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The question of whether other places that Earth has sheltered life is one of the supreme questions of science, and the new discoveries offer tempting evidence, but no proof.
This photo published by the European Space Agency (ESA) on July 25, 2018 shows radar data collected by Mars Express from ESA pointing to a pond of liquid water buried under layers of ice and dust in the southern polar region of Mars. Photo: AFP.
WASHINGTON – Scientists spotted what they said Wednesday with the help of a radar on an orbiting spacecraft, in the form of an ice lake under the ice in the southern polar plain of Mars. The tank that they detected – about 20 km in diameter, shaped like a rounded triangle and located about 1.5 km below the surface of the ice – represents the first mbad of stable liquid water ever found on March.
The question of whether other places that Earth has sheltered life is one of the supreme questions of science, and the new discoveries offer tantalizing evidence, but no evidence. Water is considered a fundamental ingredient for life.
The researchers said it would take years to verify if anything really lived in this water plane that looks like an underglacial lake on Earth. "It's the place on Mars where you have something that looks most like a habitat, a place where life could subsist," said global scientist Roberto Orosei of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Italy, who led the published research. in the newspaper Science .
"This kind of environment is not exactly your ideal vacation, or a place where fish would swim," Orosei added. "But there are terrestrial organisms that can survive and thrive, in fact, in similar environments.There are microorganisms on Earth that can survive even in the ice."
Detection was made from data collected between May 2012 and December 2015 by an instrument on board the Mars Express satellite of the European Space Agency transmitting radar pulses. "It took us many years of data badysis and we struggled to find a good method to make sure that what we were observing was clearly liquid water," said Enrico Flamini, co – author of the study. the Italian space agency during the search.
The radar profile of the place resembled that of the subglacial lakes found under the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland
. Mars was warmer and wetter, with stretches of ice. important water. lakes and river valleys on its surface. There were some signs of liquid water currently on Mars, including contested evidence of water activity on the Martian slopes, but no stagnant water.
Orosei says that the water in Martian Lake was below the normal freezing point. largely at high levels of salts. Orosei estimated the water temperature between -10 degrees Celsius and minus 70 degrees Celsius
It remains to be seen if more underground reservoirs will be found or if the newly discovered is a kind of weirdness said Orosei. If others are detected and a network of subglacial lakes exists like on Earth, he says, this could indicate that liquid water has persisted for millions of years or so. even as it dates back to 3.5 billion years ago when Mars was a more hospitable planet. The question would be, Orosei added, if forms of life that could have evolved for a long time on Mars have found a way to survive until now.
"No one dares to suggest that there may exist a more complex life form" says Orosei.
Intriguing! @ESA of #MarsExpress may have found groundwater near the south pole of #March . The data from my thermal probe could follow this discovery. I can not wait to land and get to work. https://t.co/HwiioCRQHQ pic.twitter.com/h7Mklp6mGl
– NASAInSight (@NASAInSight) July 26, 2018
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