"Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now)" (bman76-4)
12/21/2018 at 00:33 • Filed to: None
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"Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now)" (bman76-4)
12/21/2018 at 00:33 • Filed to: None | 6
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I mean, the only thing bigger than finding water on Mars would be finding life... and everywhere we’ve found water on earth we’ve also found life.
!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!
glemon
> Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now)
12/21/2018 at 00:51 |
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I wouldn’t get too excited
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Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now)
> Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now)
12/21/2018 at 00:58 |
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Looks like the link got Kinja’d
MrDakka
> Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now)
12/21/2018 at 01:16 |
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Lets steal that ice to combat climate change just like Futurama.
Also regarding the whole life on Mars, I wouldn’t put too much stock in it. At best, we’ll find simple microcellular life that we can experiment with.
Future Heap Owner
> MrDakka
12/21/2018 at 01:24 |
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That would still be incredible if it was clearly unrelated to life on Earth. Also the most depressing news I’d ever hear in my entire life.
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Future Heap Owner
> Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now)
12/21/2018 at 01:26 |
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Water does a lot of great things that water ice doesn’t. Finding w ater ice is not nearly as exciting as finding water.
That said, I thought nearly all surface ice on Mars was dry ice (like the caps), so it’s cool to learn there’s at least one crater filled with water ice.
facw
> Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now)
12/21/2018 at 01:47 |
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That’s very cool. We know there is water ice (maybe not that much?) in deep craters near the poles of the moon, but that doesn’t translate to life (though really we haven’t checked). Ultimately we are primarily looking for liquid water, or places where there was once liquid water as places to look for life. Even that that’s no guarantee of life, we really have no idea how likely abiogenesis is, it appeared to happen quite early on Earth, which suggests it’s not so hard, but also only happened once as far as well can tell, which suggests it isn’t actually that common. And of course there’s always the tiny possibility that microbial life could have been brought to Mars (or even Earth) via a meteor.
Water ice is important for looking at establishing an outpost or even a colony, since that would require water for drinking and agriculture, and shipping it would not be cost effective. You can also use it to make fuel for return journeys, though taking a relatively rare resource and shooting some of it into space seems a bit wasteful.
WRXforScience
> Future Heap Owner
12/21/2018 at 01:53 |
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The polar ice caps on Mars are mostly water ice (about 70%) with the rest being mostly dry ice (solid carbon dioxide).
There’s also permafrost/subsurface ice all over the planet. We even found liquid water; however, it was full of perchlorates in lethal concentrations and was pretty transient too.
Good news is that there’s lots of water on Mars, the bad news is that it’s frozen and contaminated. If you want to use it, you’ll need to distill it first.
NASA may have found a subglacial lake on Mars, which could be a great place for life but would be tough to investigate.
Fun fact, Mars is only about as big as Earth’s core but since Earth is mostly covered in oceans, Mars has about the same land area as the Earth.
With a surface gravity less than half Earth’s, most people would be able to dunk on Mars. Mars’ atmosphere is about as thick as the air at the cruising altitude for jets, so you’ll still need a pressurized habitat and spacesuits (ones similar to drysuits would probably work, but the thing atmosphere and lack of a magnetic field means that there’s a pretty high radiation exposure on the surface of Mars so you’ll want to minimize your time spent outdoors anyway).
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Future Heap Owner
> WRXforScience
12/21/2018 at 02:40 |
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Ah, I knew there was water ice mixed in too, but thought it was a minority.
I was always tickled by the land area equivalence between Earth & Mars. My favorite Mars fact though, is probably how the entire n orthern hemisphere is kilometers lower in elevation than the southern, as if Mars was dropped on its head as a babe and still bears the scar.
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MrDakka
> Future Heap Owner
12/21/2018 at 09:30 |
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Why would it be depressing?
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WRXforScience
> Future Heap Owner
12/21/2018 at 09:44 |
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That’s a good one! It can be tough keeping up w ith all the ongoing explorations of Mars and the rest of the Solar System. Every 3-5 years something that was an accepted fact is completely replaced.
We used to think one of Mars’ poles was dry ice and the other water ice, but with more data we found that they are both pretty similar in composition and have lots of water ice (the dry ice deposits on top seasonally, an Earth analogy would be snow at the poles covering large glaciers).
20 years ago I would have put the chances of seeing a manned mission to Mars in my lifetime at 50/50, but now it looks like it is almost certain. Exciting times.
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Future Heap Owner
> MrDakka
12/21/2018 at 10:42 |
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It would be evidence that the great filter is ahead of us
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
user314
> WRXforScience
12/21/2018 at 12:02 |
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Good news is that there’s lots of water on Mars, the bad news is that it’s frozen and contaminated. If you want to use it, you’ll need to distill it first.
Eh, I don’t anyone was planning on being able to go to the Moon/Mars/Europa/asteroids and be able to just drink the water straight up, so it’s not that bad. Even if it is too badly contaminated to drink, water is useful as a rad shield, too.
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WRXforScience
> user314
12/21/2018 at 12:48 |
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You should be okay drinking melted ice, most impurities are driven out during the freezing process.
Water is also great for making rocket fuel, electroly zing it makes hydrogen and oxygen which are the best rocket fuel and oxidizer.
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MrDakka
> Future Heap Owner
12/21/2018 at 17:09 |
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Technology implies belligerence. Society will self destruct as will everything else. The only purpose of existence is to maximize pleasure
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Future Heap Owner
> MrDakka
12/21/2018 at 18:04 |
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We’re gonna have to agree to disagree there