This is the assessment that emerges from comparing the photographs of the excavation site four days ago and yesterday. If it was salt it would not evaporate
Clumps of white material about the size of game blocks that evaporated from the excavated hole and were photographed immediately after the excavation by the Phoenix lander's camera, convince the scientists that the material photographed was water ice that evaporated immediately after the excavation caused it to be exposed.
"It must be ice," says the lead scientist on the Phoenix project, Peter Smith at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "These small lumps disappeared over the course of a few days, this is the clearest evidence that it is ice. Some claimed that the white substance is salt, salt does not evaporate."
The lumps remained at the bottom of the trench informally known as "Dodo-Goldilocks" when the Phoenix robotic arm expanded the trench on June 15 during its 20th Sol day since landing. Several of them were gone when the Phoenix looked at this dig again on Sol 24 (June 20). Although earlier, when the backhoe dug into another trench, the robotic arm encountered difficult terrain that caused excitement among the scientists that they were approaching a new underground ice layer.
The Phoenix team spent Thursday analyzing the new images and data that had successfully arrived from the lander earlier that day. The study of the first finds showed that the new excavation called "Shelgia 2" is located to the right of "Shelgia 1". Ray Arbidson of Washington University in St. Louis, a partner in the research team responsible for the robotic arm said: "We dug a hole and exposed a hard layer at the same depth as the ice layer in the previous dig."
As mentioned, this was also the assessment a few days ago When the experiment of baking the material removed from this excavation in the Phoenix oven did not yield the discovery of water. The scientists claimed that the ice evaporated in the time between the exposure of the lump of dirt from the excavation and its introduction into the oven.
An animated illustration of the disappearance of the substance suspected to be ice
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to the point,
It's a nice idea but I have a better one:
You can make a shovel, an oven and a water detector, the shovel will put the soil into the oven which will heat it, and then the detector will be able to tell if there is water.
On second thought it's complicated and probably won't work.
I will leave to heat a rod and push gently into the ice layer. If it's really ice the rod will penetrate after a certain time.
These are stubborn living creatures that flew to them.
I think the white substance they found on Mars is cocaine. In the pictures you can see that there is less of it because... there is life on Mars, and they... you know...
Even 100 ovens will not help because the laws of physics on Mars are different in heat water turns to ice in cold it evaporates
If there was an astronaut on Mars, in a few minutes it would be possible to know whether there is ice on Mars or not.
There is indeed a possibility that it is carbon dioxide because they said that there is frozen carbon dioxide at the poles of Mars
For a physicist, are you really a physicist or a linguist?
There was ice, now it has evaporated and there is no more ice on Mars
I agree with Roy on that.
I think that what looks like a bird walks and flies like a bird - is a bird:
1. On landing there is a photo of ice under the robot's feet as a result of the landing.
2. The first sample taken from Martian soil did not go into the oven because it was too moist from moisture.
3. The white substance evaporates (ice and not salt).
There are still two months left for the task (without a time extension), it is interesting to wait and see what happens next.
cocaine
I agree withRoey Tsezana's opinion, give NASA scientists some credit. It is true that they have a huge motivation to announce that they found water on Mars, on the other hand, if it later turns out that there was a mistake here, the price will be heavy, so I guess they are quite careful in their announcements.
Friends, why all the aggressiveness against NASA scientists? It is clear to them too that these proofs are circumstantial at best, and nothing will fall based on them.
The Phoenix trials are progressing slowly, and I'm sure for good reason. It is not easy to control a laboratory level robotic probe that is millions of kilometers away from us. Phoenix has several more furnaces to conduct the experiment, and we just have to be patient and wait for the next experiment they will conduct.
Good Day,
Roy.
The results are unsatisfactory and do not allow, in my clearly uneducated opinion, to determine whether or not there is water on Mars. I have every hope that it will be proven that there is water there, but until then it is a severe cognitive dissonance of NASA scientists and their mental need to find water on the Red Planet.
Greetings friends,
Ami Bachar
Why can't it be frozen carbon dioxide?, also its color is white, why exactly water ice.?
Are they checking with the color of the grooves if there is or isn't water in Mars?, maybe it's because of the failure of their furnace test?
I believe there is water on Mars but a crack in the ground won't convince me.
good evening
Sabdarmish Yehuda
Thanks for the answer, father (I asked why it was not possible to comment under this article before)
And on the subject itself - in my opinion, NASA scientists behave a bit like amateurs, from the pictures in which you see the so-called "disappearances" of the white lumps, it seems that these are more games of light and shadow (pictures taken at different times of the day) and not a true disappearance of the material. Also, why not guesses Will NASA scientists take another sample and put it in the oven for serious testing? They act like amateurs.
to ask. Sometimes the system goes crazy and deletes V from being able to give comments.
I thought the temperature (certainly at the poles) was well below 0 degrees Celsius.
So how exactly did the ice evaporate?