Evidence Detected of Lake Beneath the Surface of Mars (cnn.com) 100
For decades Mars has teased scientists with whispers of water's presence. Now they have some solid evidence. From a report: The Italian Space Agency announced Wednesday that researchers have detected signs of a large, stable body of liquid water locked away beneath a mile of ice near Mars' south pole. The observations were recorded by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument -- Marsis for short. "Marsis was born to make this kind of discovery, and now it has," says Roberto Orosei, a radioastronomer at the National Institute for Astrophysics, who led the investigation. His team's findings, which appear in this week's issue of Science, raise tantalizing questions about the planet's geology -- and its potential for harboring life. CNN elaborates: Between May 2012 and December 2015, MARSIS was used to survey the Planum Australe region, which is in the southern ice cap of Mars. It sent radar pulses through the surface and polar ice caps and measured how the radio waves reflected back to Mars Express. Those pulses reflected 29 sets of radar samples that created a map of drastic change in signal almost a mile below the surface. It stretched about 12.5 miles across and looked very similar to lakes that are found beneath Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets on Earth. The radar reflected the feature's brightness, signaling that it's water. "We interpret this feature as a stable body of liquid water on Mars," the authors wrote in the study.
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We're whalers on the Mars, we carry a harpoon. But there ain't no whales so we tell tall tales and sing a whaling tune"
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I see you've got a fungineering degree.
Drill Baby Drill (Score:1)
Bruce Willis is available, lets drill in to it!
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Worse, Napoleon [xkcd.com].
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unleashed that which can't be contained.
Isn't that an oxymoron?
Two stories, one draw (Score:3)
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This one about Mars having water, another one telling roughly the same about the moon. It's a draw. Not sure now if I'd prefer to go to the moon or mars!
Mars, more of an atmosphere, more gravity, larger, more complex geology and geography. The moon is relatively boring next to mars and has much less commercial interest to attract sponsors.
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Water means rocket fuel. And Luna is a much shallower gravity well to get that rocket fuel out of. Admittedly, you're only going to be processing water into LH2 and LOX two weeks a month. But even with that limitation, it's way the hell better than lifting that much rocket fuel out of the gravity well we're all sitting at the bottom of now.
Note, by the by, that even without water on Luna, making LOX the
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I bet your mom thinks you're *so* clever.
Re: Two stories, one draw (Score:2)
True, at the equator, the sun is only up 50% of the time.
However it makes no difference if that time period is 12h (a typical earth day) or 14*24h (a typical moon 'day')
Moon, at night [Re: Two stories, one draw] (Score:2)
True, at the equator, the sun is only up 50% of the time. However it makes no difference if that time period is 12h (a typical earth day) or 14*24h (a typical moon 'day')
Huh? If you're running on batteries at night, 12 hours of storage is heavy but doable, 354 hours is pretty much out of the question.
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The point wad H2/O2 production fo rocket fuel.
Not running on the energy.
And providing enough storage is actually not such a problem anyway.
If you already sunk the cost to fly to the moon, some batteries should not be a problem, cost wise.
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!
I say walk before you run.
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Re: Two stories, one draw (Score:2)
Mars,
because of its (albeit dim) atmosphere, it had much nicer sunsets and sun rises.
Re:Two stories, one draw (Score:5, Funny)
Jetskis (Score:5, Funny)
The sound of Jetskis was unmistakable and annoying, even from several million miles away.
Gold (Score:4, Insightful)
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There is water - means that probably there were rivers, and consequently gold.
Rivers do not create gold. Gold does not accumulate in rivers faster than other debris. The only reason you find a higher density of gold in some rivers is due to the unique processes of the area that cause other debris to decay and errode at a faster rate than gold, and faster than other debris comes in.
Re:Gold (Score:5, Funny)
Arrr matey, sounds like ye be tryin to hide treasure!
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in yer booty. harrrrrr.
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Gold does not accumulate in rivers faster than other debris.
Of course it does. Let me quote a rather clever person who explains it well.
The only reason you find a higher density of gold in some rivers is due to the unique processes of the area that cause other debris to decay and errode at a faster rate than gold, and faster than other debris comes in.
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There is water - means that probably there were rivers, and consequently gold.
Excuse my ignorance but why would rivers be evidentiary to the presence of Gold?
We may witness thousands of rockets departing to Mars daily.
Gold is a very useful element but it's pretty worthless when your planet doesn't have a habitable environment. The cost per kilo to transport it is much higher than the value of Gold on Earth.
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There is water - means that probably there were rivers, and consequently gold.
Excuse my ignorance but why would rivers be evidentiary to the presence of Gold?
We may witness thousands of rockets departing to Mars daily.
Gold is a very useful element but it's pretty worthless when your planet doesn't have a habitable environment. The cost per kilo to transport it is much higher than the value of Gold on Earth.
On Earth there is gold in many rivers in the form of glitter, sand, and nuggets. I am an amateur prospector myself.
The history of humanity is the history of Gold. One can sell as much gold as he got. It is very different from other products in this respect.
I know for sure there are gold and diamonds specialists in the Mars exploration teams. If gold is discovered in large quantities on Mars people will start constructing DIY rockets and suits in backyards. Something similar happened already during gol
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Gold is just another commodity. Its value is based on A) it's use as a non-corroding conductor, and B) rich people wanting glittery shit made out of it, and poor people wanting glittery shit made of it so that they can feel more like those rich people.
It's no longer the reserve currency of the world, by any means.
An entire asteroid worth of gold would be worthless if it costed 10 cents more per troy ounce to bring it back than it cost terrestrially to mine. And what's worse, is tha
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It is just a cube with the side of 50 meters (some researches say 20 meters): https://www.bbc.com/news/magaz... [bbc.com] . That's it. That is all the gold available for billions of people on several continents.
Being an amateur prospector I know only too well how rare it is. So it is in a way not like an usual commodity.
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That depends entirely on its use.
If, for example, the world's consumption of gold were to trickle down to just electronics (desire for gold as jewelry is an entirely cultural factor. some cultures valued salt more than gold, by weight, due to the abundance and lack of use for gold), then the amount of gold left in the crust is enough for millennia without the need to recycle.
Current actual goods consumption is driven largely by the Chinese, probably du
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Oil would be better? (Score:2)
I am sure companies would go nuts to go Mars for it!
Other sources (Score:5, Informative)
Space.com: https://www.space.com/41272-ma... [space.com]
Science News: https://www.sciencenews.org/ar... [sciencenews.org]
CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/25... [cnn.com]
Two weeks... (Score:2)
Quaid... Start the reactor...
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quick, i'd like to be back in time for cornflakes.
Re:Drill, baby, drill (Score:4, Insightful)
There was a scientist that said "There is certainly life on Mars. We put it there."
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And human beings would be required to drill a mile down... and human beings contain billions of life forms on each individual. Once you send a human- life will go with them.
That said, is contamination necessarily such a bad thing? Any organisms on humans are not likely to be able to compete in Mars against species that evolved in that environment. If you stick gut bacteria in a hydrothermal vent it won't outcompete it. Terran bacteria will only overrun martian bacteria if none are still alive.
What we ha
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Any organisms on humans are not likely to be able to compete in Mars against species that evolved in that environment. If you stick gut bacteria in a hydrothermal vent it won't outcompete it. Terran bacteria will only overrun martian bacteria if none are still alive.
Eek. Your general assumption, that an invasive species will automatically be less suited to compete in an environment against native species is flat out wrong.
You then back it up with a very strictly limited scenario where it is not.
I wouldn't underestimate the ability of Earth organisms, living in a hyper-competitive environment, to be able to completely dominate a small and constrained ecosystem if one exists.
Earth organisms would be rats on their island.
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Any organisms on humans are not likely to be able to compete in Mars against species that evolved in that environment. If you stick gut bacteria in a hydrothermal vent it won't outcompete it. Terran bacteria will only overrun martian bacteria if none are still alive.
Eek.
Your general assumption, that an invasive species will automatically be less suited to compete in an environment against native species is flat out wrong.
You then back it up with a very strictly limited scenario where it is not.
I wouldn't underestimate the ability of Earth organisms, living in a hyper-competitive environment, to be able to completely dominate a small and constrained ecosystem if one exists.
Earth organisms would be rats on their island.
Invasive species only outcompete native species when the environment is similar. You put giant land snails in the arctic, they won't survive. You put snakehead carp in the desert they won't survive. Earth is very different in temperature, chemical make up and... well... just about everything from Mars. We're too different. Of course I'm willing to make generalizations that earth species couldn't compete (with perhaps a few extremophile exceptions- that wouldn't get there unless we deliberately placed t
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Invasive species only outcompete native species when the environment is similar.
Sure, I guess. Where "similar" is loosely defined as "area capable of sustained aerobic metabolism within the thermal requirements of the organism"
Invasive species decimate ecosystems in environments that are nothing like their own by terrestrial standards.
Since we're talking about bacteria here, it gets even scarier, since there are plenty of bacteria on this planet, right now, that wouldn't be too deterred by conditions on Mars. Or do you think Lake Vostok isn't full of life?
You put giant land snails in the arctic, they won't survive.
Sure. And if you put a Vibri
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How about organisms becoming stuck evolutionary at a local maximum that other organisms didn't.
Earth organisms would be seriously outnumbered, but if they found the right niche. They could have something novel that the Mars organisms just haven't had to deal with before that they aren't equipped to handle.
How do they know it's H2O? (Score:4, Interesting)
According to the article, the Italian space agency's Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument works by transmitting pulses of low-frequency electromagnetic waves. Some of those waves interact with features at and below the Martian surface and reflect back toward the instrument, carrying clues about the planet's geological composition, but it doesn't seem to have any spectrometer component.
So, and this is an honest (and not sarcastic) question, how could you possibly know what the liquid a mile below the surface is?
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Are you suggesting there is Oil on Mars?
What else could it be at that temputure and pressure? It isn't CO2.
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You are right that it might not be water, but there are many indications that its water, and none that it is not.
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Molecule size and shape also has an effect.
The easiest example I can think of off the top of my head is polarization of light off water, vs water with an oil slick on it. That you see colors means the light was affected differently on the oil. I'm sure similar physics can be determined for RF.
from TFA: (Score:5, Insightful)
"I can't absolutely prove it's water, but I sure can't think of anything else that looks like this thing does other than liquid water," says Richard Zurek, chief scientist for the Mars Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who was unaffiliated with the study.
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Top Priority Area To Investigate (Score:3)
We have known for some time that Antarctica's subsurface lakes [livescience.com] are rich ecosystems. This is the first plausible location to look for life on Mars that we have discovered (as opposed to merely hypothesized).
Ice is also relatively easy to drill through, or even penetrated with an ice subterrene [wikipedia.org].
It will be a much larger operation of course than any lander mission to date, by far.
Bad Writing (Score:5, Funny)
> Mars has teased scientists with whispers of water's presence.
This is humorously bad anthropomorphizing. Mars is "teasing" and "whispering" to scientists about how wet it is?
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> Mars has teased scientists with whispers of water's presence.
This is humorously bad anthropomorphizing. Mars is "teasing" and "whispering" to scientists about how wet it is?
They walk a thin line. Don't be descriptive and colourful language and you lose readers/viewers because you're boring. Use colourful and descriptive language and you're no longer accurate.
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MARSIS (Score:3)
They planned on using it to study Martian ice caps, so they wanted to call it ICE/IS. Apparently there was a problem with that name so they called it MARSIS.
Yes, it's a bad joke. I even tried not to post it, but I wouldn't let myself. I just think MARSIS is a dumb name.
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Or in Mars' case, forward into the Stone Age, I suppose.
Forget the lake... (Score:1)
Seems like Mars has plenty of water.
Gurgle (Score:3)
a large, stable body of liquid water locked away beneath a mile of ice near Mars' south pole
So some Martian accidentally pulled the plug out and all the water drained away.
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So some Martian accidentally pulled the plug out and all the water drained away.
This supports the Flat Mars theory.
Where the White Martians live (Score:2)
Where the Great River of Barsoom falls deep below the surface, from the canals.....
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Look, I said visit the swimming pool (Score:1)
You can visit my swimming pool, but you're not allowed to empty it out for your own personal use.
I have clear signs posted.
Also, no flip flops.
Exxon future. (Score:1)
Now Exxon can have a future in taking a resource, more valuable than gold, out of the ground.
And this time, it's far more dependable then fuel.