Substance found in Antarctic ice may solve a martian mystery
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/...an-mystery
INTRO: Researchers have discovered a common martian mineral deep within an ice core from Antarctica. The find suggests the mineral—a brittle, yellow-brown substance known as jarosite—was forged the same way on both Earth and Mars: from dust trapped within ancient ice deposits. It also reveals how important these glaciers were on the Red Planet: Not only did they carve valleys, the researchers say, but they also helped create the very stuff Mars is made of.
Jarosite was first spotted on Mars in 2004, when the NASA Opportunity rover rolled over fine-grained layers of it. The discovery made headlines because jarosite needs water to form, along with iron, sulfate, potassium, and acidic conditions.
These requirements aren’t easily satisfied on Mars, and scientists began to theorize how the mineral could have become so abundant... (MORE)
Earth has lost 28 trillion tons of ice since the mid-1990s
https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...mid-1990s/
INTRO: The world’s frozen places are shrinking—and they’re disappearing at faster rates as time goes by. In the 1990s, the world was losing around 800 billion metric tons of ice each year. Today, that number has risen to around 1.2 trillion tons.
Altogether, the planet lost a whopping 28 trillion tons of ice between 1994 and 2017. That’s according to a new study, published today in the journal The Cryosphere, calculating all the ice lost around the globe over the last few decades.
It’s the first to provide a truly global analysis of the planet’s vanishing ice, the authors say. It accounts for both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, Arctic and Antarctic sea ice and mountain glaciers all over the world.
The research combines measurements from a variety of sources—mainly satellite studies, as well as on-site observations and numerical models... (MORE)
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/...an-mystery
INTRO: Researchers have discovered a common martian mineral deep within an ice core from Antarctica. The find suggests the mineral—a brittle, yellow-brown substance known as jarosite—was forged the same way on both Earth and Mars: from dust trapped within ancient ice deposits. It also reveals how important these glaciers were on the Red Planet: Not only did they carve valleys, the researchers say, but they also helped create the very stuff Mars is made of.
Jarosite was first spotted on Mars in 2004, when the NASA Opportunity rover rolled over fine-grained layers of it. The discovery made headlines because jarosite needs water to form, along with iron, sulfate, potassium, and acidic conditions.
These requirements aren’t easily satisfied on Mars, and scientists began to theorize how the mineral could have become so abundant... (MORE)
Earth has lost 28 trillion tons of ice since the mid-1990s
https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...mid-1990s/
INTRO: The world’s frozen places are shrinking—and they’re disappearing at faster rates as time goes by. In the 1990s, the world was losing around 800 billion metric tons of ice each year. Today, that number has risen to around 1.2 trillion tons.
Altogether, the planet lost a whopping 28 trillion tons of ice between 1994 and 2017. That’s according to a new study, published today in the journal The Cryosphere, calculating all the ice lost around the globe over the last few decades.
It’s the first to provide a truly global analysis of the planet’s vanishing ice, the authors say. It accounts for both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, Arctic and Antarctic sea ice and mountain glaciers all over the world.
The research combines measurements from a variety of sources—mainly satellite studies, as well as on-site observations and numerical models... (MORE)