Mars Ice Deposit Holds as Much Water as Lake Superior

[557833]

Lake Superior has enough water to flood all of North and South America to almost one foot.

[giarc]

Was intrigued by this comment so I looked it up.

North and South America have a surface area of about 42.55 million sq km or 4.58x10^14 sq ft (1 foot deep water is obviously 4.58x10^14 cubic feet).

Lake Superior has a volume of 12,100 cubic km or 4.2x10^14 cubic feet.

That's unbelievable!

[jessewmc]

Yet another perspective: From http://water.usgs.gov/edu/wateruse-total.html in 2010 306 billion gallons of fresh water per day used in the united states. Volume of Lake Superior is very roughly 3,000,000,000,000,000 gallons.

V Lake Superior / (306 * 10^12 * 365) = 26.86 years

About 27 years of entire US water supply assuming no water cycle. Now that I do the math (hopefully I didn't screw it up), I'm not sure that's a big number or a small one actually.

[sfifs]

I read the post title and thought "huh that's all?". Then I read your comment!

Also puts into perspective just how much water there is on earth.

[rubyn00bie]

Or... cover the surface of mars with ~ 3 inches (8 cm) of water.

[superdude]

Really puts into perspective how much water is in the great lakes!

[verytrivial]

Water behaves very strangely on Mars. http://www2.cnrs.fr/en/2753.htm -- Note the videos.

[Practicality]

Interesting that this is in the "Utopia Planitia." That is starting to look like a probable location to set up a colony.

[baron816]

Mars is still less habitable than the Earth would be post nuclear war.

[codecamper]

If we could just pack up some of this extra CO2 & get it over there, maybe we'd have a new planet! I wonder how many PPM you'd need?

[pasbesoin]

Yeah, but how are we going to reheat and spin up the core?

[ChrisClark]

Mars is 96% CO2, I think it might already have enough. In fact, the problem is trying to get rid of it all.

[Ftuuky]

Good spot to land the Spacex's ITV.

[Nomentatus]

There are places on Mars where water ice is available year-round, and carbon dioxide ice seasonally, at high latitudes. Therefore, I'd say this discovery, at low latitudes, has few implications for colonization unless there's a fair bit of carbon dioxide ice mixed in. So I'm waiting for word on that before getting too excited.

[mozumder]

The entire core of Mars is made out of ice. The reactor melts it, and it makes air.

[flippyhead]

Why this excellent movie reference is down voted, I know not.

[fatdog]

King of Mars. Called it.

[techterrier]

Or mud, as this stuff otherwise known.

[Practicality]

You're going to be hard pressed to out pedantic NASA scientists. They probably spent quite some time deliberating over the term "Ice Deposit" as the most accurate one.

[peeters]

Given the temperature and pressure of Mars' atmosphere, "permafrost" might be a better comparison.

[InclinedPlane]

It is not mud. Firstly it is not liquid, it's frozen. Secondly, it's not permafrost where it's mixed with a considerable amount of dirt, it's ice, a sub-surface glacier, one of many on Mars, merely the largest one we've discovered so far.

[tempymctempface]

you're this smug about an article describing a huge water deposit on mars? I'd hate to get your opinion on something more mundane

[ginko]

Which is about a millionth of the total water on Earth.

[alexhawdon]

From TFA: "It represents less than one percent of all known water ice on Mars..."

[Dove]

Yeah, Mars. We're not impressed. It's just a muddy frozen lake, not an ocean. Total crap idea. Also, your web design sucks.

[mimimimi]

This should be enough for a colony though. With a recycling program it would probably last indefinitely. Much better than bringing the water from Earth.