Dr. Kaku's Universe

We of course have the two robot landers on the surface of Mars (Spirit and Opportunity). The Spirit Rover recently went into hibernation mode and is no longer communicating with us—the Mars Exploration Rover website states that “Spirit remains silent at her location on the west  side of Home Plate. No communication has been received from the rover since Sol 2210 (March 22, 2010). It is likely that Spirit has experienced a low-power fault and has turned off all sub-systems, including communication, and gone into a deep sleep, trying to recharge her batteries.” The Opportunity Rover however is still making her way to Endeavor crater and drove on the planet five times within this past week.

These rovers have found evidence that once upon a time, water did flow freely on the surface. In fact, just a few years ago the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter sent us photographs of layering on the bedrock. On the surface of the Earth, if you have flowing water it produces the same type of layering effect which looks like rings of halos that permeate the bedrock. This indicates that water can still flow on the surface of Mars. Many people would say “So what? Even if we find evidence of tiny little pockets of water on the surface; this certainly does not indicate that there is life. Mars seems to be a lifeless planet unless there are hot springs under the surface." However, there is some good news to this. If there proves to be large quantities of water of Mars, it means that one day we could possibly use that for things like rocket fuel. We could use electrolysis to break apart water into hydrogen and oxygen and then use the re-combination as a form of rocket fuel. Some people have even suggested that we should give our astronauts a one-way ticket to Mars which would give them an added incentive to figure out a way to create enough fuel for a return trip back home.

Even while we search for evidence of liquid water on Mars, there are still almost a billion people here on Earth that lack a reliable source of clean drinking water.  Earlier this year at the UN water conference, a NASA scientist (Essam Heggy) suggested using a ground-penetrating satellite radar originally developed for Mars to find water in the desert areas such as the Middle East and Africa. According to Heggy, the NASA radar can penetrate down (up to half a mile) to find liquid water with hopes of construction efforts to tap into them for the creation of wells.

So, in closing, we have learned that the most advanced satellites created strictly for purposes of searching for liquid water on other worlds have started to become beneficial to searching for water on desert ravaged lands here on Earth. We have hopes that in the future, with the help of NASA technology, clean drinking water can be provided to nations that have otherwise struggled to have something as simple as clean drinking water.

According to a new study by scientists at the Astromaterials Research Science Directorate at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, “Mud volcanoes themselves are an indicator of a fluid-rich subsurface, and they bring up material from relatively deep parts of the subsurface that we might not have a chance to see otherwise." The scientists used photography equipment from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to examine the structure of some of these mounds and their flow-like features. They are convinced that there is a possibility that the mounds were caused by other processes (see last image). They believe that these features “occur elsewhere in the northern plains of Mars, were good places to search for signs of life.” As you may or may not know, one of the main goals of the two Mars Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) was to determine whether life ever arose on Mars. As the NASA Web site states: “From the tiniest bacterium to the largest tree, all life as we know it requires water. Though we don’t yet know if life ever existed on Mars, within weeks of arriving, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity discovered that the plains of the Meridian surface were once a water-soaked place.”

Liquid Water—Can We Find It on Mars?

Detectives sometimes say “Follow the money when you want to crack a case.” Scientists, by contrast, say “Follow the water.” Water is plentiful throughout the Universe, mainly in the form of ice—but liquid water is both rare and precious. In our solar system for example, liquid water is only found in large quantities here on Earth and perhaps on a moon of Jupiter, under its ice cover.

You may have heard the saying liquid water is “The Universal Solvent”. It is in some sense the amniotic fluid of life, it can dissolve most minerals and chemicals besides certain oils and non-soluble compounds and it also serves as the mixing bowl for organic chemistry. Carbon has four bonds and because of that we can create chains of carbon atoms, sometimes called hydro-carbons, out of which you can form amino acids and proteins. So, in other words, where we find liquid water we have the tantalizing possibility of finding, eventually, DNA.

Looking at photographs of its geological structure, we know that Mars once had flowing water. We see remnants of evidence of an ocean bed perhaps the size of the United States. We see river beds, especially river beds (image below) that have emanated from craters. We also know that there is water on Mars however in the form of ice at the poles and also in the permafrost underneath the Martian surface.

Well, if Mars once had these great oceans and lakes and streams, what happened to them and where did they go? Mars is a small planet, it has small gravity and it cannot cling onto an atmosphere, so eventually atmospheric pressure began to drop on the surface until it hit the boiling point of water. Liquid water on the surface of Mars will boil all by itself because the atmospheric pressure there is only 1% that of Earth. In fact, in outer space; a glass of water will boil all by itself. If a human, for example, were to walk on the surface of Mars without the aid of a spacesuit or specialized equipment, first the blood within the body would begin to boil, pressure would build out at about 15 lbs per square inch and sadly the person would explode in all directions and the blood would crystallize into ice crystals. If you remember, we saw similar scenes in the movie "Total Recall" and also "Mission to Mars."

Some scientists think these domed features (above) on Mars are mud volcanoes, and could provide windows into Mars' astrobiological past. Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.

To be continued...