Further evidence of salty water on Mars

phys.org...

University of Southern Queensland's Professor Graziella Caprarelli is part of an international team investigating bright reflection signals below the Martian surface, first spotted in data acquired between 2010 and 2019 by the radar sounder MARSIS on board Mars Express.

The primarily Italian team proposed that the reflections pointed to a patchwork of salty lakes, publishing their research in Science in 2018 and in Nature Astronomy in 2021. Recently a new collaboration between the Italian team and U.S.-based researchers provided new evidence further corroborating this interpretation.

The results of these studies have been recently published in the journals Nature Communications and the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

More evidence of salty lakes at the base of Martian poles by investigating the bright reflection signatures underneath the surface of the planet. The cause of the strong radar signals may also have another explanation, such as constructive interference, clay, or salty ice. However these explanations have been ruled out at the moment and it seems likely that there is plenty of salty liguid water in the form of salty lakes in the poles of Mars.

This comes after the Mars Express Orbiter found that the surface of the ice cap covering the south pole of the planet, dips and rises, indicating the presence of liguid water.

Liguid water has been already discovered on Mars as during the summer period of the planet liguid water ice melts and runs down canyons and/or crater walls.

Furthermore there is plenty of visible water ice at the surface of the North polar ice cap and plenty of water ice underneath the carbon dioxide ice cap at the south pole of Mars.

Mars looks like a dry 'lake'. Very likely the planet was just as Earth is at the moment billions of years ago and very likely it could have supported life. Even at this moment it won't be a surprise to find microbial life on Mars or even more complex life given the amount of water in the form of ice and in the firm of liguid (salty) water.















www.nature.com...

a reply to: Asmodeus3

That's not too far to dig down. It's like the depth of a deep oil well I think. They could release it. It would freeze though but they could use it as drinking water. Since the salt separates.

originally posted by: chris_stibrany
a reply to: Asmodeus3

That's not too far to dig down. It's like the depth of a deep oil well I think. They could release it. It would freeze though but they could use it as drinking water. Since the salt separates.

It seems there is already plenty of liguid water on Mars, underneath its surface and under the polar ice caps. In the summer time its likely that when the ice caps are reduced and as well as when ice naturally can melt due to higher temperatures water flows on canyons and on crater walls.

a reply to: Asmodeus3

But the more the merrier.

I will never forget reading Kim S. Robinson's Mars Triology. So good.

I forget if they made oceans only with the ice caps or what.

originally posted by: chris_stibrany
a reply to: Asmodeus3

But the more the merrier.

I will never forget reading Kim S. Robinson's Mars Triology. So good.

I forget if they made oceans only with the ice caps or what.

It looks like the ice cap on the southern pole which dips and rises, indicating liguid water.

New measurements have strengthen this hypothesis.

I haven't read Mars Trilogy by the way...

a reply to: Asmodeus3

You know I wonder how powerful the Solar winds used to be and if the EARTH despite our more powerful magnetosphere is also losing its atmosphere, now bear with me this video would not seem to have any relevance until you watch it.

The idea is that Mars used to have a much thicker atmosphere and due to a combination of it losing its magnetosphere and the activity of solar wind it lost most of it to space and also the possibility that is also suffered some horrendous cataclysm in the past or indeed several of them.

And it seems the earth used to have a thicker, warmer atmosphere and more even climate with more moisture in the air, more oxygen and more carbon dioxide up to five or more times as much as we have in our atmosphere today and this drove the growth of animals leading to species becoming truly massive in the past.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Asmodeus3

You know I wonder how powerful the Solar winds used to be and if the EARTH despite our more powerful magnetosphere is also losing its atmosphere, now bear with me this video would not seem to have any relevance until you watch it.

The idea is that Mars used to have a much thicker atmosphere and due to a combination of it losing its magnetosphere and the activity of solar wind it lost most of it to space and also the possibility that is also suffered some horrendous cataclysm in the past or indeed several of them.

And it seems the earth used to have a thicker, warmer atmosphere and more even climate with more moisture in the air, more oxygen and more carbon dioxide up to five or more times as much as we have in our atmosphere today and this drove the growth of animals leading to species becoming truly massive in the past.

One scenario is that Mars couldn't keep its atmosphere due to its much weaker gravitational field.

However we can be pretty sure that it is very likely it could have supported life. Possibly complex life.

a reply to: Asmodeus3

The Salty Seas.

On a red ship
a girl named Bliss
with a dog called Barsoom
travelled the salty seas
battled with Insect pirates
sung with the sirens
swam with the Thark mermaids
fed silver fish
with crackers and bread
fought skeleton sailors
with a bow and arrow.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Asmodeus3

You know I wonder how powerful the Solar winds used to be and if the EARTH despite our more powerful magnetosphere is also losing its atmosphere, now bear with me this video would not seem to have any relevance until you watch it.

The idea is that Mars used to have a much thicker atmosphere and due to a combination of it losing its magnetosphere and the activity of solar wind it lost most of it to space and also the possibility that is also suffered some horrendous cataclysm in the past or indeed several of them.

And it seems the earth used to have a thicker, warmer atmosphere and more even climate with more moisture in the air, more oxygen and more carbon dioxide up to five or more times as much as we have in our atmosphere today and this drove the growth of animals leading to species becoming truly massive in the past.

What creates the magnetic field of a planet is its outer molten core consisting mainly of iron. When this process stops for whatever reason then the magnetic field ceases to exist and solar flares can do the job very easily by knocking out the atmosphere over a relatively short period of time.

From NASA

www.nasa.gov...

Due to the very low temperatures water ice and carbon dioxide are mixed together but there seems to be water trapped in rocks too.

The scientist who has commented on the article says that we haven't observed liguid water on Mars and the dark streaks on the hillsides may have other explanations rather than liguid water.

Although from the article in the opening page the ice cap that is covering the south pole of Mars, dips and rises, indicating the presence of liguid water.

a reply to: Asmodeus3

The molten iron core does indeed create the field but usually only when it is still molten and still in motion like a dynamo spinning often faster than the rest of the planet like ours does.

But as it cools and solidifies it can become a huge static magnet whose flux fields still emanate and surround the planet giving it a modicum of ongoing protection.

Mars is very strange as its weaker residual magnetic field is all over the place as if it was disrupted somehow, (though to be fair ours is not that different if a map of magnetic anomalies around the earth is viewed) there is even a fringe theory that the huge crack in mars and the huge volcano may be evidence that something big impacted the planet, big enough to throw the core off balance and disrupt it as well as leaving a huge crack in the planets crust but what that was is the subject of several theory's ranging from the idea that mars may have been a moon of another larger planet to a huge impact, then add the theory and isotope evidence of the potential use of two huge atomic bombs on the planet at some point in the past perhaps over half a million years ago or even up to one to two billion years ago and you have a possibility that it is something far more complex that happened to the planet and perhaps something no entirely natural.

Of course, like the earth it has a roughly twenty-four-hour day, actually a little over half an hour longer than on earth and if we look at our bad back's, sun burn and other problems we face our own ancestors may have been more at home there if it had a habitable atmosphere once upon a time.

But unless government Agency's tell us what they really know, scientists become totally honest, and we actually get some people up there digging around and investigating beneath the eroded upper surface of mars we may never know.

Now there may never have been intelligent life there but I believe it an odds-on chance that single celled life even perhaps taken there from the earth as spores from meteor impacts here may very well have survived there, then there is the odd chicken soup test that was carried out by one of the early probes to mars that may or may not have suggested something more than a simple chemical reaction.

But even if there was it does not mean there was a link to earth or for that matter to us even if an intelligent humanoid species once called it home but if they did what would be the statistical odds of an intelligent race arising twice in the same solar system on two separate worlds, barring of course the probability that our solar system is in fact an artifact of intelligent design with such oddities as our own moon, it's orbit and it's very strange property's such as being tidally locked to the earth, having a distance just right for us a race whom may also have been intelligently designed to be able to see it seemingly match the sun even though in reality they are vastly different in size and a whole lot of suspiciously too convenient rations even if they are not precise as time as caused drift etc.

I was always of the opinion that Phobos lines on its surface make that look like an Asteroid that may have been moved from the asteroid belt using a surface mining engine that would crawl along the surface, dig some of it up and vaporise it using nuclear energy to create a vectored thrust allowing it to be moved into orbit around mars were it could have served a purpose such as bringing water to the dying world if that asteroid was once rich in water ice, as it crawled along the surface this mining and vaporising the surface nuclear engine would have left those lines.

a reply to: Asmodeus3

A meteor impact detected by the InSight lander last year and imaged by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has exposed water ice near Mar's Equator too.


Water water everywhere.

Martian cave systems are where we will find life.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Asmodeus3

The molten iron core does indeed create the field but usually only when it is still molten and still in motion like a dynamo spinning often faster than the rest of the planet like ours does.

But as it cools and solidifies it can become a huge static magnet whose flux fields still emanate and surround the planet giving it a modicum of ongoing protection.

Mars is very strange as its weaker residual magnetic field is all over the place as if it was disrupted somehow, there is even a fringe theory that the huge crack in mars and the huge volcano may be evidence that something big impacted the planet, big enough to throw the core off balance and disrupt it as well as leaving a huge crack in the planets crust but what that was is the subject of several theory's ranging from the idea that mars may have been a moon of another larger planet to a huge impact, then add the theory and isotope evidence of the potential use of two huge atomic bombs on the planet at some point in the past perhaps over half a million years ago or even up to one to two billion years ago and you have a possibility that it is something far more complex that happened to the planet and perhaps something no entirely natural.

Of course, like the earth it has a roughly twenty-four-hour day, actually a little over half an hour longer than on earth and if we look at our bad back's, sun burn and other problems we face our own ancestors may have been more at home there if it had a habitable atmosphere once upon a time.

But unless government Agency's tell us what they really know, scientists become totally honest, and we actually get some people up there digging around and investigating beneath the eroded upper surface of mars we may never know.

Yes you are correct but the core spins only slightly faster than the rest of the planet and completes one revolution at a fraction of a second faster.

I think too that there may have been a collision of Mars with another planet in the past. At least is a possible explanation. This can slow down considerably the spinning of the planet and hence the spinning of the core.

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: Asmodeus3

A meteor impact detected by the InSight lander last year and imaged by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has exposed water ice near Mar's Equator too.

Water water everywhere.

Martian cave systems are where we will find life.

Not unlikely when you have plenty of liguid water and water ice. Microbes for example can live inside ice crystals for long periods of time and underneath several metres or kilometres of snow.


www.newscientist.com...

Microbes can survive trapped inside ice crystals, under 3 kilometres of snow, for more than 100,000 years, a new study suggests. The study bolsters the case that life may exist on distant, icy worlds in our own solar system.

Microbes can survive trapped inside ice crystals, under 3 kilometres of snow, for more than 100,000 years, a new study suggests. The study bolsters the case that life may exist on distant, icy worlds in our own solar system.

Living bacteria have been found in ice cores sampled at depths of 4 kilometres in Antarctica, though some scientists have argued that those microbes were contaminants from the drilling and testing of the samples in labs. And in 2005, researchers revived a bacterium that sat dormant in a frozen pond in Alaska for 32,000 years (see Ice age bacteria brought back to life).

Maybe there's a lot of water in different states. On Earth, a lake will freeze from the top but the bottom temp stays around 4°C. Because of the ground preventing it getting colder. Maybe the core of Mars is still warm enough to have a similar effect.

So the conclusion is, Marsian's head-antennas -often depicted in comics- are really periscopes. Used by them to navigate the salty sea underneath the dusty surface and when they peek through the surface to see what's going on.

originally posted by: TDDAgain
Maybe there's a lot of water in different states. On Earth, a lake will freeze from the top but the bottom temp stays around 4°C. Because of the ground preventing it getting colder. Maybe the core of Mars is still warm enough to have a similar effect.

So the conclusion is, Marsian's head-antennas -often depicted in comics- are really periscopes. Used by them to navigate the salty sea underneath the dusty surface and when they peek through the surface to see what's going on.

Actually there is plenty of water in all three states even in the form of vapour (to a much lesser extent). Most is water ice mixed with carbon dioxide and as it seems there is also liguid water. It was always suspected that Mars had plenty of water on its surface during the past as the planet looks like a dry lake.

a reply to: TDDAgain

Maybe the core of Mars is still warm enough to have a similar effect.

Evidence from Martian meteorites and more recently from the InSight lander's detection of marsquakes indicate that Mars still has a molten core so perhaps there are hydrothermal vents breathing life into those underground lakes and pools.
astronomynow.com...

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: TDDAgain

Maybe the core of Mars is still warm enough to have a similar effect.

Evidence from Martian meteorites and more recently from the InSight lander's detection of marsquakes indicate that Mars still has a molten core so perhaps there are hydrothermal vents breathing life into those underground lakes and pools.
astronomynow.com...

Currently the leading hypothesis is that the inner core is liguid and the outer core is solid. However there are different views on this matter and one of them is that the inner core is solid and the outer core liguid just as here in Earth but without the dynamo effect.

www.universetoday.com...

Like Earth, Mars global magnetic field is believed to have been the result of a dynamo effect caused by action in its core. This occurs when a liquid outer core revolves around a solid outer core, in the opposite direction of the planet’s rotation. Unfortunately, the magnetic field disappeared, which caused the planet’s atmosphere to be stripped over time to the point that it became extremely thin (as it is today).

Scientists attribute this to Mars’ lower mass and density (compared to Earth) which resulted in its interior cooling more rapidly. This caused the planet’s outer core to become solid, thus arresting the Martian dynamo effect. Meanwhile, its inner core is believed to be in a liquid state because the pressure in Mars’ interior is too low to cause it to solidify

So there are a few hypotheses we can entertain

1) Inner core is liguid and outer core is solid
2) Inner core is solid and outer core is liguid but without spinning and hence no dynamo effect
3) Inner core is solid and outer core is liguid with slow spinning possibly in the same direction as the direction of the planet's rotation.
4) No solid core at all

www.nasa.gov...

The late Noachian period (from 4.1 billion to 3.5 billion years ago) is the period usually thought to be habitable on Mars, with significant rain near the equator, as demonstrated by the presence of valley networks – features formed by erosion from flowing water -- at this age.