About seven years ago European Space Agency deployed the Mars Advance Radar in 2005 and has been collecting data since it was deployed.
Planetary Science and Astrophysics from Grenoble and University of California, Irvine have gone over the data it has collected of over two years. What they have identified is that there is ancient shore lines on mars. It was found on the Northern plains of Mars covered in low density material. Some of the scientists that helped research this subject found that two oceans could have been around about 4 billion year ago with the warmer conditions. About 3 billion years ago when the conditions were still warm the subsurface ice melted causing it to melt and the water to flow to lower elevations on Mars. The scientist think that the oceans life was short lived only about a million years which is not long enough for life to be present in the ocean. To see if life actually existed in Mars' ocean they would have to look back even further in history when liquid water still was present on Mars. The scientists are still trying to figure out what happened to all the water. With all the evidence that they have collected over the years to show there was an ocean its hard to say how that much water could just disappear. Some scientist say that it slowly evaporated in to Mars' atmosphere.
beautiful picture, really interested too. never though Mars would have oceans.
ReplyDeleteits crazy that were figuring out that mars used to have oceans. it kinda makes me ponder about what the earth will look like when we ruin it. hahah this is a very compelling article, i really like that people are figuring such cool things out. maybe mars had life like we do, but they ruined it.. just maybe.
ReplyDeleteDo you know why the scientists say that life couldn't exist during the million years it was there? It seems to me like that is plenty of time for life to start up.
ReplyDeleteI thought that Mars had a very dry climate and atmosphere? I also don't really understand how oceans can just evaporate over time? That is a lot of water!
ReplyDeletedoes this mean that if there was water and oceans that if we manipulated some conditions we could inhabit mars and destroy it too along with earth?
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