Rare salt formations have been documented for the first time on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, and they could yield insights about salt structures found on Mars before they disappear for good.
They're showing up now in part because water levels at the largest natural lake west of the Mississippi have been lowered by drought and water diversion, exposing more shoreline. It's a story that's playing out throughout the American West as a growing population puts more demand on scarce water resources.
Along the high-salinity waters [of] Great Salt Lake, the expanded shoreline means there are more places where water can bubble up to the surface from warm, sulfate-rich springs. When it hits the cold air, a mineral called Glauber's salt, or mirabilite, separates out.
"It has to be exposed to just the right conditions," said park ranger Allison Thompson, who first saw them in October.
[...] There are now four mounds at the Great Salt Lake beach, growing up to 3 feet (1 meter) tall and several yards wide.
Mirabilite mounds are seen more often in places such as the Arctic, bolstered by the constantly cold temperatures. There are also indications of similar structures on Mars, so study of the mounds in Utah could offer clues on how to examine salts found there.
Salt deposits on Mars could hold clues about whether groundwater or even life was ever supported on the red planet, said Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, a nonprofit group that runs a station simulating the planet in the Utah desert that isn't involved with studying the Great Salt Lake mounds.
"What would that look like? What would be the right detection instrument or technique?" he said.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @11:07AM (2 children)
Mormons on Mars. Should have seen this coming. They got they from the Arabic Pennisula, a slightly lost tribe of Israel than the Nephrites and Lamanites and Stalagtites. But, you know, Jesus appeared to them to, so as not to make them some kind of Seer-Stone cult, but instead real Conservative Trump supporting Christians, sort of, with the plural wives thing, and declaring war on the United States, for a while. And, oh apologizing for not allowing Blacks to be priests, and for having stored up billions of tax free dollars, and just otherwise being LDS. Creepy fuckers, you know! At the Show, "Bonk of Mormon", one of nice clean young men offered me a book, but I demurred, saying, "I prefer to read religious texts in the original language!" Not sure if they understood what a slam that was to their fake religion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @06:25PM
*tips hat*
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Monday January 13 2020, @02:12PM
See The Expanse" [wikipedia.org]. They have space Mormons, the Pitch Black movies had space Muslims, and "The Hammer of God" had space Chrislamists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @01:23PM (2 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_sulfate#Physical_properties [wikipedia.org]
It's been used as phase change heat storage for passive solar heated buildings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_sulfate#Thermal_storage [wikipedia.org] In a solar heating class (mid 1970s) the prof said that in bulk it tended to separate into layers which reduced thermal storage capacity. The work-around back then was to package the material in plastic bags in thin horizontal layers.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 13 2020, @12:10AM (1 child)
Heh, just remember to keep them horizontally (i.e. don't use them as tiles on your slanted roof).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @06:06PM
Early solar heating usage, 1948: https://timeline.com/woman-solar-power-leader-f682bb7c6feb [timeline.com]
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/419445/the-house-of-the-day-after-tomorrow/ [technologyreview.com] (pic of the house)
1978: https://web.mit.edu/solardecathlon/solar5.html [mit.edu] I visited this one, the windows had reflective blinds so the sun was on the ceiling where the Glauber's salt was in thin plastic bags inside special ceiling tiles. Reflecting the sun up did a couple of nice things, first the floor was free to make into any floor plan and second the warm ceiling provided nice radiant heat.
Don't know how much extra building this way would cost, but it might be getting close to a reasonable payback these days? Many of the experimental elements in 1978 like high R-value windows are now in production.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Monday January 13 2020, @01:55PM
I just wanted to provide some feedback. I expected that a scientific article regarding "rare salt formations" might include a link to both the rare salt in question (Glauber's salt), or maybe more about the actual foundation of them. The closest it has as a link to either is a link to the generic search results for salt on the phys.org website, with the first hit being the article posted here.
Instead of a link to more detail, we have links water levels unrelated to the salts, a growing population (maybe sweaty, salty people are inferred or implied), a link about... links to water, just like the generic salt link.
That said, it's not the fault of anyone here that the article doesn't cut to the chase. (I also recognize editors might not have the time to add extra content or details for everything that might benefit from it... but that's also part of what we're here to help with!)
Rather than only comment about what might be complimentary to the article... here are links that I found interesting to the Wikipedia page about Glauber's Salt, and another about Mirabilite specifically (the picture of the salt crystal is interesting enough--more interesting than a scientist doing stock footage work, but also serves to compliment the undated blurry photo of salt crystals piling up (which is useful for scale, but otherwise it sort of looks like... salt)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glauber%27s_salt [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabilite [wikipedia.org]