Andyr Posted July 31, 2005 Share Posted July 31, 2005 Ice lake found on the Red Planet A giant patch of frozen water has been pictured nestled within an unnamed impact crater on Mars. This came from the BBC website, and the full article and related links are here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4727847.stm Link to comment
SimDing0 Posted July 31, 2005 Share Posted July 31, 2005 I nominate Andyr to operate the G3 Science RSS feed. And post Studios frontpage news. Link to comment
g'lain Posted July 31, 2005 Share Posted July 31, 2005 Road trip to Mars for ice-skating!!! Link to comment
BigRob Posted July 31, 2005 Share Posted July 31, 2005 Very cool... Might be a really good spot for a manned/robot mission to go and look for life. Link to comment
Andyr Posted August 1, 2005 Author Share Posted August 1, 2005 Isotope studies (K40 - Ar40) have also been done. You look at the amount of argon present, which is a decay product from potassium and the rate of decay depends on the temperature. Tests revealed that there wasn't enough argon for the water to have been above 278K (i.e. freezing point) for over around a million years in the last 4 billion or so. So, even though there's water, it may well have not been liquid for long enough for life. Link to comment
BigRob Posted August 2, 2005 Share Posted August 2, 2005 Oh well. Still a handy source of water if we should ever send some people that way. Link to comment
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