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Long before Mars became the dry planet we know today, there used to be a lot of water on its surface, very similar to Earth. To demonstrate this, scientists have recently conducted research on the water bodies of three ancient lakes, one of which was large enough to span 50 miles, or 77 kilometers.
As Space report, scientists believe that these three lakes on Mars would have formed very differently from each other. It is thought that the first lake was created by large amounts of rainfall, while the second was slowly developed from a water that would have once crossed the planet's soil. The third lake is thought to have been formed by rivers moving on the surface of Mars.
The three ancient lake beds that were studied on Mars are found in an area known as Hellas Planitia, which is a huge basin at a depth of 23,465 feet and created from an impact major, as co-author of the new study. Virginia Gulick, a geoscientist at the SETI Institute, explained in a declaration.
"We found several groups of paleolakes with different geological histories along each drainage system. Some of the inlet channels and their deposits are similar to those produced by flash floods. Some of these floods may have even had catastrophic magnitudes (about 105 – 106 m3 / s) similar to those that formed Channeled Channels in eastern Washington State, while the morphology of other channels and valleys suggest much shorter and longer term discharges more like those in Mississippi. These channels, several hundred meters wide, traverse vast areas of volcanic lava and ash-laden debris on the inland side of the Hellas Basin. "
Tiny lakes once grouped on the ancient planet of Mars, only to disappear. Https://t.co/klpwfEtPtG pic.twitter.com/2Bs61dNZE2
– SPACE.com (@SPACEdotcom) November 2, 2018
Taking into account the three lakes studied, 34 candidates for the Martian paleolatte were identified after the scientists carried out a hydrogeographic analysis focused on the Hellas region of the northeast of the planet. This is notable because previously only one lake had been identified before. With so many ancient lake beds on Mars, this shows that the planet in hydrological terms was once much more active than we thought.
According to new research, "the lakes were fed by different hydrological processes, probably related to a recurrent hydrothermal activity of the neighboring volcanoes Hadriaca and Tyrrhena Paterae."
The new study on the identification of three old lake beds, with a total of 34 candidates, has been published in astrobiology.
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