    • Just move to Utah.

    • Re:When can I move there? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Skyshadow ( 508 ) * on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:49AM (#13195997) Homepage
      It seems to be that "could" and "will" are two different things in this situation.

      Odds are, we could live on Mars right now -- learning to grow crops could take some work, but everything else is actually fairly straightforward. You can make bricks from the soil, make O2 from the atmosphere, mine water out of the soil, etc.

      Now, when *will* we live on Mars is something else. The answer is pretty much either "a couple of years after a major government decides it's worthwhile" or, more likely, "a few years after we find some way to make money by doing so".

      • Of course, motivating a government to pursue this goal results in enormous economic gains over the mid to long term. Look at apollo. The sheer amount of research and manufacturing buildup that had to happen to make it possible gave a huge boost to the US in every corner of the economy as it did so. Big govt money spurs research, factory construction, employment to man those factories etc... and don't forget the societal boost as you give your nation a purpose.

        Of course, Senator Joe Doofus just sees that
      • a few years after we find some way to make money by doing so Martian pr0n.

      • Re:When can I move there? (Score:4, Informative)

        by jackelfish ( 831732 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @12:43PM (#13196485)
        Except for the fact that the average surface temperature of Mars is -63 C, the atmospheric pressure is 100x lower than earth and the O2 composition of the atmoshpere is about 1,000,000x less.
    • I'm curious about how long everyone thinks it will take before people are able to live on Mars.

      Truthfully, it will happen when the benefits outweigh the costs. That doesn't mean we can't explore. I just don't see a need to stay.

    • Well, once the sun has warmed sufficiently to turn the earth into a dinosaur age steaming hell, life on Mars may be preferable. Give it abother 10,000 years or so...

  • Amazing Photos (Score:5, Funny)

    by necrofluxneo ( 876830 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:41AM (#13195916)
    Excerpt taken from a chat session between ESA and NASA lead engineers: NASA: "Our Mars Rovers are both still going strong, moving at over an inch per day, and finding all sorts of great new types of reddish sand. I could possible arrange to send you some sam-" ESA: "WATER!! YEAH BABY!! WE pWnEd j0000!!! MWA AHHAHAHAHAH!!"

  • What's more... (Score:5, Funny)

    by burtdub ( 903121 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:42AM (#13195921)
    Romance advice authors have found evidence of men on Mars. No word on Venus.

  • how did we miss that before? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by option8 ( 16509 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:43AM (#13195936) Homepage
    really. IANARS*, but how did previous missions miss that? haven't we already imaged most or all of the martian surface from orbit at a resolution high enough to see this glaringly obvious bullseye?

    and if it wasn't there a few years ago, where did it come from?

    * not a rocket scientist
    • Mars is big. and the lake 20 miles is relitivly small. I chalange you to find a 20 mile lake on earth that you didn't know about before. using google maps.
      • The difference here is that we're talking about what may be the ONLY LAKE ON THE ENTIRE PLANET.

        You'd think that the people looking at the images captured by this multi-million dollar probe would have spent a few thousand dollars to develop a rigorous method (i.e. automated) of scanning the images for bright spots that could be water.

        Otherwise, what's the point of taking the photos in the first place?

    • Re:how did we miss that before? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @12:06PM (#13196161) Homepage
      really. IANARS*, but how did previous missions miss that? haven't we already imaged most or all of the martian surface from orbit at a resolution high enough to see this glaringly obvious bullseye?

      Well, this patch of ice looks like it has a surface area of what, 75 square km? All of Mars is about 145 million square km, so we're talking about 0.00005% of the surface -- I can kinda see how that might take a while to notice.

      Basically, planets are big -- Mars may be smaller than the earth, but since there's no ocean, it has about the same land area.

    • Re:how did we miss that before? (Score:5, Funny)

      by delcielo ( 217760 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @01:00PM (#13196655) Journal
      Are you kidding? With 200,000 troops, a herd of inspectors and millions of pissed off disaffected Iraqi citizens we couldn't find WMD in a country less than the size of Texas.

      Those rocket scientist kids are doing okay.

      Maybe we should have sent them into the desert.

  • Too bad... (Score:5, Funny)

    by popo ( 107611 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:43AM (#13195937) Homepage
    ..its going to take Opportunity *forever* to get up there.
  • so... how far do you think those rovers can drive before they die?

    I guess we found the next landing spot, assuming they can either land it in the crater or drive into the crater after landing.
    • Wondering the same thing. Are the rover landings precise enough to land in that 35 km crater? The crater sides themselves seem pretty severe and pretty deep, I'd think driving (at least the current rovers) down would be a VERY long shot.

      • Re:rover (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Ford Prefect ( 8777 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:55AM (#13196051) Homepage
        The crater sides themselves seem pretty severe and pretty deep, I'd think driving (at least the current rovers) down would be a VERY long shot.

        The latitude could be a problem too, albeit for a different reason - it's thought the ice is there because there's so little sunlight getting to the crater's floor.

        This hypothetical rover had better have an RTG (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator), 'cause solar panels defintely aren't going to work too well... :-]

  • Water implies Life (Score:3, Interesting)

    by orthogonal ( 588627 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:44AM (#13195941) Journal
    Water => Life.

    I'll be damned surprised if we don't find life on Mars now that we know there's free-standing water (ice) on the planet.

    Our next responsibility is to try very very hard not to contaminate Mars with Earth-life, if we haven't already with our probes.

    • Re:Water implies Life (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Water is needed by life. As a result, life implies water. Not the other way around.
    • "Our next responsibility is to try very very hard not to contaminate Mars with Earth-life"

      Bollocks it is. Our next responsibility is to sell rights to do whatever you like with the land.

       
    • Here [wikipedia.org] is some discussion of the definition of life. Tell me, how are all of these properties implied by the existence of water?
    • Our next responsibility is to try very very hard not to contaminate Mars with Earth-life, if we haven't already with our probes.

      Mars scientist Glezzargloop was denounced by the Martian Supreme Council for suggesting that 4 billion years ago, life was created on Mars by an alien probe from planet Earth which he also stated that destroyed itself in war shortly thereafter.

      "This is just blashemphy!" stated the Councils holy pontiff.

      While the more secular political cheif stated "This is just utter nonsesne, ever
    • "
      Our next responsibility is to try very very hard not to contaminate Mars with Earth-life, if we haven't already with our probes."

      wrong, our responsibility is to expand the species.
      By definition that means we must contaminate it.

  • If we combine NASA and ESA, and maybe China if they want onboard, we could start terraforming that mofo in a few years!

    Dream on, I know...

  • New raffle -- Mars Rover Lake Thaw Drop (Score:3, Funny)

    by gearmonger ( 672422 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:47AM (#13195972)
    OK, taking entries now for when the rover will drop through the ice during the Spring thaw. Please format entries to indicate specific time, day, month and eon.

  • Quick way to colonize (Score:5, Funny)

    by frank_adrian314159 ( 469671 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:47AM (#13195974) Homepage
    Now that we know there's ice there, we can tell the Canadians and they'll get a hockey team up there ASAP.

    • Re:Quick way to colonize (Score:4, Funny)

      by kin_korn_karn ( 466864 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @12:04PM (#13196142) Homepage
      No! We must not contaminate Mars with the neutral zone trap!

      Tell the scandinavian countries, they know how to play real hockey, not that canadian thug shit.

      • I believe you are confusing NHL rules with international rules.

        NHL rules are not Canadian rules. We play both NHL and international hockey up here.

        We all know that NHL hockey sucks. It's designed to sell, which according to the money behind it apparently means more time hitting/fighting, less time playing hockey.

        Canadian thug shit, hardly. I'll show you some Canadian thug shit ;)

        Best Canadian hockey is World Juniors and Olympic hockey, without a doubt.
    • Oh great! Lots of sand, some ice that we thought shouldn't have been there... now MARS is going to have an NHL before we Winnipegers get our back!

  • Why is this important? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @11:51AM (#13196015) Homepage
    I don't get it. The BBC article says:

    The existence of water on Mars raises the prospect that past or present life will one day be detected.

    ...

    It also boosts the chances that manned missions can eventually be sent to the Red Planet.

    Large reserves of water-ice are also known to be held at the poles on Mars.

    We've known for a long time that there was water ice at one of the poles. We also know there's ice underground at lower latitudes. If there's surface ice in crater at a slightly lower latitude, why does that say anything about past or present life on Mars? It's not obvious to me that this has any serious implications for human exploration either. If the idea is to get drinking water and/or hydrogen from local supplies, then is it really that significant that it can be done at a slightly lower latitude? And if the goal of the mission is to look for past or present life, then the equator is clearly where you want to visit, not high latitudes. Likewise if humans were going to set up a permanent presence on Mars, they'd probably want to do it near the equator, where the cold wouldn't be so devastating.
    • Likewise if humans were going to set up a permanent presence on Mars, they'd probably want to do it near the equator, where the cold wouldn't be so devastating.

      Hmm, I would think that a difference of 50 degrees (-50 C vs. -100 C) would not be as much of a problem as being near to vs. far away from your life sustaining ice supply. Which is why everyone has been thinking that the first base should be at the south pole. However, craters like this would certainly expand the possibilities and make a base ne
    • If the idea is to get drinking water and/or hydrogen from local supplies, then is it really that significant that it can be done at a slightly lower latitude?

      Hoo boy! Man, when the Martian tour guide said don't drink the water, they mean don't the water! I haven't had runs like that since I drank tap water in Mexico city! And even then it didn't try to crawl out of the toliet... That god for hotel plungers.
    • I think it might be that the ice on the poles is frozen CO2 (like "dry ice"), whereas this is frozen H20. At least that's what I inferred fromt he article.
  • Fools, that ain't water! Don't they know an dab of Oxy5 when they see it? Poor Mars is covering up a zit and you got it on camera....he won't be happy now. NASA get photoshoppin' on those pics before Mars finds out! He'll be kickin' them rovers off it's surface!

  • You know what this means. (Score:4, Funny)

    by blair1q ( 305137 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @12:08PM (#13196174) Journal
    Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity sit on the Martian regolith listening to the news.

    They look at each other, then, after a beat, say, in unison, "ROAD TRIP!"

  • Meddling Fools! (Score:3, Funny)

    by popo ( 107611 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @12:13PM (#13196205) Homepage

    I see you've found the sliding roof of my Martian lair!
  • It was all sucked down to earth in a 75,000 mile long waterspout thousands of years ago.

  • Perhaps that ice wasn't always there. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ZSpade ( 812879 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @12:18PM (#13196247) Homepage
    Isn't it possible that whatever made the crater is also what brought the ICE? I mean, if it was a comet it could have made a very large and localized ice deposit; since they already mentioned that most of the ice had disappeared years ago. Well, that's just my little hypothesis, who knows how old that crater is!
  • I wonder, with all the ice frozen into the soil, if the pool we see here was created when the astroid which build the crater hit. (i.e. all the ice melted and pooled in the bottom of the crater, then froze) Rather then water that was left behind from the origional rivers and streams on mars.

  • Canadian Exploration Plans (Score:4, Funny)

    by airship ( 242862 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @12:20PM (#13196267) Homepage
    Meanwhile, the Canadian Space Agency today released an artist's rendition of their new planned Mars Explorer Vehicle.

    http://www.zamboni.com/machines/model700.html [zamboni.com]

    They also announced that the expedition will be fully underwritten by the Canadian Hockey League.

  • Green tendrils? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Digital_Quartz ( 75366 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @12:24PM (#13196291) Homepage
    Grab the high-res overhead shot, and look at the bottom left edge of the ice patch. There's what a faint green discoloration which look like some sort of "tendrils" creeping up the side of the ice. Anyone have any theory what those are? Could they just be some sort of color distortion introduced by the camera? Or is this possibly some sort of organism?

    • Re:Green tendrils? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by polyp2000 ( 444682 )
      Indeed, these are very interesting. At first i thought they might be an artifact of the camera or something but after some minor investigation.

      Im pretty sure those are there in the physical sense. Try loading the hi-res overhead shot into gimp or whatever your favorite gfx proggy might be. Invert the colors on it (turns the water black) and then using the brightness and contrast adjustments you can really bring out the shapes. What is particularly interesting is that on the topleft corner of the ice are wha

    • Re:Green tendrils? (Score:3, Informative)

      by blincoln ( 592401 )
      It looks like an artifact of either graphics compression or a glitch in the sensor data to me:

      - The shapes are very angular, unlike everything else in the image.

      - It's only there in the blue channel. If it were really present, there should be *some* trace of it in red or green, but if you remove the blue channel the shapes disappear.

      - If I re-compress the image as a minimum-quality JPG, the amount of green "tendrils" dramatically increases.

      My best guess is that it's a JPG artifact due to the extreme colour
    • After looking at the highest resolution color version I noticed that you can see the square patterns of the pixels, or more likely sets of compressed pixels. This happens often with JPEG images that have been compressed a little too much. Each square of X pixels gets compressed separately and some information is lost, so that when the same square is uncompressed it doesn't always blend smoothly into the surrounding squares with regard to color and lightness. I believe this is referred to as posterization, a

  • APOD (Score:3, Informative)

    by Stonan ( 202408 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @12:27PM (#13196310) Homepage
    Was originally an Astronomy Picture Of the Day. (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050720.html [nasa.gov]) This is a good site or backgrounds!

    P.S. For other good/neat pics goto http://epod.usra.edu/archive.php3 [usra.edu] (Earth Science Picture Of the Day)

  • Living On Mars? A Little Dose Of Reality (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Cutting_Crew ( 708624 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @12:53PM (#13196587)
    living on mars??

    get real.. we cant even send a shuttle into space to the ISS without foam coming off and jeopardzing the crew, not sure where thats gonna lead. the old shuttles are done for -- they arent going to build new ones. they are using these until the new "capsules" are built to go into space and even these wont be for humans.

    we've got at least 50 - 60 years before we even START to think about talking about sending humans to mars for anything.

    In the nine months it takes to get to Mars, Mars moves a considerable distance around in its orbit, about 3/8 of the way around the Sun. You have to plan ahead to make sure that by the time you reach the distance of Mar's orbit, that Mars is where you need it to be! Practically, this means that you can only begin your trip when Earth and Mars are properly lined up. This only happens every 26 months. That is there is only one launch window every 26 months.

    After spending 9 months on the way to Mars, you will probably want to spend some time there. In fact, you MUST spend some time at Mars! If you were to continue on your orbit around the Sun, then when you got back to where you started, Earth would no longer be where you left it!

    Just like you have to wait for Earth and Mars to be in the proper postion before you head to Mars, you also have to make sure that they are in the proper position before you head home. That means you will have to spend 3-4 months at Mars before you can begin your return trip. All in all, your trip to Mars would take about 21 months: 9 months to get there, 3 months there, and 9 months to get back. With our current rocket technology, there is no way around this. The long duration of trip has several implications.

    First, you have to bring enough food, water, clothes, and medical supplies for the crew in addition to all the scientific instruments you will want to take. You also have to bring all that fuel! In addition, if you are in space for nine months, you will need a lot of shielding to protect you from the radiation of the Sun. Water, and cement make good shielding but they are very heavy. All together, it is estimated that for a crew of six, you would need to 3 million pounds of supplies! The Shuttle can lift about 50,000 pounds into space, so it would take 60 shuttle launches to get all your supplies into space. In the history of the Shuttle, there have only been about 90 launches, and there are less than ten launches per year... So with the shuttle, it would take six years just to get the supplies into space. For this reason, you would probably need to develop a launch system that could lift more than 50,000 pounds into space. Even with a better launch vehicle, it is unlikely that you could launch the Mars mission all at once. You will have to launch it in several pieces and assemble them in orbit.

    Second, you are going to be in space for an extended period of time, and there a physiological consequences of being weightless for long periods of time. For one, your muscles do not need to work as hard. In response to being used less, your muscles begin to shrink or atrophy. Remember, your heart is also a muscle, and pumping blood around your body is easier in the weightless environment of space, so your heart gets weaker as well. On an extended space voyage, your muscles might become so weak that it would be difficult for you to stand upright once you return to an environment where you are subject to gravity.

    Just like your muscles have to do less work to move you around in space, your bones are not needed as much. The main function of your skeleton is to support the weight of your body. When you are weightless in space, your body realizes that the bones are not being used as much and they begin to lose calcium, and become more brittle. These are serious effects which may impair the ability of the astronauts to carry out experiments and tasks when they get to Mars, where they will be subjected to gravity again.

    In order to study these physiological effects of

  • Lakefront property on Mars... (Score:3, Funny)

    by svtmunk ( 461967 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @01:08PM (#13196723)
    Get it fast before rates rise and the bubble bursts....

    As an added bonus - you can ice skate all year round!

  • Not the only one (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ektanoor ( 9949 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @01:23PM (#13196850) Journal
    Well at least I see that there is more than one lake in the northern hemisphere. Well, really what I saw is a lot smaller than this one. I would call it a pond. But what amazed me is that it showed that water could really keep for some time in open air (or more correctly "near open air"??). Moreover, the pond was getting water from a spring over the hill behind it. Considering this, I think there should be more places where water could gather.

    BTW, If I well remember, the borders of the pound showed some gradation suggesting it was drying up. And,and and if I really didn't mess anything, the pond was mostly covered by a wall. But it was not a crater. Probably a subduction as the shape was more similar to an ellypse over an highland. Yes, and what most critics may bash me was that the pond was in small highland. Yes pressure should a lot less there. But it was there...

    But please don't ask me for a proof. As I told once around here. I lost that frame. I hardly tried to pick it back but it was searching in a haystack as all my data went limbo back them. It is on one of MGS frames before Summer 2000. I worked with the original frames or with those processed by Malin's labs.

    Besides I am not here claiming first discoveries. Just leaving a note. Maybe someone finds it or catches something more interesting. Like underground rivers or something else :)

  • What's CG, what's real? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) ( 613870 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @01:27PM (#13196888) Journal
    They look like CG renders to me. One of the pictures has a comment pointing out that the depth has been exaggerated by a factor of 3 (not the anaglyph). So clearly at least one image is a fake. It's getting annoying just how processed images are these days without a suitable warning. Nowadays it seems acceptable, not just to apply filters or color transforms, but also use image based rendering to render from a new viewpoint.

  • What about the Martian Poles (Score:3, Insightful)

    by popo ( 107611 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @03:14PM (#13197968) Homepage

    There's something I've never understood about this quest for water on Mars.

    First off, this "ice" thing doesn't seem like a big deal to me. When I was 8 years old I had a picture of Martian ice caps on my wall. (Yeah.. I was like that). So why is this a big deal? Because its at the bottom of a crater in a less than frozen area? How does that make life more likely? Clearly the bottom of that crater's pretty inhospitable too...

    Secondly -- I've never understood why we don't look for water in a place I would think is the most obvious: in the periphery of the ice caps. Wouldn't liquid water most likely be in the place where the caps melt? It seems highly likely that Martian ice caps perform similarly to Earth's ice caps -- sloughing off ice into a temperate zone.

    Why do Mars' frozen poles not get more attention in this quest for water?

    Anyone?

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