Frozen seas on Mars?

Whenever something stupid comes up to cast a pall over spece science research (last week's awful news report that scientists had "discovered" life in Martian caves) I have to remind myself to just wait a few days, and something truly marvellous will turn up to wash the bitter taste of stupidity away. Such has come to pass:

A frozen sea, surviving as blocks of pack ice, may lie just beneath the surface of Mars, suggest observations from Europe's Mars Express spacecraft. The sea is just 5° north of the Martian equator and would be the first discovery of a large body of water beyond the planet's polar ice caps.

Images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera on Mars Express show raft-like ground structures - dubbed "plates" - that look similar to ice formations near Earth's poles, according to an international team of scientists.

But the site of the plates, near the equator, means that sunlight should have melted any ice there. So the team suggests that a layer of volcanic ash, perhaps a few centimetres thick, may protect the structures.

"I think it's fairly plausible," says Michael Carr, an expert on Martian water at the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, who was part of the team. He says scientists had previously suspected there was a past water source north of the Elysium plates. "We know where the water came from," Carr told New Scientist. "You can trace the valleys carved by water down to this area."

The complete article can be read online over at New Scientist. The researchers estimate the buried sea (would it be appropriate to call it permafrost?) is approximately 900 by 800 kilometers in size, annd 45 meters deep. That's a heck of a lot of water. It's located in an area a number of massive "outflow channels" drained into historically. And, since it's so close to the equator, that improves the chances of more aqueous deposits being located elsewhere around the planet, rather than just confined to the cold areas around the poles. If the Martian water is as briny and/or acidic as theories suggest, or if there is subterranean heat rising from the Martian interior, it is not too far a leap to imagine there are liquid pockets mixed in there at some point. Since methane continues to be tracked in the Martian atmosphere, which must be produced either by active biological or volcanic processes, I think this is exciting news indeed.

A show of hands for the newest prime candidate for a Mars lander? It's not a smoking gun, or silver bullet, but an important piece to an increasingly large and complex puzzle.

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