Not liquid water, it is volcanic rock underneath Mars’ south pole: Study

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In 2018, the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft detected some vivid radar reflections on the ice-covered south pole of Mars. Scientists suspected that they have been taking a look at liquid water at about 1.4 km underneath the ice. However, a brand new research printed yesterday states that the reflections could also be attributable to volcanic rock buried underneath the ice.

“For water to be sustained this close to the surface, you need both a very salty environment and a strong, locally generated heat source, but that doesn’t match what we know of this region,” stated the research’s lead writer, Cyril Grima , a planetary scientist on the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics in a launch. The findings have been printed within the journal Geophysical Research Letters,

The coloured dots characterize websites the place vivid radar reflections have been noticed by ESA’s Mars Express orbiter at Mars’ south polar cap. (ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The group used the info from Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS), a multi-frequency radar sounder on board the Mars Express spacecraft which remains to be working at present, offering about 15 years of measurements.

The group explains that on Earth too, rocks shaped by lava flows replicate radar in the same manner.

Last 12 months, a paper printed in the identical journal had stated that clay minerals may be creating the mysterious alerts.

Isaac Smith, a Mars geophysicist at York University, who was not concerned within the research added: “I think the beauty of Grima’s finding is that while it knocks down the idea there might be liquid water under the planet’s south pole today, it also gives us really precise places to go look for evidence of ancient lakes and riverbeds and test hypotheses about the wider drying out of Mars’ climate over billions of years.”

Dr Cyril Grima and Dr Isaac Smith at the moment are engaged on proposed missions to search out water on Mars with radar. This will assist discover future human touchdown websites and in addition seek for indicators of previous life.

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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS

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