![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldChlorofluorocarbons will have to do until we can begin importing CO2. On the plus side, it looks like there's plenty of water.
[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<a [...] hopes</a>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]
Chlorofluorocarbons will have to do until we can begin importing CO2. On the plus side, it looks like there's plenty of water.
<A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,895321,00.html"Ice discovery dents colonisation hopes</A>
Friday February 14, 2003
The Guardian
The north and south poles of Mars are covered with water ice trapped under a crust of frozen carbon dioxide, but that might not be good news for astronauts looking for a drink, scientists reported yesterday.
Findings reported in the journal Science show that while there may be plenty of water ice, there is not enough carbon dioxide to ever warm the planet enough to make the water drinkable.
<lj-cut>
"There's definitely not liquid water," said Shane Byrne, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology. "There's just a three-kilometre thick ice sheet, like Greenland."
Apparent indications of surface water, including features that look like river valleys, suggest Mars might once have been warm and wet enough to sustain liquid water, and therefore allow for the possibility of life as we know it on Earth.
Astronomers have believed for decades that the Martian south pole had plenty of frozen carbon dioxide, unlike Mars's north pole, which appeared to have only a trace.
New thermal images made by Nasa's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey probes show both poles have an abundance of water ice just metres below the surface.
The robotic spacecraft sent back high-resolution pictures of flat-bottomed pits in the surface dry ice at the Martian poles, Mr Byrne said. These pits change seasonally, with the bottoms heating up in the Martian summer. That indicates the bottoms of the pits are made of water ice.
The water ice would never warm up enough to melt, being dozens of degrees below freezing.
Andrew Ingersoll, a Caltech professor and Mr Byrne's co-author for the Science article, said this scenario is bad news for the idea of terraforming, a visionary approach to heating up Mars enough to unlock its frozen water.
A large amount of carbon dioxide in the Martian at mosphere is thought to be one way to have a "greenhouse effect" to capture solar energy to melt the ice.
"If you wanted to make Mars warm and wet again, you'd need carbon dioxide, but there isn't nearly enough if the polar caps are made of water," Prof Ingersoll said. "Of course, terraforming Mars is wild stuff and is way in the future; but even then, there's the question of whether you'd have more than a tiny fraction of the carbon dioxide you'd need."
ยท Reuters
</lj-cut>
<A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,895321,00.html"Ice discovery dents colonisation hopes</A>
Friday February 14, 2003
The Guardian
The north and south poles of Mars are covered with water ice trapped under a crust of frozen carbon dioxide, but that might not be good news for astronauts looking for a drink, scientists reported yesterday.
Findings reported in the journal Science show that while there may be plenty of water ice, there is not enough carbon dioxide to ever warm the planet enough to make the water drinkable.
<lj-cut>
"There's definitely not liquid water," said Shane Byrne, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology. "There's just a three-kilometre thick ice sheet, like Greenland."
Apparent indications of surface water, including features that look like river valleys, suggest Mars might once have been warm and wet enough to sustain liquid water, and therefore allow for the possibility of life as we know it on Earth.
Astronomers have believed for decades that the Martian south pole had plenty of frozen carbon dioxide, unlike Mars's north pole, which appeared to have only a trace.
New thermal images made by Nasa's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey probes show both poles have an abundance of water ice just metres below the surface.
The robotic spacecraft sent back high-resolution pictures of flat-bottomed pits in the surface dry ice at the Martian poles, Mr Byrne said. These pits change seasonally, with the bottoms heating up in the Martian summer. That indicates the bottoms of the pits are made of water ice.
The water ice would never warm up enough to melt, being dozens of degrees below freezing.
Andrew Ingersoll, a Caltech professor and Mr Byrne's co-author for the Science article, said this scenario is bad news for the idea of terraforming, a visionary approach to heating up Mars enough to unlock its frozen water.
A large amount of carbon dioxide in the Martian at mosphere is thought to be one way to have a "greenhouse effect" to capture solar energy to melt the ice.
"If you wanted to make Mars warm and wet again, you'd need carbon dioxide, but there isn't nearly enough if the polar caps are made of water," Prof Ingersoll said. "Of course, terraforming Mars is wild stuff and is way in the future; but even then, there's the question of whether you'd have more than a tiny fraction of the carbon dioxide you'd need."
ยท Reuters
</lj-cut>
