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According to new research, Mars may have organized an ocean with waves that were stored against sandy beaches 3.6 billion years ago. China’s Zhurong Rover and his soil -drunk radar recognized the old coastal lines when it operated from May 2021 to May 2022.
The Rover landed in Utopia Planitia, a level within the largest known impact basin on Mars, near a series of ridges on the northern hemisphere of the planet. Scientists have long asked whether the ridges could represent the remains of a coastline, so Zhurong visited the provisions of an old water.
The study based on data recorded by Zhurong as a radar instrument was published on Monday in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We find places on Mars that used to look like old beaches and old river deltas,” said Study Co author Benjamin Cardenas, assistant professor of geology in the Department of Geosciences in Penn State. “We found evidence of wind, waves, no sand deficiency-a real beach on vacation.”
In addition, it was possible that the Mars environment was warmer and moist that was suspected for ten years than before, wrote the authors of the study.
The revelations contribute to the increasing evidence that the red planet once had a warmer, humid climate and an ocean that a third of the surface of the marsmole, which may have created a hospitable environment for life.
The China National Space Administration has published a picture that was put into position its Zhurong Rover and landing platform with a remote camera with which The Rover was positioned on June 11, 2021. – CNSA/AP
The search for the old ocean des Mars
In the 1970s, the Mariner 9 and Viking 2 of NASA were the first missions for spy characteristics that pointed out to the presence of an old ocean on Mars.
The Utopia Planitia dates from the Hesperian period or 3.7 billion to 3 billion years ago. In contrast to the old regions of Mars, there are no existing evidence of standing water, said Aaron Cavosie, a planetary scientist and senior lecturer at space science and technology center at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. Cavosia was not involved in the new study.
“The Mariner 9 -orbiter first resumed the Giant Canyons on Hesperian surfaces of Mars in the 1970s.” The idea is that Mars’s climate has cooled down at that time and the surface has dry out. “
Several spaceships have recorded observations that indicate that a large part of the water from Mars has escaped into space when the atmosphere of the planet disappeared – astronomers still investigate what this dramatic transformation has caused. When the planet cooled down, part of the water probably moved underground in the form of ice or combined with stones to produce minerals.
The pictures of Viking apparently showed a coast in the northern hemisphere. In a strong contrast to the flat coastal lines on Earth, the Mars feature was irregular, with height differences of up to 6.2 miles (10 kilometers).
Study Co -author Michael Manga, professor of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues previously suggested that volcanic activities in the region and a change in the rotation of Mars changed the coast and were uneven over time.
“Since the spin axle of Mars has changed, the shape of Mars has changed. And what used to be flat is no longer flat, ”said Manga.
However, what scientists needed the most to answer their questions were observations from “boots on site” or in this case, said Rover, said Cavosie. Zhurong could see whether the layers of rock buried in Utopia Planitia were volcanic or whether they contained sediment that matched those of an ocean.
A graphic shows how Ocean teases and winds carry sediment to the coast of the earth, where the sediment forms beaches. Old Mars may have had a similar scenario. – Hai Liu/Guangzhou University, China
The bathroom of a coast
When Zhurong landed, it traveled along the ridge of Utopia Planitia and collected data with a radar up to 260 feet (80 meters) below the surface.
Between 32.8 and 114.8 feet (10 and 35 meters), the radar of the rovers divided sedimentary structures, similar to layered beaches on earth that dived at an angle of 14.5 degrees. The radar has also measured the size of the particles that matched that of sand grains.
“The structures don’t look like sand dunes,” said manga. “You don’t look like an impact crater. They don’t look like lava flows. Then we started thinking about oceans. The alignment of these characteristics is parallel to what the old coast would have been. “
The structures were very similar to the earth of the coastal sedimentage, as found in the Bay of Bengal, which were formed by the presence of a long -term stable ocean, the authors of the study said.
The team believes that the rover has found “foreseplace” that take millions of years to form themselves as sediments that have been worn by tides and waves downwards towards an ocean.
“This immediately noticed because it indicates that there were waves, which means that there was a dynamic interface between air and water,” said Cardenas. “When we look back where the earliest life developed on earth, it was in the interaction between oceans and the country. This paints an image of old habitable environments that is able to accommodate the conditions for microbial life. “
Next to each other show how a series of sediment deposits would have formed at the Zhurong landing location in the distant past on Mars (left). And what the landing site looks like today (right). – Hai Liu/Guangzhou University, China
Rivers probably helped throw sediments into the oceans, which were then distributed by waves to create beaches. Sediment rocks, carved channels and even the remains of an old river delta that was examined by the endurance of NASA have shown how water once shaped the Mars landscape.
After the ocean had dried out, the beaches were probably covered by volcanic eruptions and material from dust towers, which effectively saved the coast, said Cardenas.
“It is always a challenge to know how the last 3.5 billion erosion erosion on Mars has changed or have completely deleted the evidence of an ocean,” he said. “But not with these deposits. This is a very clear data record. “
Now the team wants to determine the height of the waves and tides within the ocean how long the ocean continued and whether it offered a potentially hospitable environment, said Magna.
François forgotten, senior research scientist and research director of the French National Center for Scientific Research, said that he was not entirely convinced of the hypothesis presented in the study that only ocean coast can explain the radar data. Forget was not involved in the new research.
“I don’t think we can be sure that the observations could not be explained by dune processes” or the formation of sand dunes, which forget that he believes that he is more likely to be on Mars.
In the meantime, Dr. Joe McNeil, a planetary scientist and postdoctoral in the London Natural History Museum, believed that the results of the hypothesis of an old Nordseische Ocean on Mars lead to weight by providing decisive underground proof. McNeil was not involved in the new study.
“If these coastal deposits really represent the deposit of sediments on the edge of an old ocean, it indicates stable fluid water for a long time, which has a significant impact on Mars’s climate history,” said McNeil. “It would mean that Mars had conditions that could have supported a hydrological system with potential habitable surroundings for considerable time quantities.”
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