Deep, buried Purple Glaciers Spotted on Mars

A very interesting find on Mars. Glaciers.
The ice in these glaciers is purple in color, and some of the ice formations are deeper than 100 meters.


Eight ice sites have exposed on Mars by erosion, some are a couple of feet thick others are 100 meters plus. Lots of water.

though ice has long been known to exist on Mars, a better understanding of its depth and location could be vital to future human explorers, said the report in the US journal Science.

Erosion has exposed eight ice sites, some as shallow as a few feet (one meter) below the surface, and going as deep as 100 meters or more, it said.

The interesting thing about the deep ice is it can give us a idea if NASA can get a drilled sample. They do think the ice formed "recently", I wonder how recently.

Researchers believe the ice formed relatively recently, because the sites appear smooth on the surface, unpocked by craters that would be formed by celestial debris smashing into the planet over time.
However, if a sample could be drilled from one of the glaciers, researchers could learn plenty about Mars' climate history and the potential for life on Earth's neighboring planet.

www.yahoo.com...


NASA plans to send humans to Mars in as soon as 13 years or as long as over 20 years. Nothing seems to happen fast with NASA (other than Apollo).

NASA plans to send the first human explorers to Mars by the 2030s.

.

Very interesting. I didnt even know Mars had water.

Theyll find fossils, its the safest route to disclosure

a reply to: seasonal
The English rock band, Deep Purple should have have used Mars in their Vinyl artwork!

a reply to: Kalixi

It's a long way off before NASA will get the mission off Earth. Plenty of time to get a plan together to mislead or misdirect.

originally posted by: Kalixi
Very interesting. I didnt even know Mars had water.

Theyll find fossils, its the safest route to disclosure

You didn’t know mars had water? Where have you been? Lol we have known of water ice on mars for decades.

a reply to: Quantumgamer1776

On Venus duh, with all the rest of the Amazonians.

Fossils?
www2.jpl.nasa.gov...

METEORITE YIELDS EVIDENCE OF PRIMITIVE LIFE ON EARLY MARSA NASA research team of scientists at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), Houston, TX, and at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, has found evidence that strongly suggests primitive life may have existed on Mars more than 3.6 billion years ago.

The NASA-funded team found the first organic molecules thought to be of Martian origin; several mineral features characteristic of biological activity; and possible microscopic fossils of primitive, bacteria-like organisms inside of an ancient Martian rock that fell to Earth as a meteorite. This array of indirect evidence of past life will be reported in the August 16 issue of the journal Science, presenting the investigation to the scientific community at large for further study.

In 1996, researchers led by David McKay, Everett Gibson and Kathie Thomas-Keprta from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston suggested that they might have found microbial fossils in a meteorite from Mars known as Allan Hills 84001 (ALH 84001). (Cosmic impacts on Mars can be powerful enough to blast rocks off the Red Planet, a fraction of which crash on Earth, the moon and other bodies in the solar system.)

www.space.com...


Perhaps.

a reply to: seasonal


Why did it take so long to find large purple ice sheets/glaciers? We've had orbiters circling and studying Mars for several decades now.

List of Mars Missions: en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: seasonal
A very interesting find on Mars. Glaciers.
The ice in these glaciers is purple in color, and some of the ice formations are deeper than 100 meters.

Eight ice sites have exposed on Mars by erosion, some are a couple of feet thick others are 100 meters plus. Lots of water.

though ice has long been known to exist on Mars, a better understanding of its depth and location could be vital to future human explorers, said the report in the US journal Science.

Erosion has exposed eight ice sites, some as shallow as a few feet (one meter) below the surface, and going as deep as 100 meters or more, it said.

The interesting thing about the deep ice is it can give us a idea if NASA can get a drilled sample. They do think the ice formed "recently", I wonder how recently.

Researchers believe the ice formed relatively recently, because the sites appear smooth on the surface, unpocked by craters that would be formed by celestial debris smashing into the planet over time.
However, if a sample could be drilled from one of the glaciers, researchers could learn plenty about Mars' climate history and the potential for life on Earth's neighboring planet.

www.yahoo.com...


NASA plans to send humans to Mars in as soon as 13 years or as long as over 20 years. Nothing seems to happen fast with NASA (other than Apollo).

Hang on,

I read only yesterday, the median temperature on mars is -65 degress celcious because of its distance from the sun.

From where then does the rain come from??

How can the rain form if the atmosphere is far thinner than it is on earth which is why they had to use rockets to reduce the speed of decent of the vehcile carrying the Curiosity Rover that we see pcitures from?

That ice isn't really purple, it was just an enhanced image you saw.

Here's NASA's original article: www.jpl.nasa.gov...

The ice looks bluish-green, or aquamarine, on the nearly-true-colour RGB version of the image: hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu...



That's a great find! I've never seen glacier-coloured ice on Mars before. mentalfloss.com...

What's interesting is that the image was taken back in 2011, but the findings were made only recently. This shows that, although new images are coming in all the time, it takes time to examine them and make discoveries like this one.

originally posted by: Kalixi
Very interesting. I didnt even know Mars had water.

Theyll find fossils, its the safest route to disclosure

ice isn't a byproduct of water. water can turn into ice under the right conditions, as can many other elements.
mars and other celestial bodies have many elements in frozen states.
to have water, frozen, vapor, or liquid, you need hydrogen and oxygen, and mars has less than 0.1% oxygen and no hydrogen.

the amount of ice on the surface of mars due to the harsh cold conditions cannot be due to water, because it wouldn't be able to be sustained at 0.1% oxygen on the entire planet for less than an hour.

a reply to: odzeandennz

Thatks for that TIL

a reply to: odzeandennz
Water ice on martian surface comes from water vapour freezing out. Below-surface ice might well be from what used to be liquid water. And who knows, perhaps deep below the surface, there might be pockets of liquid salty water (and perhaps even life).

a reply to: odzeandennz

Unless a large percentage is tied up in water ice ?

originally posted by: wildespace
a reply to: odzeandennz
Water ice on martian surface comes from water vapour freezing out. Below-surface ice might well be from what used to be liquid water. And who knows, perhaps deep below the surface, there might be pockets of liquid salty water (and perhaps even life).

Sublimation sucks the water right out of the ice, directpy into vapor

When i lived in laramie the ice would vaporize even at -20 due to the thin atmosphere at that elevation

Great find sir! S+F!

Every day we find a new proof that our Planet Earth is not that unique as we think.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan

originally posted by: wildespace
a reply to: odzeandennz
Water ice on martian surface comes from water vapour freezing out. Below-surface ice might well be from what used to be liquid water. And who knows, perhaps deep below the surface, there might be pockets of liquid salty water (and perhaps even life).

Sublimation sucks the water right out of the ice, directpy into vapor

When i lived in laramie the ice would vaporize even at -20 due to the thin atmosphere at that elevation

very true. And this happens because of the make up of our atmosphere and lack of radiation.


for water to exist in any forms, hydrogen and some nitrogen and oxygen ( no matter how minute) must be present. there's no way or sensationalism around that.

but water may well be 'trapped' (i. e. preserved) underneath the surface. mars has about .1% oxygen the rest is CO.

again, these reports are simply misleading and full of holes which can be proven bunked based of official data already collected.

The Martian atmosphere consists of approximately 96% carbon dioxide, 1.9% argon, 1.9% nitrogen, and traces of free oxygen, carbon monoxide, water and methane, among other gases,[1] for a mean molar mass of 43.34 g/mol.[2][3] There has been renewed interest in its composition since the detection of traces of methane in 2003[4][5] that may indicate life but may also be produced by a geochemical process, volcanicor hydrothermal activity.[6]

water cant manifest, or have different requirements other than water on earth. if there is water 8n the ice, the first exposure to the Mars atmosphere wil make it vanish 8nto thin CO2 or methane.

Locked away beneath the surface of Marsare vast quantities of water ice. But the properties of that ice—how pure it is, how deep it goes, what shape it takes—remain a mystery to planetary geologists. Those things matter to mission planners, too: Future visitors to Mars, be they short-term sojourners or long-term settlers, will need to understand the planet's subsurface ice reserves if they want to mine it for drinking, growing crops, or converting into hydrogen for fuel.

Trouble is, dirt, rocks, and other surface-level contaminants make it hard to study the stuff. Mars landers can dig or drill into the first few centimeters of the planet's surface, and radar can give researchers a sense of what lies tens-of-meters below the surface. But the ice content of the geology in between—the first 20 meters or so—is largely uncharacterized.

Fortunately, land erodes. Forget radar and drilling robots: Locate a spot of land laid bare by time, and you have a direct line of sight on Mars' subterranean layers—and any ice deposited there.

originally posted by: vinifalou
Great find sir! S+F!

Every day we find a new proof that our Planet Earth is not that unique as we think.

And the ice on Mars does it with eye catching flare, awesome purple.

Perhaps purple = bacteria /archaea?

a reply to: carewemust

Good point!