Good news: Euro sat spots liquid pools on Mars. Bad news: Under ice, saltier than someone who put last penny into a failed crypto biz Pools of salty liquid surround a larger lake of water hidden beneath a thick crust of ice below the Martian south pole. That's according to findings published in Nature Astronomy on Monday. Astronomers analyzing radar data from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft detected a bright layer buried 1.5km (1 mile) …
"Here's a planet where life has pretty much been ruled out, though."
Life as we know it ITYM. So long as there's an energy gradient and materials that could be used to store genetic data in some form even if its something completely out there such as stable vortexes in a molten liquid, then there's always the potential for some sort of life to evolve even if it is absolutely nothing whatsoever like ours.
> I find it difficult to imagine a 3000+C° gas giant
Me too. Especially so near an active star.
On the other hand we don't know how long it has been there. Maybe the gas giant is getting progressively stripped of its gas, and in a (astronomically) short time it will be mostly "Gone with the (solar) Wind"?
On the contrary, there are many gas giants that have been found close to their star and tidally locked.
It's a wonder why our own Jupiter didn't end up there as well - except we have Saturn.
This astrophysicist thinks that is the reason.
gas it might be, what what element is in gaseous form ? At those temperatures the transition elements are most likely, not light ones. As for life, the randomisation by heat makes any stable matter complex highly unlikely, let alone life. Wish fulfillment, too much cheap later Star Trek or worse, blah blah
The idea also explains both the asteroid belt and the small size of Mars (the rest of the mass which would have made a bigger Mars is in that belt.
A bigger Mars with a decent magnetic dynamo core would have held onto it’s atmosphere and surface water. A moderate greenhouse (those volcanoes) could even have kept it reasonably toasty. Not tropical perhaps but mild to freezing. Definitely fine for life.
Can you imagine the first telescopes turned to the Blue/Green planet (war god if not red?) may well have seen oceans not just ‘canals’. Two cradles of life in the same system. With known life on Mars we would not have stopped with Luna. We would have gone there before now.
I personally find it difficult to imagine a common or garden gas giant which up until now I understood is theorized not to have a conventional surface and consists predominantly of hydrogen and helium, the two lowest mass elements in the universe . Here we have a comparison which contradicts that theory by proposing a surface while swerving the obvious question, if iron were to vaporize on the 'surface' what does the 'surface' consist of?
Seems a poor comparison when the most probable comparable property is 'big'.
While it might be bad news for those looking for Marvin the Martian, we already know of Earth extremophiles that can exist in similar environments. Plus, the mission to explore them seems easier than those proposed missions to Europa or Enceladus.
Pints all around (or maybe extra salty Margaritas).
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