"Mapping Mars’ Missing Ice" Topic
1 Post
All members in good standing are free to post here. Opinions expressed here are solely those of the posters, and have not been cleared with nor are they endorsed by The Miniatures Page.
Please remember that some of our members are children, and act appropriately.
For more information, see the TMP FAQ.
Back to the SF Media Message Board
Areas of InterestScience Fiction
Featured Hobby News Article
Featured Recent Link
Featured Ruleset
Featured Showcase Article Do you lie awake at night worrying about giant insects devouring the human race? Me, too...
Featured Profile Article Our Man in Southern California, Wyatt the Odd  , takes press pass in hand and reports from the Gen Con So Cal convention.
Featured Movie Review
|
| Tango01 | 05 Sep 2014 1:01 p.m. PST |
"Mars has oceans worth of ice. Most of it is concentrated at the poles, but there is also a substantial amount frozen in two bands of dusty soil that span the planet's midlatitudes. The map above shows the gullies that form when some of that ice melts. A recent study used these gullies to estimate roughly how much ice is frozen in Mars' soil. The bands of soil—called the latitude-dependent mantle—cover less than a quarter of Mars' surface, from about the 30th to the 60th lines of latitude on either side of the equator. Scientists believe the frozen soil was deposited by massive glaciers or something similar less than a million years ago. It is discontinuous, having melted away in some places and accumulated in others. It averages about 18-36 feet deep, but shielded from the sun on the pole-facing walls of craters, these deposits can be over 90 feet deep. The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters on August 16, focuses on five of these craters at different places on the globe. Even though they don't directly face the sun, they do occasionally get enough solar energy to melt the ice, which flows down crater wall and deposits the soil in a fan shape at the bottom of the slope…"
Full article here
link Amicalement
Armand |
|
