Ancient Mars was home produced 65-foot floods, new study suggests
Massive floods that loomed more than 65 feet high may once have swept the surface of Mars.
This is according to a new study, which argues that many of the rock depositions on the red planet are the result of large bodies of moving water, not just ‘ a puny river.’
Researchers say Mars may once have been home to global ice much like that which existed on Earth during the Pleistocene, giving way to huge outburst floods that shaped the features we see today.
In the new study, researchers examined a 400-meter stretch of sedimentary rock found in Mars’ Gale Crater.
The region has been explored in part by the Curiosity rover and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and contains rocks thought to be 3.7 to 4.1 billion years old.
Four units within this rock each represent different types of deposition, according to the new research, and ‘all of these packages involved water,’ says Ezat Heydari of Jackson State University.
In one spot, known as the Hummocky Plain Unit, ridges filled with rounded cobbles and cross beds were found to reach 4 meters (13 feet) high.
There, the grains of sediment get up to 20 centimeters in size
‘These ridges are asymmetric,’ Heydari says. ‘ In other words, they were formed by one direc- tional current.’
According to the researcher, creating such features would have required large- scale flooding, with water upwards of 10-20 meters deep.
‘That’s one of the reasons I say these deposits are related to floods, rather than a puny river,’ Heydari says.
The sedimentary rocks seen in the Gale Crater may have been transported there through processes similar to that which took place on Earth thousands of years ago during the Pleistocene.
‘ On both planets, one hemisphere was covered by ice – northern Hemisphere on Earth, versus the Southern Hemisphere in Mars – and the other hemisphere was warm,’ Heydari says.
The new report follows research published earlier this year that offered what was said to be the first evidence that liquid water still exists on Mars today.
Scientists at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics revealed the presence of the underground reservoir this summer.
The team says it spans 12 miles ( 20km) and is buried a mile ( 1.6km) beneath the surface.
But, studying this feature won’t be easy.
As of now, the technology on the Mars rovers and landers cannot drill deep enough to reach such a deeply- buried lake.
- How does a lake on Mars change what we know about life on the Red Planet?
Liquid water is known to be one of the key components to life as we know it, and scientists have spent decades searching for it on Mars.
If a large, permanent of body of water exists on the red planet then it has a good chance of hosting microbial life.
Researchers had long speculated liquid water is present under the planet’s surface, but lacked solid evidence to confirm this.
A new finding from a team of Italian scientists suggests a subsurface lake that stretches 12 miles ( 20km) long is hidden beneath the Martian south pole.
The discovery is the first evidence of a lake of liquid water on Mars that still exists today – an environment scientists believe is ideal for the growth of life.
While the lake exists at a hostile temperature of -68°C (-90°F), microbes could grow there, as they do in similar environments on Earth, scientists said.
Dr Brendan Burns, a microbiologist and astrobiologist from The University of New South Wales, who was not involved in the research, said: ‘While the surface of Mars is inhospitable, there is the fascinating possibility that microbial life could survive and flourish in sub- glacial Martian waters.’