Will the lander find water on Mars before August 1st, 2008?

Yo KennyK.
Will Ice be considered a form of Water?

(Not KennyK) - Ice is merely a phase of water it has to count. (The odds would be pretty crazy otherwise!)

mork's question probably refers to frozen non-H2O fluids

If they find ice this question will settle as 'yes'.

If they do find ice, they will turn it into water. Part of the process of determining what the samples are composed of is heating them up. I'm not a scientist, and I don't understand all of it, but apparently heating makes it easier to determine what they have.

Actually as I understand it, they will turn it into steam (them little ovens are hot) either way, I think we're agreed that we're looking for H2O in any phase.

Hi Kenny,

So are you saying that "confirmed" Ice will count?

Regards,

Ryan
Hubdub Category Editor

they should have sent a decent bottle of single malt up with it.

Ryanj - yes. As long as it is H2O ice and not some other frozen substance (they've already found "dry ice").

Skipper, you suspended too early... just because it's NOT salt doesn't mean that it's water. Dry ice melts too but is carbon dioxide, not water.

It might be water, but news reports currently state that scientists 'believe it's ice but haven't confirmed anything yet (except that it's NOT salt)

Agreed, fingers_of_fury, they do not know it's frozen water - they based their statement on the fact it [the substance] disappeared. Observation and theory are not proof.

Skipper suspended when the Phoenix declared "Hey I found water!"... We can wait to settle until they confirm, but they now seem pretty happy about finding it. I think the suspend was impressively fast, so kudos to Skipper.

duh, constable1664, where are you from? in science you proof actually by observation and theory. But never mind ...

kruijs - observation and theory by themselves do not constitute proof. I may observe someone do something and theorize as to their motive, but still not have proof. Proof is tangible and has substance – unlike the whitish substance under Martian soil.

I see that settlement is requested agin, and again I must say that it only APPEARS that some 'whitish' pieces of material in shadows have disappeared.

Yet, if you look at the side-by-side photos, you will see other 'whitish' areas in full sun are still intact. Why would the pieces in shadow "evaporate" but the areas in full sun be intact and unchanged except for some windblown dust?

My regards to my fellow Hubdubbers but my wager stands unchanged, and I protest settlement without absolute proof. I'll gladly accept the analysis provided by the American lander's equipment but until then...

Not enough caffeine yet this morning ... but how is it that this other question
<http://www.hubdub.com/m8554/Which_happens_first_Phoenix_Lander_finds_ice_on_Mars_or_Karl_Rove_removed_from_Fox_News?
settled "Yes" for Ice/Water yesterday and this question didn't?

Or, conversely, did the other market settle too soon?

Maybe I'm missing something/need more ice coffee.

I have no horse in this race, but to answer the question above:

The possibility exists that the pieces in the shadow evaporated because they had almost all of their surface area exposed to the ambient temperature and thus heated more quickly and the other white patches are just the tip of a much larger piece which remains insulated by the soil with the majority of its surface area in contact with colder portions below. It might be like comparing an ice cube sitting on the ground and a block of ice buried underground with only its tip protruding. The ice cube would melt first and initially more noticeably.

NASA Phoenix Mars Lander Confirms Frozen Water
"It is with great pride and a lot of joy that I announce today that we have found proof that this hard bright material is really water ice and not some other substance," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, during a Friday news briefing to announce the confirmation of water ice.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080620.html

@Erik - I hope that it is ice/water... but it's still an assumption.

Quote from article you provided:
"The key new evidence is that chunks of bright material exposed by digging on June 15 and still present on June 16 had vaporized by June 19. "This tells us we've got water ice within reach of the arm, which means we can continue this investigation with the tools we brought with us," said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, lead scientist for Phoenix's Surface Stereo Imager camera. He said the disappearing chunks could not have been carbon-dioxide ice at the local temperatures because that material would not have been stable for even one day as a solid."

I haven't visited Mars yet so I don't know much about physics there... I'm very curious to learn more... are there unusual phenomenons on another planet that could cause chunks to disappear? I hate to see NASA miss out on knowledge that might be missed due to knee jerk assumptions.

I completely cashed out of this question but continue to enjoy the discussion.

Rumor has it the chunks were eaten by a strange animal between shutter clicks. However, we should not ignore the possibility that a Hubdub user is gaming the system by removing the pieces when the camera is not looking.

I'm convinced that the martians loaded the chunks into their little green SUV's...We know that they have to have them. How else to explain the warming of the Martian atmosphere...just ask Algore.
http://newsbusters.org/node/11122
http://globaloney.blogspot.com/2008/01/those-darn-martian-suvs.html
"Darn it. We send one friggin' little SUV to Mars and look what happens. After all, Mars couldn't be warming due to something like the sun (hello!) because that might mean Earth's warming is due to something like the sun."

I think I glimpsed a slow moving white Bronco leaving the scene, or maybe it was just ice, or salt...

Maybe we'll get an aerial video from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on the news tonight of that slow speed white Bronco getaway.