The study’s authors said the freezing temperatures would have actually supported ancient life better.
Paris:
The question of whether ancient life could have existed on Mars centers on the water that once flowed there, but new research released Monday suggests that many valleys on the Red Planet were carved out by icy glaciers, not by rivers.
Nature Geoscience’s study, which comes amid a flurry of new missions to Mars trying to find out whether the now barren planet ever hosted life, casts doubt on a dominant theory that the planet once had a hot climate and humid with abundant liquid water that sculpted the landscape.
Researchers from Canada and the United States have examined more than 10,000 Martian valleys and compared them to channels on Earth that were carved out under glaciers.
“In the last 40 years since the valleys of Mars were first discovered, the assumption has been that rivers once flowed on Mars, eroding and causing all of these valleys,” said the lead author Anna Grau Galofre in a press release issued by the University of British Columbia.
But these formations are of a great variety “suggesting that many processes were involved in sculpting them,” she added.
Researchers have discovered similarities between certain Martian valleys and the subglacial channels of Devon Island, in the Canadian Arctic, which has been nicknamed “Mars on Earth” for its barren and frigid conditions and has hosted training missions space from NASA.
The study’s authors said their results suggest that some Martian valleys may have been formed around 3.8 billion years ago by meltwater beneath the ice caps, which they say is would align with climate modeling predicting that the planet would have been much colder in its ancient past.
“The results demonstrate that only a fraction of the valley systems correspond to typical patterns of surface water erosion, which contrasts sharply with the conventional view,” said co-author Mark Jellinek.
Nature Geoscience has noted that understanding climatic conditions “in the first billion years of Mars’ history is important in determining whether the planet has ever been habitable.”
The study’s authors said the freezing temperatures would have actually supported ancient life better.
“A layer of ice would offer more protection and stability to the underlying water, while providing shelter from solar radiation in the absence of a magnetic field – something Mars once had, but is gone.” billions of years ago, ”the University of British Columbia statement said.
The research comes after NASA launched its latest rover to Mars, Perseverance, to look for signs of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet.
If all goes according to plan, Perseverance will reach Mars on February 18, 2021 and collect rock samples that could provide invaluable clues as to whether there has been past life on Mars.
However, recovery and analysis is not expected until the 2030s.
China has also launched its first Mars rover, which is expected to arrive by May 2021.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
