Geophysical Detection of Subsurface Water on Mars - Houston Tx, August 2001
Updated on June 1st 2001
These are fairly solid scientific articles, written within a space
limit so they are terse and may be difficult to read. Files are in pdf
format so you will need Adobe's pdf reader either integrated with your
browser or as a stand-alone application.
The Introduction to each one gives an overview
of the topic.
This paper introduces the concept of liquid Carbon dioxide as a likely feature of the subsurface of Mars and discusses how it might be detected and what the consequences of it are for our search for water on Mars. This is the easiest piece to read, and has a set of links for further reading. The relative abundance of H2O and CO2 on Mars are discussed carefully, and an excess of CO2 is predicted compared to what can be stored as carbonates and clathrates. This leads to the expectation that the regolith of Mars is saturated with CO2, at least locally. This contribution tackles the misconceptions concerning geothermal gradients on Mars. Historically, quite large values have been assumed, almost as large as that for the Earth. In fact, several lines of evidence show that Mars is much less active than the Earth and has much lower gradients. This makes any water on Mars very deep and hard to find.
Created:
May 2002
Last modified: May 2002
Authorised by: Head, Earth Sciences
Maintained
by: Nick Hoffman
Email: nhoffman@unimelb.edu.au