Immense ice deposits found at south pole of Mars

[gulfcoastliberal]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A spacecraft orbiting Mars has scanned huge deposits of water ice at its south pole so plentiful they would blanket the planet in 36 feet of water if they were liquid, scientists said on Thursday.

The scientists used a joint NASA-Italian Space Agency radar instrument on the European Space Agency Mars Express spacecraft to gauge the thickness and volume of ice deposits at the Martian south pole covering an area larger than Texas.

The deposits, up to 2.3 miles thick, are under a polar cap of white frozen carbon dioxide and water, and appear to be composed of at least 90 percent frozen water, with dust mixed in, according to findings published in the journal Science.

Scientists have known that water exists in frozen form at the Martian poles, but this research produced the most accurate measurements of just how much there is.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070315/ts_nm/mars_water_dc

[Duer 157099]

1. Just wait: Bottled water from Mars at your grocery store

It's just a matter of time.

(darn! did I just give away another brilliant million-dollar idea?!?!)

[gulfcoastliberal]

2. Just make sure it's an LLC just in case...

People drinking it suddenly develop weird symptoms from Martian microbes!

[pinniped]

3. * is a Martian microbe.

.

[hunter]

27. You offend Martian Microbes!

Take that back, or they will have to use their mind control rays on you!

[Duer 157099]

5. Hey, that'd defintely be part of the marketing strategy

For thrillseekers, y'know.

"Be the FIRST on your planet to catch the newest, deadliest plague!"

[mazzarro]

4. It will make old men virile and young again ! -- n/t

[Igel]

12. With the exact opposite effect on women.

Thus making the men pine for their dotage.

[Crayson]

26. Because men are from Mars and women from Venus?

[NashVegas]

6. Yay! The Rich People Will Have a Place to Go!

When the earth is toast krispy.

[Nikki Stone1]

30. God! That was my thought exactly!

:)

[anotherdrew]

31. don't worry the very rich won't go 'til the very poor have gone and died building them new homes

of course, they might just use robots eventually

[politicat]

35. Nope. It'll be smart and skilled first, then smart and desperate, then

poor and desperate. The ruling classes never immigrate. They don't have to. They can afford to maintain their way of life regardless of reality, and they have no incentive to leave.

But Earth will be a poorer place for it. The brightest and best who realize that the only way to preserve humanity is to have Off Site Backup will be the ones doing the off site backuping and leave. The slow, the complacent, the oblivious and the controlling won't go, (and of course there will be an opportunity gap, unless someone figures out that there's a lot of space for either Botany Bays or work camps...) and Earth will show a brain drain... which will end up making all of the problems worse, since those smart enough to get out will, and the rest ...

Besides... ya know how hard it is to remodel a bathroom or a kitchen when you have to live around the remodel? That's kind of what we have going on here on earth. We need to kind of clear off the planet for a couple hundred years and let the contractors fix the "sinks" and "HVAC". Or at least, spend a couple centuries living really lightly and around the atmosphere and oceans.

[IntravenousDemilo]

7. That's where those were! I've been looking all over for them! n/m

[ozone_man]

8. Where there is water

there is likely to be (to have been) life, which will add one more giant step away from our Earth centric view of the universe.

[hang a left]

22. Yeah baby....

Lets GTF outa here.

[Zhade]

32. I can't wait until found life destroys the egocentric bullshit of most religions.

What a wonderful day that will be. :)

[firefox_fan]

33. That would be great.

Curious to see how they'd take it.

[ozone_man]

34. I'm patiently waiting the same.

There will be one less crevice for the god of the gaps to hide in. ;)

[VegasWolf]

9. Let's NOT put bush in charge of terraforming Mars!!! nt

[damntexdem]

10. Terrorforming is what he would do.

Then he'd really launch a war on Terra.

[dEMOK]

15. Clever, but contradictory...

;)

(But I'm sure there's a Terra/"Gone With The Wind" joke in there somewhere.)

[bigworld]

11. Sounds about like the bottom of my freezer

[iam]

13. I bet there is life in

a liquid water zone deep underground at the ice/rock interface due to heat generated by friction and latent background heat from the core. Sounds really exiting! Could you imaging filling the great canyon with this water? Zow!

[gulfcoastliberal]

16. Just think of the black smokers on the seafloor -

that totally shocked everyone b/c there was an entire ecosystem of life in a zero-sunlight environment. Just hot water. I wouldn't be surprised, either. Also think of Europa, caught in the huge tidal forces of Jupiter. Definitely liquid water there too.

[WindRavenX]

14. Fucking AWESOME!!!

I KNEW they would eventually find it!! :bounce:

[Occulus]

17. So can we now say we know where all (or most) of the Martian water disappeared to?

Now: how could we melt this? Mirrors?

A billion Bics?

:D

[Duer 157099]

18. Just colonize the place and build industry

pretty soon you'll have global warming, just like here, and it will all melt. We seem to be particularly good at this talent.

[Crayson]

25. Actually that's what Terraforming would mean

As in the Schwarzenegger movie... but real.
Blow megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere which would warm the planet up, melt the ice, allow plants to thrive that produce oxygene.

[MGD]

19. I was under the impression that there was CO2 locked up in the Martian pole.

If this were melted and released, an atmosphere could form which would trap the heat from the sun and unlock the moisture trapped as ice. I also understand that the soil is comprised of a fair amount of iron oxide and iron superoxide which would react with the newly released water vapors to release its stored O2. I'm thinking a few well placed thermonuclear devices might facilitate this. I can think of no other energy source currently available to us that can generate the necessary heat and energy to initiate the process.

[AlGore-08.com]

20. Smirk is totally on board for the whole "Let's nuke Mars" thing

Let's nuke 'em over there so we don't have to nuke 'em over here.

[harpboy_ak]

21. I grok you, my brother

Let us share water.

My first thought was Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land...

[JerseygirlCT]

23. Ah! Cheney's undisclosed location? nt

[AngryAmish]

24. Lucky we found that now right after the Cylons destroyed 60% of our water

The civilians will riot if they don't get a hot shower every day.

[0rganism]

28. Maybe we can use it to replace all the ice that's melting from our south pole?

"...solving the problem once and for all."

"but --"

"ONCE AND FOR ALL!"

[Canuckistanian]

29. Just like the ice daddy puts in his drink in the morning.

Before he gets all mad.