Friday, December 21, 2007

'Active glacier found' on Mars

Shaun Saunders send in this article from BBC News online.

We have seen evidence that water in liquid form was once common on Mar's surface. Today, evidence shows that a significant amount of the Martian polar regions are composed of water ice. However up to this point this was considered ancient ice, many millions of years old. Recent overflights of the Deuteronilus Mensae region between Mars' rugged southern highlands and the flat northern lowlands by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft have shown an icy feature may only be several thousand years old. This could be significant in not only finding active water underground on Mars but also these areas might be uniquely positive sites for discovering microbial life on the red planet. The reasoning being that as the water peculates to the surface it would carry along any microbes living in the or around the liquid.

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