Search for life on Mars accelerates as new bodies of water found below planet's surface - National Post

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According to the Independent, the MARSIS helped researchers make a previous breakthrough when a large underground lake was found during a study in 2018. However, at that time there was some skepticism regarding the findings and data collected. In order to clearly determine whether the body of water was liquid, researchers felt they needed to investigate further.

To do so, a team led by planetary scientist Elena Pettinelli from Roma Tre University looked to existing methods to study the lakes beneath Earth’s Antarctic glaciers, using satellites in orbit to bounce pulses back and forth. In doing so, they were able to compare data obtained from MARSIS of the area surrounding the body of water found on Mars, which allowed them to confirm that it was in fact liquid. The method also allowed researchers to locate a number of other wet patches around the larger body of water under Mars’s surface, suggesting a number of salty lakes. 

“Not only did we confirm the position, extent and strength of the reflector from our 2018 study but we found three new bright areas,” said Professor Pettinelli, who is also an author on the study published in Nature Astronomy.

“The main lake is surrounded by smaller bodies of liquid water, but because of the technical characteristics of the radar, and of its distance from the Martian surface, we cannot conclusively determine whether they are interconnected,” she said in a statement.

The subsurface lakes appear to be “hypersaline solutions” — extremely briney liquid with high concentrations of salt — which may explain why they are not frozen solid, given the extreme cold of Mars’ south pole. 

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2020-09-30 14:34:43Z
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