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Liquid water was found on Mars! At least the scientists discovered signs of liquid water. Or rather some scientists are convinced that they found what they believe to be signs of liquid water.
On Mars
And where there is water, there is life. May be. In fact, what there is, is a lot of hedging
Whatever the case may be, aspiring astrobiologists are delighted with what may or may not be water on the red planet.
Imagine: a whole pond, just waiting for a fearless scientist to advance – somehow – and take a sample to test the signs of life. Tiny Martian microorganisms. Maybe something even bigger. You know, for braai.
READ MORE: The first lake of liquid water is discovered on Mars
Here's the catch, though. Or has catch, because you've probably noticed that there are a lot of captures. This particular catch is that all this hypothetical water is trapped at about one kilometer deep.
If only one was eager to go on Mars, he also has a pronounced and frustrating interest in sending tiny submarines into inaccessible undergrounds. the water that would seek and return safely with living beings today.
Here is what we know.
Since arriving in 2003, the European Space Agency's Mars Express Orbiter has, among other things, scanned the South Pole of the planet with Marsis (or, as her mother calls her when she is angry , the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding).
In radar profiles collected between May 2012 and December 2015, Marsis revealed "unusually bright underwater reflections" surrounded by much less reflective areas, according to the team's research paper published in the journal Science Wednesday
This bright area, about 20 km wide, displays permittivity properties – which signal the ability of a substance to store energy in a electric field, and are also detectable by polar polar strata. ice-space – which correspond to those of aquifers, say the researchers. "We interpret this feature as a stable body of liquid water on Mars."
Obviously.
Humanity, of course, has a long and distinguished history of being wrong about water on Mars.
In 1884, philosopher-astronomer Percival Lowell founded the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, whose planet Pluto was later discovered in 1930.
But Lowell also went around to tell whoever wanted to hear that there was water. Canals crisscrossing Mars, built by a once great and dying civilization
This idea takes root in the imagination of an audience already passionate about the concrete developments of the Panama and Suez canals, and inspired by science fiction works. – especially in the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and CS Lewis, but later HG Wells, Ray Bradbury and even Philip K Dick.
Unfortunately for Lowell, what he thought he saw was not channels at all. Improvements in telescope technology have been equally evident in the decades that followed. According to science writer Claire F Evans, optometrists who studied Lowell's work concluded that what he was seeing was most likely … the veins of his own eyeball
. All the more so in 2012, NASA's Curiosity Rover has clearly highlighted what was once a watercourse bed, and more and more recent discoveries have confirmed that Mars was once, and perhaps still, wet if not wet.
READ MORE: 10 things you did not know about Mars
Still, Mars Express's observations leaked a lot of ink. The existence of a large volume of liquid water under the polar cap would justify [pas tout à fait] Lowell, but she has already inspired at least one small wonder.
For one last word, check with an appropriate scientist. One that is not related to the mission of ESA
Richard Zurek is the chief scientist of the Mars program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Nasa. After reviewing the work of the research team, he says Wired that he can not say unequivocally that it is water at 100 %, but he "can not think of anything other than liquid water In other words, he looks like a duck, and that he's laughing like a duck, so it's probably a duck on an underground lake of liquid water
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