Volcanoes at last? Or some strange artifact of venus alien atmosphere?

Some interesting stuff at the planetary society and some tantalising abstracts.

Thank you! Some fascinating papers, in particlular some dealing with what looks to be a CO-OCS cycle between the lower and middle atmosphere, exact chemistry still to be determined. Apparently some aerosols of unsual composition or unusual size at the poles... could that have some bearing on the question of the 'mode 3' particles? Venus is still guarding its mysteries.

The article above mentions that the UV absorber appears to be drawn from the lower clouds...I wonder if the absorber is being recycled: Brought to the cloud tops, broken down by uv, reconstituted and brought up again... or if there is a fixed amount in the atmosphere and it just goes up and down.... still very mysterious! News from VEX has been...well there hasn't been any for a while now (not a complaint, just an observation), does anyone know if there are any articles or papers in the works?

I hate to be a misery Zvezdichko but it sounds to me like he could be talking about the controversial signs of water already found there by other space probes. I hope I'm wrong though, it's very exciting if he's not!

Yes that works fine thanks! There's clearly a lot still to learn from venus, I hope there's a ballon or aerobot mission going there sometime soon. Could a moderator or admin change the title of this thread to 'Mode 3 particles or sensor illusion? '. I only typed down radar because I'd been looking at Magellan radar maps of venus and my brain has a few wires loose ....

When discussing venus a topic that often comes up is the presence of non spherical 'mode 3' particles in the clouds. One of the first hits that comes up on a search is this article, which suggests that the Mode 3 particles may be a sensor illusion. Has the existence/non existence of mode 3 particles been settled, and if not, are there any plans to investigate them further?

I suspect it was introduced to the chambre to, but I'll ask. For anyone following this topic we're talking with Prof Chevrier here.

The evidence doesn't point to the phoenix site being rich in brine, but if a brine formed from components present at the phoenix site can be stable under accurately reproduced conditions then, given the size of the martian arctic, I'd bet my favourite coat (and it's a very nice coat, if a bit matrix-esque for every day use) that brines do occur, even if only rarely.

There is another thread, here, where we were taking over the formation of brines with Hanna Sizemore, a phoenix team postdoc. She is adamant that even under ideal conditions the most liquid water you'd see at the phoenix site is a few monolayers. However she was fending off talk of liquid droplets on the landers legs, and even open pools of brine, so she might be willing to go as far as 'ten monolayers, in the right spot under the best conditions imaginable' or similar if she doesnt feel like the only skeptic in the room. I hope there's room in the martian arctic for a few exceptional microclimates where brine can form in detectable amounts, becuse I reeally like that coat!

It seems that stable brines can exist on mars, using solutes available at the phoenix landing site, and at the MER's sites and the viking 1 site (see link on post 40), and there are reserves of water ice at lattitudes as low as 45 degrees north (see link on post 44), so I'll eat the coat if there aren't a few damp patches up there from time to time. It's leather so I'll have to get a big tenderiser

A press release from Prof Vincent Chevrier (who's been known to hang out on BAUTforum and answer questions on the Phoenix mission), whose university of Arkansas group do a lot of work simulating conditions on mars.

An small impact could do a good job of mixing dark rock and dust with ice....ok like I said it's my pet idea this month!

But, with regards to the presence of a frozen northern ocean, wouldn't a census of small craters churning up ice be a nice cheap way to map ice distrubutions at depths greater than a meter? I assume that's beyond the limits of current techniques or the ice turned up at these craters wouldn't have been a surprise! A job for someone with patience who doesn't mind combing HIRISE images of mars I think, with some follow up by CRISM to confirm that it is ice not just light toned soil .

I'd suggest that buried ice exposed by small impacts (as seen in this LPSC paper) at low elevations might be a better source of ephemeral liquid water, as it's an idea I've taken a shine to.

As I understand it we can explain the evidence of water using brines and impact phenomena at the average temperatures we see today, so why do we need to invoke some unknown force to warm the planet up?

I think this discussions been done before on this forum by people more knowledgable than me: Here and here. Have a read if you've got the time (lots of time) , it's interesting and quite heated in places!

Edit: Based on the last couple of paragraphs of this report (I don't have access to the full nature article) the significance seems to be that, in the right combination, salts found at the landing sites of the MER's and viking could depress the freezing point of water enough for a stable liquid to form at those locations. There might be some room to discuss how that gels with the theories already discussed, but we'd need to be carefull not to run the discussion into the ground or cross any lines. Doug and the other mods run a zero tolerance / benevolant dictator regime here. You'll notice one of the threads I linked above has been locked for causing the mods headaches!

Some more modelling on the idea of early mars being cold and wet.

I thought that the temperatures in the 'craters of eternal darkness' were similar to those in the outer solar system, IE around 100 deg K? Still a comparison between (putative) mercury organics and the outer solar system bodies organic would be interesting, particularly the effect of abundant metals nearby and higher radiation. A phoenix type lander to one of the poles would be fascinating, but mercury seems as difficult to get to as the outer planets in terms of the energy needed. I hope it's done one day though, mercury is turning out to be a lot more interesting than the baked out rock I was told about in school!

It's a reasonable idea that mercury has water ice in shadowed craters at it's poles, and that meteorites containing organics rain down on the planet the same as with earth. So there's probably some organics mixed in with the ice- and the ice has probably been subjected to impacts, radiation, and possibly even warming by vulcanism. So how would mercury organics compare to those found in ices on bodies in the outer solar system? Edit: A search of the web hasn't turned up much, and I wonder if organic materials would be processed differently, given that mercury is a dense rocky world near the sun, as opposed to an icy world far from it.

Isn't the phoenix data relating to thin films of water kind of ambiguous? There were some things, like soil stickiness, that could be evidence for thin water films, but the one sensor that would have given an unambiguous answer, the TECP, told us the soil was bizarrely dry considering it was sitting on a slab of ice and the humidity in the air above could reach 100%.

I think that the effect small ice exposing impacts would have on Martian soil and rock would depend on how frequent they are. Ice exposed on the surface at low latitudes will be more active than ice sequestered a meter or so below. If small impacts are frequent then they might up the overall rate of water activity at the surface.

Reading this paper, which i'm sure most people here already have, the thought has occured to me that occasional exceptional events , like small meteorite impacts , could bring preserved ice to the surface in areas where it would not ordinarily be stable, and that this ice might in a smallest of ways melt (short lived thin films on rocks in the debris field etc). Over bilions of years, could events like this account for some of the chemical evidence we see of liquid water on mars? That could have some bearing on theories like an ancient northern ocean.

New scientist has this story about radar evidence supporting Hotei Arcus as a cryovolcano, here's a link to the LPSC abstract.

Clays need moisture to form, I believe. Thats undoubtably a huge oversimplification though....

Mike, would it be possible to place an optical microscope on its side, close enough to observe the grains through the glass, and allow it to move up and down on a platform (maybe a lab jack?) so that you could get some close up images of the grains at various levels? We have a couple of old and unused microscopes around our lab, I'm pretty sure no one would notice if I cannabalised one. I'm wondering if I can get chemistry to loan me some heptane so I can have a go myself!

That would be tame compared to actually landing on one of the lakes. besides we don't even know if they're lakes, they could be huge masses of chunky and gooey hydrocarbon goop.

If that is correct it does go against a biological source, you'd expect microbes to be concentrated in areas where water ice was more common and there was some chance of liquid water.

Happy birthday mate, and happy christmas and new year to everyone as well!

There's some more on it over on the planetary society blog. Thanks Emily! The description of how water adsorption works is excellent, it really clarifies the difference between thin films of water and thin films of liquid water.