A New Chapter for Water on the Red Planet: Study Reveals Surprising Findings
A Study Writes a New History of Water on the Red Planet Mars, which has now become a desert, holds evidence of ancient river valleys formed more than 3 billion years ago, providing significant proof of the presence of liquid water in the past on the Red Planet.
Determining the timelines for the formation of these valleys affects the understanding of the planet’s habitability in its early stages, a goal pursued by a recent study conducted by Alexander Morgan, a research scientist at the Institute of Planetary Sciences in the United States.
Morgan used impact cratering as a dating tool to determine the maximum timelines for the formation of Martian valley networks shaped by flowing water. He found that these valleys took hundreds of millions of years to form, indicating that conditions allowing for rivers on Mars were intermittent, with long dry periods interspersed with short periods of water flow. This has significant implications for the early habitability of Mars, as stable liquid water over longer periods would be more conducive to potential life.
The study challenges simplified classifications of early Mars as ‘warm and wet’ or ‘cold and icy,’ suggesting that surface conditions allowing for river existence may vary significantly over time, akin to the complex climatic history of Earth.
A comparison is made with the slow erosion rates of Martian rivers to parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile, and possible explanations include the presence of large rocks hindering erosion or irregular river flow, perhaps occurring only 0.001% of the time, due to volcanic activity or variations in Mars‘ axial tilt and orbit.
The research highlights the complexity of Mars‘ early stage and the variations in conditions that could impact the existence of liquid water.
