Mars was a more rainy place than planetary scientists had previously thought, according to a new study of an ancient inverted river channel that spans more than 9,000 miles (14,484 kilometers) in the Noah-Histora area of Red Planet.
“Our work is new evidence suggesting that Mars was a much more complex and active planet than it once was, and this is very exciting to be involved,” Adam Loffic, a research leader at the UK Open University, said in a statement.
I knew that Mariner 9 Orbiter Mission in the 70s had photographed surfaces covered by dry river channels, and Mars was once a wet planet. These channels date back more than 3.5 billion years ago. However, this is not the only evidence that a channel cut into the ground will flow water to Mars.
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When the water was neutralised or evaporated, sedimentary deposits remained. You may see these in craters, which were once filled with water. NASA’s curiosity rover explores Gale Crater, which has a central, three-mile-high peak (5km tall) covered in sediment.
These deposits also lay on the riverbed. Over the years, the deposits would have hardened, and the surrounding river channels and land would have weathered and eroded. It left behind sediment. The deposits are more resistant to erosion and protrude like a tall ridge. Geologists today call them subtle ridges of rivers, or more clearly reversed channels.
Now a PhD student, loskoot, has led the discovery of NoAchis Terra’s vast network of channels, based on images and data taken by the high-resolution imaging science experiment (HIRISE) and context cameras of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) of DEDCT MARS GLOBAL SURVERY MISSION.
Related: Can Mars’s signs of life be hidden in a thick layer of clay?
Previously, Noachis Terra was not paying attention because there was a lack of more classical river channels that formed more obvious evidence of water. However, by mapping the network of inverted channels, losekoot realized there was plenty of evidence that there was once plenty of water in the area.
“Studying Mars, especially areas of underexploration like Noahis Terra, is a real exciting environment that has remained little different for billions of years,” losekoot said. “This is a time capsule that records basic geological processes in ways that are impossible here on Earth.”
Some of the inverted channels appear as isolated segments that have survived the element for billions of years. Others are more unscathed, forming a system that runs hundreds of miles and stands dozens of yards high.
Such a wide network of reverse channels does not suggest that these channels were caused by flash floods, losekoot argues. Rather, they appear to have formed in stable climatic conditions over a geologically significant period during the Noatian-Hesperia transition.
Of particular interest are the most likely sources of water that have formed these inverted channels, such as rain, hail and snow. Certainly, given the size of Noah Hysterella’s inverse channel network, this area of Mars may have experienced many rainy days in a warm, humid climate.
It is more evidence that Mars was more like Earth than the cold, barren desert that it is today.
Losekoot presented his discoveries at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomical Conference held at Durham University in England from July 7 to July 11.
This article was originally published on Space.com.
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