MARTIAN OCEAN... damn!!

Well, it's frozen solid, but European scientists say that it's there. I'll let an excerpt from an article from News.BBC.co.uk explain:

The interpretation is based on images taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on Europe's Mars Express spacecraft. These show extensive fields of large, platy features - reminiscent of the fractured ice floes found in polar regions on Earth.

Finding exposed ice at the equator would be unlikely. Very low pressures on the planet would lead to sublimation - the ice would erode over time straight to water vapour.

But the research group, led by John Murray, from the Open University, UK, tells Nature that a crust of dust and volcanic ash, perhaps just a few centimetres thick, has prevented this happening.

"The story runs that water flowed in some kind of massive catastrophic event; pack ice formed on top of that water and broke up, and then the whole thing froze rigid," explains Professor Muller.

"Large amounts of dust then fell over that area. The dust fell through the water and on top of the pack ice, which explains why the pack ice is a different hue to the area around it."

That sorta makes sense, doesn't it? The point is, up until now, scientists thought that there was only ice at the caps--but a Martian ocean?? That's a whole different reason to believe life could have existed there.

Hell man, if there's some sort of heat from inside the planet, liquid water could exist down there and that'd mean there was an even better chance at life on Mars right now.

Of course, before anything else, I'm a scifi writer, so naturally I'm hopeful that there is life somewhere out there. Still more ice means more water (duh) which means a larger likelihood for life.

Now, if we could just get someone up there to check for us...

Hey, Bush, didn't you have a plan for that?

Read more about the Martian ocean at the BBC News website.