Mars was not always a lifeless desert

Techno 11 January, 2018

2018-01-11 12:31

Mars was not always a lifeless desert
On the red planet there was warm and humid conditions which could develop life.

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Liquid water is currently unstable on the surface of Mars because the planet’s atmosphere is too thin and of too low a temperature, reports Rus.Media. But one day on the red planet there was warm and humid conditions which could develop life. An important challenge for planetology, is the Dating of the period, when Mars was a radical change of climatic conditions has made the planet so dry and barren it is now.

In the new study, cosmogenic bill Cassata (Cassata Bill) of Lawrence Livermore national laboratory. E. Lawrence, USA, shows that impose limits on the duration of the aquatic period” of the history of Mars, exploring the gases enclosed in the Martian meteorites.

Cassatt has analyzed the content of one of the gases of the Martian atmosphere, xenon (Xe), two Martian meteorites, ALH 84001 and NWA 7034. The results of the analysis indicate that in the early Martian history in the planet’s atmosphere was enough hydrogen to make possible the separation of isotopes of xenon by mass (in space removes the lighter isotopes) as a result of a process known as hydrodynamic mechanism of loss of the atmosphere. However, measurements taken Cassaday show that this process reached a climax in the first few hundred million years after the formation of the planet (more than 4 billion years ago), and since the isotopic composition of xenon Martian atmosphere almost unchanged.

On the Ground the separation of isotopes of xenon mass is a gradual process that continues to happen still. The fact that the loss of the atmosphere of the hydrodynamic mechanism stopped on Mars many years ago indicates the reduction in the flow of hydrogen into space, and this, in turn, suggests that the surface of the red planet in this period, almost no water, photodissociate which is an important source of atmospheric hydrogen. Thus, the “wet” period in the history of Mars lasted not so long, as some modern scientists, and ended after a few hundred million years after the formation of the planet, says Cassata.

The study was published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.