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A large web featuring a liquid lake and associated wet “patches”, potentially brimming with brine, has been detected several hundred metres below the south pole of Mars.
Speaking to Daily Maverick, world experts have hailed this discovery as “very compelling” and “exciting”, suggesting it might help direct the search for extraterrestrial life towards the Red Planet’s polar subsurface.
Radar research in 2018 by the same authors indicated a subglacial lake below the Martian south pole – a thick ice cap formed by layers of ice and dust. Native to the austral region known as Ultimi Scopuli, the subglacial lake was thought to be the first-ever stable body of liquid water encountered on Earth’s cold and hellishy dry twin.
But this attempt, though significant, left big questions unanswered. Was this a once-in-a-lifetime find? Caused, perhaps, by extraordinary circumstance? Or were there, indeed, liquid patches to be dived into elsewhere?
“The discovery of multiple lakes answers that question, showing that subglacial liquid water may be common,” lead author Prof Elena Pettinelli told Daily Maverick.
Published in Nature Astronomy this week, the Roma Tre University-led study describes a 20km x 30km area of potent reflectivity, located some 1.5km below the Martian south pole.
The bombshell detection of a stable patchwork of liquid-water bodies tips our knowledge of Mars into new and exciting territory
www.dailymaverick.co.za
Speaking to Daily Maverick, world experts have hailed this discovery as “very compelling” and “exciting”, suggesting it might help direct the search for extraterrestrial life towards the Red Planet’s polar subsurface.
Radar research in 2018 by the same authors indicated a subglacial lake below the Martian south pole – a thick ice cap formed by layers of ice and dust. Native to the austral region known as Ultimi Scopuli, the subglacial lake was thought to be the first-ever stable body of liquid water encountered on Earth’s cold and hellishy dry twin.
But this attempt, though significant, left big questions unanswered. Was this a once-in-a-lifetime find? Caused, perhaps, by extraordinary circumstance? Or were there, indeed, liquid patches to be dived into elsewhere?
“The discovery of multiple lakes answers that question, showing that subglacial liquid water may be common,” lead author Prof Elena Pettinelli told Daily Maverick.
Published in Nature Astronomy this week, the Roma Tre University-led study describes a 20km x 30km area of potent reflectivity, located some 1.5km below the Martian south pole.
The bombshell detection of a stable patchwork of liquid-water bodies tips our knowledge of Mars into new and exciting territory
Space Odyssey: ‘Red Seas’ of Mars: discovery of multiple ‘salt lakes’ shifts frontiers of planetary science
Beneath the Martian south pole lurks a network of liquid-water bodies, hailed as a breakthrough insight into our sister world – and maybe even life beyond Earth.
www.dailymaverick.co.za
