Immense ice deposits found at south pole of Mars

Reuters via Yahoo! ^ | 3-16-07 | Will Dunham

[Pharmboy]

Why doesn't mars have an EM field? No iron core? And if not, why? Is it so different than the Earth in terms of chemical makeup?

Thanks in advance for your answers...

[Psycho_Bunny]

Just as a knee-jerk reaction, I'd bet that a lot of it was moved there via rain weather patterns and froze....or was turned to ice by the cold, like our polar caps....and the liquid that was in the temperate regions bled off into space and/or was absorbed into the ground.

I could easily be way wrong.

[MaxMax]

Can't Bush do anything right?
Send more rockets for cying-out-loud!

[Yossarian]

Why doesn't mars have an EM field? No iron core? And if not, why? Is it so different than the Earth in terms of chemical makeup?

I'm not sure. I think Mars has a semi-liquid core, whereas we have a solid inner core, and a consistently liquid outer core.

I think one big difference is our big moon - it zips around us, and its gravity churns up our outer core into a nice fluid - and it's the MOVING iron that causes the field to propagate. (Think of an electric motor / generator.)

[Yossarian]

Why doesn't mars have an EM field? No iron core? And if not, why? Is it so different than the Earth in terms of chemical makeup?

I'm not sure. I think Mars has a semi-liquid core, whereas we have a solid inner core, and a consistently liquid outer core.

I think one big difference is our big moon - it zips around us, and its gravity churns up our outer core into a nice fluid - and it's the MOVING iron that causes the field to propagate. (Think of an electric motor / generator.)

[SunkenCiv]

NASA to Announce 'Significant Findings' of Water on Mars Tuesday!
Space DOT com | 3-1-04 | Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer
Posted on 03/01/2004 5:08:45 PM EST by vannrox
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1088571/posts

The Yardangs of Mars
Geological Society (UK) | July 24, 2004 | staff
Posted on 01/01/2005 2:18:55 PM EST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1312117/posts

Images reveal 'sea of ice' near Mars' equator
Associated Press | Feb 26, 2005
Posted on 02/26/2005 4:02:49 AM PST by FYREDEUS
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1351506/posts

[Interesting Times]

Hey, check this out.

[TheLion]

It would probably condense there because of the cooler temperatures.

[anymouse]

Never said Mars would be paradise. But it could be a place you could live. Shielding and additional oxygen could be tolerated, if the atmospheric pressure increased a bit and the CO2 content decreased to tolerable levels. I didn't say it would happen over night either.

[BlackJack]

YEAH BABY this is GREAT HISTORIC NEWS!!!

There is life...we will find it....bacteria....worms...who knows
whats crawling around in the dirt.

We can't live on Mars....its slightly bigger than the moon...
gravity is toooo weak for us to be healthy. We can live in orbit
and come down to dig and find fossils....who knows what!!!

[AntiKev]

This is NASA's problem...their PR department SUCKS. That should have been a non-story. Instead every time there's an article about the good things that NASA is doing, Nowak creeps into the discussion.

[AntiKev]

Well for that we need heavy-lift. I.e. something on the order of the Saturn V. Which is COMING with Ares V, provided that NASA isn't messed with as far as the budget goes. As far as the pressure goes, it's not about gravity. It's about density. If we heat the planet, we release the sequestered CO2 and H2O faster than the solar wind can strip away molecules from the top of the atmosphere. Then we've created a denser atmosphere, higher density, higher mass, higher pressure.

If it were ONLY about gravity, Mars would ALREADY have an atmospehre with 1/3 the pressure of MSL on Earth, because Mars gravity is 1/3g. And the moon would have a 1/6bar atmosphere. It doesn't work that way.

[zot]

I suspect most of the water went away when Mars was struck by the large rock that ripped off half its crust.

Or maybe not a direct impact. The gravitational attraction of a near miss by a large rock (planet-size or nearly) could strip off almost all the water, very quickly, and leave one hemisphere of Mars very different from the other hemisphere, as it is now.

[SengirV]

Yeah, I saw that less than an hour after I asked. Laughed when I saw it. =)

[Renfield]

Bump for later read.

[theFIRMbss]

>their PR department SUCKS

Their PR is GREAT.
Has the US press ever
described the events

around NASA's TOMS
ozone monitoring mess
caught by Forest Mims?

You've got to wonder
how much is unseen given
all the stuff we see.

[anymouse]

Mars is considerably larger than Earth's moon, although it is about half of the Earth's size.

I rather doubt that we will find any existing life on Mars, but it is more important to bring life to Mars anyway. We will live on Mars if we will it to be so. As Chrietin wrote in Jurassic Park, "life will find a way."