Mars already has a lot going for it. You can brew beer up there. The mountainous terrain is gorgeous. It isn't rapidly succumbing to the ravages of man-made climate change. And now, Italian scientists have discovered a lake filled with liquid water hiding underneath ice caps on the Martian south pole. That means there may be life. The scientists who search for life beyond our planet first look for water, because you can't have organisms without it. On Mars, NASA discovered signs of flowing water back in 2015, but those amounted to little more than damp spots. NASA's Curiosity rover has explored lake beds that held water long ago, before Mars' atmosphere thinned, cooling the planet. There is also plenty of water frozen at the red planet's poles. But Italian scientists, working on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission, found a liquid pool that stretches 12 miles wide. The measurements were taken using radar, and if they're correct, this is a huge deal. "It is liquid, and it’s salty, and it’s in contact with rocks," Enrico Flamini, the former chief scientist of the Italian Space Agency who oversaw the research, said of the Mars lake during a press conference, per The New York Times. "There are all the ingredients for thinking that life can be there, or can be maintained there if life once existed on Mars." We haven't discovered alien lifeforms quite yet. But now we know a good place to start looking for them. Cheers to science for giving us something cool to think about. Sarah Rense Sarah Rense is the Lifestyle Editor at Esquire, where she covers tech, food, drinks, home, and more. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io<doc-sep>There's water on Mars. For the first time, scientists have detected a lake of salty water under the Martian ice, a study released Wednesday said. The lake is about a mile under the surface and stretches 12 miles across. The presence of water under the Martian polar ice caps has long been suspected but not seen until now, the study said. The discovery raises the possibility of finding life on the Red Planet. "Without water, no form of life as we know it could exist," said Anja Diez of the Norwegian Polar Institute. Astronomers used radar data from the orbiting European spacecraft Mars Express to find the water. They spent at least two years checking over the data to make sure they had detected water and not ice or another substance. “I really have no other explanation,” said study lead author Roberto Orosei of Italy’s National Institute of Astrophysics in Bologna. "This is just one small study area; it is an exciting prospect to think there could be more of these underground pockets of water elsewhere, yet to be discovered." More:Mars makes closest approach to Earth in 15 years this weekend Although evidence of water was obvious on the planet's surface in the form of vast dried-out river valley networks from eons ago, Mars' climate does not allow for water on the surface today. The discovery could offer fresh clues about how Earth’s neighbor so profoundly transformed billions of years ago from a warmer, wetter world to its freeze-dried state today, according to Scientific American. Cassie Stuurman, a geophysicist at the University of Texas, said that “if these researchers are right, this is the first time we’ve found evidence of a large water body on Mars." The area is similar to that of lakes found beneath the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets on Earth, which also were detected using radar scans. "This thrilling discovery is a highlight for planetary science and will contribute to our understanding of the evolution of Mars, the history of water on our neighbor planet and its habitability," said Dmitri Titov of the European Space Agency. The study was published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Science. Contributing: The Associated Press<doc-sep>Scientists have found a vast lake underneath the surface of Mars, in what they are hailing as a hugely significant breakthrough in the search for alien life on the planet. The discovery marks the first time a stable body of water has been detected on Mars, resolving a decades long debate about whether it has any water at all. It has long been assumed that if water was not present on the red planet, it would almost certainly not be capable of sustaining life. However, according to scientists responsible for the breakthrough, the vast lake lies underneath Mars’s southern pole and stretches 20km across. Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Show all 30 1 /30 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An image from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a 200,000 mile long solar filament ripping through the Sun's corona in September 2013 Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa Celebrates 50 Years of Spacewalking For 50 years, NASA has been "suiting up" for spacewalking. In this 1984 photograph of the first untethered spacewalk, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless is in the midst of the first "field" tryout of a nitrogen-propelled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space A Hubble Cosmic Couple The spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427 — more commonly known as WR 124 — and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it ESA/Hubble & NASA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Veil Nebula Supernova Remnant Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula - expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago Nasa's most stunning pictures of space The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launch The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station. It also took caviar, ready for the satellite's inhabitants to celebrate the holidays Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Earth from the ISS From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Black Hole Friday Nasa celebrated Black Friday by looking into space instead — sharing pictures of black holes Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space NuSTAR X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Cassiopeia A c A false colour image of Cassiopeia A comprised with data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-Ray observatory Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Orion Capsule splashes down The Orion capsule jetted off into space before heading back a few hours later — having proved that it can be used, one day, to carry humans to Mars Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Earth Observations From Gemini IV in 1965 This photograph of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank was taken during the Gemini IV mission during orbit no. 19 in 1965. The Gemini IV crew conducted scientific experiments, including photography of Earth's weather and terrain, for the remainder of their four-day mission following Ed White's historic spacewalk on June 3 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Frosty slopes of Mars This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Yellowstone from space NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this image of Yellowstone via his twitter account Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Saturn This near-infrared color image shows a specular reflection, or sunglint, off of a hydrocarbon lake named Kivu Lacus on Saturn's moon Titan Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Worlds Apart Although Mimas and Pandora, shown here, both orbit Saturn, they are very different moons. Pandora, "small" by moon standards (50 miles or 81 kilometers across) is elongated and irregular in shape. Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across), a "medium-sized" moon, formed into a sphere due to self-gravity imposed by its higher mass Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun in this image taken 10 September, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Mars Rover Spirit Nasa's Mars Rover Spirit took the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. The image shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Morning Aurora From the Space Station Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station Nasa/Scott Kelly Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Launch of History - Making STS-41G Mission in 1984 The Space Shuttle Challenger launches from Florida at dawn. On this mission, Kathryn Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to perform a spacewalk and Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space. The crew of seven was the largest to fly on a spacecraft at that time, and STS-41G was the first flight to include two female astronauts Nasa's most stunning pictures of space A Fresh Perspective on an Extraordinary Cluster of Galaxies Galaxy clusters are often described by superlatives.<doc-sep>Planetary scientists announced that they have found evidence that a substantial amount of liquid water exists in one spot under the surface of Mars. !! ! Let me be clear up front: The evidence is quite good, but not 100% conclusive. There are caveats, which I’ll explain below. But looking over their work, I have to admit this looks (ironically) solid. If I had to bet, I’d say they have indeed found a shallow but wide lake of liquid water buried deep under the Martian surface. And that’s truly amazing. The observations come from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, which has been orbiting the Sun’s fourth rock since late 2003. It’s equipped with the usual fleet of cameras and detectors to peer down at Mars, to map it optically as well as mineralogically, and investigate the near-Mars environment of space. It also has a radar instrument called the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS). This device is a 40-meter-long boom (made of two 20-meter booms that extend away from the spacecraft) that sends radar (radio wave) pulses down to the planet below. Depending on the composition of the surface and the wavelength used, the pulse reflects off the surface and is sent back to the spacecraft. The time it takes to go down and back up can be used to measure the distance to the feature; the distance to a mountaintop and back is shorter than to the bottom of a valley, so the pulse takes less time for the former and more for the latter. MARSIS can be used as an altimeter in that way to make a topological surface map of Mars. But there’s more. Some wavelengths of radar penetrate the surface, passing right through the material there. It can be weakly or strongly reflected by some materials below the surface, allowing scientists to build a depth map of Mars down to several kilometers! The resolution isn’t great — it creates a swath on the surface about 3–5 kilometers wide — but multiple passes can be used to build up enough signal to make decent maps of what lies below. Zoom In Penetrating radar image of Mars shows the icy surface as a bright fuzzy line at the top, and deeper down (toward the bottom) the patchier, undulating bright line that may be a signal from liquid water. Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/ASI/Univ. Rome; R. Orosei et al 2018 Here’s where things get fun. The south pole of Mars has a huge deposit of ice under the surface called the South Polar Layered Deposits (SPLD), stretching well over a thousand kilometers across. This ice is nearly pure water, mixed with dust in various amounts (roughly 10-20% in places). A part of this a few hundred kilometers across sticks out above the surface, forming the south polar ice cap, which is again mostly water ice, though it has a sheet of carbon dioxide ice (“dry ice”) a meter or so thick that covers it seasonally. It’s been known for some time that liquid water could exist under the Martian surface. Heat from the Martian interior bubbles up, and warmth from the sunlit surface works its way down. Depending on the thermal gradient (how the temperature changes with depth, which depends on the material), this means that in some places on Mars the temperature allows for water ice to melt. In general, it’s about 1 – 2 kilometers deep. Years ago it was thought that the SPLD was too thin to have liquid water under it, but then MARSIS mapped the region (called Planum Australe, or southern plains) and showed it’s actually up to 3.7 kilometers thick in places! Hmmmm. Zoom In The Mars Express spacecraft has detected what might be liquid water deep below the surface of Mars. The location of the signal (left) is near the south pole, and multiple overlapping radar passes (right) show the details (blue is stronger signal). Credit: Context map: NASA/Viking; THEMIS background: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State University; MARSIS data: ESA/NASA/JPL/ASI/Univ. Rome; R. Orosei et al 2018 And now, finally (well, hopefully), paydirt. Or paywater. 29 passes of MARSIS over an area show something very interesting: A 20-km-wide deposit of material about 400 km from the south pole that reflects radar very well. From the pulse timing delays, this stuff is about 1.5 km below the surface, and distributed in a layer that’s very thin, only a few dozen centimeters thick. There are several materials that could exist under the surface that would produce radar reflections, including warm water ice, CO 2 ice, or even liquid CO 2 (which needs high pressure to remain liquid, or else it turns directly from a solid into a gas). However, either these are not reflective enough to create the signal seen, or the physical conditions needed to create the signals are pretty unlikely. The most likely substance by a long shot that can exist there and be so reflective is the simplest: liquid water. Zoom In The southern polar ice cap of Mars (using infrared, green, and blue light), which is mostly water ice with a thin layer of carbon dioxide ice on top, taken by Mars Express. Credit: ESA / G. Neukum (Freie Universitaet, Berlin) / Bill Dunford So while it’s the way to bet, it’s not a lock. It’s difficult to know exactly how well the radar penetrates the surface, which can muddy the signal and makes determining the composition of the subsurface difficult. However, once again, all things considered, liquid water does the best job explaining what’s seen. Some people are calling it a lake, which is fair enough, but at 20 km across with only the depth of the water in a bathtub, it’s more like a thin layer. Still. This is really exciting! We’ve known about water ice on Mars for decades (the polar ice caps make that fairly obvious) as well as ice just below the surface to surprisingly low latitudes. But liquid water has been maddeningly elusive. This new result makes it seem far, far more likely to exist.<doc-sep>
OUT OF THIS WORLD | What's Up In Space - the biggest news coming down to Earth from space Liquid water on Mars! Lake discovered under Martian ice cap Find Your Forecast Search for a location Scott Sutherland Meteorologist/Science Writer Wednesday, July 25, 2018, 10:00 AM - After decades of trying to answer the question of whether Mars has liquid water, scientists appear to have found the answer, and the implications of their discovery could be huge. Depending on where and how you look, you can find plenty of water on Mars. Satellites and telescopes have shown us ice deposits at the planet's polar regions. Orbiters have also revealed immense glaciers residing just under the surface, potentially accessible to any future explorers or even colonists that go there in the future. Robotic landers and rovers have uncovered evidence that there were once flowing streams and rivers on the surface, and even freshwater lakes that would have been safe for us to drink. All of that water is either locked up in solid form, however, or locked away in the distant past. What about liquid water, on Mars, right now, giving us some possibility that the Red Planet could harbor life? Based on new research, published in the journal Science on Wednesday, there really is liquid water on Mars - a 20-kilometre-wide lake of it, at least a metre deep, buried under a kilometre-and-a-half of south polar ice! "We discovered water on Mars," says Roberto Orosei, a researcher with the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). According to Orosei, who led the team that made this discovery, they detected the lake using a ground-penetrating radar instrument on the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter, known as the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding, or MARSIS. Artistic impression of the Mars Express spacecraft probing the southern hemisphere of Mars, superimposed to a color mosaic of a portion of Planum Australe. The study area is highlighted using a THEMIS IR image mosaic. Subsurface echo power is color coded and deep blue corresponds to the strongest reflections, which are interpreted as being caused by the presence of water. Credits: USGS Astrogeology Science Center, Arizona State University, ESA, INAF. From May 2012 to December 2015, the spacecraft made 29 passes over this one region on Mars, allowing the research team to scan the area with MARSIS, and then combine those scans into a profile of the layers under the surface. "MARSIS was able to detect echoes from beneath the southern polar cap of Mars, that were stronger than surface echoes," Orosei explained. "This condition on Earth happens only when you observe subglacial water, like in Antarctica, over places like Lake Vostok." Lake Vostok is a persistent lake of freshwater, some 4 kilometres below the surface of the East Antarctica ice sheet. The lake is very likely warmed from below by geothermal heat, while at the same time is insulated from the cold at the surface by the ice itself. This keeps the lake at just below freezing temperatures, and it maintains a liquid state due to the immense weight of the ice above pressing down on it. In the case of this subsurface lake of water on Mars, the researchers say that it is likely stays liquid partly due to magnesium, calcium and sodium salts, which are common in Mars rocks. This would lower the water's freezing temperature, and combined with the pressures exerted by the 1.5 kilometres of ice above it, it would be prevented from freezing solid. Watch below as Roberto Orosei walks us through this amazing discovery: DETECTING A SUBSURFACE LAKE FROM SPACE So, how did MARSIS find this lake? Geophysicist Cassie Stuurman, who was not involved in this particular discovery, but who did discover the Lake Superior-sized glacier under Mars' surface, reported back in 2016, explained that the way ground penetrating radar works is by sending out radio waves, and then measuring the return waves that are reflected off the surface, and off boundaries between different materials under the surface. "So, if there's a boundary between air and ice, or ice and dust, or ice and water, we get a reflection back," Stuurman said. The reason for the reflections at these boundaries has to do with the electrical properties of the materials, and according to Stuurman, liquid water has radically different electrical properties than rock or ice. "It sticks out like a sore thumb in the radar data," she said.