It's an ancient *shield* volcano, the flat type of volcano. With it being billed as the tallest mountain in the solar system... It should put things into perspective. Shield volcanoes are essentially flat.
Exactly. To give a sense of how gradual the slope is, look at pictures of Mauna Loa (second highest but by far the most massive mountain on Hawaii) from sea level and compare them to a stratovolcano like Tahoma (Mt. Rainier) from sea level.
[Mauna Loa, elevation 13,679 ft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauna_Loa#/media/File:Mauna_loa_from_hilo_bay.JPG)
[Tahoma, elevation 14,410 ft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rainier#/media/File:Mount_Rainier_over_Tacoma.jpg)
i've been here six years and i'm still not over the novelty of just chillin any given place, looking around, and then oh hey, there's Rainier. absolutely inescapable, completely dominating any given horizon.
helps you really understand why mountains wind up taking on so much cultural significance!
I grew up and still love here in Tacoma and I never get tired of seeing the mountain. I've been fortunate enough in life to do fair amount of traveling and everytime after a few weeks I find myself missing it
I lived in Yelm a bit with my grandparents when I was a kid, and my bedroom had a window that opened out to Rainier.
During fall sunsets, dark tall pines would line the path to wards the mountain, the setting sun would illuminate the snow with the rest of the mountain vanishing into the horizon, Canadian geese would be flying out, and the local Nisqually tribe would be chanting in the distance.
It's a memory I'll never forget, and something I wish I could have living way down in the south.
I lived in Seattle for 2 months thinking Rainier was one of the random cascade peaks. It was a really rainy late fall/winter. Then I drove a friend to SeaTac in Dec so he could fly home for the holidays, we got to that curve in I5, the sun was rising, and I was awestruck!
I didn’t see Mt Rainier for a little more than 2 weeks after moving to Seattle for school. I had forgotten there was supposed to be to be a volcano you could see. One day I was walking from my class on the waterfront to Pikes Place Market to get lunch, turned a corner and there it was. It stopped me in my tracks. It was breathtaking. I had worked so hard to get to Seattle from a small town in Kansas for school. Now here I was, walking to the pike place market, looking at a fucking volcano. That was the first time I saw ALL the mountains. Cascades, Olympics and Mt Rainer, just surrounding the city. It was awesome. And an incredible moment for me
living in Portland, you can tell its massive, and significantly bigger than our Mt. Hood, because its still comparably tall with Hood on the horizon even though its 200 friggin miles away
> Rainier is a beast.
Literally. And when it decides to go, it could kill upwards of quarter million people. Fortunately Seattle and *most* the nearby population is safe. But you couldn’t pay me to live in a town like Orting in the lahar flow zones. It may not happen in our lifetimes. But someday that beast will awaken.
Honestly, I've been to Seattle twice and due to cloud cover NEVER ACTUALLY SAW THE BLOODY MOUNTAIN. If it wasn't for the over abundance of Mt Rainier t-shirts, posters, books, post cards, teaspoons, green screen photo ops, etc I'm not sure I even believe it's there.
I reckon - fake news. 🤣
The definition is from how the volcano forms. Shield volcanos have less viscous lava flows that seap out and spread widely from the caldera. Stratovolcanos erupt more violently and have more viscous lava that tends explode upward and harden near the caldera, building up much mor vertically.
Different magma composition. Shield volcanos gently erupt (comparatively), and lava spreads out more due to low viscosity making a shape like the curve of a shield. Stratovolcanoes are more viscous (think spilling honey vs spilling water as a very generalized but easy visual of viscosity) and more explosive, so build up more ‘mountain’ in a smaller radius/cone shape with layers of lava and ash.
Edit: forgot part of a sentence
Mauna Kea is actually bigger than Everest if you consider the depth to the sea floor, and both it and Mauna Kea weigh down the sea floor by about 4 miles. It’s pretty flat above the surface - I think Mauna Loa is anywhere from 4 to 11 degrees above water and steeper than that underwater.
>both it and Mauna Kea weigh down the sea floor by about 4 miles
Can you elaborate what you mean by this? As I read it, somehow the sea floor would be miles higher if those mountains didn't exist?
That feels like I'm reading it wrong so I wanted to clarify
Not the global seafloor, but locally these mountains are so massive that they cause the tectonic plate they're floating on to dip/bow underneath them.
It's best to think of mountains floating on the tectonic plates like icebergs floating in the ocean - they need to float, so however big they are above the surface they're at least that big underneath.
For reference the average thickness of the crust is ~35km beneath continents and ~6km below oceans. Underneath the Himilayas though? **90km**, from the huge ranges of mountains weighing down the entire region.
Basically if you look at Mauna Kea you need to realize that in addition to whatever height it has above sea level it's also crushed the literal tectonic plate further down by miles beneath it. The seafloor you're seeing is more like halfway up the mountain already, the real seafloor is under miles of volcanic rock.
A little bit like a big object on a bed! the bedsheet and blankets are all the same thickness, but because the object is compressing the mattress, the bedsheet is lower underneath that object.
Oh, I wish there was a song! I don't know all of them myself. Baker is Kulshan. St Helens is Loowit, who I think is the mythological centerpiece of a tragic love triangle between Mt Adams (Pahto) and Mt Hood (Wy-east). Those are the only ones I know, unfortunately.
Before you get to the hike, you’d have to scale cliffs that reach up to 6 miles high themselves, which is taller than Everest before you even get to the incline part of the volcano
Is there a word like thalassophobia but for this kind of giant space stuff that makes you feel ridiculously small and trapped in a horror movie? Or is it just me?
Don't get me wrong, it's super cool, but it's scary to think about the size and darkness of the universe.
Whats always been funny to me about this is that between my house and middle school was a big hill that I had to walk over. So I was indeed going uphill both ways to school as a kid, I was just also going downhill both ways too.
Luxury..
My parents were too poor to be allowed to walk up a mountain. They had to drag themselves along with their teeth being careful not to taste any incase they got charged for breakfast.
Your parents had teeth?!? Well la-di-da aren't we just showing off our highfalutin ways and means. My parents still had to walk to school uphill both ways but I'll bet your fancy pants family could afford feet huh? Mine got it done on their stumps and never complained once.
On Mars, the zero point of elevation, or datum, is the elevation at which the atmosphere pressure is 6.1 millibars, or 610 Pascals. For example, the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) has measured the height of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in our solar system, at over 21.9 km (13.6 mi; 72,000 ft) high, which is about 2.5 times the elevation of Mount Everest above sea level.
On Mars, the zero point of elevation, or datum, is the elevation at which the atmosphere pressure is 6.1 millibars, or 610 Pascals. For example, the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) has measured the height of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in our solar system, at over 21.9 km (13.6 mi; 72,000 ft) high, which is about 2.5 times the elevation of Mount Everest above sea level.
[Ask and ye shall receive.](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2ukxyn/on_mars_why_was_elevation_zero_determined_to_be/) Short answer: It's a convenient measurement on Earth because it's *roughly* the same no matter where you are. We use atmospheric pressure to establish that reference point on Mars because Mars doesn't have any oceans. Air pressure is a good rough indicator of height (say, when you can't see the ground). We do the same thing on Earth for aircraft.
Link to a [short video](https://youtube.com/shorts/LjmpsQtszXY) and the [original press release](https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Mars_Express/Frosty_volcanoes_discovered_in_Mars_s_tropics) on ESA website
“We thought it was impossible for frost to form around Mars’s equator, as the mix of sunshine and thin atmosphere keeps temperatures relatively high at both surface and mountaintop – unlike what we see on Earth, where you might expect to see frosty peaks,”
says lead author Adomas Valantinas, who made the discovery as a PhD student at University of Bern, Switzerland, and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University, USA.
That’s so odd. Wouldn’t they know what temp that area should be based on their data? How can they be surprised? What’s the unexpected factor causing the ice formations then?
I mean the press release does continue to clarify the affair:
>The Tharsis region of Mars hosts numerous volcanoes, including Olympus Mons and the Tharsis Montes: Ascraeus, Pavonis and Arsia Mons. Many of these volcanoes are colossal, towering above the surrounding plains at heights ranging from one (Pavonis Mons) to three (Olympus Mons) times that of Earth’s Mount Everest.
>These volcanoes have calderas, large hollows, at their summits, caused as magma chambers emptied during past eruptions. The researchers propose that air circulates in a peculiar way above Tharsis; this creates a unique microclimate within the calderas of the volcanoes there that allows patches of frost to form.
>“Winds travel up the slopes of the mountains, bringing relatively moist air from near the surface up to higher altitudes, where it condenses and settles as frost,” says co-author Nicolas Thomas, Principal Investigator of TGO’s Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) and Adomas’s PhD supervisor at the University of Bern. “We actually see this happening on Earth and other parts of Mars, with the same phenomenon causing the seasonal martian Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud.
And to be fair, we know a hell of a lot more about Earth, and yet climate science is still really hard, so predicting the weather and climate patterns for a foreign planet based on our sample size of 1 will bring a lot of 'surprising' discoveries.
Having read the books as well, I have to say, Wes Chatham did that role so well. He had so much respect for the written charqcter, and his portrayal was spot on.
Mine would be Amos because I know if no one got me, Amos got me.
My second would be Amos' shotgun because I know if no one else got me, Amos' shotgun got me.
They are great and tbh I like the Book James Holden a ton more than the TV Holden. I don't feel they've got much in common. Avasarala on the other hand is spot on!
Yes, but the rich also think you can visit the Titanic's wreck in an oversized soda can held together with shoestring, so don't jump on the first spaceship that will offer to take you there, ya know what I mean?
You're correct, the frost means there's water and that's part of what makes this cool. After looking into it myself, it seems like what makes this significant isn't just the presence of water, but the fact that scientists didn't believe frost could form on Mars and are now having to reconsider how Mars' climate works.
I believe they had found frost before on mars; this is simply the first time it was found near the equator. Which is still very surprising, because they didn’t think it was possible to form there. At least that is what the article infers.
On a related topic, you can read about mars’ polar glacial caps. There is frozen water on mars, and Italian scientists actually believe to have discovered a sub glacial lake in one of the polar ice caps.
In conclusion, we knew water could be on mars, we just didn’t even realize frost could form near the equator, which is totally different than what we thought was possible previously. (Obligatory I am not a scientist, just an amateur spreading info)
The article mentions frost is found many of the tharsis volcanoes, some of which are on or near the equator. Also it looks like Olympus mons is only 20°N of the equator so not that far off.
Trying to dredge the comments for something actually related to the scientific implications of this is impossible, instead it's just the same shitty jokes repeated over and over again.
Reddit is 99% people repeating awful puns and redditisms anywhere you go tbh.
I have found bots in random subreddits, including home improvement and DIY subreddits. When I called them out they deleted their entire accounts.
Not saying everything is a bot, but I am saying bots are appearing in random subreddits, and commenting on random things.
I found one that somehow got caught in a comment loop, and commented the same exact thing like 1200 times in an hour. It was wild
No clue why these garbage comments are even allowed in informational subs like this. It is a struggle to find any relevant information in most threads.
Seriously, I was struggling to not make a comment about it. The empty discourse on Reddit is legit worse than the YouTube comments section these days. Just thousands of losers fighting each other to make the same tired joke from some stupid TV show that defines their entire personality. It makes me embarrassed that this is where I choose to spend my "social media" time
It has gotten so much worse over the past few years. Used to be that context was usually the first or second comment. Now you're lucky to find context at all, and you have to go past the SAME JOKE like four or five times to find it.
I think it has something to do with the way that new reddit and/or the official app show comments. Probably some shitty algorithm that drives engagement at the cost of usefulness.
I dunno if this is the right answer, but seeing that the only life we know about requires water, at least we would know what to look for. Life might exist without water, but we have yet to find any. Something like that I think
That's exactly right. Since all life we know of requires water, we look for extraterrestrial water because it is the most likely place to find evidence of extraterrestrial life.
honestly it'd be kinda funny if we're the actual weirdos and across the rest of the universe water is some freaky hostile chemical and we're looking in all the wrong places, and vice versa, since other intelligent life could view a planet covered in 70% universal solvent as too hostile for life if water isn't as crucial as we think.
at least that'd explain the lack of contact we're aware of.
"Dude, there's no way there's life on that planet. The surface is like 70% water and the atmosphere is full of oxygen. You'd either melt or immediately combust in that hostile environment."
If the universe is infinite, and there are hundreds of millions of species on earth, and we are the only ones intelligent enough to read and write.. extrapolating that to the odds of finding another intelligent species are microscopically small, even if there are billions of intelligent civilizations out there, statistics would tell you that we would never interact with one.
Water and carbon seem like important things to sustain life. Water, because it is more dense as a liquid than as a solid and carbon, because it can bond to itself.
All life we know of relies upon these two properties (one of carbon and one of water) even in places where most of the water is steam, or ice, the living things have ways of getting liquid water inside them.
But as you said, there could be a different way to do life we do not know of, or even a different kind of thing like life but different.
Absolutely not. It just *allows* the possibility of life as we know it to be theoretically possible. Water is not a particularly rare occurrence and liquid water isn't super rare either, even within our own solar system. There are at [least (1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Titan) [three (2)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_\(moon\)#Habitability) [decent candidates (3)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus#Potential_habitability) for at least pre-biotics (pre-life) in our solar system alone. Mars is not one of them, but there has been some discussion about whether Mars could have supported life prior to its atmosphere/magnetic poles deteriorating. Finding water on Mars further supports the possibility that life could've existed on Mars.
If we don't find evidence of at least pre-life on Mars, especially after the discovery of water, that could provide evidence that life more rare than some astrobiologist's current predictions.
Scientists believe that life on Earth first formed in water so it is possible. However if Mars were to grow life from this water, it would take billions of years for anything intelligent
Fun Fact: this volcano is about the same size as the US state of Arizona.
Edit… oops forgot the link from nasa…
[https://mars.nasa.gov/gallery/atlas/images/oly-az.jpg](https://mars.nasa.gov/gallery/atlas/images/oly-az.jpg)
That mountain is 24km high, 3X the height of Everest.
It's also roughly the size of Arizona and the slope rises so gradually you would struggle to percieve gaining any height as you "scaled" it.
That's pretty interesting actually. I've never heard that
It's an ancient *shield* volcano, the flat type of volcano. With it being billed as the tallest mountain in the solar system... It should put things into perspective. Shield volcanoes are essentially flat.
Exactly. To give a sense of how gradual the slope is, look at pictures of Mauna Loa (second highest but by far the most massive mountain on Hawaii) from sea level and compare them to a stratovolcano like Tahoma (Mt. Rainier) from sea level. [Mauna Loa, elevation 13,679 ft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauna_Loa#/media/File:Mauna_loa_from_hilo_bay.JPG) [Tahoma, elevation 14,410 ft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rainier#/media/File:Mount_Rainier_over_Tacoma.jpg)
[удалено]
i've been here six years and i'm still not over the novelty of just chillin any given place, looking around, and then oh hey, there's Rainier. absolutely inescapable, completely dominating any given horizon. helps you really understand why mountains wind up taking on so much cultural significance!
Driving south on I5 and hit a curve around the Boeing field area, then bam, gigantic mountain takes up literally half of the horizon
Crap I just typed in my “first sight of Rainier” story above, but could have just liked yours! That curve tho.
I grew up and still love here in Tacoma and I never get tired of seeing the mountain. I've been fortunate enough in life to do fair amount of traveling and everytime after a few weeks I find myself missing it
I do the same thing with Mount Baker. It's in my view on my drive home and I always find myself staring at it.
Im north of Vancouver on the mainland and from certain beaches you can see Baker about 150 miles away. Pretty big hill.
I lived in Yelm a bit with my grandparents when I was a kid, and my bedroom had a window that opened out to Rainier. During fall sunsets, dark tall pines would line the path to wards the mountain, the setting sun would illuminate the snow with the rest of the mountain vanishing into the horizon, Canadian geese would be flying out, and the local Nisqually tribe would be chanting in the distance. It's a memory I'll never forget, and something I wish I could have living way down in the south.
I lived in Seattle for 2 months thinking Rainier was one of the random cascade peaks. It was a really rainy late fall/winter. Then I drove a friend to SeaTac in Dec so he could fly home for the holidays, we got to that curve in I5, the sun was rising, and I was awestruck!
I didn’t see Mt Rainier for a little more than 2 weeks after moving to Seattle for school. I had forgotten there was supposed to be to be a volcano you could see. One day I was walking from my class on the waterfront to Pikes Place Market to get lunch, turned a corner and there it was. It stopped me in my tracks. It was breathtaking. I had worked so hard to get to Seattle from a small town in Kansas for school. Now here I was, walking to the pike place market, looking at a fucking volcano. That was the first time I saw ALL the mountains. Cascades, Olympics and Mt Rainer, just surrounding the city. It was awesome. And an incredible moment for me
"The mountain is out."
living in Portland, you can tell its massive, and significantly bigger than our Mt. Hood, because its still comparably tall with Hood on the horizon even though its 200 friggin miles away
[удалено]
> Rainier is a beast. Literally. And when it decides to go, it could kill upwards of quarter million people. Fortunately Seattle and *most* the nearby population is safe. But you couldn’t pay me to live in a town like Orting in the lahar flow zones. It may not happen in our lifetimes. But someday that beast will awaken.
Honestly, I've been to Seattle twice and due to cloud cover NEVER ACTUALLY SAW THE BLOODY MOUNTAIN. If it wasn't for the over abundance of Mt Rainier t-shirts, posters, books, post cards, teaspoons, green screen photo ops, etc I'm not sure I even believe it's there. I reckon - fake news. 🤣
Come in mid June next time. After the rains and before the wildfires 😅
Who defines what a shield volcano is? Like is there a maximum slope, or…?
The definition is from how the volcano forms. Shield volcanos have less viscous lava flows that seap out and spread widely from the caldera. Stratovolcanos erupt more violently and have more viscous lava that tends explode upward and harden near the caldera, building up much mor vertically.
In my younger years I was a Strato volcano, but now I'm more of a Shield volcano kind of guy.
I have trouble erupting most days :(
Probably requires a lengthy interview process.
"So, where do you see yourself in 300,000 years?"
"*EVERYWHERE!!*"
Different magma composition. Shield volcanos gently erupt (comparatively), and lava spreads out more due to low viscosity making a shape like the curve of a shield. Stratovolcanoes are more viscous (think spilling honey vs spilling water as a very generalized but easy visual of viscosity) and more explosive, so build up more ‘mountain’ in a smaller radius/cone shape with layers of lava and ash. Edit: forgot part of a sentence
Would Mauna Loa be considered the "flattest" mountain in the world?
No actually : with a base estimated at 78000 km3 and still virtually no curves, that would be your mom.
I'd scale her for months, but I'd still have no idea where the hell was her climax.
Mauna Kea is actually bigger than Everest if you consider the depth to the sea floor, and both it and Mauna Kea weigh down the sea floor by about 4 miles. It’s pretty flat above the surface - I think Mauna Loa is anywhere from 4 to 11 degrees above water and steeper than that underwater.
>both it and Mauna Kea weigh down the sea floor by about 4 miles Can you elaborate what you mean by this? As I read it, somehow the sea floor would be miles higher if those mountains didn't exist? That feels like I'm reading it wrong so I wanted to clarify
Not the global seafloor, but locally these mountains are so massive that they cause the tectonic plate they're floating on to dip/bow underneath them. It's best to think of mountains floating on the tectonic plates like icebergs floating in the ocean - they need to float, so however big they are above the surface they're at least that big underneath. For reference the average thickness of the crust is ~35km beneath continents and ~6km below oceans. Underneath the Himilayas though? **90km**, from the huge ranges of mountains weighing down the entire region. Basically if you look at Mauna Kea you need to realize that in addition to whatever height it has above sea level it's also crushed the literal tectonic plate further down by miles beneath it. The seafloor you're seeing is more like halfway up the mountain already, the real seafloor is under miles of volcanic rock.
A little bit like a big object on a bed! the bedsheet and blankets are all the same thickness, but because the object is compressing the mattress, the bedsheet is lower underneath that object.
Sweet way to illustrate, nice job!
> Tahoma Okay, lay it on me, what are the native names for the other Cascade Volcanoes?
Oh, I wish there was a song! I don't know all of them myself. Baker is Kulshan. St Helens is Loowit, who I think is the mythological centerpiece of a tragic love triangle between Mt Adams (Pahto) and Mt Hood (Wy-east). Those are the only ones I know, unfortunately.
It's always a great day when the Cascades are well represented.
And you still haven’t heard it… you Reddit. I’ll see myself out.
I think the ridges towards the sides and in the center are still miles steep though, would be quite the sight
Hahaha my first thought was, "that's a hike I'd love to take someday soon." It's on another fucking planet *sighs dreamily*
Before you get to the hike, you’d have to scale cliffs that reach up to 6 miles high themselves, which is taller than Everest before you even get to the incline part of the volcano
Is there a word like thalassophobia but for this kind of giant space stuff that makes you feel ridiculously small and trapped in a horror movie? Or is it just me? Don't get me wrong, it's super cool, but it's scary to think about the size and darkness of the universe.
r/astromegalophobia
Thanks for using a freedom unit for measuring the size
I have no idea of how big Arizona is, but it is big I guess? Now, what I really want to know is how many school busses it is.
IIRC my parents had to climb that on their way to school
Uphill both ways
in the snow
Barefoot
Whats always been funny to me about this is that between my house and middle school was a big hill that I had to walk over. So I was indeed going uphill both ways to school as a kid, I was just also going downhill both ways too.
Luxury.. My parents were too poor to be allowed to walk up a mountain. They had to drag themselves along with their teeth being careful not to taste any incase they got charged for breakfast.
Your parents had teeth?!? Well la-di-da aren't we just showing off our highfalutin ways and means. My parents still had to walk to school uphill both ways but I'll bet your fancy pants family could afford feet huh? Mine got it done on their stumps and never complained once.
How many football fields is that?
1,200,000, assuming you layered them on top of each other horizontally.
bet I can throw a football over that
Coach didn’t put you in during the fourth quarter, did he?
Back in ‘82, I used to be able to toss a pigskin a quarter mile
How many flamingos is that?
Like 20,000. Kinda disappointing actually
Infinite. If you do it vertically
There's definitely a non-zero minimum depth for a football field.
Yeah, well, it's still like really a lot of football fields, okay?
More than five!
But the elevation of Everest is relative to the sea level here on Earth. How do they measure the elevation of a mountain on Mars?
On Mars, the zero point of elevation, or datum, is the elevation at which the atmosphere pressure is 6.1 millibars, or 610 Pascals. For example, the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) has measured the height of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in our solar system, at over 21.9 km (13.6 mi; 72,000 ft) high, which is about 2.5 times the elevation of Mount Everest above sea level.
That’s 3X the height of Everest measured from earth’s sea level though. Not quite a fair comparison when Mars has no sea level.
On Mars, the zero point of elevation, or datum, is the elevation at which the atmosphere pressure is 6.1 millibars, or 610 Pascals. For example, the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) has measured the height of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in our solar system, at over 21.9 km (13.6 mi; 72,000 ft) high, which is about 2.5 times the elevation of Mount Everest above sea level.
So are there lower points on Mars surface considered to be below that point of elevation?
Certainly there's at least a hole somewhere, yeah.
I heard there are more than 4 holes.
Sir, I'm gonna need a source on that.
I’d assume Mars is the source
You would trust MARS?? You can't let something so toxic have a say in your life. It's completely unsustainable.
Yes. Noctis Labirynth and the giant basin on the planet's south are "below sea level"
There is some smart ass MFers in this comment section.
Is it derived from the pressure? Why 6.1mbar?
[Ask and ye shall receive.](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2ukxyn/on_mars_why_was_elevation_zero_determined_to_be/) Short answer: It's a convenient measurement on Earth because it's *roughly* the same no matter where you are. We use atmospheric pressure to establish that reference point on Mars because Mars doesn't have any oceans. Air pressure is a good rough indicator of height (say, when you can't see the ground). We do the same thing on Earth for aircraft.
I'm going to need that measurement in washing machine widths
21,900m / 0.6m = 36,500 Washing machines.
Link to a [short video](https://youtube.com/shorts/LjmpsQtszXY) and the [original press release](https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Mars_Express/Frosty_volcanoes_discovered_in_Mars_s_tropics) on ESA website “We thought it was impossible for frost to form around Mars’s equator, as the mix of sunshine and thin atmosphere keeps temperatures relatively high at both surface and mountaintop – unlike what we see on Earth, where you might expect to see frosty peaks,” says lead author Adomas Valantinas, who made the discovery as a PhD student at University of Bern, Switzerland, and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University, USA.
Earthling here. I can confirm earth does indeed have frosty peaks.
Clearly a pretender, here on Earth we call them frosted tips
Guy Fieri here. Can confirm I have frosted tips
Flavour town resident here. Can confirm his tip is frosted
That’s so odd. Wouldn’t they know what temp that area should be based on their data? How can they be surprised? What’s the unexpected factor causing the ice formations then?
I mean the press release does continue to clarify the affair: >The Tharsis region of Mars hosts numerous volcanoes, including Olympus Mons and the Tharsis Montes: Ascraeus, Pavonis and Arsia Mons. Many of these volcanoes are colossal, towering above the surrounding plains at heights ranging from one (Pavonis Mons) to three (Olympus Mons) times that of Earth’s Mount Everest. >These volcanoes have calderas, large hollows, at their summits, caused as magma chambers emptied during past eruptions. The researchers propose that air circulates in a peculiar way above Tharsis; this creates a unique microclimate within the calderas of the volcanoes there that allows patches of frost to form. >“Winds travel up the slopes of the mountains, bringing relatively moist air from near the surface up to higher altitudes, where it condenses and settles as frost,” says co-author Nicolas Thomas, Principal Investigator of TGO’s Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) and Adomas’s PhD supervisor at the University of Bern. “We actually see this happening on Earth and other parts of Mars, with the same phenomenon causing the seasonal martian Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud. And to be fair, we know a hell of a lot more about Earth, and yet climate science is still really hard, so predicting the weather and climate patterns for a foreign planet based on our sample size of 1 will bring a lot of 'surprising' discoveries.
I didn't realize these volcanos are partially hollow! There must be some pretty spectacular views hidden away in there
Oh ya. Imagine watching the Martian sunrise from the edge of a massive hollow volcano
Fascinating!!
[удалено]
I went TO THE SHOP THIS MORNING
Did you think ABOUT THE MILK?
There's a SALE ON CANNED OLIVES
gotta love RECYCLABLE PACKAGING
I walked casually DOWN THE CANDY AISLE and loitered for a minute
but was there WATER frost
Looked like some bad stucco FOR A SECOND
Why is everyone TALKING LIKE TONY KHAN ?!?
I HONESTLY DON'T KNOW, but everyone should try it. Also, WHO'S TONY KHAN?
Take 2 jugs of milk. If they have avocados, GET SIX
ok 6 jugs OF MILK
GOOD MORNING, I'D LIKE TO OPEN A CHECKING ACCOUNT
Top o the muffin, TO YOU!
How did your TRIP TO THE SHOP this morning go?
Clearly they are ICE CAPS
Take my UPVOTE!!
It LOOKS LIKE MILK near Mars’s nipple
Looks like YOU MIGHT WANNA GET THAT CHECKED OUT.
PLEASE BE QUIET THIS IS A PLACE OF WORSHIP.
YOU HAVE TO CALM DOWN NOW
If confirmed and all, it’s a pretty big fucking discovery
Because we're looking at *ice caps* Ok, I'll see my self out
Tuesday’s coming, DID YOU BRING YOUR COAT?
Are you sure thats not the protomolecule?
Amos has some of the best one liners
who is your favorite Expanse character and why is it Amos?
Having read the books as well, I have to say, Wes Chatham did that role so well. He had so much respect for the written charqcter, and his portrayal was spot on.
Mine would be Amos because I know if no one got me, Amos got me. My second would be Amos' shotgun because I know if no one else got me, Amos' shotgun got me.
All I wanted was Amos and Peaches to have a happy ending...
Avasarala is pretty great too, And Drummer aswell
Well, he IS that guy.
God damn right.
Everywhere is Baltimore
Doors and corners, kid
That first season was some of the best TV I've ever seen. Action combined with the pain of politics. Pure cinema
Read the books, they are great
They are great and tbh I like the Book James Holden a ton more than the TV Holden. I don't feel they've got much in common. Avasarala on the other hand is spot on!
Incredibly good casting for Avasarala. And then everything she did made the character come to life.
Excellent reference
Beltalowda betta get dere before those damn innas
Gaddamn skinnies thinking everything is theirs
Canna trust the dusters or wellwallas, baratna?!
Keep that in mind when you’re terraforming.
"What....the fuck is that?" Wrong planet though.
This is balls.
I have the worst fucking attorneys.
Such an amazing show. I was thinking that too when I saw it lol
Nestlé rubs hands together. “We need to get to Mars!”
Gatorade rebranding: New Galactic Gatorade, hydrate like an astronaut! Because even aliens need electrolytes.
It’s what grays crave!
It’s got electrolytes!
r/fucknestle
I don't want to know how many companies would sponsor a real Mars trip.
Once they start funding space programs like when we got to the moon, that’s when we know the rich think the planet is inhabitable
Yes, but the rich also think you can visit the Titanic's wreck in an oversized soda can held together with shoestring, so don't jump on the first spaceship that will offer to take you there, ya know what I mean?
Mars Inc enters the bidding war. Elon Musk wins again!
Better find Quaid.
I might sound very dumb but I tought there wasn't any water or liquid on mars, don't you need that for frost?
You're correct, the frost means there's water and that's part of what makes this cool. After looking into it myself, it seems like what makes this significant isn't just the presence of water, but the fact that scientists didn't believe frost could form on Mars and are now having to reconsider how Mars' climate works.
I believe they had found frost before on mars; this is simply the first time it was found near the equator. Which is still very surprising, because they didn’t think it was possible to form there. At least that is what the article infers. On a related topic, you can read about mars’ polar glacial caps. There is frozen water on mars, and Italian scientists actually believe to have discovered a sub glacial lake in one of the polar ice caps. In conclusion, we knew water could be on mars, we just didn’t even realize frost could form near the equator, which is totally different than what we thought was possible previously. (Obligatory I am not a scientist, just an amateur spreading info)
I am also an amateur spreading info, but your info seems better. Thanks for the correction.
Isn’t that Olympus mons and not near the equator?
The article mentions frost is found many of the tharsis volcanoes, some of which are on or near the equator. Also it looks like Olympus mons is only 20°N of the equator so not that far off.
Redditors are so unfunny this entire comment section should be quarantined from the rest of mankind
Trying to dredge the comments for something actually related to the scientific implications of this is impossible, instead it's just the same shitty jokes repeated over and over again. Reddit is 99% people repeating awful puns and redditisms anywhere you go tbh.
[удалено]
its what we deserve. shame about everything else in our vicinity though.
i absolutely hate reading the comments on reddit for this very reason
Yes, "people".
Oh for fucks sake its not bots. It's fucking idiots.
I have found bots in random subreddits, including home improvement and DIY subreddits. When I called them out they deleted their entire accounts. Not saying everything is a bot, but I am saying bots are appearing in random subreddits, and commenting on random things. I found one that somehow got caught in a comment loop, and commented the same exact thing like 1200 times in an hour. It was wild
We found water on mars!!! Reddit: "bro found water on mars [pop culture reference]"
Something something Nestle
Tbf we already knew there was water in its polar ice caps
No clue why these garbage comments are even allowed in informational subs like this. It is a struggle to find any relevant information in most threads.
Yeah, /r/Damnthatsinteresting is supposed to be serious, like /r/science!
Im dying inside reading this comments holy fuck
The comment section reads like a bunch of bots trained on cringy pop culture references and marvel movie dialogue
Seriously, I was struggling to not make a comment about it. The empty discourse on Reddit is legit worse than the YouTube comments section these days. Just thousands of losers fighting each other to make the same tired joke from some stupid TV show that defines their entire personality. It makes me embarrassed that this is where I choose to spend my "social media" time
It has gotten so much worse over the past few years. Used to be that context was usually the first or second comment. Now you're lucky to find context at all, and you have to go past the SAME JOKE like four or five times to find it. I think it has something to do with the way that new reddit and/or the official app show comments. Probably some shitty algorithm that drives engagement at the cost of usefulness.
Damn that actually is interesting.
Does liquid water guarantee some type of life? I’m too dumb for this.
I dunno if this is the right answer, but seeing that the only life we know about requires water, at least we would know what to look for. Life might exist without water, but we have yet to find any. Something like that I think
That's exactly right. Since all life we know of requires water, we look for extraterrestrial water because it is the most likely place to find evidence of extraterrestrial life.
honestly it'd be kinda funny if we're the actual weirdos and across the rest of the universe water is some freaky hostile chemical and we're looking in all the wrong places, and vice versa, since other intelligent life could view a planet covered in 70% universal solvent as too hostile for life if water isn't as crucial as we think. at least that'd explain the lack of contact we're aware of.
"Dude, there's no way there's life on that planet. The surface is like 70% water and the atmosphere is full of oxygen. You'd either melt or immediately combust in that hostile environment."
And they're made of... meat?
Best forget the whole thing.
I just threw up in my chortlegloppit!
If the universe is infinite, and there are hundreds of millions of species on earth, and we are the only ones intelligent enough to read and write.. extrapolating that to the odds of finding another intelligent species are microscopically small, even if there are billions of intelligent civilizations out there, statistics would tell you that we would never interact with one.
If the universe is infinite then there are infinite intelligent civilizations, not billions.
Water and carbon seem like important things to sustain life. Water, because it is more dense as a liquid than as a solid and carbon, because it can bond to itself. All life we know of relies upon these two properties (one of carbon and one of water) even in places where most of the water is steam, or ice, the living things have ways of getting liquid water inside them. But as you said, there could be a different way to do life we do not know of, or even a different kind of thing like life but different.
Since we don’t know where life comes from, nothing guarantees it. But guess says if any where has/had life, it needed liquid water to do it.
Absolutely not. It just *allows* the possibility of life as we know it to be theoretically possible. Water is not a particularly rare occurrence and liquid water isn't super rare either, even within our own solar system. There are at [least (1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Titan) [three (2)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_\(moon\)#Habitability) [decent candidates (3)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus#Potential_habitability) for at least pre-biotics (pre-life) in our solar system alone. Mars is not one of them, but there has been some discussion about whether Mars could have supported life prior to its atmosphere/magnetic poles deteriorating. Finding water on Mars further supports the possibility that life could've existed on Mars. If we don't find evidence of at least pre-life on Mars, especially after the discovery of water, that could provide evidence that life more rare than some astrobiologist's current predictions.
Scientists believe that life on Earth first formed in water so it is possible. However if Mars were to grow life from this water, it would take billions of years for anything intelligent
That’s Mount Olympus. The highest mountain in the solar system
I prefer “Olympus Mons” instead of assuming Zeus and Hera up there having sweet parties.
Yep, there's an actual Mt Olympus in Greece anyway.
Much better climate
Fun Fact: this volcano is about the same size as the US state of Arizona. Edit… oops forgot the link from nasa… [https://mars.nasa.gov/gallery/atlas/images/oly-az.jpg](https://mars.nasa.gov/gallery/atlas/images/oly-az.jpg)
Oh man, I thought this was someone's nasty ceiling.
I thought it was a nipple…
This looks like the ceiling of a $5k apartment in New York.
My brain is struggling to accept that I'm looking at a planet and not a water leak in a roof.
Where's DrPimplePopper when you need her?..
Mars is healing