Can radars detect life on Mars? Mars: Salty Lakes Found Thanks To MARSIS Radar!
Everyone has a dream.
Some of us, dream of Mars.
Here are 3 things that we know about the Red Planet:
1) At a distance of 54.6 million kilometers from the Earth, Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun;
2) It is smaller than the planet Earth;
3) At this time, Mars' surface cannot support life as we know it.
Also, here are 3 things that we dont know yet:
1) When we are going exactly;
2) If we are staying;
3) If Mars ever supported life as we know it.
Follow me to know how the use of radars could help us detect life on this red planet.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe for more videos:https://www.youtube.com/c/InsaneCuriosity?sub_confirmation=1?
Business Enquiries: Lorenzovareseaziendale@gmail.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As humans, we have always striven to find proofs of life on other planets.
Scientists are now taking a chance on Mars.
On Earth, all forms of life need water to survive. It is likely, though not certain, that if life ever evolved on Mars, it did so in the presence of a supply of water.
On Mars, we will therefore search for evidence of life in areas where liquid water was once stable, and below the surface where it still might exist today.

On the NASA website we can read:
Because water is key to life as we know it, earlier Mars missions were designed to make discoveries under the previous Mars Exploration Program science theme of “Follow the water”. The launch of the Curiosity mission rover mark transition between the themes of “Follow the Water” and “Seek Signs of life”. In addition to landing in a place with past evidence of water, Curiosity was seeking evidence of organics, the chemical building blocks of life.
Places with water and the chemistry needed for life potentially provide habitable conditions. Future Mars Missions (as the Perseverance Rover of NASA's Mars 2020 mission), will search for life itself in places that continually evolve from discoveries by prior missions.
New and previously developed technologies will enable us to explore Mars in ways we never have before, resulting in higher-resolutions images, longer-ranging surface mobility and even the return of Martian soil and rock samples for studies in laboratories on Earth (as the case of NASA's Mars 2020 mission)

But let's get deeper in what we discovered a few days ago.
We know that on Mars' surface the lack of a substantial atmosphere makes liquid water impossible, but two years ago, in 2018, a group of Italian scientists announced evidence of salt water beneath the southern polar cap of Mars: salty lakes at Mars's South Pole.
On September, 28th 2020 they had the confirm of that: subglacial lakes on Mars, that is , WATER. At. Liquid. State.

A team of researchers led by Sebastian Emanuel Lauro and Elena Pettinelli (University of Rome) has confirmed the presence of a saltwater lake system under the subsurface of Mars, at the South Pole.
First thing first, how was it possible to make such a huge discovery?
Well, scientists used radars.
This is actually a really common technique. For instance, we use radars to identify subsurface glacial lakes on Earth, in regions like Antarctica or Greenland.

But how do radars work?
A radar device emits radio waves, running at the speed of light, that bounce off layers of material in the planet surface and subsurface, and the way the signal is reflected back indicates the kind of material that is present at a particular location.

If electromagnetic waves travelling through one material meet another material, the waves willl reflect or scatter from the boundary between the materials. This means that a solid object in air or in a vacuum, will usually scatter radar radio waves from its surface.
Radar waves scatter in a variety of ways depending on the wavelenght of the radio wave and the shape of the target. When the signal come back, it bounce off in a way similar to the way light is reflected by a mirror.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If You happen to see any content that is yours, and we didn't give credit in the right manner please let us know at: Lorenzovareseaziendale@gmail.com and we will correct it immediately"

"Some of our visual content is under a Attribution-ShareAlike license. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/) in it’s different versions such as 1.0, 2.0, 3,0 and 4.0 – permitting comercial sharing with attribution given in each picture accordingly in the video."

Credits: Ron Miller
Credits: Nasa/Shutterstock/Storyblocks/Elon Musk/SpaceX/Esa
Credits: Flickr

#InsaneCuriosity #MarsDiscoveries #WaterOnMars