They Finally Found Liquid Water on Mars

Bright Side

Scientists have finally found liquid water on Mars, and it's a huge deal! Buried under layers of ice near the planet’s south pole, this hidden lake gives hope that life might exist, or at least once existed, on the red planet. The discovery was made using radar data from a Mars orbiter, showing a lake that’s about 12 miles wide. It’s not exactly like the lakes on Earth—it’s super salty, which is why it stays liquid in Mars' freezing temperatures. Still, finding water is a game-changer because water is key to life. Who knows what other secrets Mars might be hiding?

Transcript

00:00Recently, scientists have made an astounding discovery that can change the entire course of Mars exploration.

00:07Apparently, there are oceans of liquid water on the Red Planet.

00:11So, the future looks bright.

00:13We could use this water to support future missions, and then even relocate to Mars,

00:18since we wouldn't need to worry about where to get this precious liquid, right?

00:23Well, there's one big problem.

00:25Well, these oceans of liquid water are in Mars, so deep inside that we aren't likely to get there.

00:31At least, that's what a new analysis of seismic data collected by the Mars Inside Lander claims.

00:37Huge reserves of liquid water seem to be the best explanation for some seismic quirks of the Red Planet.

00:44So, all this precious water is out of our reach.

00:48But we need to find it to solve the puzzle of the aquatic history of our blushing, dusty neighbor.

00:53And the first thing we need to do is identify where the water is and how much of it the planet is hiding.

01:01Navigation has confirmed that the parachute has deployed, and we're seeing significant deceleration.

01:06Now, our rovers are scurrying about on the surface of the Red Planet,

01:10gathering all the available data on the planet's surface geology.

01:14And it's getting increasingly obvious that Mars was once covered with water.

01:19Many factors, from Martian terrains to ancient dry lakebeds and deltas,

01:24suggest that there was a time when the planet was quite soppy.

01:29These days, there's still some water on and right below the surface of Mars.

01:33But it's in the form of ice, and nowhere near what Mars had in the ancient past.

01:38To understand how much of it could have been on the Red Planet billions of years ago,

01:42we must know where all this water went.

01:46There are two spots where the water could have gone – into space or toward the interior of Mars.

01:53Then it could have been isolated, as either liquid reservoirs or ice deposits.

01:58Currently, we don't have any way of measuring how much water once leaked away.

02:03But now, we finally can find out more about the gooey center of the Red Planet.

02:08All thanks to the Mars InSight lander.

02:11It isn't operating anymore.

02:13But from November 2018 to December 2022,

02:17it was listening to the hums and rumbles and monitoring the activity below its feet.

02:26The thing is, acoustic waves generated by seismic activity deep inside the planet

02:32can change according to the composition and density of the material these waves are moving through.

02:38And scientists can get a lot of information analyzing the behavior of seismic waves.

02:43In this case, they used a model similar to those used to map underground oil fields and aquifers on our home planet.

02:51Then, with the help of this model, they analyzed the data gathered by InSight on Mars.

02:57They discovered that the best explanation could be that there was a layer of fractured rocks

03:02whose cracks were filled with water deep under the surface of the Red Planet.

03:06That layer could be at a depth of 7 to 12 miles.

03:11That's why it would be extremely tricky for future missions to get to it.

03:15And still, the new discovery could help us understand the Martian water cycle.

03:20Confirming the existence of a large reservoir of liquid water

03:23can help us sneak a peek at what the climate on Mars used to be

03:27or what it could be like one day.

03:30And if once, Mars had a lot of water.

03:34It could have been habitable in the ancient past and might become habitable in the future.

03:40Water is crucial for life as we know it.

03:42So, underground water reservoirs on the Red Planet could already be habitable.

03:48Maybe, while we're talking, tiny microorganisms or even some tentacled creatures

03:53are living their lives in the comfort of their underground home.

03:56On Earth, super-deep mines do host life.

04:00And the bottom of the ocean, with its immense, unbelievable pressures, isn't lifeless either.

04:06So far, we haven't found any evidence of life on Mars.

04:10But for now, it sounds like this place has the potential to sustain life.

04:16Insight data has shown that there isn't likely to be a lot of water ice in the upper crust of the planet,

04:21at least in the region around the lander.

04:24But if it turns out that there is a water-rich layer deep below the surface

04:29and stretching around the entire globe of the planet,

04:32then there would be enough water to fill ancient ocean beds and even more.

04:39Now, Mars isn't the only place outside Earth where there is water

04:42or where we might one day find water.

04:45Take the good old moon, for example.

04:47On Earth's natural satellite, water can be found all over the surface.

04:51But it's not the water you might be imagining.

04:54On the Moon, water remains mostly as ice, and is distributed unevenly.

05:00For example, the poles of the Moon are the regions that never receive sunlight.

05:04This is the reason they're extremely cold.

05:07And it's no wonder there's a lot of ice there.

05:10The ice in these areas is often mixed with the lunar soil and hiding deep below the surface.

05:15Then there's Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn.

05:19In reality, it's not that large, just 314 miles across.

05:24In other words, this moon is small enough to fit inside Arizona.

05:28Ooh, we should try that.

05:30Well, interestingly, when the Cassini space probe first arrived at Saturn,

05:35researchers were expecting Enceladus to be a frozen ball of ice.

05:39But what they saw was plumes of icy particles and water vapor erupting from geysers on the Moon's surface.

05:45It was clear that there was a massive ocean between the Moon's rocky core and its icy shell.

05:53Then there's Jupiter's Moon Europa.

05:56Scientists think that this world is one of the most promising places in the solar system

06:00when it comes to searching for new life forms.

06:03That's because Europa has a huge saltwater ocean as deep as 40 to 100 miles.

06:09And even though it's under a layer of ice that is likely to be 10 to 20 miles thick,

06:14it's still potentially habitable.

06:17Astronomers believe that plumes of water might erupt from cracks in the ice shell

06:21and release the contents of the Moon's ocean into space.

06:25The temperature, pressure, and chemistry are very different on Europa.

06:30And astronomers aren't sure yet how the ice behaves there.

06:34That's the main reason they haven't figured out yet

06:36how deep or large the water reservoirs on Europa are

06:39and how long they need to refreeze.

06:42But out of all the places where we could find water in the universe,

06:47the most bizarre is probably open space.

06:50In 2011, two teams of astronomers discovered a cloud of water floating freely among stars.

06:57It was the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected.

07:01So this massive cloud of water vapor surrounds a black hole.

07:06But not just any black hole.

07:08This one's a quasar located 12 billion light-years from Earth.

07:12The conditions around this quasar must be really special

07:15to create such an enormous amount of water.

07:18This cloud contains 140 trillion times the volume of all the water on Earth.

07:24That's enough to give every person on the planet

07:26a whole planet's worth of water 20,000 times over.

07:30Sounds wild, doesn't it?

07:32But there's something even cooler.

07:34Astronomers think this water cloud formed just 1.6 billion years after the universe began.

07:40This discovery is yet another sign

07:42that water has been around all over the universe, even in its early days.

07:47But here's the kicker.

07:49Until they found this, scientists had never detected water vapor so far back in time.

07:55Sure, there's water in our Milky Way galaxy, but most of it's frozen solid in ice.

08:00This discovery really pushes the boundaries of what we know about water in the universe.

08:05As we saw, the darkness, the universe is

08:16the only one that's placed in

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