3 ms·

How many times have they found this? I feel like I see this headline once a month.

hmd_imputer 7y ago
That is exactly what I wanted to say as well. It seems every other month, I see the exact the same title. At some point, it loses it becomes just another useless news
goodcanadian 7y ago
Yes, there are subtleties here that are missed by the headline. Water ice on Mars is not new, particularly in the polar ice caps. What is new is that they have produced a map of (very) near surface water ice at lower latitudes (within a few centimetres of the surface). This isn't exactly a surprise, but it also hasn't really been shown before. It shows that the water is there and widely available.
- izzydata 7y ago
  I'd like to see someone gather up all of the articles relating to water on mars and place them on a timeline with brief summaries of the actual progress being done. To most people it looks like water on mars over and over.
  - goodcanadian 7y ago
    It doesn't help that with this and most other science news, press releases always try to make the discoveries look like major breakthroughs when they are, in fact, incremental additions to our knowledge.
  - ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
    I would love a website that did that... for this and other topics like "Stem Cell break throughs". Science-News-Timelines.Org - Startup idea, maybe?
sb057 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_discoveries_of_water_on_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_discoveries_of_w...
mturmon 7y ago
From the abstract of the article in GRL, here's a sentence on the novelty of this particular work: > While several investigations have already predicted, identified, and characterized some properties of near‐surface ice on Mars, our results constitute a significant advance in the context of the upcoming crewed exploration because 1) they focus on very shallow depths accessible with limited equipment, 2) they provide continuous regional coverage including the mid‐latitudes, and 3) they yield moderate spatial resolution maps (3 ppd [= pixels per degree of lat/lon, I believe]) relevant to landing site selection studies. The basic measurement used is surface thermal emission vs. time, which is inverted using a thermal model with a rock/ice depth boundary, thermal emission from the surface, albedo, solar insolation angle, conduction by a faint atmosphere, etc. The paper also mentions that one of the co-authors passed away unexpectedly while the paper was being written. RIP.

That is exactly what I wanted to say as well. It seems every other month, I see the exact the same title. At some point, it loses it becomes just another useless news

goodcanadian 7y ago

Yes, there are subtleties here that are missed by the headline. Water ice on Mars is not new, particularly in the polar ice caps. What is new is that they have produced a map of (very) near surface water ice at lower latitudes (within a few centimetres of the surface). This isn't exactly a surprise, but it also hasn't really been shown before. It shows that the water is there and widely available.

izzydata 7y ago
I'd like to see someone gather up all of the articles relating to water on mars and place them on a timeline with brief summaries of the actual progress being done. To most people it looks like water on mars over and over.
- goodcanadian 7y ago
  It doesn't help that with this and most other science news, press releases always try to make the discoveries look like major breakthroughs when they are, in fact, incremental additions to our knowledge.
- ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
  I would love a website that did that... for this and other topics like "Stem Cell break throughs". Science-News-Timelines.Org - Startup idea, maybe?

sb057 7y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_discoveries_of_water_on_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_discoveries_of_w...

mturmon 7y ago

From the abstract of the article in GRL, here's a sentence on the novelty of this particular work: > While several investigations have already predicted, identified, and characterized some properties of near‐surface ice on Mars, our results constitute a significant advance in the context of the upcoming crewed exploration because 1) they focus on very shallow depths accessible with limited equipment, 2) they provide continuous regional coverage including the mid‐latitudes, and 3) they yield moderate spatial resolution maps (3 ppd [= pixels per degree of lat/lon, I believe]) relevant to landing site selection studies. The basic measurement used is surface thermal emission vs. time, which is inverted using a thermal model with a rock/ice depth boundary, thermal emission from the surface, albedo, solar insolation angle, conduction by a faint atmosphere, etc. The paper also mentions that one of the co-authors passed away unexpectedly while the paper was being written. RIP.