RADAR FINDS WATER 1 MILE UNDER THE MARTIAN SOUTH POLE

      Mars Express Orbiter has used radar to find liquid water one mile below the Martian South Pole. On Figure 1 the axis term is SOUTH POLE. At the same absolute skip are MARS and RADAR. Supposedly the water is one mile down, and it is kept liquid by having a high salt concentration. At skip +1 on the matrix are MILE, SALT, and THE WATERS PREVAILED EXCEEDINGLY.

STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF FIGURE 1. As per my standard protocol, no statistical significance is assigned to the axis term, here the 42nd lowest ELS of SOUTH POLE. Normally I don't feature ELS ranks this high unless there are at least two a priori 4+ letter key words at special case skips (+/- 1 or the absolute skip of the axis term). Here there are two terms at the absolute skip of the axis term: MARS and RADAR. Before factoring in the ELS rank of SOUTH POLE, MARS is at a special case skip against odds of about 163 to 1, and RADAR is found this way against odds of about 61 to 1. In the open text is THE WATERS PREVAILED EXCEEDINGLY. There was no reason for me to search for that entire phrase. I just wanted THE WATERS which found against odds of about 7.7 to 1. The first article used as a reference stated, "the potential presence of dissolved salts — could allow water to stay liquid even at what would otherwise be below-freezing temperatures." So I looked for SALT and found it at skip +1 against odds of about 5.67 to 1. Finally, the location of this underground lake is about a mile. So I looked for MILE and found it a skip +1 against odds of about 14 to 1. After dividing the combined significant by 42 to account for ELS rank 42 of the axis term, the matrix was found against odds of about 147,823 to 1.

      As I was writing this I noticed that a few of my fans at DoD were reading earlier articles that I wrote about UTOPIA PLANTIA which is a frozen fresh water lake on Mars, and MARS MAVEN. Utopia Planitia has the area of Lake Superior or the State of New Mexico on Earth, but it doesn't look blue from orbit because the ice has a few feet of Martian dust on top of it. MAVEN stands for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN. Its mission is to determine how the Martian atmosphere and ocean were lost over time. The  matrices for UTOPIA PLANTIA  and MARS MAVEN  are repeated below as Figures 4 and 5 respectively for comparison purposes.

ABSTRACT OF RADAR EVIDENCE OF SUBGLACIAL LIQUID WATER ON MARS. The new findings by R. Orosei et al. are published in the July 25, 2018 edition of Science. (DOI: 10.1126/science.aar7268). The Abstract is as follows:

The presence of liquid water at the base of the martian polar caps has long been suspected but not observed. We surveyed the Planum Australe region using the MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding) instrument, a low-frequency radar on the Mars Express spacecraft. Radar profiles collected between May 2012 and December 2015 contain evidence of liquid water trapped below the ice of the South Polar Layered Deposits. Anomalously bright subsurface reflections are evident within a well-defined, 20-kilometer-wide zone centered at 193°E, 81°S, which is surrounded by much less reflective areas. Quantitative analysis of the radar signals shows that this bright feature has high relative dielectric permittivity (>15), matching that of water-bearing materials. We interpret this feature as a stable body of liquid water on Mars.

DEPTH OF THE WATER.

Between 2012 and 2015, MARSIS’ ground-penetrating radar conducted a survey of a 120-mile-wide (200-kilometer-wide) zone in the Planum Australe region, just beyond Mars’ permanent south polar ice cap. The readings turned up evidence of a particularly bright radar reflection in a 12-mile-wide (20-kilometer-wide) area (see Figure 3 below). MARSIS’ team interpret that feature as an interface between the overlying ice and a stable body of liquid water that would have to be at least 3 feet (1 meter) thick.

“This subsurface anomaly on Mars has radar properties matching water, or water-rich sediments,” lead study author Roberto Orosei, a principal investigator for the MARSIS experiment, said in an ESA news release. ““This is just one small study area; it is an exciting prospect to think there could be more of these underground pockets of water elsewhere, yet to be discovered.”