Mars ice could flood planet

Scientists have revealed the full technical details of their discovery of vast reservoirs of ice beneath the Martian surface.

So much ice has been found in the polar regions that if it were to melt it would deluge the planet.

The ice may stretch far underground to regions where it is warm, raising the possibility of warm caverns of meltwater in which scientists hesitantly speculate conditions could be suitable for life.

But they caution that we may never know until we have rock and ice samples returned to Earth by an unmanned probe for analysis.

William Boynton, of the Lunar and Planetary Institute of the University of Arizona, US, is lead author on one of a trio of pioneering Mars papers published in this week's issue of Science magazine.

He regards the sensational findings of ice below the surface of Mars as third time lucky.

"Twice I was close to this," he told BBC News Online. "We detected the subsurface ice using an instrument on Mars Odyssey that was also on the Mars Observer spacecraft.

"That probe reached Mars 10 years ago, but blew up when it got there - so, we could have found [the ice] then."

And Dr Boynton could also have found it with the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander spacecraft. It crashed into the planet's polar regions in 1999.

"It would have landed on precisely the place where we now see the ice. Polar Lander had a scoop that would have been able to dig and reach the ice so just think what we could have seen if that mission had been a success."

"We started seeing the signal from the ice within a few days of starting our survey of the planet," he said.

"We saw ice where we had expected to. The signal was so strong it just knocked us over."

The Gamma-Ray Spectrometer, one of several sensors on board Mars Odyssey able to find evidence of ice reserves, is only able to look about a metre (three feet) beneath the surface.

"We can see an awful lot of water there," said Dr Boynton, "but why should it stop there? It may go down 10 metres, a 100 metres or even kilometres."

The underground ice solves one of the deepest and longstanding mysteries about the Red Planet: where did the water go?

All over its surface there is evidence that in the distant past copious amounts of water flowed. We can see dried up river lakes, ancient shorelines, and vast, empty canyons.

Now, scientists know where all this water has gone - it is frozen deep underground.

It has been found exactly where it was predicted - Poleward of 60 degrees south, where the average temperature and soil properties would allow ice to form.

If Mars were to become much warmer for some reason and the ice melted, it would drench the planet to an average depth of between half and one kilometre.

"Well, it's a little hard to say," speculated Dr Boynton. "If the ice is deep enough, there could be regions where it gets warm enough to melt and that would mean pockets of warm water underground.

"That would be very exciting - but we will not know for sure until we bring back a sample for analysis."

And the Mars Odyssey data has provided another ironic twist in the history of exploring the Red Planet.

In 1976, two sophisticated American spacecraft, Vikings 1 and 2, landed on the planet. They scooped up some soil and looked for life. Most scientists believe they found none. But Viking 2 may have come close.

"Our findings indicate that perhaps just a metre below Viking 2, there may have been a lot of ice. It may have got so far yet so close to finding ice on Mars," said Dr Boynton.

And the scientist who endured two failed missions and 17 years to solve one of the greatest planetary mysteries chuckles to himself.

You overestimate mans influence. Not nice.

You don't know just how close we came to depleting the soil resources here on Earth. By not following accepted methods of crop rotation, and leaving fields fallow, we were on a fast track to depletion. Many farms have returned to rotation/fallow methods. Many other countries also found that pest control via chemicals was a fast track to major crop loss. They have learned that they get greater return by using natural forms of pest control.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

I'm laughing because I grew up on a farm. My father was considered one of the more successful farmers in our community. I farmed myself until I was 38. Many of my relatives still farm and ranch. My ancestors farmed. We come from a long line of 'tillers of the earth'. My forefathers grew crops for Mother Russia. Many of them still do so.

In the short paragraph you penned you managed to parrot a bunch of 'the sky is falling' phrases that sound idiotic to anyone who knows even a smidgen of the truth.

I'm crying because you've obviously allowed yourself to be duped, and while I expect that kind of drivel when I'm at the Leftists web sites, I was somewhat blindsided (as apparently were others) by your lack of knowledge coupled with an apparent willingness to show it off that ignorance. That's a trait more common to Liberals (or Progressives, or whatever they are calling themselves these days).

Farms going back to summer fallow??????? Give me a break, few, if any, in our western states ever stopped. You are confusing the American farmer, one the the most ingenious and caring professionals that ever lived, with the farming methods of the Marxist (Russia under communism) and dictatorships (Zimbabwe right now).

Food shortages around the world are a result of political manipulation, not production, and by all reasonable projections will remain so for the next hundreds of years.

You definitely need to educate yourself in this area.

Thanks for responding, and in such an adult informative manner. I did mean farming practices in other countries.

You are correct, that for the most part we have followed conservative farming practices in the United States. I also am sure that with your background you have much more knowledge of the subject than I.

But we must still be careful. We are on a fast track to concentrating our food growing capabilities onto smaller and smaller pieces of land. We are using the newest technology to get more output per acre. There is a limit to that, and nature has a nasty habit of carrying mutations beyond what we had planned.

The current situation in the middle east could further complicate things. A few nukes here and there could spread radioactive dust around the globe. That dust would settle onto everything, including much of our farmland. Maybe glow in the dark cereal will be a popular item, but I doubt it.

I know, the sky is falling, the sky is falling. I sound like a harbinger of doom to you. I assure you I don't mean to. I think it is to our benefit to be educated, learn from past and other countries mistakes, and fight to keep growing.

Remember this. Everyone on this planet for years and years and years said there was NO WATER on MARS.
Everyone said.... We couldn't travel faster than the speed of sound, that we couldn't travel in outer space or go to the moon.........

Remember this. Everyone on this planet for years and years and years said there was NO WATER on MARS. Everyone said....

Not everyone said that at all. Art Bell types have been saying there is water on mars for a long time ;P I'm sure there were alot of scientists that felt there must be water still there somewhere.

Also Mars most likely lost its atmosphere when hit by a very large object and then froze. At least that is the theory that sounds good to me anyway.

Food shortages around the world are a result of political manipulation, not production, and by all reasonable projections will remain so for the next hundreds of years.

Political Manipulation, yes. Also the result of overspraying with insecticides, overuse of the land by lack of crop rotation, not allowing the land to fallow.

You may have more personal experience, and then call me ignorant. I may be ignorant of some things, but at least I am not close-minded. When I read all of the available information I can get on soil depletion, lack of potable water, contamination, control of water resources, poor farming practices in Indonesia, Korea, Australia, and watch as what was once fertile farmland disappear, I can SEE what happens if we keep going that same path.

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