The likelihood of lakes of liquid water hidden under the southern polar ice cap is not as high as it used to be.The paper found that the temperatures were too cold for water to remain unfrozen. A new study has found that the radar signal that was interpreted as liquid water was probably volcanic rock.The researchers want to determine if the terrain on Mars could produce strong echoes if it were covered by an ice sheet.Some volcanic-related terrains could produce a very strong analog signal to what is seen at the South polar cap.There are underground water supplies at the south pole.The researchers said that a patch of highly radar-reflective 1.4 kilometers under the ice was consistent with nothing more than an underground pool of liquid water.There were more shiny reflective patches that suggested a whole network of underground lakes.This would be huge. The underground bodies of water are places where we can find life that uses chemical reactions to survive. If there is life on Mars, we might find it in a similar environment. Mars is too cold to hold liquid."For water to be sustained this close to the surface, you need both a very salty environment and a strong, locally generated heat source, but that doesn't match what we know of this region," says planetary scientist Cyril Grima of the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics.The question is, what the heck are those shiny patches?A paper looking at the data found that frozen clay could be similar to the signal detected by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) instrument on the European Space Agency's Mars Express probe.They took a different approach. They put a virtual ice sheet over the entire radar globe of Mars, showing what the red planet looks like.They looked for reflective patches that were similar to the ones they thought were water. The patches were mapped against the known geology of Mars. The patches were nicely matched with the volcanic terrain.ril GrimaMars might be covered in ice. There are red spots.Similar to frozen clay, volcanic rock is rich in metal such as iron. We know that Mars has a lot of iron and volcanic rock.If the ice cap is likely to be frozen clay, future missions could try to find out if that is the case.New avenues for exploration are offered by the research. They can help us understand the history of water on Mars.The beauty of Grima's finding is that it knocks down the idea of liquid water under the planet's south pole, but it also gives us precise places to look for evidence of ancient lakes and riverbeds and test hypotheses about the wider drying out.Two scientists are going to be working on a proposal to use radar-based remote sensing to try and locate water on Mars, as well as learn more about the red planet.Smith says that science isn't perfect on the first try. In planetary science, we're looking at places no one has ever visited and relying on instruments that sense everything remotely.The research has been published.
