'We thought it was impossible:' Water frost on Mars discovered near Red Planet's equator
'We thought it was impossible:' Water frost on Mars discovered near Red Planet's equator
"Its existence here is exciting, and hints that there are exceptional processes at play that are allowing frost to form."
Quick, send 200 billionaires to Mars to confirm this.
Careful! I’m told those individuals are responsible for nearly all productive work on the planet.
We should send up some sea monkeys for hahas.
/s
We should send genetically modified cockroaches and algae. Then check back 500 years later. Surely there's no way it can go wrong
JOHJ in the distance
In my lifetime we've gone from 'there's no water on Mars' to 'there's tons of water all over the equator, evaporating into the atmosphere daily then freezing on the surface at night'. Which is pretty cool.
Well it'd have to be or it wouldn't freeze
Dad! 🙄
<3
Father's day isnt quite here yet dad
somebody stop Nestle before it's too late
🥂 this mf lmao
Another one for the books!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_discoveries_of_water_on_Mars
There's an image on Wikipedia I can't find showcasing water on Mars.
A glass of water on a Mars bar.
I wonder: Is there any experiment done on Mars that uses Spectroscopy to detect water?
I'm thinking of something like this:
Due to Absorbance, wet air should absorb specific frequencies of light.
Wow that's incredible. We're still making such incredible discoveries despite Mars being so close to home.
Funny how we consider that "close" in terms of space. It's such a massive distance we can't really comprehend it and it's only the first planet out from us. Even at the speed of light it would take 3 minutes+ to get there! I'm no spacengineer but that's like 186k miles per sec. Or something. Space is big. Really big.
Also, the comparatively small and weak gravitational field of Mars has made it a most challenging target in the solar system, behind only Mercury and the Sun itself.
Of course, through trial and error, with better know-how and tech, they have gotten increasingly competent and even reliable at the task.
the frost patches cover a vast area of each of the volcanoes, and its water content could fill roughly 60 Olympic swimming pools, measuring close to 29.4 million gallons (111 million liters) of water.
Wow! That's far more than I expected. I think it's probably more than anyone expected!
I've seen this dr.who episode
We should use the ice water to grow carrots and then look lovingly at the carrots and then hopefully we don't a zombies
Did you maybe a word?
Mars nipple
wait til they find oil...
Oil discovered on Mars
US gov: So anyways, we've decided that we suddenly LOVE NASA and are going to divert 1T$ to it
Breaking news: terrorist operation discovered on Mars, potential of wmds.
Titan has oil and we have known for decades
Materialize some non-white insurgents, FREE 🦅 them, profit
Isn't that Olympus Mons? 7 miles up?
Lemmy read the article for you. Yes.
The frost sits within the Tharsis area, the largest volcanic region on Mars, which hosts 12 large volcanoes. This includes Olympus Mons, which is not only the tallest volcano on Mars but is also the tallest peak in the solar system at the height of 18.6 miles (29.9 kilometers), making it around 2.5 times the height of Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on Earth.
Had a hunch so I googled the size of Phobos just now: 27 by 22 by 18 kilometers. Olympus Mons is larger than the bigger of Mars' two satelites.
Though it's probably more that I severely underestimated just how tiny Phobos and Deimos are. They feel bigger in Doom...
Where?
There!
Is there any sign of bacterial life? Amazing find.
Pimple
Oh great. More places we won't be able to send rovers then.
That is a very weird take for such amazing news
So..... It's not weird if you have ever worked to try to get funding to do mars exploratory missions with the approval of the planetary councils.
One of the big rules is we can't go where we think there might be water and therefore life on Mars unless we can prove our device is 100% sanitized. To the point where a friend and colleague gave up and suggested we just shoot the surface with a copper ball and just collect the dust once it's in upper atmosphere.
Also, I was already part of a group that was taking pictures of lava tubes and we discovered cracking and shifting soil like a decade ago letting us know we had found surface water. It's kinda old news to me.
Edit: I guess the interesting part of this discovery is specifically that it's frost since that is a unique form for the water to take especially there. Since we would expect it to sublimate pretty quickly.
