BILLYFRED0000
05-16-2008, 09:34 AM
An international team of scientists used the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to probe the north pole of the red planet with radar. The ice cap there goes about 1.2 miles deep (2 km) and is roughly the size of Pakistan at 310,000 square miles large (800,000 square km).
These scans revealed the polar cap has up to four layers of ice rich in sand and dust, each separated by clearer sheets of nearly pure ice. Each dirty and clean layer is some 1,000 feet thick (300 meters).
These dirty and clean layers were created by ages of intense dust storms followed by icy eras. This five-million-year-long cycle was likely driven by wobbles in Mars' tilt and fluctuations in the shape of its orbit around the sun. The more sunlight the red planet saw because of these changes, the more the polar icecaps retreated and the more dust storms Mars saw.
"All this layering is key evidence for theoretical models that predict that changes in Mars' climate are coupled with orbital changes," said researcher Roger Phillips, a geophysicist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder.
Quoted From an article on the ice packs of mars.
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And I thought that SUV's and green house gases controlled the climate..... Boy was I wrong.....
:rolleyes: :doh:
These scans revealed the polar cap has up to four layers of ice rich in sand and dust, each separated by clearer sheets of nearly pure ice. Each dirty and clean layer is some 1,000 feet thick (300 meters).
These dirty and clean layers were created by ages of intense dust storms followed by icy eras. This five-million-year-long cycle was likely driven by wobbles in Mars' tilt and fluctuations in the shape of its orbit around the sun. The more sunlight the red planet saw because of these changes, the more the polar icecaps retreated and the more dust storms Mars saw.
"All this layering is key evidence for theoretical models that predict that changes in Mars' climate are coupled with orbital changes," said researcher Roger Phillips, a geophysicist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder.
Quoted From an article on the ice packs of mars.
**************************************
And I thought that SUV's and green house gases controlled the climate..... Boy was I wrong.....
:rolleyes: :doh: