Mars Phoenix Lander: Daily repeated change of soil electric permittivity and visible evaporating brine in the ground

[Holger Isenberg]

The mysterious white stuff suddenly appearing in the Martian soil seen by Phoenix Lander on Mars, active May 2008 - November 2008:

GHYNpoQbgAAGZZ0.jpeg

As visible in this new animation by user landru79 the white material appeared within a few seconds after digging!
https://twitter.com/landru79/status/1762579331505627405

It's interesting how apparently all scientists' research only focuses on the disappearance of the white material after the trench was dug and not how is suddenly gradually appeared a few seconds after digging. This gradually appearing hints to a liquid brine pouring out of the ground and then evaporating increasing the salt concentration. This great video presentation goes into the details, but still ignores the pouring out before freezing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvHaaLIJqYA

For the electric universe discussion this other detail from the same presentation video is interesting: A sudden daily repeated change of the electric permittivity of the Martian soil during the night. That's measured by 4 needles on the robotic arm pressed into the ground. Temperature was also measured with those needles. Though they had problems with the temperature measurements as the contact to the soil was bad and needed unexpected high pressure from the arm to achieve usable measurements. I'm still a bit sceptic about the temperature measurements as they are surprisingly close to the atmosphere temperature also measured by the lander. With the sun shining on the ground it should be noticeable higher in the almost vacuum atmosphere.

In article Formation and Persistence of Brine on Mars: Experimental Simulations, section 3.2 goes into that direction with an interesting lab experiment but also ignores the pouring out before freezing: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10. ... .2016.1525

Copied from my this week's posting on https://twitter.com/areoinfo/status/1762613492404920489

[Xuxalina Rihhia]

With blue skies, Mars cannot have an almost vacuum of an atmosphere. It has to be a lot denser than 6 millibars.

[nick c]

What is the source or origin of this (possible remarkable) discovery of salt water on or just beneath the Martian surface?

[Holger Isenberg]

What is the source or origin of this (possible remarkable) discovery of salt water on or just beneath the Martian surface?

You mean the discussion of the findings in images or where the water is potentially coming from?

I remember that I heard or read about possible liquid brine years ago, but that was already after the even older discussions of normal water possible to exist at low elevation locations as the conditions are sometimes below the water triple point which is known since decades. On my old website https://mars-news.de I have an entry from February 28, 2010 where I posted one of the first images of the white salt crystals pouring out of the wheel-disturbed soil near Spirit Rover on its Sol 2182: https://areo.info/mer/spirit/2182

Where the water is originally coming from I don't know. Discussions exists that the difference in more water on the Mars south pole than the north pole is not only due to the longer southern winter in the more elliptic orbit but also due to asymmetries in the ion flow.

[nick c]

Where the water is originally coming from I don't know.

Yes, the source of the salt water was my question.

[Holger Isenberg]

Yes, the source of the salt water was my question.

The standard model answer would be comets.

And it looks like they they are not complete wrong with that!

Because comets, as _we_ know, are not fluffy icy dirtballs (Ice Ball Comet Model, IBCM) and none of the many comet observing probes ever found water on them. But probes detected OH- ions and maybe even water molecules at large distance from their core in the tail. And according to James McCanney, comets are accumulating matter from ions in space, i.e. the inverse than assumed by the standard model.

The Nature and Origin of Comets, James McCanney 1983:
https://bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ ... mets28.htm

Dynamics of a Small Comet, James McCanney, 1983:
https://bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ ... mets23.htm

More of his older papers from the 1980s and 1990s:
https://bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_autor_mccanney.htm

Recently he started also to upload some papers on ResearchGate:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/James-Mccanney

I wouldn't exclude the possibility that planets work in a similar way.

[Maol]

Oxygen and Hydrogen ions in the solar wind.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com ... 12JA018071

[3] Hydrogen, helium and oxygen are the most abundant elements in the solar wind. According to measurements by SWICS on Ulysses, the oxygen abundance (H/O ratio) varies significantly between fast and slow solar winds, with mean values of 1500 and 2300, respectively [e.g., von Steiger et al., 2010].

[nick c]

The outgassing of molecular oxygen from the nucleus of a comet combines with protons in the solar wind to form hydroxyls and H2O.
But I don't think that this is the source of the possible discovery of salt water found on the Martian surface.

Comet 67P emits ancient molecular oxygen from its nucleus

[Holger Isenberg]

source of the possible discovery of salt water

That oxygen-generator on Comet 67P is interesting on its own!

But back to the salt water on Mars. Almost any large object in the solar system has a sodium tail:
viewtopic.php?t=1155

So it's even existing on small asteroids already.

[Maol]

Notice Sodium there, between Neon and Manganese.