Frozen Sea At Martian Equator Options

[Bert]

'Pack ice' suggests frozen sea on Mars

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7039

A mirror of the slashdotted PDF document cited in the article (with pictures of the "ice plates"):

http://www.libera.be/files/1741.pdf

[edstrick]

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2002/pdf/2026.pdf

It's always amuzing when press-release hype conveniently ignores prior studies that reach the same conclusions, just with somewhat less compelling evidence, and the press is too unclueable to know or find it.

Quote fragments: ".... Crater counts indicate these channels could be only a few million years old..." "... Simply stated, this is what a fresh outflow channel deposit would look like. The outflow event deposited ice rich sediment in a low gradient plain and then froze in place...." "...It is possible that shallow ground ice is still present if a sufficient depth of insulating mantle material is covering the ice..."

Rice, Parker, Russel, and Knudscen, Lunar and Planetary Science (abstracts) XXXIII (2002) Morphology of Fresh Outflow channel Deposits on Mars.

There is an enormous amount of downloadable info in the current and recent LPSC abstract volumes online.