Word: polarizing
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...answer may lie in a theory suggested by Astronomer Bradford A. Smith of New Mexico State University and others long before Mariner 9 took off. Smith says that water may be stored as ice in the planet's northern polar cap under a thin layer of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice. That hidden water, he says, may be released periodically into the Martian atmosphere, producing regional rains and perhaps floods to erode the arid Martian surface. Bemused scientists at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Lab are now calling Smith's rains Martian "monsoons...
...Martian north pole is currently tilted toward the sun only when the planet is also at its greatest distance, or aphelion, from the sun. In contrast, the southern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun at the planet's closest approach, or perihelion. As a result, the southern polar cap gets warm enough to evaporate almost completely each summer, releasing most of its dry ice into the atmosphere. The northern polar region, however, remains cold enough during summer to retain a large and relatively thick polar cap throughout the year...
...getting drunken townspeople in from the freezing cold. "They're simply bored," says Mrs. Sadie Neakok, 51, the district magistrate in Barrow. "There's nothing better to do than get drunk." Recreation is limited to basketball at the school gym, unreliable cable television, movies at the Polar Bear Theater (with special weekend showings of X-rated films), bingo and a week of Eskimo sports between Christmas and New Year...
...that also is going, and the settlement's 400 snowmobiles have entirely replaced the dog sled. About the only thing that has survived from the old days is the hunt. The men still hunt whales from fragile little boats made from animal skins. They also stalk walrus, seal, polar bear and caribou. But now they use high-powered rifles to bring down their prey...
...south pole, one of the few areas where Mariner's cameras have been able to peer through the huge dust storm that still obscures much of the planet, the surface is also remarkably smooth, leading some scientists to theorize that the region was scoured clean by glaciers as the polar cap grew during Martian winters and then receded again. If glaciers were indeed responsible, their presence would indicate that there is more water in the polar cap (which is composed largely of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice) than anyone had supposed. Mariner has also discovered four craters that...