Scientists Discover a 12 Mile-Wide Body of Liquid Water on Mars
Scientists determined almost definitively that a lake of liquid water exists below the surface of Mars, confirming the long-standing belief that the red planet was once home to massive oceans, and even the possibility that life thrived there. The Mars Express satellite and its MARSIS system discovered the 12.4 mile-wide lake below the planet’s surface by shooting pulses of radar near the planet’s ice caps.
Similar to pockets of subglacial water in Antarctica, the polar ice caps provide pressure and a layer of insulation from the planet’s harsh climate, lowering the melting point and keeping it from freezing. In a paper published in the journal Science, researchers noted that the lake likely consists of more of a briney sludge than a pool of liquid water, the way we’d imagine it on Earth. The temperature where it’s located is a frigid negative 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
The pool is about a mile below ground and according to one scientist involved in the study, contains “a serious quantity of water, on the order of millions of liters.”
MARSIS, the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding system is only able to detect large bodies of water, meaning a multitude of smaller pockets could exist elsewhere throughout the planet, adding to the possibility that life there was once common.
Radar imaging of the body of water near Martian ice caps
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The discovery is huge for the prospect of sending a manned mission and eventually colonizing the red planet. The availability of liquid water not only provides a source for humans to drink, it is also a necessary ingredient for manufacturing rocket fuel.
But for those who have been studying the strange anomalies on the planet, including the Face of Cydonia, pyramids, and seemingly artificial features, this discovery is just a drop in the bucket of a much larger disclosure regarding life on the red planet. These abnormalities have led many to believe an ancient civilization may have once existed there before its atmosphere was eventually destroyed by a nuclear winter. Whether that cataclysm was man made or due to a cosmic event has also been debated.
Researchers like Richard Hoagland and Mike Bara believe NASA is withholding current evidence of life on Mars, and the latest announcement has been made numerous times in the past, dating back to discoveries made by the Phoenix lander in 2008.
With recent evidence that NASA accidentally destroyed organic matter collected by the Viking probes 40 years ago, it wouldn’t be a surprise to discover that it has already found evidence of life there.
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Watch this Conscious Media interview in which Regina Meredith discusses the possibility of life on Mars with Richard C. Hoagland:
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A Massive Meteor Hit Earth Last Year; Almost No One Noticed
A massive meteor explosion over the Bering Sea three months ago went completely unnoticed until just now, when scientists reviewed low-frequency acoustic wave data picked up by global recording stations. The 32-foot diameter meteor exploded on Dec. 18, releasing 173 kilotons of energy – about 10 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
This latest meteor explosion was the second largest impact in the past 30 years, coming in behind the Chelyabinsk meteor of 2013 which caused a number of injuries and was widely captured on video.
But unlike Chelyabinsk, this recent explosion took three months to be detected by a scientist studying infrasound data, which is inaudible to humans, but recorded by 16 monitoring stations around the world. The explosion is even being compared to the Tunguska event of 1908, during which a meteorite leveled an area of Siberia that included somewhere in the range of 80 million trees.
The explosion occurred in an incredibly remote area of the planet over an ocean where, luckily, no air traffic was passing through at that moment. But the fact that meteors this size with devastating potential, can enter the atmosphere almost undetected is a little unsettling.
While it wasn’t witnessed or officially recognized until now, footage from a Japanese weather satellite happened to capture an image of the explosion as it entered the atmosphere between Russia and Alaska.
The meteor explosion caught by the Japanese Himawari-8 satellite Simon Proud, University of Oxford/Japan Meteorological Agency
Scientists often refer to a meteorite this size as a city-buster due to its potential to level an entire city, and bolides this size tend to enter our atmosphere a few times per century.
Reassuringly, most of the larger asteroids floating in our general vicinity have been mapped out and are regularly monitored by scientists at various observatories – even if we don’t necessarily have the means to deflect them if they were on a crash course with Earth.
But these mid-size rocks are particularly troubling, especially as man-made space debris can lead to collisions and changes in trajectory.
The technology and cataloging of 90 percent of all near-Earth asteroids larger than 450 feet in diameter is underway, but may take several decades. But these are only the rare nation-busters that would wipe out an entire country; mapping out all of the smaller city-busters is something that hasn’t really been considered, if it’s even possible.
Seems like it might be time someone builds a machine learning algorithm to do that for us.
For more on near-miss asteroids check out this episode of Beyond Belief with Dan Durda:
