Chinese scientists will have detected characteristics geological that indicate an ancient coastline and evidence of existence of marine environments.
A Chinese rover has found new clues about the presence of an ancient ocean on Mars, by identifying traces of an ancient coastline that water would have drawn – very different from the dry and desolate world it is today.
With these data, combined with those obtained by and byChinese scientists claim to have detectedgeological features indicative of an ancient coastlineduring a period when Mars could have already become cold and dry and lost much of its atmosphere.
They described superficial characteristics such as depressions, sediment channels, and volcanic mud formations indicative of a shoreline and evidencethe existence of both shallow and deep marine environments.
“We estimate that the flooding of Utopia Planitia on Mars occurred approximately 3.68 billion years ago. The ocean surface likely froze over a geologically short period of time,” said the main author, Bo Wu, planetary scientist at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, told Reuters.
The ocean appears to have disappeared approximately 3.42 billion years ago.
“The water was heavily silted, forming the layered structure of the deposits,” added Hong Kong Polytechnic University planetary scientist and study co-author Sergey Krasilnikov.
Like Earth and the other planets in our solar system, Mars was formed about 4.5 billion years ago. By the time the ocean existed, it could have already begun its transition away from being a hospitable planet.
“The presence of an ancient ocean on Mars has been proposed and studied for several decades, but significant uncertainty remains. These findings not only provide further evidence to support the theory of a Martian ocean, but also present, for the first time, a discussion about its probable evolutionary scenario”, these Bo Wu.
Water is considered a key ingredient for life and the existence of an ancient ocean suggests that Mars, at least at some point, will have been capable of supporting microbial life.
“Earlier in Mars’ history, when it likely had a thick, hot atmosphere, microbial life was much more likely,” Krasilnikov said.
EFinding evidence of an ocean on Mars could help solve a bigger mystery:Is Earth the only planet in the solar system capable of supporting life?
