Salty -and- Fresh Water?

Palomar · 2004-07-28 10:36:50

*Not really a "strong-suit" topic of mine. :-\ But here goes:

What are the chances both fresh and salt water once flowed on Mars?

--Cindy

Rxke · 2004-07-28 13:40:02

Short answer: yes, after a while...

Water starts out as fresh. (Rain) It is the leaching(sp?) out of salts etc. that are in rocks that gives the oceans their salinity. (mainly)

Springs, wich are in fact places where water-impenetratable rock-layers surface, so all the water that soaks into the ground in the vincinity has to end up there... would first be salty, because that water, while travelling through porous layers 'picked up' salts etc. So the water dissolves the salt in the rocks, and transports it away (to the sea) and after a while it becomes fresh, because of new water not 'having to leach the salts anymore' (they're gone)

(oh boy, too hard to put this in words, esp. English)

Wait... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_water]Wikipedia on salinity of seawater

Um. Their explanation is muuuuuch better!

Palomar · 2005-04-01 06:52:19

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/ … conclusive proof: Water on Mars!

*Thought I'd better put this in one of the threads I started.

--Cindy

Shaun Barrett · 2005-04-02 00:07:19

Inconclusive proof: Water on Mars!
*Thought I'd better put this in one of the threads I started.
--Cindy

< Grooaaan! >

People have been shot for less than that.

Palomar · 2005-04-02 15:50:42

Inconclusive proof: Water on Mars!
*Thought I'd better put this in one of the threads I started.
--Cindy
< Grooaaan! >
People have been shot for less than that.

Well...it IS water on Mars. :laugh:

Couldn't pass that up, considering what yesterday was. Ha. :;):

--Cindy

srmeaney · 2005-04-09 22:35:01

Salt water on Mars would probably need some sort of bacterial process It would be a good indicator of early life processes.

Grypd · 2005-04-10 07:01:51

No it just indicates that minerals have been disolved in water that is all salt water is. of course finding salt water is a good sign as this indicates water that has flowed to disolve salts and has remained liquid. And this would be a perfect place to find life.

Palomar · 2005-04-10 07:39:58

*Hi all. I'm more interested in the possibility of -fresh- water having once been present on Mars.

--Cindy

Grypd · 2005-04-10 14:42:28

Not necassarily that good. You see one of the possible places for life to have begun is in the prescence of heated water ie black smokers or in thermal pools. These places tend to have water with salty concentrations.

So on Mars if we want to find life then we should be looking for liquid water near a thermal source...Aquifers

And for Mars explorers getting fresh water is easy (Boil it and condense) and those salts are very useful for the long term approach to Mars

Robert M. Blevins · 2005-05-05 00:53:14

Water on Mars?
This is now an easy question to answer, according to NASA.
YES.
Two sources, both currently active, underground and in the ice caps.

The Mars Orbiter pictures have shown RECENT evidence of water upwelling from underground on Mars. These upwells create small channels that often run out after a short distance. I have several pictures onsite showing this feature.

We're not talking about thousands of years ago for the upwells, but in the last few decades. The reason the channels run out after a distance is probably because the water soon evaporates into the atmosphere, due to the low atmospheric pressure...

Shaun Barrett · 2005-05-05 04:19:27

Yes, indeed, Robert.
These are exciting times for Martian exploration as more and more fundamental questions are answered. :up:
[ Welcome to New Mars by the way. ]

Shaun Barrett · 2005-05-05 06:47:04

Cindy:-

I'm more interested in the possibility of -fresh- water having once been present on Mars.

It's an interesting question.
Of course, we've all known for some time now that salty water once flowed on Mars, so I won't insult your intelligence by dwelling too long on that aspect of it.
(In passing, I imagine that one of the most important factors in the concentration of salts in water on Mars would be the length of time any oceans may have persisted and how long any rivers existed to wash eroded minerals into them.
Another factor would be the concentration of minerals in certain bodies of water due to evaporation, of course; as discovered by Opportunity at Meridiani.)

Something that's always fascinated me is that there are dendritic drainage networks all over the ancient cratered southern highlands of Mars. Although described by geologists as 'immature' networks, lacking the well-developed characteristics exhibited by similar networks here on Earth, it is widely suspected they may have been carved by the runoff of precipitation billions of years ago.
Then you have to consider the existence of enormous lakes in the southern highlands, like Lake Ma'adim:

... which is estimated to have held more than 5 times as much water as the present-day Great Lakes of North America. Calculations suggest the lake had a surface area of some 1.1 million square kilometres and a depth of 1100 metres!
On a topical note, it was this lake which overflowed into Ma'adim Vallis and fed the Gusev Crater Lake, whose sediments NASA's Spirit Rover is investigating as we speak. (See the topmost blue-filled crater in the above picture.)

It seems likely to me that Lake Ma'adim, whose distinct shoreline has been identified and mapped, was a freshwater lake, perhaps fed by precipitation during an early epoch or by freshwater aquifers in a later era.
The northern wall of Gusev Crater was breached at some stage in the past, perhaps by water erosion, and it's not difficult to imagine the water streaming northward into the lowlands. There it may well have become part of a saltier longer-standing body of oceanic water(?)

I can't prove Lake Ma'adim was filled with fresh water, of course. It's more of a hunch. But it may well be that Spirit's current analysis of a rocky outcrop dubbed 'Methuselah', in the Columbia Hills of Gusev Crater, will soon be giving us definitive information one way or the other.

Isn't it just wonderful stuff?!!! :up:

::Edit:: I know I've waxed lyrical about Lake Ma'adim before. Apologies to those who have tired of my enthusiasm for it.

Palomar · 2005-05-05 07:02:08

*Hello Mr. Blevins; yes, I'm aware of the information you shared in your post (along with the 2 private messages you sent me).

I feel you missed the point of my original question. Refer to Rik and Shaun's posts.

-*-

Shaun wrote:

It's an interesting question.
Of course, we've all known for some time now that salty water once flowed on Mars, so I won't insult your intelligence by dwelling too long on that aspect of it.

Interesting info about Lake Ma'adim. Five times the Great Lakes...wow. Nice refresher information. Really, my memory is getting overloaded. So much stuff I'm keeping track of with astronomy and all, LOL.

Thanks Shaun.

--Cindy

Shaun Barrett · 2005-05-06 04:26:21

Without wishing to labour the point unnecessarily, I found a nice image of the Martian dendritic drainage formations I mentioned:-

The text accompanying the image states:-

Mariner 9 and Viking Orbiter imagery, however, revealed networks of interconnecting dry river beds that exhibited dendritic (from the Greek, meaning "treelike") drainage patterns characteristic of water-carved channels. This is the strongest evidence that Mars was once a warmer and wetter place with sufficient atmospheric pressure to retain liquid water on or near the surface. [Scene is 160 kilometers across, Viking Orbiter image 606A56, centered at 42.5°S 92.6°W. Image processing by Brian Fessler (Lunar and Planetary Institute).]

This text is somewhat conservative in that it doesn't mention the possibility of precipitation having been responsible for the drainage pattern. However, I have certainly seen this kind of Martian terrain associated with rainfall by some authorities in other accounts.

My own simple investigations reveal that the region pictured above lies on the South-South-Eastern border of the Tharsis Bulge, at an altitude of some 8 kms above Datum. In conjunction with the fact that the surface of Lake Ma'adim was some 2-3 kms above Datum, I think this altitude is significant.
Both these facts indicate that liquid water could exist for prolonged periods at considerable altitudes above the Martian equivalent of sea-level. This implies the existence of a much more massive atmosphere and a warmer environment than we see today on Mars.
And I think it implies there was once a great deal of fresh water on Mars as well as the salty water Opportunity has found solid evidence for.

I can hardly wait for the deployment of the Mars Express Ground-Penetrating Radar ( let's hope it goes well ) because it may make a profound contribution to the revolution in knowledge about Mars already instigated by NASA's magnificent Rovers.
:up:

Palomar · 2005-05-06 13:01:51

I found a nice image of the Martian dendritic drainage formations I mentioned:-
...snip...
My own simple investigations reveal that the region pictured above lies on the South-South-Eastern border of the Tharsis Bulge, at an altitude of some 8 kms above Datum. In conjunction with the fact that the surface of Lake Ma'adim was some 2-3 kms above Datum, I think this altitude is significant.
Both these facts indicate that liquid water could exist for prolonged periods at considerable altitudes above the Martian equivalent of sea-level. This implies the existence of a much more massive atmosphere and a warmer environment than we see today on Mars.
And I think it implies there was once a great deal of fresh water on Mars as well as the salty water Opportunity has found solid evidence for.
:up:

*Thanks Shaun! Very interesting (nice photo too). Intriguing to think there might have been a generous quantity of fresh water on Mars at one time.

(...and -- as Marsian evolution went -- what might have been, and also what may have been prevented for whatever unfortunate reason...)

Rainfall on Mars. I know many of us have wondered what happened to ancient Mars' lusher atmosphere.

--Cindy

SpaceNut · 2021-09-17 19:09:35

bump need to fix topic

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-02-09 10:46:23

NASA finds evidence of lakes in unexpected region of Mars

https://news.sky.com/story/nasa-finds-e … s-12806705

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-02-18 13:29:47

How to pull carbon dioxide out of seawater

https://news.mit.edu/2023/carbon-dioxid … ation-0216

Mars: Traces of waves discovered on edge of lake that disappeared billions of years ago

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/science/artic … 65_10.html

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-02-18 13:30:44)

Void · 2023-02-18 14:27:11

Quote (Mars_B4_Moon):

How to pull carbon dioxide out of seawater
https://news.mit.edu/2023/carbon-dioxid … ation-0216

So, I think I know how to couple that with a useful process.

Here we go:

Even under water the contents of the bag should warm from sunlight, and you could have natural or assisted flow of nutrient rich water from below by thermal convection. But you could pump it as well if you wanted to.

Many places in the oceans are nutrient deprived, and yet have good sunlight. They are deserts.

Of course, this then requires the bag to be of a plastic, and it also needs a method to move up and down in the water column, to avoid damage from large waves.

The issue of plastics is corrupt behaviors to dispose of them into the oceans. The issue of microplastics has an unknown ending. So, far, I am not aware of people getting sick or dying from it.

The people farmers do not want plastics as it might solve problems. They want a problem they can solve by taking possession of the freedom of the common people. To enslave them. So, of course they do not want the problems solved. They want an excuse to take what does not belong to them.

Control, and the right to exploit.

You might notice that this method might also produce food using fertilizers that are in the deeper ocean waters.

If this were done on a body of water on Mars, the CO2 could become depleted, and if you kept pushing Martian atmosphere into the water, you would build up Nitrogen and Oxygen and Argon, I think.

There, I made the post "On Topic".

Done.

Last edited by Void (2023-02-18 15:33:35)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-10-07 07:26:52

MIT’s New Desalination System Produces Freshwater That Is “Cheaper Than Tap Water”

https://scitechdaily.com/mits-new-desal … tap-water/

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#1 2004-07-28 10:36:50

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#2 2004-07-28 13:40:02

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#3 2005-04-01 06:52:19

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#4 2005-04-02 00:07:19

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#5 2005-04-02 15:50:42

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#6 2005-04-09 22:35:01

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#7 2005-04-10 07:01:51

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#8 2005-04-10 07:39:58

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#9 2005-04-10 14:42:28

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#10 2005-05-05 00:53:14

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#11 2005-05-05 04:19:27

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#12 2005-05-05 06:47:04

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#13 2005-05-05 07:02:08

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#14 2005-05-06 04:26:21

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#15 2005-05-06 13:01:51

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#16 2021-09-17 19:09:35

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#17 2023-02-09 10:46:23

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#18 2023-02-18 13:29:47

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#19 2023-02-18 14:27:11

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

#20 2023-10-07 07:26:52

Re: Salty -and- Fresh Water?

Board footer