They find an underground "lake" and reopen the question of life on Mars

The mass of salt water was discovered by signals sent by a European probe; "This is not yet a fait accompli," say the experts, who evolve between hope and caution

WASHINGTON.- Through a satellite able to see through the ice and soil layers of the South Pole March, a group of Italian scientists detected a body of salt water 20 kilometers wide, a reservoir similar to the lakes that are under the Antarctic ice sheet.

The discovery not only involves greater detection of water in the liquid state on the planet, but also encourages the possibility that it is a place where there has been or even life.

"This could become the first habitat we discovered on Mars," said the planetarian Roberto Orosei of astrophysics of Italy, a researcher who led the study, which was published yesterday in the review
Science .

Scientists know that there is still no sign that there are Martian bacteria swimming there and that the environment is hostile to life: it is estimated that Water under the ice cap is – 68 ° C The researchers believe that the water remains liquid because of its salinity and, speculating, Orosei and his colleagues describe these waters as "muddy".

The researchers do not even know exactly how to call this water plan. water, which they detected when analyzing radar echoes collected over three years by the Mars Express spacecraft, which orbits around the planet. With existing technology, they still can not see the bottom of this water plane, but they feel that it is at least one meter deep because otherwise they would not have detected it. It could be a subglacial lake or a saturated sedimentary layer of water.

We have already found traces of water on Mars, but these are usually traces of the past, fugitive traces or frozen water. The detection of a stable liquid water tank is the basis of the reformulation of a hypothesis that began to be discussed thirty years ago: in the polar ice caps of Mars, there may be to have water, as in the Earth

new data on the climatic history of Mars, would encourage new research from other sources of water below the surface, would represent a resource Potential for potential travelers on this planet and would help to focus the ever-hopeful search for signs of life, present or past

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One of the elements sought by scientists who hunt for life on other planets is the presence of water, but no traces of moisture or ice that freeze and vaporize, but from stable sources in the liquid state, such as "In extreme conditions, life moves in the rocks, which is a central aspect of astrobiology," said Jim Green, chief scientist of NASA, who did not participate in the study. The concept of liquid water somewhere on Mars leads us to believe that there can be an environment that houses life now. "

For their discovery, Orosei and his colleagues used the Marsis radar, which is onboard Mars Express … It sends electromagnetic impulses to the planet and measures the rebound echo." as well as they discovered particularly brilliant reflections in a large extension of about 20 kilometers and about 1600 meters deep under the ice.

March, as other frontiers of science, has a long history of troubling discoveries, such as the discovery of the water flowing over the surface in 2015, which ended up having a much more mundane explanation, in this case a dust blizzard.

Jeffrey Plaut NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, argues that the interpretation of water in a liquid state is "certainly plausible, but it is not yet a fait accompli."

"This same discovery on Earth would have surprised anyone. "The interpretation would have discovered a sub-glacial lake, and someone would do an exercise to see if that is indeed the case, "says Orosei," on Mars, c & rsquo; Is obviously much harder, because you can not drill on the ice to corroborate it "

Green alleges that the InSight mission, which is already en route to Mars, may be able to provide evidence. It is expected to hit the surface next November and has a probe that can drill up to five meters to take temperatures. On the basis of these data, scientists can create models of the heat flux that leaves the planet. Thus, they can estimate whether it is plausible that the temperature is high enough to maintain the water in the liquid state.

Translation by Jaime Arrambide