Huge Glacier the Size of California and Texas Combined Found on Mars

I did not know this so I thought I would post to our members as information: See link for full article. The article is not talking about the polar ice caps but a huge recently discovered glacier below the dusty plains of Mars. Those who have followed some of the Martin news have probably suspected below the surface there was Ice ever since several close ups of the first scoop marks left by our Rovers were shown. Imagine Mars if all this frozen stuff were thawed ... Hummm

sputniknews.com...

Just below the surface of Mars, a gargantuan glacier of ice the size of the country of Sumatra exists between the equator and the Red Planet’s north pole, and astrogeophysicists say it’s the likely result of snowfall some tens of millions of years ago.

"It extends down to latitudes of 38 degrees,” study lead author Ali Bramson told Space.com. “This would be like someone in Kansas digging in their backyard and finding ice as thick as a 13-story building that covers an area the size of Texas and California combined."

Now if our govt will stop giving our money away and pump some into NASA, we'll get off this rock and our explorers will have something to drink when they get there. Hell, make it a race between NASA and private companies, with contracts for the winner. Just Get Us Off This Rock and out among the stars.
Can you imagine what could be done with the money it costs for just one nuclear sub?

a reply to: 727Sky

Wouldn't tha mean that if we dig down and open this glacier up that it would release 'Oxygen' and 'Carbon dioxide' into Mars's atmosphere??

That could be the start of changing Mars for habitable life!

good news if it can be done

originally posted by: TruthxIsxInxThexMist
a reply to: 727Sky

Wouldn't tha mean that if we dig down and open this glacier up that it would release 'Oxygen' and 'Carbon dioxide' into Mars's atmosphere??

That could be the start of changing Mars for habitable life!

good news if it can be done

To much Total Recall for you my friend, without a magnetosphere whatever is released into the atmosphere will slowly be stripped away by the Suns solar rays.

This is great news though, water = fuel.

was soo relieved to see the end of the title was mars ...
phew ... that was a very quick adrenalin rush

No, not at all suprised! Huge finding indeed. Well, nothing seems impossible, what next some martian camps..LOL. It doesn't seem that far fetched now with the leaps of discoveries humanity is making. Which has the potential to make us rethink life as we know it.

Well, I'm just gonna put my tinfoil hat on, and speculate that, Mars was once brimming with life, than lost its atmosphere due to an ELE event, and much of its life forms went extinct and so martian inhabitants especially, moved over to earth, since earth being the next succession frontier in our evolutionary process and therefore formed the basis of life as we know it.

a reply to: 727Sky

Ice glaciers the size of two US states?

At least the first pioneers to reach Mars will be able to have a nice cuppa tea.

a reply to: Segenam

Just curious, but why relieved?

Slightly off-topic, but does anyone know the hydrogen/deuterium ratio of Martian water?

On Earth, it's roughly 6420/1. But on Mars, it's about 1240/1. That means deuterium extraction will be a considerably more efficient process on Mars if colonists have need for it. For instance, if they decide to use fusion reactors for power.

Actually, the article says the glacier is as big as Sumatra, which is 182,000 miles squared.

It only mentions Texas and and California as perspective to the size of Mars....

Texas alone is 268,000 miles squared....

originally posted by: MysterX
a reply to: 727Sky

Ice glaciers the size of two US states?

At least the first pioneers to reach Mars will be able to have a nice cuppa tea.

Yep and maybe there are fish like eatable creatures frozen and embedded .. Sushi ! Everything a daring astronaut could need.. Well almost...hummm

originally posted by: DAVID64
Now if our govt will stop giving our money away and pump some into NASA, we'll get off this rock and our explorers will have something to drink when they get there. Hell, make it a race between NASA and private companies, with contracts for the winner. Just Get Us Off This Rock and out among the stars.
Can you imagine what could be done with the money it costs for just one nuclear sub?

This is one of my pet peeves, a Virginia class sub costs about $2b (and we all know how efficient the navy is) so, NASA could make eight annually with its $18b budget and still pay everyone their salaries.

Considering how much is invested in mundane terrestrial product development, private companies would almost certainly dwarf these expenditures and, I would argue, be far more efficient.

In a free and open market, space product development would follow the same laws of economics as any other product development cycle and provide to consumers of space technology (humans) the best solutions at the lowest cost.

originally posted by: TruthxIsxInxThexMist
a reply to: 727Sky

Wouldn't tha mean that if we dig down and open this glacier up that it would release 'Oxygen' and 'Carbon dioxide' into Mars's atmosphere??

That could be the start of changing Mars for habitable life!

good news if it can be done

Just like how we can't just simply "plant trees" on the surface of Venus to level out the CO2 content in its atmosphere, we can't just defrost the permafrost in Mars to create an atmosphere on Mars. It's not that simple. Like muSSang pointed out, Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere.

a reply to: 727Sky

Slowly being introduced to the reality there probably is life on Mars.

If there was a civilisation on Mars which was destroyed, they probably did what we have done and head underground.
That is of course if anyone survived....

originally posted by: DAVID64
Now if our govt will stop giving our money away and pump some into NASA, we'll get off this rock and our explorers will have something to drink when they get there. Hell, make it a race between NASA and private companies, with contracts for the winner. Just Get Us Off This Rock and out among the stars.
Can you imagine what could be done with the money it costs for just one nuclear sub?

We could already be on Mars withing the existing budget of nasa

It's about pride within the people who want their pet techs to be utilized

I suggest this video



There are other forces at work

I guess there's no global warming on Mars.

originally posted by: TruthxIsxInxThexMist
a reply to: 727Sky

Wouldn't tha mean that if we dig down and open this glacier up that it would release 'Oxygen' and 'Carbon dioxide' into Mars's atmosphere??

That could be the start of changing Mars for habitable life!

good news if it can be done

That's the most frustrating thing- We could start the terraforming process within our lifetime- It would be wonderful if we could repurpose nukes to carry payloads of cyanobacteria. sure it might take hundreds of thousands of years but the sooner we start, the sooner we can live there.

a reply to: Segenam

hush little baby don't say a word momma's gonna buy you a mockingbird...

youtu.be...

I did not see where this is water ice. Not all ice is water.