Posted on 06/19/2008 6:53:14 PM PDT by LibWhacker
And doped up at the best of times!
“I wonder why they are not thinking it could be dry ice. With so much CO2 in the atmosphere.”
Your question just raised a question for me. If CO2 is present in large quantities in Earths Atmosphere, and the atmosphere is cold at the Earths Polar Regions, would we have dry ice formations on Earth instead of global warming?
Why am I thinking that "White stuff that dissappears" is less than perfect evidence?
These images were acquired by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Surface Stereo Imager on the 21st and 25th days of the mission, or Sols 20 and 24 (June 15 and 18, 2008). They show sublimation of ice in the trench informally called "Dodo-Goldilocks" over the course of four days. In the lower left corner, lumps disappear, similar to the process of evaporation. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University
If posters on Slashdot are correct, it's too hot for dry ice to remain. Only a thin frost-like film can form, and only during coldest nights. In any case I'm sure NASA folks can tell a difference between water ice and dry ice (and if not, we are in trouble.)
In a moonbats mind on capitol hill, a democrat moonbat. :)
I was a passenger out of Dulles one January day. I had a window seat and looked at the wing. The area of the fuel tanks on the wing were a sheet of ice. We pushed back and started taxing out. I was most upset. I asked the stewardess about the ice on the wing. She informed me that this is normal. This was moments before we came to the deicing area. I then felt much better. I had every intention of getting off that plane.
Yawn. I can see seasonal polar ice on Mars using my backyard telescope. Now finding some form of life would be a big deal.
So why’d they have to dig a trench to see this? Why isn’t ice sublimating from all around the trench too?
Why not CO2 permafrost, protected by the soil? I don’t understand how water ice would sublimate so quickly at those temperatures. I guess they would say solar radiation, but in my earth experience, that takes several days, even at earth temperatures.
I wonder that too. Frozen CO2 is white and evaporates readily.
It could well be colder under the surface.
It was probably styrofoam that blew in from Earth, and it blew away when it was uncovered. That stuff goes everywhere!
Mars is the new Earth...
Hmmm, this is interesting: Therefore, there must be a much larger unidentified CO2 reservoir in the martian subsurface, possibly adsorbed CO2 in the regolith [9,10], to buffer the much larger atmosphere, or it means the total budget of CO2 is present in the atmosphere, and that Mars has today much less CO2 than other telluric planets.
I suppose the Mars people are right, just because they're the experts, but honestly I don't entirely trust them.
Don’t forget lower pressure as well.
Dude! what kind of telescope?
I have gotten one for my kids and they seem to enjoy it
I dont think I could see mars THAT clearly with it though
Well, it's a lot colder out there, and processes such as sublimation tend to have an exponential dependence on temperature. Here's a very pertinent paper, SUBLIMATION OF WATER FROM THE NORTH POLAR CAP ON MARS. They mention sublimation rates of 5cm per year from south-facing cliff scarps. This happens over a summer season, but that's still, what? 200 days? Say 50 times 4 days, so we come up with 0.1 mm for a 4 day period with this figure ... so I don't know.
Oops! 1.0 mm in 4 days. A lot closer but still a stretch, especially with the shaded location.
I don’t know, but I would like to know if the “ice” that was imaged under the lander has changed since landing.
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