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Done deal: liquid water can exist on Mars.



 
 
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Old September 4th 03, 02:00 AM
Robert Clark
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Default Done deal: liquid water can exist on Mars.

Alex Blackwell posted this to the uplink.space.com board:

=====================================
Office of University Relations
University of Arkansas

CONTACT:
Derek Sears
Professor, chemistry and biochemistry, Fulbright College;
Director, Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for Space and Planetary Sciences
(479) 575-5204,

Melissa Blouin
Science and research communications manager
(479) 575-5555,


EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE AT 2 P.M. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2003

SURFACE WATER POSSIBLE UNDER MARS-LIKE CONDITIONS

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- A team of researchers from the University of
Arkansas has measured water evaporation rates under Mars-like
conditions, and their findings favor the presence of surface water on
the planet. Water on the planet's surface makes the existence of past
or present life on Mars a little more likely, according to the group.

Derek Sears, director of the Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for Space and
Planetary Sciences, and his colleagues graduate student Shauntae Moore
and technician Mikhail Kareev reported their initial findings at the
fall 2003 meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the AAS.

The researchers have brought on-line a large planetary environmental
chamber in which temperature, pressure, atmosphere, sunlight and soil
conditions can be reproduced. Sears and his colleagues use the chamber
to investigate the persistence of water under a range of physical
environments and to study its evaporation.

For their first experiments, reported at the DPS meeting, the group
chose to measure one of the most important properties of water on a
planetary surface, the rate at which it evaporates.

"Physicists have long argued that Mars is currently a sterile desert,
completely unsuited to life," Sears said. "This conclusion is based on
their belief that water would evaporate very quickly, as soon as it
appeared on the surface."

The University of Arkansas group examined the effect of Mars'
atmospheric conditions -- temperature and wind -- on the evaporation
rate. The movement of the atmosphere close to the surface is a crucial
factor in the survival of water on Mars. Water evaporates more slowly
when evaporated molecules build up over the water's surface, but wind
sweeps away evaporated molecules, allowing more water molecules to
escape the surface and increasing evaporation rates.

"These findings suggest that even under worst case scenarios, where
wind is maximizing evaporation, evaporation rates on Mars are quite
low," Sears said. This implies that surface water could indeed exist,
or have existed recently, under the given conditions on Mars.

In addition to the evaporation experiments, the group examines the
ways in which water-ice behaves when frozen at depth and how it reacts
when covered with layers of frost or dust. They also explore how ice
behaves when exposed on the surface, and whether it can exist in a
transient liquid phase that could harbor life.

The subtle balance between the input of heat from the Sun and
subsurface sources and the strength of the surface atmospheric motions
determines the fate of the water; whether it remains as ice, becomes
liquid, and if so how long it remains as a liquid, or how quickly it
evaporates.

"The environmental chamber will enable us to gain new insights into
the behavior of water on Mars and reduce much of the speculation on
this topic," said Barney Farmer, principal investigator for the
atmospheric water vapor mapping experiment during the Viking missions
and a member of the Arkansas research group.

EDITORS NOTE: Dr. Sears will be at the Doubletree Monterey during the
meeting. The number there is (831) 649-4511.
=====================================

This of course confirms what Gil Levin has been saying all along:

Liquid water and life on Mars.
http://mars.spherix.com/spie2/spie98.htm

I've said that Barry Digregorio's book "Mars: the Living Planet"
probably will be regarded as a classic book on the life on Mars issue.
A related fact is that Gil Levin will probably be regarded as the most
insightful scientist to have ever studied the planet Mars.


Bob Clark
 




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