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For the discoverers, the water-research mission on Mars "is not over, but has finally begun and years of observation are waiting for us."
After years of debate over the existence of liquid water in March 1945 an Italian team has verified the existence of an underground lake, liquid and salty, under a ice layer. This is thanks to one of the Mars Express probe missions, from the European Space Agency (ESA) sent to the Red Planet.
The research, published by the journal Science was presented at the headquarters of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and was qualified by its president, Roberto Battiston, as "the most important of last years."
Earth-like
The important discovery, signed by a team of Italian researchers, concludes that in an area called Plamun Australe, located in the ice cap of the South Pole of Mars, the profiled profile by the radar is very similar to the large lakes of liquid water found under Antarctica and Greenland on the Earth
The lake is, according to the data, under 1.5 kilometers of ice, s & 39; stretches for about 20 kilometers and has a thickness of only one meter. It is also salty or it would not be explained that it was liquid water seen at temperatures between -20 and -70 degrees Celsius
How did they find the underground lake ?
Roberto Orosei, first author of the study, explained in an interview with Efe the details of one of the most important discoveries since March was reached. It all started "by observing the radar data that came from the base of the ice cap of the south pole of Mars compared to the normal material that we had from the rest of Mars."
These were strong radar echoes, which were on Earth they always translate as water, because "it has the peculiarity of reflecting these echoes in a strong way as we l & # 39; 39; have discovered in this type of situations in the underground lakes of Antarctica or Greenland. "
He points out that this lake is salty.
"For the radio waves to pass, the ice must be very transparent and this occurs at -20 degrees Celsius, so the liquid water that is in contact with the ice must have the same temperature or to undo it, "he said.
But for these temperatures the water does not freeze, it must have a significant amount of salts and "from this it has been deduced that there is a lot of salt, since the pressure of 1.5 kilometers ice and the little one The gravity of Mars is not enough for him. "
Are there any remains of life on Mars?
The authors of this research explain that this lake could perfectly well be a "biological deposit". "Although we do not know the exact composition, we believe that it is a type of environment in which certain terrestrial bacteria could survive and could therefore be an ecological and possibly inhabited reservoir, there are bacteria that feed on salts for their development. "
This researcher from the Italian Institute of Astrophysics, will now have to look for any other types of lakes like this or is the last thermal vestige and certify that "Mars is a completely dead planet". "If we find more lakes like this, we could conclude that Mars was once a temperate planet where you could have lived," he said.
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