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A color image of the Hellas Planitia region of Mars. (Credit: NASA / JPL / USGS)
Today, water on Mars is enclosed in ice deposits or in deep underground lakes. However, the water had once sunk on the surface of the planet and researchers found new evidence of its presence on the red planet.
A new study reveals that the Hellas impact basin on Mars once contained a number of ephemeral or generally dry lakes, but filling with water for brief periods.
Aquatic world
Researchers at the SETI Institute, located in the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet, have discovered many of these temporary lakes at the northeastern edge of the Hellas impact basin, researchers at the SETI Institute said. The depressions were filled with water from a variety of sources, including groundwater, snowfall, rivers and streams.
Known as paleolakes, these ancient Martian lakes were active when the climate of Mars was radically different from today's. The researchers found that one of the paleolakes is almost completely filled with smooth sediment, which is similar to what scientists have discovered in the salt lakes of the Andes. This similarity suggests that the conditions on Mars during the formation of this paleolake could have resembled those of the Andean mountains today – cold and arid.
The identified paleolakes were located along water drainage systems leading to smaller surface depressions, or "lakes", at the Hellas Planitia boundary, a plain located in the impact basin. The lakes were not all the same either. Some may have served as a source for cbad systems hundreds of kilometers long, while others may have been crossed by rivers. Others bear the scars of probable flash floods.
"In the highest resolution images, we could see sediments, deposits and what appeared to be shorelines in some cases in those craters and depressions in which the channels were heading," said Virginia C. Gulick, Senior researcher and researcher at SETI, in an email.
An illustration showing when the paleolakes on Mars were active and how it compares to an activity on the primitive Earth. (Credit: Virginia C. Gulick)
The team was surprised by their findings. "We found that these channels were active periodically in the history of Mars and much more recently than expected. They were active periodically from the end of the Noachian period to the end of the Amazon, pbading through the Hesperian, "Gulick said. These periods extend over billions of years and are getting closer to the present day. They indicate that these hydrological features were a common and enduring feature of the Martian surface.
This research could play an important role in the search for life, potentially providing evidence of microbial life on the planet. "Areas where water was periodically available for long periods of the history of Mars, especially if they were badociated with volcanic magma hydrothermal systems, could have provided habitats suitable for microbial life if it came one day, "said Gulick.
This new study was published in the journal Astrobiology Volume 18, Number 11.
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