New research suggest Mars was once a water world fit for life

By Dean Murray via SWNS

New research suggests Mars was a water world fit for life .

NASA’s Curiosity rover is providing new details about how the ancient Martian climate went from potentially habitable to a surface inhospitable to human or other life.

Researchers used instruments onboard Curiosity to measure the isotopic composition of carbon-rich minerals (carbonates) found in the Gale crater and discovered new insights into how the Red Planet’s ancient climate transformed.

Results indicate massive evaporation on the planet as water was released as solar wind and solar storms eroded away to space a significant amount of the planet’s atmosphere, turning Mars into the cold, arid desert we see today.

David Burtt of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and lead author of the study, said: "The isotope values of these carbonates point toward extreme amounts of evaporation, suggesting that these carbonates likely formed in a climate that could only support transient liquid water.

"Our samples are not consistent with an ancient environment with life (biosphere) on the surface of Mars, although this does not rule out the possibility of an underground biosphere or a surface biosphere that began and ended before these carbonates formed.”

Ancient regions on Mars bear signs of abundant water - such as features resembling valleys and deltas, and minerals that only form in the presence of liquid water. Scientists think that billions of years ago, the atmosphere of Mars was much denser and warm enough to form rivers, lakes, and perhaps even oceans of water, but the water was lost.

David Burtt of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and lead author of the study, said: "The fact that these carbon and oxygen isotope values are higher than anything else measured on Earth or Mars points towards a process (or processes) being taken to an extreme.

"While evaporation can cause significant oxygen isotope changes on Earth, the changes measured in this study were two to three times larger. This means two things: 1) there was an extreme degree of evaporation driving these isotope values to be so heavy, and 2) these heavier values were preserved so any processes that would create lighter isotope values must have been significantly smaller in magnitude."

The research was published Monday (Oct 7) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .

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