Nearly one kilometer and half decade old debate under the southern polar ice cap of Mars, on the presence of the continuous body of liquid water on the planet. Does it make the possibility of being present for life on Mars
The Discovery by an 11-member Italian team led by Prof Roberto Orosei of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Bologna of a 20-km lake a kilometer and a half under the southern polar ice cap of Mars concludes in some ways a decades-old debate over the presence of a persistent body of liquid water on the planet. Does it also make it more likely for life to be present on Mars?
In The Things that Live on Mars, which appeared in Cosmopolitan in March 1908, HG Wells asked, “Is it probable that evolution has gone upon exactly parallel lines on the two planets (Earth and Mars)?” Intelligent beings could not be present in isolation, he wrote; “they can be but a part of the natural history of Mars in just the same way that man is but a part of the natural history of the earth”.
Water, Living and Life
“Life, our definition is based on how it is on Earth,” said Dr. Amitabh Ghosh of NASA’s Mangal Exploration Rover Mission, but why should it be somewhere else? “Our attraction with Mars is partly because Water is evidence and partly due to popular imagination. For example, some satellites of Jupiter and Saturn clearly have underground oceans, who may have a past or present life too … “
However, Dr. Ghosh said, “We do not think of Jupiter as a hospitable planet. From the moment, we searched the planet Mars, the more we found, the more we found the evidence of the previous water, the current water … We find more, there is evidence of water. “We probably do not think that life can be present in the oceans in very hot conditions in the Antarctic. (But) in extremely unexpected places, in extreme circumstances, people get a life. It helped to expand our feeling where life can survive. “
Dr. Anil Bharadwaj, Director, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, said that atmospheric pressure on the surface of the Martian is about hundred times less than the earth, to ensure that the water is not in liquid form but in the form of ice or vapor.
Dr. Bharadwaj had earlier worked on ISRO’s Mangal Orbiter Mission (MOOM), Dr. Bharadwaj said that it is possible that water mixed with other compounds including salt, which reduces temperature and helps keep it liquid Does. Dr. Ghosh agreed on this: “The atmospheric pressure is so low that the water does not survive. The problem here is that how does this continuous body of water survive? We may need to investigate. Let us add so much salt. What is the structure of water? Is this water, is it combined with salts? “
Mission Technology
Although this is not the first time Mars has been found on Mars (Dr. Orroji and his team said that 40 years ago Viking Mission Orbiter had reported the evidence of lakes, rivers and delta, and NASA’s Mars Reconciones Orbiter in the conclusion year Liquid water intervals are provided on planet Mars), the discovery of underground lake is still important.
