Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
Speaker 2: Mars. Let's be honest. When you close your eyes and
Speaker 2: picture it, what do you see? You see the rust
Speaker 2: right the rest, You see that endless oxidized orange dust,
Speaker 2: just rocks that have been sitting there, baking in radiation
Speaker 2: for three billion years. It is the definitive desert planet.
Speaker 3: It is, I mean in our collective imagination and certainly
Speaker 3: in the images we get from the rovers. It's a
Speaker 3: place of absolute desiccation. It really makes the Sahara look
Speaker 3: like a rainforest exactly.
Speaker 2: And the story we've been told, the story of the
Speaker 2: basically in all the textbooks, is that the water is gone,
Speaker 2: or well, if it's not gone, it's locked up in
Speaker 2: the attic in the basement at poles, right at the poles.
Speaker 3: That's the prevailing narrative. We know there is water ice
Speaker 3: at the poles. We can literally see the white caps.
Speaker 3: But for human exploration, you know, for the dream of
Speaker 3: actually living there, the poles are well.
Speaker 2: The problematic problematic is a very very polite way of
Speaker 2: saying absolutely lethal, isn't it?
Speaker 3: It really is.
Speaker 2: But here is where it gets interesting for our deep
Speaker 2: dive today. What if that story is wrong, or not
Speaker 2: wrong exactly, but missing a massive chapter.
Speaker 3: A huge chapter, right?
Speaker 2: What if there are gigantic reserves of water. We're talking
Speaker 2: massive active glaciers hiding in plain sight right near the equator,
Speaker 2: exactly where we want to land, and the only reason
Speaker 2: we haven't seen them is because they are wearing a disguise.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a conspiracy theory, doesn't it. But this
Speaker 3: is actually the central thesis of a fascinating new piece
Speaker 3: of research we are unpacking today.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So today we are looking at a breakdown of
Speaker 2: a study published in the journal Icarus by Mme de
Speaker 2: Pablo and a team of researchers. And the specific article
Speaker 2: that caught our eye was from Universe Today, written by
Speaker 2: Andy Thomas Wick titled Martian Volcanoes could be hiding massive
Speaker 2: glaciers under a blanket of ash.
Speaker 3: And this research essentially proposes that we might be sitting
Speaker 3: on the resource jackpot of the Solar System. But to
Speaker 3: find it, we have to stop looking at Mars like
Speaker 3: a dead rock and start understanding how volcanoes and ice
Speaker 3: interact and really specific ways.
Speaker 2: And to do that we have to start, of all
Speaker 2: places in Antarctica we do.
Speaker 3: We have to look at a very specific, very strange
Speaker 3: island on Earth to decode what is happening on Mars.
Speaker 2: So here is the mission for this deep dive. We're
Speaker 2: going to find out how a volcano in Antarctica is
Speaker 2: basically the decoder ring for Martian geology. We are going
Speaker 2: to look at the smoking guns that prove these glaciers exist.
Speaker 2: We'll explain why our billion dollar radar satellites completely miss them.
Speaker 2: And then we are going to talk about the catch, the.
Speaker 3: Legal catch, the incredible irony that finding this water might
Speaker 3: make it illegal to actually touch.
Speaker 2: Right, So settle in. We are going really deep on
Speaker 2: this one.
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: I want to start with the accessibility problem because I
Speaker 2: feel like a lot of people listening might think, you know,
Speaker 2: water is water. If we know there's ice at the
Speaker 2: Martian poles, why are we so obsessively hunting for it
Speaker 2: at the equator. Why can't we just land at the
Speaker 2: North Pole, melt some ice and make a cup of tea.
Speaker 3: It's a great question, and it really comes down to
Speaker 3: the sheer brutality of the Martian environment. You have to
Speaker 3: remember Mars is already incredibly cold. The average global temperature
Speaker 3: is something like minus eighty degrees fahrenheit, but the poles,
Speaker 3: the poles are a completely different beast.
Speaker 2: How cold are we actually talking.
Speaker 3: During the polar winter? You are looking at temperatures dropping
Speaker 3: to minus one hundred and ninety five degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is cold enough to freeze carbon dioxide directly
Speaker 3: out of the atmosphere. That is actually why the caps
Speaker 3: grow and shrink. It's dry ice freezing and sublimating.
Speaker 2: Right. So, if I am trying to run a habitat
Speaker 2: or rover or just keep my blood like wed.
Speaker 3: You are fighting a losing battle. Materials become brittle, electronics fail,
Speaker 3: lubricants freeze solid, and then there is the darkness. The
Speaker 3: polar regions on ours, just like here on Earth, experience
Speaker 3: months of total darkness. If you are relying on solar power,
Speaker 3: which is our primary energy source, for these missions, you
Speaker 3: are dead in the water.
Speaker 2: So operationally speaking, the poles are a.
Speaker 3: Nightmare, an absolute nightmare. But there is another layer to this,
Speaker 3: which is the regulatory hurdle, the space lawyers, the planetary
Speaker 3: protection officers. Yes, we have an international agreement that we
Speaker 3: cannot contaminate what are called special regions on Mars. A
Speaker 3: special region is defined essentially as anywhere that earth microbes
Speaker 3: might be able to survive and replicate.
Speaker 2: And since life needs water.
Speaker 3: Exactly the poles have accessible water. Ice if we crash
Speaker 3: a lander there, or if a human walks around there
Speaker 3: with a leaky spacesuit, we could introduce earth bacteria into
Speaker 3: a water rich environment that could completely destroy our ability
Speaker 3: to ever detect native Martian life. We simply wouldn't know
Speaker 3: if the bugs we found were Martians or just hitchhikers
Speaker 3: from Florida.
Speaker 2: So the poles are essentially the forbidden zone.
Speaker 3: That's right. They are the most scientifically valuable spots, so
Speaker 3: we aren't allowed to touch them without extreme billion dollar
Speaker 3: sterilization protocols that just aren't feasible for large scale human
Speaker 3: missions yet, which brings us.
Speaker 2: To the holy grail. We need water, but we need
Speaker 2: it where it's warm, where there is sunlight and where
Speaker 2: the planetary protection rules are a little more relaxed. We
Speaker 2: need water at the equator.
Speaker 3: Ideally, yes, the mid latitudes or the equator. That is
Speaker 3: where you have the solar energy. That is where the
Speaker 3: thermal management of your base is easier. That is where
Speaker 3: you want to build.
Speaker 2: The equator is dry, it's a desert.
Speaker 3: Well that has been the assumption. We look at the
Speaker 3: equator and we see dust, we see rock. But for
Speaker 3: decades geologists have been looking at satellite images of these regions,
Speaker 3: specifically around the volcanoes, and seeing things that look well.
Speaker 2: Wrong, wrong, how like out of place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they see shapes, low bait shapes, these long tongues
Speaker 3: of material that look like they flowed down a hill.
Speaker 3: If you saw that exact shape on Earth, you would
Speaker 3: immediately say that is a glacier. But on Mars at
Speaker 3: the equator, exposed ice is impossible. It would sublimate, turned
Speaker 3: straight from a solid into a gas almost instantly in
Speaker 3: that thin atmosphere.
Speaker 2: So a scientist are looking at these shapes and saying
Speaker 2: it looks like a glacier, but physics says it absolutely
Speaker 2: cannot be a glacier.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and that cognitive dissonance is exactly what this new
Speaker 3: paper is trying to resolve. They are basically saying it
Speaker 3: is a glacier. It's just wearing a heavy coat.
Speaker 2: And to prove that they found a twin, a geological
Speaker 2: twin right here on Earth, let's talk about Deception Island.
Speaker 3: Ah, Deception Island. It is genuinely one of my favorite
Speaker 3: places on Earth geologically speaking.
Speaker 2: Even the name Deception Island it sounds like a villain's
Speaker 2: layer from a spy movie.
Speaker 3: It really does. It's actually located in the South Shetland Islands,
Speaker 3: just off the Antarctic Peninsula. And it's named that because
Speaker 3: from the outside, from the ocean, it looks like a solid,
Speaker 3: impregnable island. But it's actually a donut. It's a ring
Speaker 3: a caldera, right, It's the flooded caldera of an active volcano.
Speaker 3: You can actually sail a ship right through a narrow
Speaker 3: breach in the wall, a spot called Neptune's Bellows and
Speaker 3: anchor inside the center of the volcano.
Speaker 2: That sounds incredibly ominous, Yeah, anchoring your ship inside an
Speaker 2: active volcano.
Speaker 3: It is, And it's not just technically active. It is historically,
Speaker 3: very recently active. This thing erupted multiple times in the
Speaker 3: late nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies, and those specific eruptions
Speaker 3: are the key to unlocking our Martian mystery.
Speaker 2: Because Deception Island isn't just made of rock, it's rock
Speaker 2: and ice exactly.
Speaker 3: It's heavily glaciated. So when those eruptions happen, specifically the
Speaker 3: big ones in nineteen sixty nine and nineteen seventy, you
Speaker 3: had this violent, chaotic interaction between magma and ice.
Speaker 2: Now, when I think of lava meating ice, I think
Speaker 2: of melting, I think of massive steam clouds and catastrophic floods.
Speaker 3: And that definitely does happen. But here's the nuance we
Speaker 3: need to look at. These were what we call free
Speaker 3: podo magmatic eruptions.
Speaker 2: Freedomagnetic. Okay, that is a five dollars word. Break that
Speaker 2: down for us.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 3: It means the magma interacts directly with water, usually groundwater
Speaker 3: or glacial melt, and it basically explodes. The steam expansion
Speaker 3: pulverizes the magma into tiny microscopic fragments ash dust. So
Speaker 3: instead of just flowing rivers of lava, you get these massive,
Speaker 3: towering plumes of black ash raining down on everything for miles.
Speaker 2: So it essentially rained black dust onto these pristine white glaciers.
Speaker 3: Yes, it blanketed them completely. And here's where the physics
Speaker 3: gets incredibly cool. You'd instinctly think hot ash falling on
Speaker 3: a glacier would melt the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Sure, hot rock, cold ice melting ensues, But ash is
Speaker 2: very porous.
Speaker 3: It is full of tiny air pockets. It's actually an
Speaker 3: incredible insulator. Think of it like a giant blanket of styrofoam.
Speaker 3: If you put a thin layer of hot ash on ice,
Speaker 3: Sure the top millimeter melts, but once that ash cools down,
Speaker 3: it forms a crust, a thermal barrier.
Speaker 2: So it stops being a heat source and immediately starts
Speaker 2: being protective blanket exactly.
Speaker 3: It shields the ice from the sun, It shields it
Speaker 3: from the wind, It traps the cold. In so on
Speaker 3: Deception Island today, there are places where you can walk
Speaker 3: on what looks for all the world like a dirt hill.
Speaker 3: It's gray, it's rocky, it looks like solid ground. But
Speaker 3: if you were to dig down just a meter or
Speaker 3: so with a shovel, you would hit solid ancient glacial ice.
Speaker 2: A dirty glacier or glacier in an earth suit.
Speaker 3: A debris covered glacier, that is the technical term. And
Speaker 3: this gives us a very clear model a mechanism. If
Speaker 3: it can happen so perfectly on Deception Island, could it
Speaker 3: happen on Mars.
Speaker 2: So the researchers took this model volcano erupts ash covers ice,
Speaker 2: ice survives, and they looked at Mars and they found
Speaker 2: a match.
Speaker 3: They did they turned their attention to a specific region
Speaker 3: called hecate Stolus hicicety Stillus.
Speaker 2: Another great name.
Speaker 3: Who is Heckeity the Greek goddess of magic, crossroads and ghosts,
Speaker 3: which is actually very fitting for a dead volcano.
Speaker 2: Very fitting. So what exactly is Hickey Stillness.
Speaker 3: It's an ancient shield volcano in the northern hemisphere of Mars.
Speaker 3: It's incredibly old. We are talking billions of years. But
Speaker 3: when the researchers looked at the flanks of this volcano,
Speaker 3: the long slopes leading down from the peak, they saw
Speaker 3: the exact same morphological features they saw on Deception Island.
Speaker 2: Morphology meaning the physical shape and texture of the land.
Speaker 3: Right, They didn't just see generic rocks or impact craters,
Speaker 3: they saw specific patterns that on Earth only ever form
Speaker 3: when you have a massive body of ice moving under
Speaker 3: a blanket of debris.
Speaker 2: So the working hypothesis is this Hicky Stolus erupted a
Speaker 2: long time ago. It spewed massive amounts of ash. That
Speaker 2: ash covered the glaciers that were sitting at its base,
Speaker 2: and now millions or billions of years later, those exact
Speaker 2: same glaciers are still sitting there, perfectly preserved under a
Speaker 2: layer of rock and dust.
Speaker 3: That is the theory. But in planetary science, you can't
Speaker 3: just look at a picture and say, well, it looks similar,
Speaker 3: so it must be the same thing. You need proof.
Speaker 3: You need evidence that creates a signature that only ice
Speaker 3: can create.
Speaker 2: The smoking guns.
Speaker 3: The smoking guns, and this paper identifies three very distinct ones.
Speaker 2: Let's walk through these because this is the real detective work.
Speaker 2: Smoking gun number one crevasses.
Speaker 3: Crevasses. Now, most people kind of know what a crevass
Speaker 3: is if you've seen a documentary about climbers on Everest.
Speaker 3: It's the terrifying, seemingly bottomless crack in.
Speaker 2: The ice, right the abyss you didn't want to fall into.
Speaker 3: Exactly, But physically, why does a crevass actually form. It
Speaker 3: forms because ice is a solid, but on a massive scale,
Speaker 3: it flows like a very very slow, thick liquid. It
Speaker 3: is plastic. When that flowing ice goes over a bump
Speaker 3: in the bedrock beneath it, or has to turn a corner,
Speaker 3: it stretches, and because the top layer of the ice
Speaker 3: is brittle, it snaps. It cracks.
Speaker 2: Okay, So cracks mean movement precisely.
Speaker 3: If you just have a pile of dirt static bert
Speaker 3: it doesn't form systematic, deep parallel cracks. It might slump
Speaker 3: a bit in a landslide, but it doesn't fracture in
Speaker 3: these very specific, predictable patterns.
Speaker 2: And we see these exact cracks on Deception Island.
Speaker 3: We do. We see them incredibly clearly in the high
Speaker 3: resolution satellite imagery of the ash covered glaciers there. And crucially,
Speaker 3: we see these exact same fracture patterns on the slopes
Speaker 3: of Hegetistolus.
Speaker 2: So we are looking at a Martian surface that is
Speaker 2: broken in a way that suggests the material underneath it
Speaker 2: is stretching and flowing downhill.
Speaker 3: Yes, it implies that the core of that dirt pile
Speaker 3: is actually something mobile, something that behaves exactly like ice.
Speaker 2: Okay, that is compelling, but rock can crack, earthquakes happen.
Speaker 2: What makes it definite? That brings us to smoking gun
Speaker 2: number two. And this is a word I had honestly
Speaker 2: never heard before reading this paper. The berg shrund.
Speaker 3: The berg shrund. It's a wonderful German word, berg meaning mountain,
Speaker 3: shrund meaning cleft or fissure.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a heavy metal band.
Speaker 3: We are the Bergschrund, it really does. But geologically speaking,
Speaker 3: it is a very specific, very important feature. A berg
Speaker 3: shrund is a special type of crevass that forms at
Speaker 3: the very top of a glacier at.
Speaker 2: The head right.
Speaker 3: Imagine a massive glacier sitting in a mountain valley. The
Speaker 3: top edge of the ice is frozen solid to the
Speaker 3: mountain rock face. It's stuck there, But the rest of
Speaker 3: the massive body of the glacier is incredibly heavy and
Speaker 3: gravity is constantly pulling it down the valley.
Speaker 2: So it pulls apart.
Speaker 3: It tears away. The moving ice physically rips away from
Speaker 3: the stagnant ice or the rock face. That tear creates
Speaker 3: a massive, deep, gaping crack right at the very top
Speaker 3: of the system. That is the bergshrund.
Speaker 2: It's the separation point. It's basically the ice saying I'm
Speaker 2: leaving now exactly.
Speaker 3: And here is the kicker for our Martian mystery. You
Speaker 3: do not get a bergshrund in a landslide, You do
Speaker 3: not get it in a rock fall or a tectonic fault.
Speaker 3: You only get it when you have a cohesive, highly
Speaker 3: viscous mass that is slowly sliding downhill under its own
Speaker 3: immense weight.
Speaker 2: And we found these specific formations on Mars.
Speaker 3: We did the team identified surface features at Hekkati's Goullis
Speaker 3: that match the geometry of an earth bergshrund perfectly. And
Speaker 3: we aren't talking about small little cracks here. Some of
Speaker 3: these features are up to six hundred meters long.
Speaker 2: Six hundred meters it's like six football fields. That is huge.
Speaker 3: It's massive. To have a continuous, sweeping fracture that large
Speaker 3: implies an enormous body of material moving in absolute unison.
Speaker 3: It is a very strong indicator that we aren't just
Speaker 3: looking at loose dirt sliding down a hill. We are
Speaker 3: looking at a coherent sheet of ice that is, or
Speaker 3: at least was slowly sliding down the volcano that is wild.
Speaker 2: So we have cracks showing flow, which are the crevasses,
Speaker 2: and cracks showing detachment. The berg shruns. What is the
Speaker 2: third smoking gun?
Speaker 3: The third one is found at the other end of
Speaker 3: the glacier, the bottom. It's the bulldozer effect.
Speaker 2: I like the sound of that. What is the bulldozer effect?
Speaker 3: Geologists formally call them push moraines. Imagine a massive bulldozer
Speaker 3: driving through a field of loose soil and rocks. As
Speaker 3: it pushes forward, a huge pile of debris builds up
Speaker 3: right in front of the blade. Right now, imagine the
Speaker 3: bulldozer just stops and backs up. That big ridge stays there.
Speaker 2: It marks the furthest point the bulldozer ever reached exactly.
Speaker 3: Glaciers are nature's bulldozers. As they slide down the valley,
Speaker 3: they push thousands of tons of rock and soil in
Speaker 3: front of them. When the glacier eventually retreats, or in
Speaker 3: this specific case, when the ice simply stops moving and stabilizes,
Speaker 3: it leaves behind these very specific, bumpy, ridged terrains at
Speaker 3: the terminus.
Speaker 2: And I'm guessing we see this at Deception Island.
Speaker 3: We see it clearly. The ash covered glaciers push the
Speaker 3: debris into these distinct lobes, and we see almost identical
Speaker 3: low bait ridges surrounding the base of the floes at Hecatistholus.
Speaker 2: So let's put the whole puzzle together. Here we have
Speaker 2: the massive detachment are at the top, the flow cracks
Speaker 2: in the middle, and the rubble pile pushed up at
Speaker 2: the bottom. It is the complete anatomy of a glacier.
Speaker 3: It is. If it walks like a duck, quacks like
Speaker 3: a duck, and pushes rocks like a duck, it's probably
Speaker 3: a glacier.
Speaker 2: But and I have to play Devil's advocate here, because
Speaker 2: there is a huge glaring difference between Antarctica and the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: The atmosphere Mars is effectively a vacuum compared to Earth.
Speaker 2: The atmospheric pressure is tiny. If I took an ice
Speaker 2: cube right now and put it on the equator of Mars,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't melt into a nice little puddle. It would sublimate.
Speaker 2: It would turn straight into gas and just vanish into
Speaker 2: the sin air.
Speaker 3: Correct exposed ice is fundamentally unstable at those Martian latitudes.
Speaker 2: So if these glaciers really are millions of years old.
Speaker 2: Why are they still there? Why haven't they just evaporated
Speaker 2: away over the eons even with a dirt blanket. Surely
Speaker 2: the gas would eventually escape.
Speaker 3: This is the survival mechanism question, and the authors of
Speaker 3: the paper propose a really elegant two stage process to
Speaker 3: explain exactly how it survived.
Speaker 2: Walk us through that.
Speaker 3: Okay, Stage one, the volcano erupts, the glacier is covered
Speaker 3: in ash, but as we discussed with the crevasses, the
Speaker 3: glacier is still moving. It cracks, it forms these deep fissures.
Speaker 2: Which opens the ice underneath directly to the Martian air
Speaker 2: right and at.
Speaker 3: That exact moment, simblammation does happen. The pristine ice exposed
Speaker 3: deep in those cracks instantly turns to gas and escapes.
Speaker 3: But then stage two kicks in the patch kit exactly.
Speaker 3: Mars is an incredibly dusty place. We have global dust storms,
Speaker 3: we have more volcanic ash falling over time. That ambient
Speaker 3: dust settles right into those open cracks.
Speaker 2: It fills them up like spackling a hole in drywall.
Speaker 3: Perfect analogy. The dust fills the crevasses and creates a
Speaker 3: dense plug. And once that plug is formed, the system
Speaker 3: is sealed, the dust gets compacted. It becomes a physical
Speaker 3: barrier that water vapor just cannot easily pass through.
Speaker 2: So the ice is basically trapped inside its own patched
Speaker 2: up shell.
Speaker 3: It's sealed in a geological time capsule. The authors argue
Speaker 3: that what we see today, these shallow, dusty troughs on
Speaker 3: the surface, are actually just the ghosts of the original crevasses.
Speaker 3: The ice deep below has retreated slightly, the dust has
Speaker 3: slumped in to fill the void, and now the whole
Speaker 3: system is an equilibrium. The sublimation has stopped completely because
Speaker 3: the seal is airtight, or well Mars tight.
Speaker 2: That is incredible. The very environment that usually destroys the ice,
Speaker 2: the blowing dust and the dry conditions, actually helps seal
Speaker 2: it in and protect it.
Speaker 3: Nature always finds a way.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the geology makes sense, the physics of the
Speaker 2: preservation makes sense. But there is one giant, billion dollar
Speaker 2: technological elephant in the room, and we really have to
Speaker 2: address it. Sure, Charad. The shallow radar instrument on the
Speaker 2: Mars Reconnaissance orbiter. This is a machine built specifically to
Speaker 2: find underground ice. It sends radar ways down. They bounce
Speaker 2: off the subsurface ice and we get a nice picture.
Speaker 2: We have used it to map the poles, we have
Speaker 2: used it to find buried ice all over the planet.
Speaker 3: It is arguably our primary tool for exactly this kind
Speaker 3: of work.
Speaker 2: So did it be when Shared flew directly over Hekatious Stulless,
Speaker 2: did it's a bing giant glacier right here?
Speaker 3: It did not. It was completely silent, worse than silent. Actually,
Speaker 3: it gave us noise clutter. And for a long time
Speaker 3: critics of the glacier theory have used that as definitive proof.
Speaker 3: They say, look, if there was a mile thick glacier
Speaker 3: sitting right there, the radar would absolutely see it. Didn't
Speaker 3: see it. Therefore, just a pile of rock.
Speaker 2: That sounds pretty logical on the surface.
Speaker 3: It sounds logical, but it completely ignores the physical limitations
Speaker 3: of the technology itself. The paper argues that Charade is
Speaker 3: the right tool, but hecatas Thullus is the absolute wrong
Speaker 3: geometry for it.
Speaker 2: Explain that why does the physical shape of the volcano
Speaker 2: matter to a radar beam?
Speaker 3: Okay, let's do a little bit of physics. Charad works
Speaker 3: by sending a chirp, a radio pulse straight down towards
Speaker 3: the planet. We call that nator pointing. The pulse hits
Speaker 3: the surface and part of it bounces back, part of
Speaker 3: it penetrates the ground, hits the denser layer of ice below,
Speaker 3: and bounces back, and.
Speaker 2: You measure the time difference between the two bounces to
Speaker 2: figure out exactly how thick the ice is exactly.
Speaker 3: But this entire system relies on what we call speculaar reflection.
Speaker 3: Think of it like a mirror. If you stand directly
Speaker 3: over a mirror that is laying perfectly flat on the floor,
Speaker 3: and you shine a flashlight straight down at it, the
Speaker 3: beam bands is straight back up into your eyes. You
Speaker 3: see the bright reflection.
Speaker 2: Okay, it makes sense.
Speaker 3: Now, imagine that same mirror is on a steep slope,
Speaker 3: say it's tilted twenty degrees. You are still standing directly
Speaker 3: above it. You shine your flashlights straight down. Where does
Speaker 3: the being go.
Speaker 2: It bounces off at an angle, It hits the wall
Speaker 2: across the room. It definitely doesn't come back to.
Speaker 3: My eyes exactly. The receiver antenna on the satellite is
Speaker 3: your eyes. Because Hektisthalis is a volcano, it inherently has
Speaker 3: steep sloping flanks. The radar pulse hits that slope and
Speaker 3: scatters wildly away from the spacecraft. We just don't get
Speaker 3: a clean echo back.
Speaker 2: So we aren't seeing no ice. We are just seeing
Speaker 2: a deflected signal.
Speaker 3: We are seeing blindness. We are seeing clutter caused by
Speaker 3: the extreme roughness and the sharp angle of the terrain.
Speaker 3: The lack of a clear signal is not evidence of absence,
Speaker 3: It's simply evidence of a bad viewing angle.
Speaker 2: So the most sophisticated scanning tool we have is essentially
Speaker 2: useless for this specific type of geological formation until.
Speaker 3: We can physically tilt the radar or get a completely
Speaker 3: different vantage point. Yes, we are flying blind, which brings
Speaker 3: us right back to the visual evidence. We have to
Speaker 3: trust our eyes the morphology because our ears the radar
Speaker 3: just aren't working. In this context, this.
Speaker 2: Feels like a classic scientific standoff. The visual data screams yes,
Speaker 2: it's a glacier, and the radar says, I have no idea.
Speaker 3: And in the complete absence of radar confirmation, the deception
Speaker 3: island analog becomes the absolute strongest argument we have. We
Speaker 3: know for a fact this exact morphology means buried ice
Speaker 3: on Earth. It is by far the most logical explanation
Speaker 3: for what we are seeing on Mars.
Speaker 2: So let's assume for a minute they're right. Let's assume, hey,
Speaker 2: Katie'stolus is indeed sitting on a massive buried glacier. And
Speaker 2: let's assume, as the article suggests that this might be
Speaker 2: true for other massive volcanoes on Mars Olympus, Mons Rga,
Speaker 2: Mons Scrace month.
Speaker 3: It would completely change the inventory of water on Mars.
Speaker 3: We aren't just talking about a few hitting buckets of frost.
Speaker 3: We are talking about hundreds of cubic kilometers of pure
Speaker 3: fresh waters sitting near the equator.
Speaker 2: So what does this actually mean for us for the
Speaker 2: future of human exploration on Mars, Because this really feels
Speaker 2: like the big so wet moment of the whole discussion.
Speaker 3: It is a total game changer for what NASA calls
Speaker 3: in city resource utilization.
Speaker 2: Is SRU living off the land.
Speaker 3: Right, instead of bringing all our water from Earth, which
Speaker 3: costs roughly ten thousand dollars a bottle just in launch weight,
Speaker 3: we mine it right there.
Speaker 2: So if this theory holds up, we don't need to
Speaker 2: go to the deadly poles anymore. We don't need to
Speaker 2: freeze to death in the dark. We can land comfortably
Speaker 2: at the sunny equator, right next to a volcano which
Speaker 2: might even still have some deep residual geothermal heat, and
Speaker 2: we could just drill.
Speaker 3: We drill through a few meters of soft volcanic ash,
Speaker 3: and bam, we hit pure ancient massive ice.
Speaker 2: And from that ice we get water to drink. We
Speaker 2: crack the hydrogen and oxygen to make literal rocket fuel,
Speaker 2: We make breathable air. Becomes the ultimate gas station and
Speaker 2: oasis for a future colony.
Speaker 3: It sounds perfect. It honestly sounds too perfect.
Speaker 2: Usually is, And this is where the other shoe drops,
Speaker 2: the legal shoe.
Speaker 3: The Outer Space Treaty.
Speaker 2: Article NAYAKS of the nineteen sixty seven Outer Space Treaty,
Speaker 2: to be exact, it is the foundational document of all
Speaker 2: space law, and it has a very specific clause about
Speaker 2: harmful contamination.
Speaker 3: This goes right back to what we talked about the
Speaker 3: very beginning planetary protection protocols.
Speaker 2: Right we avoid the poles because they are special regions.
Speaker 2: We don't want to accidentally introduce our dirty earth microbes
Speaker 2: that might kill off native Martian life or completely mess
Speaker 2: up our science experiment.
Speaker 3: But right now we feel okay, about landing rivers at
Speaker 3: the equator because we assume it's dry, dead rock, no water,
Speaker 3: no potential for life, no problem exactly.
Speaker 2: But if we prove that there is massive, easily accessible
Speaker 2: water a few meters under the surface of these equatorial volcanoes.
Speaker 3: Then the equator instantly becomes a special region.
Speaker 2: Yes, if Hecketslolus has water, and if that water is accessible,
Speaker 2: then technically, under the current Coast Bar guidelines the Committee
Speaker 2: on Space Research, it becomes a highly restricted zone.
Speaker 3: So the exact moment we definitively confirm the resource exists,
Speaker 3: we might legally ban ourselves from ever using it.
Speaker 2: That is the dilemma. It is the ultimate catch twenty two,
Speaker 2: the ultimate irony of space exploration. We are spending billions
Speaker 2: of dollars searching desperately for the one thing we need
Speaker 2: to survive. But because that thing water is also the
Speaker 2: absolute prerequisite for life finding, it triggers the exact international
Speaker 2: protocols designed to protect life.
Speaker 3: We need the water to stay alive, but if we
Speaker 3: touch the water, we might be committing a massive crime
Speaker 3: against science.
Speaker 2: Or a crime against potential alien biology. It raises a
Speaker 2: genuinely massive ethical question. Do we have the right to
Speaker 2: dig up and exploit these resources to fuel our rockets.
Speaker 2: If there is even a one percent chance that there
Speaker 2: is dormant microbial life waiting inside that ice.
Speaker 3: It's not just an engineering or science problem anymore. It's
Speaker 3: a fundamental philosophy problem.
Speaker 2: It is, and it's one we are absolutely going to
Speaker 2: have to solve before the first starship lands with human
Speaker 2: on board.
Speaker 3: So how do we resolve this standoff? How do we
Speaker 3: find out if the ice is really there without triggering
Speaker 3: a total legal lockdown or accidentally contaminating the site.
Speaker 2: Well, the article points out a harsh reality. We can't
Speaker 2: do it from orbit anymore. We have hit the absolute
Speaker 2: limit of what we can see from two hundred miles
Speaker 2: up with our current satellite boots on the ground or
Speaker 2: robot treads. We need a dedicated mission to Hecatees Thollus,
Speaker 2: not just to look at it from above, but to
Speaker 2: actually touch it, to drill down.
Speaker 3: There are some interesting proposals for this right There.
Speaker 2: Are concepts being developed. There is the idea of fly Ridar,
Speaker 2: which is essentially a drone or an airplane that would
Speaker 2: fly directly in the Martian atmosphere.
Speaker 3: Oh, that solves the geometry problem exactly.
Speaker 2: If you are flying a drone just one thousand feet
Speaker 2: off the ground, you can fly alongside the volcano. You
Speaker 2: can look directly at the slope, not just down on
Speaker 2: top of it. You can get that speculatar reflection. You
Speaker 2: can definitively confirm the ice without ever having to touch
Speaker 2: the ground.
Speaker 3: But eventually someone is going to I want to actually.
Speaker 2: Drill eventually, yes, and that will be the moment of
Speaker 2: truth for humanity on Mars.
Speaker 3: You know, when we started this discussion, I really thought
Speaker 3: we were just talking about some weirdly shaped rocks. But
Speaker 3: this connects absolutely everything. It connects the history of whaling
Speaker 3: and volcanoes in Antarctica to the ancient volcanoes of Mars.
Speaker 3: It connects the complex physics of radar scattering to the
Speaker 3: international ethics of biological contamination.
Speaker 2: That is the beauty of comparative planetology. You pull on
Speaker 2: one weird little thread, a doughnut shaped island in the
Speaker 2: South Shetland chain, and it completely unravels a mystery on
Speaker 2: a planet one hundred and forty million miles away.
Speaker 3: It really makes you look at Mars completely differently.
Speaker 2: It does. And I want to leave you our listeners
Speaker 2: with that exact thought. We tend to think of Mars
Speaker 2: as a fossil, a dead thing, just the static red
Speaker 2: marble spinning in the dark. But if to Pablo and
Speaker 2: his team are right, Mars is much more dynamic than
Speaker 2: we ever gave it credit for. It is a world
Speaker 2: that is actively holding onto its past. It is wrapping
Speaker 2: its precious water in heavy blankets of ash. It is
Speaker 2: hiding its greatest treasures in geological time capsules, just waiting
Speaker 2: for someone clever enough and careful enough to actually find them.
Speaker 3: And it challenges us. It demands that we be better explorers.
Speaker 3: We can't just be tourists looking at the scenery from orbit.
Speaker 3: We have to be detectives, and more importantly, we have
Speaker 3: to be stewards.
Speaker 2: As we plan to become a species that lives on
Speaker 2: two worlds, we have to grapple with a heavy fact
Speaker 2: that the second world isn't just a blank canvas for
Speaker 2: us to paint our bases on. It has its own
Speaker 2: deep history, its own complex geology, and maybe just maybe
Speaker 2: its own life.
Speaker 3: And perhaps thanks to a fiery little island called deception,
Speaker 3: we are one step closer to finally understanding it.
Speaker 2: That is a wrap for this deep dive. I highly
Speaker 2: recommend you go search for Deception Island and look at
Speaker 2: the photos. It is hauntingly beautiful. And then go look
Speaker 2: at the orbital images of Hekkati's Tholus. Once you see
Speaker 2: the resemblance between the two, you really cannot unsee it.
Speaker 3: It's uncamp.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, thanks for being curious, and as always,
Speaker 2: keep looking up. SA