Why don't we send a rover to some of these interesting places? It seems like we're constantly making fascinating finds on Mars, then send rovers to the middle of a random rocky desert.
Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars
11–20 of 495 posts
Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars
#12Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars
#13For those, like me, wondering how this is even possible: In order to remain liquid in such cold conditions (the research team estimate between -10 and -30 Celsius where it meets the ice above), the water likely has a great many salts dissolved in it.
Very interesting; I presume there is a way to determine the concentration of salts that "great many" represents. Would be interesting to compare with known halotolerant lifeforms' salt tolerance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halotolerance).
Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars
#14would this be enough to create an viable atmosphere or should a dome be put over it?
Given that any previous water in the atmosphere has mostly escaped over time, the dome seems like a better bet.
Mars lost its atmosphere on a geological time scale. You just need to raise the average temperature 5C to create a runaway greenhouse effect (and that gas release from the polar regions would far outpace the solar winds stripping atmosphere away and once it leveled off would take millions of years to get back to the state it is in now).
The very thin atmosphere it has now, will take another 2 billion years or so to be stripped away entirely.
Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars
#15Why don't we send a rover to some of these interesting places? It seems like we're constantly making fascinating finds on Mars, then send rovers to the middle of a random rocky desert.
Building a rover that can drill more than a few inches deep is presently a huge technical challenge. If you look at drill rigs used by humans for water wells and such, the rover will need to be 8x larger and heavier than the current Curiosity.
Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars
#16would this be enough to create an viable atmosphere or should a dome be put over it?
No, you also need an ancient alien race to have created a reactor that can free the air which can be activated after pressing the button at the top of the elevator platform, but only if you can get past Cohaagen's goons, perhaps using holographic trickery.
Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars
#17would this be enough to create an viable atmosphere or should a dome be put over it?
Given that any previous water in the atmosphere has mostly escaped over time, the dome seems like a better bet.
Water escapes from Mars' atmosphere over periods of millions of years. It's unlikely that domes would help very much. They'd crumble long before they protected any meaningful amounts of water.
Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars
#18Why don't we send a rover to some of these interesting places? It seems like we're constantly making fascinating finds on Mars, then send rovers to the middle of a random rocky desert.
Have a little more faith in the people running these missions than that. The landing spots for any missions we send over are chosn very carefully and with a lot of thought. There are specific goals for any mission and the landing sites are chosen based on those in mind.
Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars
#19Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars
#20For those, like me, wondering how this is even possible: In order to remain liquid in such cold conditions (the research team estimate between -10 and -30 Celsius where it meets the ice above), the water likely has a great many salts dissolved in it.
It seems like, being under ground, it would also be subject a higher than normal pressure, which would also help