Astronomy Rules :: Essays Papers

Astronomy RulesMars would make a muddied host for the Winter Olympics. Yes, theres the lack of air to consider. tho to a greater extent important, Martian snow turns out to be rock hard. Worse, it is melting away at an alarming rate.In item, Mars may be in the center of a period of profound climate change, according to a in the buff study that shows dramatic year-to-year losses of snow at the south pole. It is non yet clear, though, if the evidence of a single years change represents a trend. But the study provides a surprising new view of the nature of the southern cover lens hood, said Michael Caplinger of Malin lay Science Systems.Its saying that the permanent cap isnt quite so permanent as we thought, Caplinger said in a telephone interview.A second study of twain poles finds that Red orbiter snow is more dense and hard than the euphemistic packed pulverization advertised by Eastern ski resorts, and nothing like the blue-blooded flakes expected in Utah for the 2002 Olympics. Instead, its hard as ice.Though unrelated, the deuce studies were based on observations made by NASAs Mars Global Surveyor and both will be published in the Dec. 7 issue of the diary Science. The combined observations represent an exciting new way to look at Mars atmosphere and how it interacts over fourth dimension with the polar caps and even soil at mid-latitudes, said David A. Paige, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles.The new data ar showing whats going on on Mars seasonally as well as on interannual time scales in much more detail than we had with previous observations, Paige told SPACE.com.Where the snow is both(prenominal) of Mars polar regions are cover in permanent caps of ice. Scientists have known since the 1970s that some of the ice in the north is piddle ice. There may be water ice in the south, too, but there is no firm evidence. Both poles are covered in a veneer of carbon dioxide ice, popularly called dry ice here on Earth. Each c ap grows during its pass and recedes in summer. The research into snow density, lead by David E. Smith of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, confirm that much of the Martian snow is in fact composed of carbon dioxide.The study involved more than 400 billion elevation measurements spanning more than one Martian year, from February 1999 through May of 2001. The orbiting ballistic capsule bounced a beam of laser light to the surface and back, recording the round-trip time to determine elevations within 4 inches (10 centimeters).