Water Found on Mars: Now to Melt It

[sanman]

Here it is! It's now official:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25274243/

Water has been found on Mars! :)

Now we just need to melt it all.

 

[Garth]

Could it not be Dry Ice?

Garth

 

[blimkie.k]

How is it "official"? The article says nothing about it being proven or even tested yet.

 

[AhmedEzz]

Do you think there IS water on Mars and therefore life? It excites me but the possibilities are overwhelming.

 

[blimkie.k]

Here is another article from wedsday similar to the one posted by sanman.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080618.wphoenix0618/BNStory/Science/home

Left of the text there are some images of the excavation. Looks like ice. They say some of it disappeared as if the sun converted it to water vapour. I don't see this as a proof of water as dry ice (solid co2) probably behaves the same way because when you observe dry ice vapour evaporates from it.

It would be quite amazing if there was some water ice found on Mars but that doesn't mean there is life. However there have been forms of microbes and bacteria found living in some pretty extreme environments on Earth so finding something like that on Mars would be simply fascinating. Life starting twice in our solar system right next door.

 

[Ai52487963]

One would think that Phoenix had a spectroscopic camera on it to clearly determine the chemical makeup of dry ice or water ice. As far as I'm concerned, its neither until I get some sort of spectral analysis.

How do the phase diagrams of CO2 and H2O compare with the surface temperature and pressure of Mars anyhow? Is it more likely that the former will stay longer before sublimating in the sun?

 

[AhmedEzz]

I think its official, the Phoenix team did find ice on Mars.
"We can easily and confidently rule out that its carbon dioxide ice,"

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/0...ference-update-proof-of-water-ice/#more-15217

 

[LowlyPion]

Looks like water.

"He said the disappearing chunks could not have been carbon-dioxide ice at the local temperatures because that material would not have been stable for even one day as a solid."
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/06_20_pr.php

 

[Ai52487963]

Cool, answers my question.

Very nice discovery indeed!

 

[sanman]

Here are some more cool pictures:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/06/martian_skies.html

The ice clouds are particularly cool to look at, and so are the dust devils. The weather on Mars seems at times to be comfortingly familiar.

I'm wondering though if the icecaps were melted, whether the water wouldn't all just sublimate into vapor, creating a very large cloud cover masking the entire planet, with the ice crystals reflecting away more solar radiation, to make Mars colder.

They say water is a greenhouse gas, but when you see those reflective white ice crystals, you have to wonder.

 

[LowlyPion]

Looks like you've pretty much identified the stasis that the planet already might be experiencing.

If the ice caps, such as they are, were melted ... the planet would get cooler?

And what is it that happens when water vapour gets cooler? Does it precipitate and bind again with the darker detritus of the Martian soil and absorb more radiation on behalf of the planet again?

The real problem it seems to me with Mars is the amount of resources like water and other gases that it actually does have. Whether it had it once and lost it in the persistent solar winds absent a magnetosphere or never really had it in the first place, it should make us appreciate all the more the confluence of good fortune enjoyed by that last picture in the series you posted - the Earth moon portrait from 142M km.

 

[AhmedEzz]

How long do you think it would take before we can fully understand and explore Mars?

 

[sanman]

Yes, I really enjoyed that picture of Terra and Luna together in the same frame, au naturel. Gives you a direct feel of the scale of distance between them. (I wonder which continent of Earth is in view? Can anyone tell?)

Here's also a cool picture of a Rainbow on Mars, taken by the Opportunity rover:

This is a result of water droplets in the air, just like here on Earth.

Regarding understanding Mars, I think that we should use our constantly increasing supercomputing power to then model the weather on Mars in greater detail. The orbiters and planetside probes are generating large streams of data, and these could then be usefully plugged into a climate simulation on a supercomputer. Then we could explore terraforming ideas, to see how they might play out.

 

[LowlyPion]

Won't the real problem with terraforming Mars simply be the lack of a useful atmosphere and of course the non-existent magnetosphere that might serve to conserve lighter gases ... not to mention the reality of its lower gravitational mass? Modeling what atmosphere may be there may be useful for learning about planetary weather systems in general, but seemingly unlikely to be of use in actually terraforming Mars.

Obviously there is in relative local terms some water at the poles, but with water vapor pressure already a miserably low percentage (<.03%?) of an atmospheric pressure already a minor fraction of Earth's (<1%?), it seems a rather daunting prospect to expect with the smaller atmospheric volume at the surface, that PV=nRT doesn't already show the tank is virtually empty by "terra firma's" standards.

I think I read somewhere that water flowing on the surface was possibly a billion years ago. If true, then time's vector for that looks rather discouraging. Of course there may be some unseen frozen sea, but I fear at this point that such is the stuff of wishful science fantasy.

 

[AhmedEzz]

Are there other possible candidates for terraforming?

 

[LowlyPion]

Have we a need to terraform something else? Is water on Mars important only as a stepping stone to terraform it? Or is there perhaps something to be learned from water's history on Mars and what might be relevant as lessons to us?

Maybe we should look more inwardly and terraform Earth by trying not to muck up the place for all that may follow? Let's use supercomputers and the resources we have here to get the world in a more healthful balance before we start tampering with far off worlds I'd say.

 

[sanman]

Yes, but it is in Man's nature to seek greener pastures, or to enlarge the existing green pastures.

To accept otherwise is to cap our fate under a low ceiling.
To relegate ourselves to merely avoiding further harm to Earth would end up as an endless Sisyphian repetition of belt-tightening.

Mars is an engineering problem. It simply requires the right approach.
The whole point of learning about Mars is to make use of it. Atmospheric erosion under Solar Wind is far too gradual to be relevant to human timescales anyway.

Anyhow, back on the subject of Mars climatology modeling, there should be a joint international effort to pool data on Martian weather patterns. Perhaps there could also be a jointly-funded supercomputing effort.

 

[LowlyPion]

Not to be overly contentious but the manifest destiny you articulate is not unique to Man any more than it would be to the earliest prokaryotes. While I appreciate your ambition on behalf of the species, I wonder perhaps if we could set nobler goals than indiscriminately spreading ourselves around merely for the sake of spreading ourselves around?

As to capping our fate I'd say the sun running down is a rather formidable obstacle to all ambition of extending ourselves in our current form on Mars or Earth. Maybe we should just enjoy the ride from our current assigned seats?

It's not enough then to merely want to understand water on Mars? Or planetary climatology elsewhere unless it offers the practical end of extending Man's Empire? That seems more Star Wars than Star Trek.

As a practical matter what life forms might be sustainable on a world with half gravity and little water, despite the idea of engineering the planet? Is our DNA which represents hundreds of millions of years of adaption and selection to Earth ecology (including full G gravity) going to be anything but a more highly fragile life form mal-adapted and ill suited for localized survival elsewhere?

 

[B. Elliott]

The whole point of learning about Mars is to make use of it.

Actually, the whole point of learning about Mars is to further our understanding of geology, volcanism, plate tectonics, planetary formation, weather, life, and just plain general science... which can help to solve problems here, at home. We don't study Jupiter simply to make future use of it. Nor is it the same with why we study GRBs, pulsars, other galaxies, the CMB, ect.

The more we learn about Mars, the more we learn about our own planet.

 

[sanman]

Likewise, one can take that learning to an experimental level. Attempting eco-remediation methods on Mars could be used to learn about how perform remediation on Earth, should a large-scale ecological disaster occur on our only place to live.

 

[LowlyPion]

I'm unclear what remediation would mean in the case of Mars. As far as the current climate there being suitable now or ever for terra-species - that looks unlikely to me. The lack of a magnetosphere and lower gravity look to be pretty daunting to the hope of developing the kind of volume of gases an atmosphere would require to build to anywhere near Earth's 1000 millibars or so starting as it is at about 6 or 7 millibars today.

The solar wind is a restless wind. A restless wind that yearns to wander ... And so too does the atmosphere on Mars I'd think which is likely resistant to much volumetric increase at this point, even if one were to increase the pressure there temporarily - ignoring for a moment the way in which such a thing might be accomplished in the first place.

In looking at Earth this was evidently a rather long term process building the atmosphere we see today. Here's a link that addresses Earth's atmospheric evolutionary epochs. The time scale is in billions of years.
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/samson/evolution_atm/

Like I said before I do appreciate your ambition on behalf of the species in terms of developing worlds away from terra firma as alternative islands of habitability, but I'd say that as responsible stewards of Earth's atmosphere today we have a number of pressing problems that need solving in the next few decades and not the kind of time needed to bootstrap Mars even if we if only as a lab experiment.

But cheers anyway

 

[Quisquis]

I'm unclear what remediation would mean in the case of Mars. As far as the current climate there being suitable now or ever for terra-species - that looks unlikely to me. The lack of a magnetosphere and lower gravity look to be pretty daunting to the hope of developing the kind of volume of gases an atmosphere would require to build to anywhere near Earth's 1000 millibars or so starting as it is at about 6 or 7 millibars today.

The solar wind is a restless wind. A restless wind that yearns to wander ... And so too does the atmosphere on Mars I'd think which is likely resistant to much volumetric increase at this point, even if one were to increase the pressure there temporarily - ignoring for a moment the way in which such a thing might be accomplished in the first place.

In looking at Earth this was evidently a rather long term process building the atmosphere we see today. Here's a link that addresses Earth's atmospheric evolutionary epochs. The time scale is in billions of years.
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/samson/evolution_atm/

Like I said before I do appreciate your ambition on behalf of the species in terms of developing worlds away from terra firma as alternative islands of habitability, but I'd say that as responsible stewards of Earth's atmosphere today we have a number of pressing problems that need solving in the next few decades and not the kind of time needed to bootstrap Mars even if we if only as a lab experiment.

But cheers anyway

The Earth forum is https://www.physicsforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=84" way. This here is the astronomy forum.

The solar wind would act on mars' atmosphere on cosmic time scales(I'm pretty sure)... nothing we would need to concern ourselves with after we had thickened it. As for the time it would take to build an atmosphere, the link you provided doesn't, by necessity, include any human intervention. I would imagine that something of this scale could be done in 1000 years without any advancement on current technology, especially if we broke down the CO2 and h2o already on Mars.

Although not a research paper, http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5480" link seems to be very informative with regards to what pressures and oxygen percentages are necessary to create a survivable atmosphere on Mars.

Of particular interest is the post where it says that the space suit is 3.2 psi (220 mbar) pure o2, and that produces a pressure that is absolutely fine to breath. It further states that there was an air force study that said that a person can go down to 2.5 psi (170 mbar) indefinitely if they take the time to acclimate to the pressure.

I'm sure there's more on that site, but I've got to leave work soon so I don't have time to continue to peruse it.

-Aaron

 

[LowlyPion]

Thanks for the pointer to the Earth thread. It's good to know it's there.

As to speculating about unlocking water and freeing oxygen planet wide on Mars, I will have to remain skeptical of such speculation based on
1) the raw amount of energy that must be directed by whatever processes would be used
2) the scale of production that must be achieved to overcome the massive increase in pressure from 7 millibars to even the 220 millibars that you might want to use because after all PV=nRT there just like it is here
3) that unlocking O2 and liquefying subsurface H2O will likely create further interaction with Martian minerals and result in unanticipated further mineralization over what has already occurred through its epochs, suggesting a significant unanticipated drag on net gasification - after all Mars isn't that small to know all of what's laying about unoxidized and unhydrolized and
4) an atmosphere of massively increased reactive O2 without any buffering from a more neutral gas like nitrogen will create considerable potential for combustion of carbon based materials.

As I have stated earlier it is certainly of interest that water is present on Mars and I am surely intrigued by the technical skill to be there and able to scoop the surface and apparently see it just underneath, my opinion is however, that there are tremendously sobering realities to thinking that the mere presence of water there offers any real opportunity to take beings with DNA adapted over epochs to Earth ecology and think to transplant that DNA and establish an ecology with all the interdependencies - thinking food chains among other things necessary to sustain it.

Your speculation about 1000 years to achieve even a small fraction of this seems overly ambitious to me even in Man's most capable hands.

But cheers and good luck with it.

 

[sanman]

The soil on Mars has been found to have nutrients which would be conducive to supporting life:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25396378/

All the more reason for us to go and start farming over there.

 

[B. Elliott]

The soil on Mars has been found to have nutrients which would be conducive to supporting life:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25396378/

All the more reason for us to go and start farming over there.

I wouldn't say that's a good reason to spend billions of dollars on a project to send people to Mars, just because you could possibly grow something there. What exactly is able to grow in the soil is still under speculation.

Though the dirt itself seems to be hospitable, Kounaves pointed out that the very top layer at the surface is exposed to high levels of harsh ultraviolet light that is damaging to organic compounds, so that layer of soil may not be able to support life.

You might be able to grow asparagus pretty well, but probably not strawberries."

The soil in the Alaskan tundras is far more hospitable than where Phoenix is digging now. If farming is that easy, how about we start growing food here in Alaska for the many hungry, starving people that it would help?

 

[sanman]

Again, where people choose to settle is their own business. If people want to settle on Mars, then that's their own decision, and they won't be vetoed by skeptics. By your reasoning, why allow any life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness, when all activities could be prioritized based on known needs and wants of the poor and needy? We could also argue that some types of scientific or academic funding is actually better reallocated towards projects that will more immediately help the poor. I see scientists at CERN arguing that funding a large particle accelerator could help mankind, by citing the role of past projects in possibly helping the evolution of the internet. A bit of a stretch, wouldn't you say? Everybody who wants funding will make that kind of argument, of course.

Sometimes that which is currently seen to be impractical in certain corners actually ends up providing more longterm benefits than originally thought.

 

[B. Elliott]

Again, where people choose to settle is their own business. If people want to settle on Mars, then that's their own decision, and they won't be vetoed by skeptics. By your reasoning, why allow any life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness, when all activities could be prioritized based on known needs and wants of the poor and needy? We could also argue that some types of scientific or academic funding is actually better reallocated towards projects that will more immediately help the poor. I see scientists at CERN arguing that funding a large particle accelerator could help mankind, by citing the role of past projects in possibly helping the evolution of the internet. A bit of a stretch, wouldn't you say? Everybody who wants funding will make that kind of argument, of course.

Sometimes that which is currently seen to be impractical in certain corners actually ends up providing more longterm benefits than originally thought.

The time frame for people being able to make the decision to settle on Mars is a very long time away. Well beyond our lifetime and our grandchildrens lifetime. Right now we're twice as far from the Moon as we were in the early 60's, let alone Mars even being a colonization contender.

Once we're been able to return simple soil samples from Mars, we'll then talk about colonization. Remember not to put the cart ahead of the horse.

 

[B. Elliott]

I see scientists at CERN arguing that funding a large particle accelerator could help mankind, by citing the role of past projects in possibly helping the evolution of the internet. A bit of a stretch, wouldn't you say?

Not a far stretch at all. With my experience in the telecom industry, any findings that come about from CERN experiments can quickly (relative to Mars soil findings having an impact of colonization advancement) impact the communication industry.

 

[LowlyPion]

Sadly what is described in that article, while it may be necessary, is not nearly sufficient for the purposes of supporting life of that sort on Mars. While such highly speculative statements about asparagus and strawberries make good sound bite fodder for content starved public media, I see little evidence that scraping some soil and finding what looks like a little ice translates into harvesting seas of waving asparagus sprouts. In short I wouldn't be putting my Mars farmer pants on just yet.

Before crops can even be planted, a whole ecology needs to be constructed where nothing particularly benign currently exists apparently for any known extremophiles even. Having some elements like availability of water and potassium and magnesium et al is useful but is seemingly a lot of energy away from putting the planet in suitable order.

As a gedanken start off by figuring the amount of energy required to raise the atmospheric pressure from 7 millibars to just the 250 millibars speculations forwarded earlier. (Forget for a moment Earth is actually 1000 millibars.) You know like how many moles of gas might be required. (Keeping in mind that the gas has to come from somewhere.) Whether unlocked from the precious subsurface H2O or from the hydrous magnesium sulfate deposits, it will take energy to fight entropy to free a reactive gas like O2. And apparently on surface Mars that energy source is the sun. Lest we forget Mars at 1.5 AU from the sun enjoys about 50% per square meter less of what Earth enjoys.

 

[B. Elliott]

With all this time that you're putting into dreaming about how we can colonize Mars, i'd greatly recommend that you put fourth the same effort into thinking of ways to make it cheaper to get to Mars (and back). If you can think of something that could greatly impact the industry and suddenly make it viable, now that I would be impressed with and be more than happy to read. There's nothing wrong with dreaming, it's just that I would just be enthralled if you could do something to help.

 

[sanman]

I think that the promise and appeal of exploiting Mars (eg. for settlement, habitation, etc) would certainly help to motivate the development of more cost-effective space systems to get there. After all, what could possibly present a greater ROI than the exploitation of another planet? If the Moon was fertile and green, humanity would have settled it decades ago. There would be no debates on whether or not to go to the Moon. In the same vein, the prospect of Mars supporting human habitation and settlement would improve the development pace of ancilliary systems to help bring this about, whether propulsion or otherwise.

 

[B. Elliott]

I think that the promise and appeal of exploiting Mars (eg. for settlement, habitation, etc) would certainly help to motivate the development of more cost-effective space systems to get there. After all, what could possibly present a greater ROI than the exploitation of another planet? If the Moon was fertile and green, humanity would have settled it decades ago. There would be no debates on whether or not to go to the Moon. In the same vein, the prospect of Mars supporting human habitation and settlement would improve the development pace of ancilliary systems to help bring this about, whether propulsion or otherwise.

Cart before the horse.

Nothing is going to happen until a way to get there is viable.

Sanman, even if we discovered huge outcrops of nothing but pure gold, it would still not be cost effective to go to Mars and bring it back unless there already viable ways of going to Mars and back. Whether we find a reason to go there or not, we will always come back to the same conclusion... how to get there and back.

 

[NoobixCube]

Yes, I really enjoyed that picture of Terra and Luna together in the same frame, au naturel. Gives you a direct feel of the scale of distance between them. (I wonder which continent of Earth is in view? Can anyone tell?)

Here's also a cool picture of a Rainbow on Mars, taken by the Opportunity rover:

This is a result of water droplets in the air, just like here on Earth.

Regarding understanding Mars, I think that we should use our constantly increasing supercomputing power to then model the weather on Mars in greater detail. The orbiters and planetside probes are generating large streams of data, and these could then be usefully plugged into a climate simulation on a supercomputer. Then we could explore terraforming ideas, to see how they might play out.

Thanks for the link!

 

[B. Elliott]

I Especially like these animated gifs...
http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/mars_06_20/mars_a2.gif
http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/mars_06_20/mars_a1.gif

 

[LowlyPion]

The cold test of reality for these fanciful speculations about traveling to and fro or unlocking gases and water from the Martian soil - even if it would be there in sufficient volume to make the place habitable - is to do the energy accounting and look at it from the point of view of how much is needed to do what.

Certainly sending one way robotic missions that have modest energy budgets - maybe not necessarily so modest to get there but at least so to sustain themselves there - offers a number of continuing opportunities to explore the universe around us - not just there, but elsewhere as well.

However I think it's important to be more realistic about prospects for converting Mars or inaugurating regularly scheduled flights there. These energies look to be quite considerable.