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Liquid Water Lake in Mars

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August 08, 2018

What is the issue?

  • Scientists have recently discovered a liquid water 'lake' in Mars.
  • This is expected to facilitate a better understanding on the likely presence of life on Mars.

What is the recent finding?

  • Mission - An 11-member Italian team of researchers surveyed the Planum Australe region, or the southern polar plains of Mars.
  • They used the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) instrument.
  • This is a low-frequency radar on board the European Space Agency’s Mars Express Orbiter.
  • The instrument beams radar pulses down to the planet's surface and measures how the waves reflect back to the spacecraft.
  • This would give information on the kind of materials, even below the surface.
  • Findings - The team had discovered a lake stretching for 20-km.
  • It is found 1.5 km under the southern polar ice cap of Mars.
  • Despite temperatures at about -68° C, the water remains in a liquid form.
  • The radar profile of the lake closely matches those of subglacial lakes on Earth, beneath the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.

                         

How in liquid form?

  • Atmospheric pressure on the Martian surface is almost a hundred times less than on Earth.
  • This ensures that water would not be in liquid form, but rather, as ice or vapour.
  • So the presence of water is much beneath the surface.
  • The liquid form could be due to the heavy presence of sodium, magnesium and calcium salts.
  • This may reduce the temperature and help it retain liquid form.
  • This, along with the immense pressure of the ice from above, lowers the freezing point.

What is the significance?

  • The majority of modern Mars is dry and barren.
  • But plenty of evidence has been found that the Red Planet used to be a much wetter place.
  • However, any liquid water was believed to be transitional, in short-lived pools or flowing down hillsides in the Martian summer.
  • So the discovery of a large, stable, stagnant lake on Mars is significant.
  • It offers new potential targets for future missions and places, to search for signs of past or present microbial life.
  • However, the sheer saltiness of the spot raises doubts to this belief.

 

Source: Indian Express, NewAtlas

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