The thick, mineral-rich clay layers found on Mars suggest that the red planet had a potentially life-rich environment in the ancient past due to long stretches, new research suggests.
Clay requires liquid water to form. These layers are several hundred feet thick, and are thought to have been formed about 3.7 billion years ago under warmer and wet conditions than they currently beat Mars.
“There is a lot of water in these areas, but there are not many topographical uplifts, so it’s very stable,” says co-author Rhianna Moore, who conducted the study as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas Earth School.
You might like it
“If you have stable terrain, you’re not ruining the potential habitable environment,” Moore added. “Preferred conditions may be maintained for a longer period of time.”
On our home planets, such deposits form under certain landscapes and climatic conditions.
“On Earth, the places we tend to see the thickest clay mineral sequences are places in humid environments that minimize physical erosion that can remove newly created weathered products,” said Tim Godge, assistant professor in the Department of Planetary Science at the Earth Department at Jackson School.
Related: Why does Mars look purple, yellow and orange in ESA’s stunning new satellite image?
However, it remains unclear how Mars’ local and global topography, along with past climate activities, will affect surface weathering and clay formation.
It uses data and images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is the second longest manipulated spacecraft around Mars in 2001, after Mars Odyssey – Moore, Goudge and his colleagues studied 150 clay deposits, looking at their shape and location, and studying 150 clay deposits, which are like features and settlements like other features.
They discovered that clay is mainly located in low areas near ancient lakes, but not near the once strong flowing valley. This combination of mild chemical changes and intense physical erosion helped the clay remain preserved over time.
“[Clay mineral-bearing stratigraphies] In a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy on June 16, the team wrote in the new study, and the team wrote in the new study, which tends to occur in areas where chemical weathering is favored rather than physical erosion from standing bodies close to volley network activity.
Findings suggest that severe chemical weathering on Mars may have disrupted the normal balance between weathering and climate.
On Earth, tectonic activity constantly exposes fresh rocks to the atmosphere, so when rocks react with water and carbon dioxide (CO2), carbonate minerals like limestone are formed. This process helps remove CO2 from the air, store it in solid form, and regulate the climate for a long period of time.
On Mars, there is no structural activity, minimizing the lack of carbonate minerals and the removal of CO2 from the thin air of the planet. As a result, CO2 released by Mars volcanoes has long been in the atmosphere long ago, and may have warmly dampened the planet in the past.
Researchers also speculate that clay may have absorbed water and trapped chemical by-products like cations, and that it can spread and react with surrounding rocks to form carbonates, leaving them trapped and unable to penetrate the surrounding environment.
“[The clay is] It’s probably one of many factors contributing to this strange shortage of Mars’ predicted carbonates,” Moore said.
This article was originally published on Space.com.
Source link
