Phoenix finds ice centimeters below Martian surface.

[theotherguy]

Scientists working on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission are reporting what they call compelling evidence that the robot craft has found ice while digging on the Martian surface.

Small chunks of bright material described as the size of dice have disappeared from inside a trench where they were photographed by the craft earlier this week, NASA said in a statement late on Thursday.

This has convinced scientists the chunks were ice -- frozen water -- that vaporized after digging exposed it, NASA said.

"It must be ice," said mission principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days. That is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."

Source:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=nasa-craft-finds-evidence

This means a few things:
1. Water ice is evidence that water may have flowed over the surface of mars in the distant past.

2. Water ice this close to the surface suggests large deposits of permafrost just beneath the surface.

3. Ancient microbes might be encased in ice beneath the surface for study.

4. Future astronauts will be able to land at a site like this and harvest the ice for water and rocket fuel.

 

[Cavalry]

woah, this is pretty awesome. Imagine if their was some form of alien life preserved inside this ice.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

woah, this is pretty awesome. Imagine if their was some form of alien life preserved inside this ice.

Ancient microbes might be encased in ice beneath the surface for study.

Woah...

 

[Absinthe]

This. Is. ****ing AWESOME.

 

[Ennui]

 

[Nitre]

Awsum, want some ancient organisms please.

 

[Absinthe]

It really would be kickass though if we found ancient Martian warmechs beneath the ice, long abandoned by their creators. And we'll loot them for their technology and secrets, giving ourselves a few centuries worth of a technological boost. We come to master intergalactic travel and warfare, and become the ultimate, space-conquering, dominant race of the universe. All on tech lended from Mars.

Shit yeah.

 

[Krynn72]

It really would be kickass though if we found ancient Martian warmechs beneath the ice, long abandoned by their creators. And we'll pilfer them for their technology and secrets, giving ourselves a few centuries worth of a technological boost. We come to master intergalactic travel and warfare, and become the ultimate, space-conquering, dominant race of the universe.

Shit yeah.

**** yeah!

/high five

 

[Stene]

I doubt they would show it immediatly if they found an E.B.E. somewhere in the ice.

 

[Absinthe]

CNN will be there.

 

[Slug Advisor]

That's pretty cool.

 

[Ennui]

It really would be kickass though if we found ancient Martian warmechs beneath the ice, long abandoned by their creators. And we'll loot them for their technology and secrets, giving ourselves a few centuries worth of a technological boost. We come to master intergalactic travel and warfare, and become the ultimate, space-conquering, dominant race of the universe. All on tech lended from Mars.

Shit yeah.

I read a short sci-fi story about something like that once

 

[Absinthe]

Then the man who wrote it is the most hella cool author on the planet. The only we he could best himself is if he threw dinosaurs into it somehow.

...

Spoiler

The dinosaurs ARE the Martians.

 

[<RJMC>]

Then the man who wrote it is the most hella cool author on the planet. The only we he could best himself is if he threw dinosaurs into it somehow.

...

Spoiler

The dinosaurs ARE the Martians.

Spoiler

the dinosaur where a very civilized society but there where in a global war and the most dominant specie of all fled to mars and trow a big bomb into the planet,the bomb eliminated all theyr technology left on earth so thats the reason we havent found any of it

or we are? *suspense music*

 

[TechnoHippyChic]

This is cool and all, but haven't we known about ice at the poles for a long time now?

 

[theotherguy]

This is cool and all, but haven't we known about ice at the poles for a long time now?

We knew about CO2 ice at the poles, and scans by the MRO showed that water ice might exist in pockets near the poles, but we did not know how close to the surface the ice was, and we hadn't physically confirmed it.

 

[TechnoHippyChic]

According to the article:

Scientists have long known that Mars' north polar cap is a massive storehouse of water ice, and the current research team says they will use their radar technique to refine past estimates of its thickness and make-up.

 

[Raziaar]

Tiny microbes don't interest me. The only alien species I'm interested in are ones we can see with the naked eye.

 

[pvtbones]

Tiny microbes don't interest me. The only alien species I'm interested in are ones we can see with the naked eye.

and preferably shoot and or secks with

 

[Smoke]

This is real right? I mean, I'm very, very, very excited, it better be real.

 

[PvtRyan]

Tiny microbes don't interest me. The only alien species I'm interested in are the ones that we can see naked :naughty:

Fixed.

 

[Eejit]

According to the article:

Why did you bold "water"?

Tiny microbes don't interest me. The only alien species I'm interested in are ones we can see with the naked eye.

Tiny alien microbes would be AWESHENS for geneticists!

 

[TechnoHippyChic]

Because he was saying it was CO2 ice. Also:

Mars Express Confirms Water Ice on Red Planet from 2004.

 

[theotherguy]

Because he was saying it was CO2 ice. Also:

Mars Express Confirms Water Ice on Red Planet from 2004.

Yes, I know, but this is the first time that a rover has directly observed water ice on Mars, rather than the more indirect imaging methods of the Mars Express.

 

[VirusType2]

so they needed a 4 billion dollar mission to find ice? I've got some over there in the kitchen. I can make it.

 

[Tagaziel]

and preferably shoot and or secks with

Alien Lesbian Sex. Mass Effect's biggest and only contribution to the history of gaming.

 

[Jintor]

Lol, Mikael.

Anyway, Ice on mars. Pretty cool!

 

[Jimmeh]

It's those mother****ing Protheans - their shit is buried beneath the ice I tells ya.

Mark my words.

 

[<RJMC>]

if microscopic living forms are found on the ice

I wonder how the world will react

did in the front cover of all the newspapers will be a giant "aliens discovered in mars" next to the parts of hamas make a big barbacue whit israel leaders and bush shows middle finger to putin and stuff like that?

especially considering that this is something so fictious to many and it sudenly becomes true

 

[Krynn72]

so they needed a 4 billion dollar mission to find ice? I've got some over there in the kitchen. I can make it.

But you cant make MARTIAN ICE!


Or can you?

 

[Blackthorn]

You think this is cool? Wait till they find the Prothean ruins.

Edit: Shit, someone else thought of it first. This isn't over, Jimmeh...

 

[Eejit]

They'd better watch out for the Brain and the other aliens if it visits Cydonia.

 

[highlander]

This is AWESOME!

 

[Shift]

My dream is that something like what happens in Mass Effect occurs, we find the remnants of past technology far in advance of our own and find ways of travellinf distances we could not comprehend this day, and start exploring the galaxy, rather than the solar system. As farfetched as they come but would be awsome.

 

[Raziaar]

The chances of that are so infinitely remote that it sucks. First of all you have to have the chance of life, which is rare enough that we have yet to find any. Then you have the also infinitely small chance that the life formed would grow to an intelligence surpassing ours. THEN you have to have the infinitely small chance that the intelligent life which explored the universe happened upon our solar system. If they got that far, I'd say it's fairly resonable they would have chosen to explore earth.

But really, the reality of the possibility of us finding some ancient advanced technology is depressing really, given all the things that have to go right.


I have a question. Mathematically, what are the chances that our planet is the only planet in the entire universe that contains life. There would be that moment in time where only one such planetary body would have developed life before others that were capable of developed it. Though, I guess there's also the chance that many developed it at the exact same moment in time.

 

[Adrik_Senturu]

hell yeah ice

 

[VirusType2]

damn. D: Earth is the ****ing shit!

Jesus Christ Mars, what a piece of shit you are. Grow a ****ing tree or something.


My older brother is actually a very successful Aerospace engineer who applied to be an astronaut, but he is color blind so they couldn't pass him. I remember he brought home some solid rocket fuel or something from work one time when I was a young teen.

I hope we do find some critters or something in the ice. Imagine discovering an ancient civilization that existed billions of years before Earth. Or imagine the freakiest shit - finding a NASA space shuttle under the ice. with a complexity that we haven't achieved yet. I mean, we found a space shuttle from Earth buried on Mars - but it was from the future.

Black Hole or some time dimension shit!

 

[Viperidae]

I have a question. Mathematically, what are the chances that our planet is the only planet in the entire universe that contains life.

Very low.

 

[Acepilotf14]

How do they know it's ice water?
Lots of things can be ice.
Maybe it's CO2.

 

[Pesmerga]

Even if we do find life, how do we distinguish it from something the land rover might have brought with it?