New theory explains why Mars has lost habitability and the earth does not

Solved mystery? New INvestigation suggests that the red planet has spent most of its recent history as an arid desert, with short periods of habitability.

There is a new theory to explain the disappearance of water from Mars, our neighbor who once an ocean of liquid water.

The new investigation, led by the planetary scientist Edwin Kite, From the University of Chicago, it was published on July 2 and resorts to data collected by Rover Curiosity of NASA Mars Science Laboratory to explain one of the greatest mysteries of planetary science.

The investigation suggests that the red planet has spent most of its recent history as an arid desert, with short housing periods.

The Martian landscapes, full of valleys excavated by old rivers, indicate that Mars had, in a while, a climate hot enough to allow the existence of liquid water to the surface. However, today, it is a cold and dry world.

The new investigation proposes that this transformation was not caused by a single catastrophic event, but by natural cycles Driven by the slow increase in sunlight throughout millennia, researchers advance to.

The model developed by Kite and his team shows that as the sun became gradually brighter-about 8% for every 1,000 million years-it was created brief periods when Mars could have liquid surface water. However, this Water started chemical reactions that removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, forming carbonated minerals and cooling the planet again.

This self -regulated cycle would cause habitable periods to be short and followed by long aridity phases that could last up to 100 million years.

Unlike the earth, which maintains a climate balance thanks to the carbon cycle – in which the atmospheric CO2 is recycled between the sky, the soil and the volcanoes – Mars is currently vulcanically inactive. This means that CO2 removed from the atmosphere through carbonate formation is not replaced, making the planet dried and cold.

This hypothesis was strengthened by a recent discovery of Curiosity: the identification of rocks rich in carbonated minerals on the slope of Mount Sharp.

For years, scientists sought evidence from where it could have stopped the former Martian atmosphere, rich in carbon dioxide. The absence of large deposits of carbonate was a missing piece in Puzzle, but the discovery made by Curiosity confirmed that part of the atmosphere may have been stored in the rocks.

These data help not only to better understand Mars’s history, but also to refine the search for habitable worlds outside the solar system.