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To: Dead Corpse
Only the partial pressure of H2O should matter. So of course that's very low, but it's very low at subzero earth atmospheric temperatures as well. The most I can say here is that I'm surprised by the presumption that this must be water ice, and I don't understand it. Also note, the sublimated ice chunks were evidently in the shade, as well, so I don't understand why their exposure to the atmosphere should have caused the rapid sublimation of these largish chunks of presumed water ice. Out at Jovian and Saturnian distances, ice is a mineral, functionally equivalent to rocks on earth, even on the surface of low atmosphere planetoids with exposure to sunlight.

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.

38 posted on 06/19/2008 9:49:21 PM PDT by dr_lew
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To: dr_lew
...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.

39 posted on 06/19/2008 9:52:24 PM PDT by dr_lew
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To: dr_lew
A lower pressure atmosphere increases the rate of sublimation. It happens more readily, right here on Earth, at higher altitudes.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/polar2006/pdf/8031.pdf

Low temp, low pressure, the less chance of finding liquid water. Solid H2O will sublimate more readily on Mars due to low pressure. I can think of a number of ways in which that ice on Mars not only formed initially, but is now sublimating.

Other bodies in the solar system with probable H2O ice also have other conditions that vary greatly from those on Mars.

44 posted on 06/20/2008 5:34:04 AM PDT by Dead Corpse (What would a free man do?)
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