Mars has water - okay it's really ice

[kach22i]

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7043/full/435723b.html

This image from the Mars Express spacecraft shows a pocket of water ice nestling in a martian crater, bathed in the late martian summer sun.

The shadow of the crater's rim, which towers 300 metres over the surrounding plains, prevents the ice from vaporizing in the planet's thin atmosphere. A dusting of frost survives inside the rim to the upper right, while the sun glimmers on its south-facing outer edge.

The 35-kilometre-wide crater sits 70° north of the martian equator, in a low-lying region known as Vastitas Borealis. Previous orbiters have spotted ice deposits in craters, but the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board the European probe is the first to return a three-dimensional colour image of an icy spot. The ice may be up to 200 metres thick, and lies over a dune field that has formed in the sediment on the crater's floor. The data were collected on 2 February, and this image was created for Nature last week.

At the bottom of the link it says: Mars may have a frozen sea........................but you need to subscribe.

[gaijindabe]

So those little green people have ice, how about Johnnie Walker?

[kach22i]

http://www.extremescience.com/ThickestIce.htm

90% of the ice on earth is located in Antarctica.

Marine Life: Some species of fish that live in the waters around Antarctica are specially adapted to life in near-freezing waters. Most living creatures on this planet have hemoglobin in their blood, which gives it that red color we all know so well. These particular species of fish, however, have extremely low levels of hemoglobin in their blood. So low that their blood isn't even red! They also have natural antifreeze in their bodies to protect them from freezing to death. (Even if you're a fish and the water in all the cells of your body freezes and turns to ice crystals, you die. 'Nuff said). If you were to catch one of these fish and cut it open the blood, gills and all the organs would be WHITE.

How about in the ice, not under the ice?

http://www.resa.net/nasa/antarctica.htm

t is precisely for these reasons that Antarctica has come to be regarded as a laboratory for the inhospitable conditions that obtain extra-terrestrially in the solar system. As such, Antarctica has come to be known as the "closest place to Mars."

In the meantime, researchers are finding that Antarctica is not a sterile, lifeless environment. Micro-organisms have been found to exist in the upper layers of the ice sheet and micro-organism fossils have been found in deep ice cores.

Russian scientists have been able to revive and culture bacteria, yeast, fungi, and other microbes found in ice cores that carbon date to more than 200,000 years old! This is reminiscent of the bacteria that were found surviving in hibernation on the U.S. Surveyor moon lander that was retrieved by the Apollo astronauts, having outlasted the airless and hostile lunar environment for almost three years! Clearly, microbial life "goes on and on and on..."

We are not alone.