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Mars in all its glory. | Credit: NASA
Although Mars, the Red Planet, is now a huge and inhospitable country, the scientists believe that it has the same time in our own earth – the blue planet if they will. In particular, experts say that Mars once have a warm, wet climate, and her belief is based on striking geological characteristics in today’s world, such as: B. huge valley networks, which are probably carved by running water. In fact, a new team of researchers found that Mars once had rain and even snow.
However, there is an important secret in history: it is unclear where the water of Mars comes from and most climate models can predict that the world shows surface temperatures that are far too cold to get liquid water.
“It is very difficult to make any statement,” said Amanda Steckel, postdoctoral at the Department of Geological and Planettarian Sciences of the California Institute of Technology. “But we see that these valleys start in a large selection of heights. It is difficult to explain that only with ice.”
With computer simulations, Steckel and their team dive into the way the Mars looked like about 4 billion years ago during the Noachian era, a time when water shaped the surface of the planet dramatically. Her model, which was originally designed for the earth, was adapted to simulate how Mars’ landscape developed near the equator. In this region, extensive sewer networks extend from the Hochlanden and can be released into old lakes – possibly even in an ocean. The endurance of NASA is currently researching one of these locations, Jezero Crater, where a mighty river was once poured into the pool.
“They would need meter -deep water to put on this type of boulder [seen in Jezero]”, Said Brian Hynek, senior author of the study and scientist at the laboratory for atmosphere and space physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
It is also interesting that references to the moderate past of Mars can also be seen in the geological characteristics on earth. “You could open Google Earth pictures of places such as Utah, to zoom in and see the similarities with Mars,” said Steckel.
The team tested two main ideas on how the valleys from Mars could have formed through precipitation: one in which the planet was warm and wet, and another, in the ice on the edge of a large ice cap temporarily melted – and a cold, dry climate.
Each scenario led to a completely different looking Mars, whereby the Valley origins appeared in drastically different places.
In the ice core model, the valleys mainly began at high heights, near the ice cream. Although this scenario seemed to be corresponding today, the warm and wet version generated much wider valley networks, which form everywhere from low -lying regions of up to more than 3.353 meters above the average surface of the planet.
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The latter distribution better corresponds to what we see on Mars: Valley networks that are scattered over many different ups and regions. While the ice cup model fits some local features, the warm and wet version explains the landscape of the planet at a global level. “Water from these ice caps only forms valleys by a narrow tape,” said Steckel. “If you have distributed rainfall, you can form valley heads anywhere.”
This indicates that precipitation played an important role in the formation of these valleys, pointing out that the old Mars was probably a climate that was warm, that it supports rain and even snow!
While further evidence is required and answers to questions such as B. how the planet for rain or snow remained warm enough are part of an ongoing examination. Nevertheless, Hynek said that the study offers valuable information, not only about Mars, but also about the early history of the earth.
“As soon as the erosion stopped from running water, Mars was frozen almost in time and probably still looks a lot as if the earth managed 3.5 billion years ago,” he said.
The team’s study was published on April 21 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planeten.
