The Weather Eye column in The Times informed its readers of a shallow pond basin, 3300 feet by 1300 feet, in a valley between steep cliffs, on Antarctica (in the McMurdo dry valley system). However, the pond feature is just a few inches deep. The water seems to be sucked out of the atmosphere and it is so salty, some 8 times saltier than the Dead Sea, that it never freezes (Nature, Scientific Reports). The big question that has occurred to space scientists is … could water behave somewhat like this on Mars?
Saltier than the Dead Sea
20 March 2013Geology