Ice in Martian Crater
28/03/09 13:48 Filed in: General
(this article was condensed and edited from Sky and Telescope Magazine)
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Mars definitely has its fair share of craters. Over the years spacecraft have observed the Martian landscape in greater detail. These days, the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) can pick out objects only 1 foot (0.3 m) in size; the High Resolution Stereo Camera on the European Space Agency's Mars Express has a ground resolution of 7 feet (2 m).
Icy craters on Mars
HiRISE researchers were elated, but not particularly surprised, to discover some small, freshly gouged craters in images taken last year. How fresh is fresh? One cluster must have appeared sometime between June and August, and a somewhat larger pit showed up between January and September. What did astound the team were splashes of white seen in and around a handful of these craterlets. Could it be water ice? Colleagues operating the spacecraft's CRISM instrument soon confirmed, for the one case large enough to yield a spectrum, that it was! Apparently fist-size impactors had punched into a layer of ice hidden by a foot-deep topping of dust.
Ice around a Martian crater
Formed sometime between January and September 2008, this fresh crater has dredged up barely buried water ice and splashed it onto the Martian surface. The HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded this color close-up on November 1, 2008. The scene is about 100 feet (30 m) across.
In the months that followed, these snowy splashes gradually faded from view. Water ice isn't stable at the craters' latitudes, so most likely it gradually sublimated (vaporized) into the atmosphere, leaving behind veneer of any dust that had been mixed with it. The disappearing act might also be due in part to a coating of dust blown in from the atmosphere. Either way, notes HiRISE investigator Shane Byrne (University of Arizona), the icy deposits had to be at least a couple of inches (several centimeters) thick, and they couldn't have been unearthed from more than a foot or two down.
Byrne announced these findings today at a meeting of solar-system specialists in Houston, Texas. He points out that prior surveys, particularly one done by the neutron spectrometer aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, show that vast reservoirs of ice lay barely buried across most of the planet's polar and mid-latitude regions.
But scientists are only now realizing just how near the surface the ice lies — and how easily it can be reached. When NASA's Phoenix lander dropped onto a northern polar plain last May, its braking engine blew off a few inches of loose dirt and revealed slabs of nearly pure ice.
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Reports about water and ice on Mars continue to baffle and excite the evolutionists. Why is this? Because to an evolutionist, the formula for life is sort of like Uncle Ben’s rice—just add water. Of course, life is much more complex than that and the existence of water simply does not imply that life can, has, or shall ever exist where the water is found.
The irony to these types of articles is that Creationists have had an explanation to the water on Mars discovery for years. In fact, Dr. Walt Brown, of the Center for Scientific Creation predicted that we would find water and ice on Mars. He even predicted the salt content for the areas surrounding the water deposits on Mars in contrast to other areas. His model is based on the biblical record of the flood. Click here to read Dr. Brown’s explanations.
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Mars definitely has its fair share of craters. Over the years spacecraft have observed the Martian landscape in greater detail. These days, the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) can pick out objects only 1 foot (0.3 m) in size; the High Resolution Stereo Camera on the European Space Agency's Mars Express has a ground resolution of 7 feet (2 m).
Icy craters on Mars
HiRISE researchers were elated, but not particularly surprised, to discover some small, freshly gouged craters in images taken last year. How fresh is fresh? One cluster must have appeared sometime between June and August, and a somewhat larger pit showed up between January and September. What did astound the team were splashes of white seen in and around a handful of these craterlets. Could it be water ice? Colleagues operating the spacecraft's CRISM instrument soon confirmed, for the one case large enough to yield a spectrum, that it was! Apparently fist-size impactors had punched into a layer of ice hidden by a foot-deep topping of dust.
Ice around a Martian crater
In the months that followed, these snowy splashes gradually faded from view. Water ice isn't stable at the craters' latitudes, so most likely it gradually sublimated (vaporized) into the atmosphere, leaving behind veneer of any dust that had been mixed with it. The disappearing act might also be due in part to a coating of dust blown in from the atmosphere. Either way, notes HiRISE investigator Shane Byrne (University of Arizona), the icy deposits had to be at least a couple of inches (several centimeters) thick, and they couldn't have been unearthed from more than a foot or two down.
Byrne announced these findings today at a meeting of solar-system specialists in Houston, Texas. He points out that prior surveys, particularly one done by the neutron spectrometer aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, show that vast reservoirs of ice lay barely buried across most of the planet's polar and mid-latitude regions.
But scientists are only now realizing just how near the surface the ice lies — and how easily it can be reached. When NASA's Phoenix lander dropped onto a northern polar plain last May, its braking engine blew off a few inches of loose dirt and revealed slabs of nearly pure ice.
---------------------
Reports about water and ice on Mars continue to baffle and excite the evolutionists. Why is this? Because to an evolutionist, the formula for life is sort of like Uncle Ben’s rice—just add water. Of course, life is much more complex than that and the existence of water simply does not imply that life can, has, or shall ever exist where the water is found.
The irony to these types of articles is that Creationists have had an explanation to the water on Mars discovery for years. In fact, Dr. Walt Brown, of the Center for Scientific Creation predicted that we would find water and ice on Mars. He even predicted the salt content for the areas surrounding the water deposits on Mars in contrast to other areas. His model is based on the biblical record of the flood. Click here to read Dr. Brown’s explanations.
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