New Images Reveal Pure Water Ice On Mars 179
Matt_dk writes "Images of recent impact craters taken by the HiRISE Camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed sub-surface water ice halfway between the north pole and the equator on Mars. While the Phoenix lander imaged subsurface ice where the top layer of soil had been disturbed at the landing site near the north pole, these new images — taken in quick succession, detecting how the ice sublimated away — are the first to show evidence of water ice at much lower latitudes. Surprisingly, the white ice may be made from 99 percent pure water."
What does that tell us? (Score:2, Insightful)
And build a reactor that we can then start to release the water into the atmosphere.
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Get your ass to Mars, ... Get your ass to Mars, ... Get your ass to Mars, ...
Well, okay, but he will need more than just frozen water, he eats a lot of oats. Also hates it when people tell him to do things three times.
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Get your ass to Mars, ... Get your ass to Mars, ... Get your ass to Mars, ...
I see we're thinking on the same track. There's water on the Moon, water on Mars... Where next? A bidet (Water in Uranus).
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Where it will promptly freeze and settle out back onto the surface.
99% eh... (Score:5, Funny)
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Good point. 99% pure = 10,000 parts-per-million contamination.
Who cares... (Score:2)
Just put "tar" instead.
It worked on Superman... sorta...
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It's acid from the martians trying to disable the rovers! They also put a traffic ticket on them! And all the failed probes failed because the martians shot them down!
(These jokes aren't funny, but for some reason they always get modded up. Figured I'd hitch on to that gravy train."
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That last 1% is very, very nasty.
Ever seen this? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090094/ [imdb.com]
Send in Arnold!!! (Score:2, Funny)
Ok - all we need now is to send the Guvernator up there to whip up some dissent among the subsurface mutant population, and we should have a breathable 14.7 PSI atmosphere in no time!!!
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We Californians have him on loan dealing with all the mutants up in Sacramento, Pelosi is playing the chick with three breasts.
getyourasstomars tag (Score:2, Offtopic)
Because I laugh my ass off every time I see it
For the uninitiated: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53ARrp7x4bQ [youtube.com]
Powerful evidence for recent wet Mars (Score:5, Interesting)
This is IMHO powerful evidence for recent warm wet Mars :
'The other surprising discovery is that ice exposed at the bottom of these meteorite impact craters is so pure,' Byrne said. 'The thinking before was that ice accumulates below the surface between soil grains, so there would be a 50-50 mix of dirt and ice. We were able to figure out, given how long it took that ice to fade from view, that the mixture is about one percent dirt and 99 percent ice.'
'The ice is a relic of a more humid climate not very long ago, perhaps just several thousand years ago.'
Dr. Bryne talks about making this ice through 'frost heave,' but it sounds to me like Arcadia Planitia may have been considerably warmer during the geologically recent past.
Remember, Mars has climate cycles, they cause the sublimation and freezing of both water and Carbon Dioxide, and both water vapor and Carbon Dioxide are powerful greenhouse gases on Mars. (As is methane, which is also present in the Martian atmosphere from unknown sources.) Presumably this ice dates from an earlier part of the climate cycle, when there was higher humidity. Higher humidity implies higher pressure and temperatures. Higher pressures could put the surface above the triple point of water, so that liquid water is possible.
In that case, if the temperature gets high enough, liquid water become inevitable. That would (upon the next change in the climate cycle) freeze as very pure ice.
The Europeans keep talking about sending a rover with a drill to Mars. I think we have now found a good place for it to go.
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Anything that happened that recently, will happen again. Maybe we can nudge it along.
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I think you can blame religion for several hundred years of lost science, maybe a thousand, but getting to Mars several thousand years earlier? That would've taken an act of God in itself. :-P
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Mars may well have had a thicker warmer atmosphere but without the protection of a strong magnetosphere (like earth has) the solar wind 'blew' the atmosphere off of the planet.
Well, that and it has 1/10th the mass of earth, and thus just 1/3rd the gravity with which it can hold down an atmosphere. Taken together, it's hardly surprising that Mars has such a tenuous atmosphere.
big deal (Score:2, Interesting)
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That's what I was thinking.
Good news and bad news
Good news, We found water on mars/
Bad News, it's contaminated with a pesticide.
wait...
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at 99% pure it could still be raw sewage
There is no such thing (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no such thing called "99% pure water". If it is not 100%, it is not pure.
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Well... (Score:2)
You know what this means!!
?
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They're finding a lot of water in space recently.
They just need to find the ethanol now.
For fuel of course! - *looks side to side*
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Re:Whoa (Score:4, Insightful)
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Read Zubrin's [wikipedia.org] The Case for Mars [amazon.com]. Water is all we really need.
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All you need is water.
bum ba did-a-duh
All you need is water
bum ba did-a-duh
All you need is water, yeah
Water is all we really need.
Re:Whoa (Score:4, Insightful)
Water + Solar/Nuclear = Return flight.
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As someone already pointed out, splitting water can be fuel.
However, there is hydrogen in space and methanol if I remember right. It could be harvested and processed for this. Alternatively, we could just send a supply ship into high earth orbit, doc with it and drag the fuel with us using boosters or something. You could launch the transport ship, the refueling ship remotely and bring the crew up on a third mission to avoid transferring dangerous chemicals with humans around and no place to run.
However, I'
Re:Whoa (Score:5, Informative)
Rocket motors don't require an atmosphere at all. Is just mass moving and action/reaction [howstuffworks.com]. Any sort of device that can chuck mass out the back [akamaitech.net] of a vehicle will push that vehicle forward.
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However, I'm curious how effective traditional rocket motors will be in an atmosphere so less dense then Earth's.
obligatory Goddard reference [google.com.au]
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Rockets are more efficient in a less dense atmosphere. There is less ambient pressure working against the exhaust, and there is less against the vehicle vehicle itself.
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Uranium won't get us back off the planet. Solar works well enough for short-term power, even all the way out at Mars. But it's a death sentence to explore Mars without enough fuel to get us back off the ground, so if we can find something we can use/refine as return fuel, it'll make an initial trip that much more likely.
It's only a death sentence if the point of the mission to actually get back to Earth. If you consider the history of human exploration and expansion you'll realize that quiet a bit of travel was intentionally one way. People tend to conflate the Space Race with actual exploration. Probably what we'll see with Mars (though who can really say) is a number of unmanned supply ships followed by a one way manned mission to set up some sort of colony. I think you'd actually be surprised at how many people would
We have it (Score:2)
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A very poorly placed one, as the vaste majority of the fuel you make is going to be used to get it out of the gravity well (less so for the moon, but still significant). I've said it a dozen times on Slashdot already. A gas station would make more sense on an NEO where the resources are abundant and the gravity almost non-existant.
Get your ass to an NEO! (just doesn't have the same right to it)
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If you need to get off mars then water (H+O) on the surface is in exactly the right place. Obviously the ability to make fuel outside the gravity well would be handy as well.
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Ah, fair nuf. I was thinking a more general purpose fueling point that just getting up off the surface. I was under the impression that it was difficult to use H as a rocket fuel though. In theory it has a high thrust/weight ratio but in practice it's so hard to keep it contained and cold enough to stay liquid that the extra equipement negates any advantes that it has. Doesn't mean that it's impossible of course, just difficult.
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I was under the impression that it was difficult to use H as a rocket fuel though
Yeah, the shuttle uses it.
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Get your ass to an NEO! (just doesn't have the same right to it)
Just refer to the NEO in question as "The One", and I'm sure you'll be able get some people excited about it.
We must find The One!
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Use the water as an energy source how? Heat difference between something heated by the sun and the ice? I'm not sure I follow.
If your rocket burns oxygen and hydrogen you could fly it to Mars, then use solar energy to turn water into hydrogen+oxygen, and fly home.
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Re:Lets colonize! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, not only is Fusion power only 30 years away, but personal flying jet-packs are only 10 years away, and true Artificial Intelligence is only 20 years away.
The future is looking bright!
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If you want to get technical about it, we've already harnessed fusion energy... in bombs... a good fifty years ago. We just haven't been able to scale down the process below a few megatons yield yet.
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the goal is to harness fusion energy in a controllable and sustainable fashion; not just blow something up in a quick blast. The level of knowledge and technology required is vastly different between the two concepts.
Re:Lets colonize! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Lets colonize! (Score:4, Insightful)
The more we learn about the physics of fusion the more we realize that we did not grasp all of the complexities of building a working fusion reactor. We've gone from Q 10 for a commercial reactor so we are at least getting closer to our goal of commercial fusion. The question is whether the upward trend in Q gains will continue in the future. If they do then it is quite conceivable that we will have a prototype reactor up and running in 30 years, if not, we'll learn a lot about the physics involved.
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I think that a fusion propulsion system might be much easier to do than a fusion power system. (For one thing, in a propulsion system you want to eject waste products out the back,) That, alas, also implies that the money being but into ITER will not help us much with propulsion, which no one seems to be pushing except a small group at the U of Wisconsin [wisc.edu].
Re:Lets colonize! (Score:5, Funny)
You inspired the following daydream:
1. Small crowd around a water cooler talking energetically
2. Later... Man sitting alone in a chair at home
3. Man sitting alone in a chair at home
4. Man sitting alone in a chair at home
5. Man sitting alone in a chair at home
6. Man exclaims, "HA HA! I get it!"
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Not for the Inertial Electrostatic Confinement fusion research. It sidesteps most of the issues present in Tokomak research.
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Nuclear Physics is only ~100 years old, nuclear chain reactions weren't observed until the 30s, and the first fission reactor wasn't invented until the 40s. Fusion was also first observed in the 30s and as we all know they figured out how to make a pretty good bomb out of it by the 40s. Anyway my point is, all of this stuff is relatively recent, the physics is still moving fairly rapidly, but they have figured out how to get a net energy gain out of a manageable fusion reaction so to say it's 'always' goi
Re:Lets colonize! (Score:5, Funny)
I thought it was first observed many millennia ago? What IS that bright yellow thing in the sky? ;)
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I thought it was first observed many millennia ago? What IS that bright yellow thing in the sky? ;)
Yes, that fusion source worshipped by the Pharaoh Ikhnaton and no doubt many other of our early ancestors.
So with fusion, what we are proposing to do is bottle God. I find that idea strangely compelling.
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So with fusion, what we are proposing to do is bottle God. I find that idea strangely compelling.
That, my friend, will be appearing in my yearly top-ten quotable quotes. ...or would, if such a thing existed.
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Re:Martians (Score:5, Informative)
> How long before martians now?
Soon, soon.
He brought the boys to the edge of the canal and told them to look down into the water. "There are the Martians I promised to show you"
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Soon, soon.
He brought the boys to the edge of the canal and told them to look down into the water. "There are the Martians I promised to show you"
A classic film reference; well played. :)
But remember, Earth is incapable of supporting life... according to the Martians.
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Is that "The Martian Chronicles" by Bradbury? (A book, btw)
Indeed it is, but I plead guilty to only seeing the film(s). I'm sure the book is even better.
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Nice. I remember reading that story. As I remember it, there were three girls and four boys, and that spelled trouble in the future.
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I was quoting (paraphrasing) the book. I didn't know there was a movie.
I do remember that their wasn't the only family that stayed on Mars after the war broke out, so the boys and girls will have some choices when they mature. As much choice as any prairie settler had.
Re:Another blow to the no life on Mars crowd (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure that's really dogma. Sure, it's not widely accepted that there is life on Mars, and a number of people think it's unlikely, but there's quite a lot [amazon.com] of fairly open discussion [nasa.gov] about the possibility [nasa.gov].
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Our own bacteria.
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If bacteria is discovered that is the same as bacteria here, could we prove that it didn't come from Earth?
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It's possible, but my impression is that most scientists think it's unlikely--- Mars's poorly shielding atmosphere would probably have led to any lifeforms on our probes being killed off within hours at most.
An alternate interesting observation is that large meteor impacts appear to eject enough material to transfer lifeforms between planetary bodies [planetary.org].
Re:Another blow to the no life on Mars crowd (Score:5, Insightful)
That's probably because the type of life you seem to have in mind is pretty specific - by the rest of your comment: intelligent, large enough to be visible, and both located near and willing to interact with things that we've dropped on the surface.
There's a lot of living stuff right here at home that doesn't fit any of those categories, so there's no reason to automatically assume that there can't be any life at all on Mars.
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So what you're saying is that:
It's life Jim, but not as we know it.
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The Gaia hypothesis [wikipedia.org] is one reason. Sure, there are extremophile species on Earth, but there's life all over Earth. If there were life on Mars, it has probably, like on Earth, had hundreds of millions of years to evolve, grow, and spread across the planet in one form or another, changing the environment to make it even more suitabl
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I tried Nucleic Acid once.
What a ride, what a ride!
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Just about anywhere will have mixed water (chemicals or minerals). I'm not aware of anything that would stop erosion from happening on mars. Especially since they assumed that previous surface water areas had a high saline content in the soil from all the minerals concentrating as it dried up.
This 99% pure water was probably fresh ground water frozen when the permafrost got so deep or it's more like a glacier where it came about in precipitation and somehow got buried.
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I would kiss my children and young grandchildren goodbye. Wave to the ex-wife. Kiss my main squeeze goodbye and squeeze her ass a little.
Wave goodbye to all of them, and get my ass on the craft.
And while I'm up there, I'd find my way up to the Martian Arctic, and find the Phoenix [planetary.org]. And decode my sons name engraved on the DVD.
Did I say HELL YES!
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Wow, you would drop all that and spend the rest of your life jerking off alone until you die just to read your kids name on a disc that you can probably find a copy of here in Earth.
I don't know whether to call you crazy, devoted, courageous, inquisitive or a combination of the bunch. Oh well, if it wasn't for people like you, we would probably not the US and history would be a lot different.
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Worse... DRM (Score:2, Funny)
HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dave: Play the disk, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This disk is too protected for me to allow you to read it.
Dave: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to share it, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
D
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Yah, uh, you also have to be qualified as an astronaut and a scientist. Sitting in your underwear and posting to Slashdot doesn't help. :)
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What a selfish son of a bitch.
Screw you people. I am going to certien death with the opportunity of learning nothing.
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Well, at least didn't claim the discovery of water on Mars. I think that's been done 4 or 5 times.
I know, I know, as long as it gets it in the papers...
Re:Too Bad We Won't Be Colonizing Mars Anytime Soo (Score:4, Insightful)
Rocket propulsion is dangerous, extremely expensive and rather primitive when you think about it.
State of the art, it is.
Luckily for the world, a new form of transportation and energy production technology will arrive soon, one based on the realization that we are immersed in an immense ocean of energetic particles. This is a consequence of a reevaluation of our understanding of the causality of motion. Soon, we'll have vehicles that can move at tremendous speeds and negotiate right angle turns without slowing down and without incurring damages due to inertial effects. Floating cities, unlimited clean energy, earth to Mars in hours, New York to Beijing in minutes... That's the future of energy and travel.
Observation first, flying cities later. We haven't observed hypothetical effects that would allow the technologies you causally (heh heh) list. And an immense ocean of energetic particles and "causality of motion" (whatever that means, if anything) do not imply flying cities. Show us the effect experimentally before you tell us how wonderful it will be.
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"causality of motion" (whatever that means, if anything)
It means "I don't understand Conservation of Energy, and think not understanding something means you can act like it doesn't exist."
It's a physics troll, kind of a cross between Electric Universe and Time Cube. He's been posting essentially the same message and blog link for a while now.
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He's talking about electric universe 'theory'. It's a form of free energy horseshit.
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Pro tip:
When ever you read or hear something like that coming from a reasonable source, there is probably a reason for it.
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If you read the article you'd know they were in fact making a scientific statement of reasonable significance given what they expected to find.
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Of course there was always someone claiming it wasn't water but some other molecule also bearing hydrogen... or something else. I doubt the deniers will stop until someone actually goes there and takes a sample. Then again that does not stop the wackos who claim the Moon landing was faked either...