Cornell University astronomers explain the Martian water reflection, South Pole, suggesting that bright reflections are more likely to come from geological layers than liquid water. Earth’s bright reflections are often traces of liquid water, as is the case with Lake Vostok, the world‘s largest subglacial lake, but Mars is too cold to form a similar lake.
In fact, Mars does have bright reflections and needs to be explained, so another theory is put forward. Through computer simulations, it is proved that similar strong reflections can be generated by interference of geological layers without liquid water or other rare materials.Using four material simulations, atmosphere, water ice, dry ice and basalt, the researchers assigned each layer a corresponding dielectric constant, which is an inherent material property that describes electromagnetic radiation.shootpassed throughinteraction.
The results showed that when the two layers of carbon dioxide were separated by a layer of powdered ice, the resulting reflection was as bright as actually observed. The researchers said they would use a layer of carbon dioxide embedded in water ice, which is known to be abundant near the surface of the ice cap. In principle, similar results can be obtained if rock layers, or even powdered water ice, are used, because the research model shows that the effect of layer thickness and spacing on reflected power is far more important than the composition of the basement layer. While the paper doesn’t have a single simplified stratigraphy to explain each observation, it demonstrates that the bright reflections can be produced without liquid water.
It is important to know what is not liquid water on Mars, because if there is liquid water, there may be life, or it could be used for future missions to Mars. It cannot be ruled out that liquid water may also have an important influence on the age of the polar cap, the heating of the interior of Mars, and the recent evolution of climate geology. None of the results disproves the possibility of liquid water on Mars, the research team says, but argues that the interference hypothesis is more consistent with other observations because there seems to be no way to prove who is right and who is wrong other than actual drilling. The research results were published in the journal “Nature Astronomy”.
▲ The edge of the layered sediments at the South Pole of Mars. (Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)
(This article is reproduced with permission from the Taipei Planetarium; the source of the first image: NASA)
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