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Scientists have uncovered a "a stable body of liquid water" on Mars, in what some are calling a "game changer" in the search for alien life. What is believed to be liquid water is sitting below Mars' southern polar ice cap and is described as a "well-defined, 20-kilometer-wide zone." 20 kilometers is roughly 12.5 miles. The findings, which are published in the journal Science, were made possibly by Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS), an instrument that resides on the Mars Express spacecraft. MARSIS surveyed Mars' Planum Australe region between May 2012 and December 2015 and utilized...

Radar images previously revealed thousands of buried glacier-like formations in the planet’s northern and southern hemispheres. That data has now been incorporated into computer models of ice flow to determine the glaciers’ size and hence how much water they contain. “We have looked at radar measurements spanning 10 years back in time to see how thick the ice is and how it behaves. A glacier is, after all, a big chunk of ice and it flows and gets a form that tells us something about how soft it is. We then compared this with how glaciers on Earth behave and...

At least after carefully examining the picture, I can certify that it was not digitally manipulated.