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[webfact]

Underground lake found on Mars, raising possibility of life

 

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took this snapshot of Mars 11 hours before the planet made its closest approach to Earth on August 26, 2003. REUTERS/J. Bell (Cornell U.) and M. Wolff (SSI)/NASA/Files

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Using a radar instrument on an orbiting spacecraft, scientists have spotted what they said on Wednesday appears to be a sizable salt-laden lake under ice on the southern polar plain of Mars, a body of water they called a possible habitat for microbial life.

 

The reservoir they detected -- roughly 12 miles (20 km) in diameter, shaped like a rounded triangle and located about a mile (1.5 km) beneath the ice surface -- represents the first stable body of liquid water ever found on Mars.

 

Whether anywhere other than Earth has harbored life is one of the supreme questions in science, and the new findings offer tantalizing evidence, though no proof. Water is considered a fundamental ingredient for life.

 

The researchers said it could take years to verify whether something is actually living in this body of water that resembles a subglacial lake on Earth, perhaps with a future mission drilling through the ice to sample the water below.

 

"This is the place on Mars where you have something that most resembles a habitat, a place where life could subsist," said planetary scientist Roberto Orosei of Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Italy, who led the research published in the journal Science.

 

"This kind of environment is not exactly your ideal vacation, or a place where fish would swim," Orosei added. "But there are terrestrial organisms that can survive and thrive, in fact, in similar environments. There are microorganisms on Earth that are capable of surviving even in ice."

 

The detection was made using data collected between May 2012 and December 2015 by an instrument aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft that transmits radar pulses, which penetrate the Martian surface and ice caps.

 

"This took us long years of data analysis and struggles to find a good method to be sure that what we were observing was unambiguously liquid water," said study co-author Enrico Flamini, chief scientist at the Italian Space Agency during the research.

 

The location's radar profile resembled that of subglacial lakes found beneath Earth's Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets.

 

Mars long ago was warmer and wetter, possessing significant bodies of water, as evidenced by dry lake beds and river valleys on its surface. There had been some signs of liquid water currently on Mars, including disputed evidence of water activity on Martian slopes, but not stable bodies of water.

 

Orosei said the water in the Martian lake was below the normal freezing point but remained liquid thanks in large part to high levels of salts. Orosei estimated the water temperature at somewhere between 14 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 10 degrees Celsius) and minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 70 degrees Celsius).

 

It remains to be seen if more subsurface reservoirs of water will be found or whether the newly discovered one is some sort of quirk, Orosei said.

 

If others are detected and a network of subglacial lakes exists like on Earth, he said, that could indicate liquid water has persisted for millions of years or even dating back to 3-1/2 billion years ago when Mars was a more hospitable planet.

 

The question would be, Orosei added, whether any life forms that could have evolved long ago on Mars have found a way to survive until now.

 

"Nobody dares to propose that there could be any more complex life form," Orosei said.

 

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-07-26

[Guest]

How Mars has kept the salt water / salt brine so warm at the pole? Does this mean that Mars still have a lot of residual heat from it's creating billions of years ago? D

 

Does Mars have liquid core, which helps the heat to come up to the surface?

 

Does Mars have nuclear activity in the core, which helps to keep the planet warm?

 

 

59 minutes ago, webfact said:

Orosei said the water in the Martian lake was below the normal freezing point but remained liquid thanks in large part to high levels of salts. Orosei estimated the water temperature at somewhere between 14 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 10 degrees Celsius) and minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 70 degrees Celsius).

 

Quote

Differing in situ values have been reported for the average temperature on Mars, with a common value being −55 °C (218 K; −67 °F). Surface temperatures may reach a high of about 20 °C (293 K; 68 °F) at noon, at the equator, and a low of about −153 °C (120 K; −243 °F) at the poles.

 

[ballpoint]

5 minutes ago, oilinki said:

How Mars has kept the salt water / salt brine so warm at the pole? Does this mean that Mars still have a lot of residual heat from it's creating billions of years ago? D

 

Does Mars have liquid core, which helps the heat to come up to the surface?

 

Does Mars have nuclear activity in the core, which helps to keep the planet warm?

 

 

 

 

"Intense pressure of the overlying ice would warm the ice. Computer models indicate that temperatures would be about minus-90 Fahrenheit — far colder than the melting point of water. That suggests that the water is brim full of salts, allowing it to melt".

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/science/mars-liquid-alien-life.html

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, ballpoint said:

"Intense pressure of the overlying ice would warm the ice. Computer models indicate that temperatures would be about minus-90 Fahrenheit — far colder than the melting point of water. That suggests that the water is brim full of salts, allowing it to melt".

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/science/mars-liquid-alien-life.html

Increasing pressure does warm the ice, but once the pressure is stabilised, there is no extra heat generated. The increased pressure does lower the  solidification point of water. This also requires huge amounts of salts in the water. 

 

If there is no residual heat from the birth of the planet or when something collided Mars and created it's moons, or other forms of heat generation, like nuclear fusion, then the planet's surface temperature should be close to the ambient temperature.

 

That's why I'm wondering more about the temperature, than that there is liquid water on Mars. 

[RuamRudy]

7 minutes ago, oilinki said:

Increasing pressure does warm the ice, but once the pressure is stabilised, there is no extra heat generated. The increased pressure does lower the  solidification point of water. This also requires huge amounts of salts in the water. 

 

If there is no residual heat from the birth of the planet or when something collided Mars and created it's moons, or other forms of heat generation, like nuclear fusion, then the planet's surface temperature should be close to the ambient temperature.

 

That's why I'm wondering more about the temperature, than that there is liquid water on Mars. 

I am afraid I can offer no insight whatsoever, but I wonder if the following article has any significance, considering the water was found at the south pole:

 

Why is only half of Mars magnetized?

 

"...only the southern half of Mars is strongly magnetized."

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, RuamRudy said:

I am afraid I can offer no insight whatsoever, but I wonder if the following article has any significance, considering the water was found at the south pole:

 

Why is only half of Mars magnetized?

 

"...only the southern half of Mars is strongly magnetized."

From that article, this gives a logical explanation for the partial and weak magnetic field on south pole.

 

Meanwhile in the north, volcanic activity messed the arranged magnetic fields on mineral, after the Mars's core cooled down, which stopped the dynamo.

 

Quote

Earth's magnetic field is supported by an internal dynamo; Mars must once have had a dynamo, which would have magnetized its rocks, but then the dynamo shut down. So any rocks that formed on Mars before the dynamo shut down are magnetized; any rocks that formed after the dynamo shut down, or that were heated above their Curie point (the temperature at which their magnetic domains randomize, which differs from mineral to mineral, but which is in the ballpark of a few hundred degrees Celsius) after the dynamo shut down, are not magnetized.Earth's magnetic field is supported by an internal dynamo; Mars must once have had a dynamo, which would have magnetized its rocks, but then the dynamo shut down. So any rocks that formed on Mars before the dynamo shut down are magnetized; any rocks that formed after the dynamo shut down, or that were heated above their Curie point (the temperature at which their magnetic domains randomize, which differs from mineral to mineral, but which is in the ballpark of a few hundred degrees Celsius) after the dynamo shut down, are not magnetized.

 

Anyway, if Mars have magnetic field, it also means that Mars used to have liquid core for longer time, which probably means that the inside of Mars is still rather warm. As it's mass is way smaller than Earth's mass, it cooled down much faster over the billions of years.

 

 

[how241]

It is possible that there is a big underground cave system on Mar,  with streams running through them.  Life of various types might be living down there.

[Skeptic7]

Is there life on Mars? 

Bowie