Teh One Who Knocks
07-25-2018, 03:03 PM
Doyle Rice, USA TODAY
https://i.imgur.com/USYi0G1.jpg
An artist's conception of the Mars Express spacecraft probing the southern hemisphere of Mars.
There's water on Mars.
For the first time, scientists have detected a lake of salty water under the Martian ice, a study released Wednesday said. The lake is about a mile under the surface and stretches 12 miles across, they say.
The presence of liquid water under the Martian polar ice caps has long been suspected but not seen, until now, the study said.
The discovery raises the possibility of finding life on the red planet. "Without water, no form of life as we know it could exist," said Anja Diez of the Norwegian Polar Institute.
Astronomers used radar data from the orbiting European spacecraft "Mars Express" to find the water. They spent at least two years checking over the data to make sure they’d detected water, not ice or another substance.
“I really have no other explanation,” said study lead author Roberto Orosei of Italy’s National Institute of Astrophysics in Bologna. "This is just one small study area; it is an exciting prospect to think there could be more of these underground pockets of water elsewhere, yet to be discovered," he said.
Although evidence of water was obvious on the planet's surface in the form of vast dried-out river valley networks from eons ago, Mars' climate does not allow for water on the surface today.
The discovery potentially offers fresh clues about how Earth’s neighbor so profoundly transformed billions of years ago from a warmer, wetter world to its current freeze-dried state, according to Scientific American.
Cassie Stuurman, a geophysicist at the University of Texas, said that “if these researchers are right, this is the first time we’ve found evidence of a large water body on Mars."
The area is similar to that of lakes of liquid water found beneath the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets on Earth, which was also detected using radar scans.
"This thrilling discovery is a highlight for planetary science and will contribute to our understanding of the evolution of Mars, the history of water on our neighbor planet and its habitability," said Dmitri Titov of the European Space Agency.
The study was published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Science.
https://i.imgur.com/USYi0G1.jpg
An artist's conception of the Mars Express spacecraft probing the southern hemisphere of Mars.
There's water on Mars.
For the first time, scientists have detected a lake of salty water under the Martian ice, a study released Wednesday said. The lake is about a mile under the surface and stretches 12 miles across, they say.
The presence of liquid water under the Martian polar ice caps has long been suspected but not seen, until now, the study said.
The discovery raises the possibility of finding life on the red planet. "Without water, no form of life as we know it could exist," said Anja Diez of the Norwegian Polar Institute.
Astronomers used radar data from the orbiting European spacecraft "Mars Express" to find the water. They spent at least two years checking over the data to make sure they’d detected water, not ice or another substance.
“I really have no other explanation,” said study lead author Roberto Orosei of Italy’s National Institute of Astrophysics in Bologna. "This is just one small study area; it is an exciting prospect to think there could be more of these underground pockets of water elsewhere, yet to be discovered," he said.
Although evidence of water was obvious on the planet's surface in the form of vast dried-out river valley networks from eons ago, Mars' climate does not allow for water on the surface today.
The discovery potentially offers fresh clues about how Earth’s neighbor so profoundly transformed billions of years ago from a warmer, wetter world to its current freeze-dried state, according to Scientific American.
Cassie Stuurman, a geophysicist at the University of Texas, said that “if these researchers are right, this is the first time we’ve found evidence of a large water body on Mars."
The area is similar to that of lakes of liquid water found beneath the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets on Earth, which was also detected using radar scans.
"This thrilling discovery is a highlight for planetary science and will contribute to our understanding of the evolution of Mars, the history of water on our neighbor planet and its habitability," said Dmitri Titov of the European Space Agency.
The study was published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Science.