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Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#51

Post by zip1234 »

ryanmercer wrote: post #10
jlebrech wrote: post #2

would this be enough to create an viable atmosphere or should a dome be put over it?

Earth's atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon, and 0.03% carbon dioxide, so no. If you want to create an atmospheric pressure that humans could survive without a suit, the dry ice in the polar regions is more than enough, the trick with Mars is raising the average temperature 5C at which point you'd create a runaway greenhouse. As for just water needs, the polar regions are lousy with water ice (the nort…

I thought part of the problem was the lack of a magnetic field? I'm not sure if that has anything to do with keeping an atmosphere or just the ability to survive on the surface with radiation protection though...

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#53

Post by yellowapple »

ryanmercer wrote: post #22
brlewis wrote: post #7

For 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 is also quite possible Mars still has 'hot spots' as geologically it was very 'recently' volcanically active. Every now and then there's little anomalies that possibly hint at subsurface hot spots that might allow for hot springs and similar. In Robert Zubrin's fictional (but hard-science) book "First Landing" on the first manned Mars mission they actually find a hot spot and drill into it resulting in a geyser (w…

"that are a bit outdated now due to scientific discoveries, like finding the polar caps are lousy with water ice"

They are? The north cap has more than 800,000 cubic kilometers of water in it. Not much compared to Earth, but in space terms that seems pretty abundant to me.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#54

Post by dsfyu404ed »

walrus01 wrote: post #15
liberte82 wrote: post #11

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.

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.

>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.

Not necessarily. The hole will be stationary relative to Mars so you could just send a little base station with radio and power that drops a paper towel roll sized module with an unspooling data/power link cable and your science stuff into the ice. It can either bore its way through like a TBM (hard but good scientific value since you can measure environment on the way down) or just have it heat itself and let gravity drop it through (no moving parts but less scientific value since you're altering the environment around the probe). When you hit water stop unspooling the cable and just hang it there by the cable.

I'm sure college students in Maine or Montana would be able to pool their ice fishing expertise and come up with some working prototypes if given a sufficient quantity of beer.

It's fun to play armchair engineer.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#55

Post by jlebrech »

ryanmercer wrote: post #14
nacnud wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

maybe we should let Elon Musk nuke mars https://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/11/us/elon-musk-mars-nuclear...

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#56

Post by ChuckMcM »

remote_phone wrote: post #43
ryanmercer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any exploratory drilling, or covering any real amount of ground, you need humans. For reference, Opportunity Rover has only traveled 45 km/28 mi in 14 years. A human can collect more specimens in a day than ALL of the rovers have to date. If we remove this year's launch window, you have 10 minimum-energy launch windows in the next 21 years. 2020, 2022, 2024, 2026, 2029, 2031, 2033, 2035, 2037, 2039. If we could g…

I was talking to an oncologist yesterday. Her biggest frustration is that Silicon Valley billionaires are spending billions upon billions to send things to space, when there are serious problems on Earth that could be fought, most importantly cancer. It’s hard to argue with her. $400B/yr would fund a lot of research that would benefit humanity a lot better than a coordinated mission to Mars, even though it would be v…

This is a false dichotomy that always annoys me. It is entirely possible that by spending $400B to safely send people to Mars and live there, especially in a moderately high radiation environment, that we will discover EXACTLY the mechanisms that send cells into cancer states and how to reverse that so they stop. Otherwise we're going to have colonists getting cancer and dying too quickly.

Then not only do we get to be multiplanetary so that when the crap really starts hitting the fan there is a lifeboat, but we also cure cancer.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#57

Post by harperlee »

ryanmercer wrote: post #48
remote_phone wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking to an oncologist yesterday. Her biggest frustration is that Silicon Valley billionaires are spending billions upon billions to send things to space, when there are serious problems on Earth that could be fought, most importantly cancer. It’s hard to argue with her. $400B/yr would fund a lot of research that would benefit humanity a lot better than a coordinated mission to Mars, even though it would be v…

Money is going into biotech fortunately though. Sam Altman started nudging YC towards biotech a few years ago (one article example https://www.wired.com/2015/11/y-combinator-sam-altman-interv... ) and to date has funded the following companies directly involved in cancer research and treatement: Cambridge Cancer Genomics, Oncobox, Mednet, HistoWiz, Luminist, iSono Health, Notable Labs. And I agree, cancer needs figur…

> we're quickly screwing this planet

I'd love to see humans achieve interplanetary colonization in my lifespan, but that one is a lame reason: as much as we hurt Earth, it will remain much more habitable than Mars.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#58

Post by jhabdas »

apo wrote: post #4

Here's the original paper (no paywall, and apparently not linked in the BBC article): http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/07/24/scien... A couple of highlights: My first thought was why couldn't this be some other liquid like CO2: We examined other possible explanations for the bright area below the SPLD (supplementary text). For example, a CO2 ice layer at the top or the bottom of the SPLD, or a very lo…

Maybe because the site isn't served over TLS, just in case black hat flat-earthers try a MITM on scientific progress?

Here's a link straight to the downloadable PDF two clicks past that abstract:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/07/24/scien...

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#59

Post by AnimalMuppet »

simias wrote: post #27
hossbeast wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like, being under ground, it would also be subject a higher than normal pressure, which would also help

I was wondering about that, how deep is it exactly? If TFA mentions it I missed it. Given the planet's low gravity and very thin atmosphere I presume it must be pretty deep in order to remain liquid. They mention Lake Vostok at the end of the article which is 4km deep but it's probably not directly comparable.

It says 1.5 km down. I'd expect there to be significant pressure down there. Enough to make it liquid at -10C? I suspect so, but I'm not an expert on the pressure gradient on Mars...

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#60

Post by megaman22 »

remote_phone wrote: post #43
ryanmercer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any exploratory drilling, or covering any real amount of ground, you need humans. For reference, Opportunity Rover has only traveled 45 km/28 mi in 14 years. A human can collect more specimens in a day than ALL of the rovers have to date. If we remove this year's launch window, you have 10 minimum-energy launch windows in the next 21 years. 2020, 2022, 2024, 2026, 2029, 2031, 2033, 2035, 2037, 2039. If we could g…

I was talking to an oncologist yesterday. Her biggest frustration is that Silicon Valley billionaires are spending billions upon billions to send things to space, when there are serious problems on Earth that could be fought, most importantly cancer. It’s hard to argue with her. $400B/yr would fund a lot of research that would benefit humanity a lot better than a coordinated mission to Mars, even though it would be v…

Fighting cancer is being the little Dutch boy sticking your finger in a dam. Adding a decade or so at the end of people's lives is great, but bodies break down, and you're going to be fighting a constant rear-guard action.

Getting off this rock is the first step towards getting all of our eggs out of one basket.

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