Most astrophysicists agree that liquid water once existed on Mars. What is in dispute, however, is how much water it was in. In a new analysis, a research team from the University of Copenhagen concludes that the planet could have been covered by an ocean 300 meters deep some 4.5 billion years ago. the study It was published in the journal “Science Advances”. released. Was the Red Planet once blue in color and might have harbored life?
“In its infancy, young Mars was bombarded by ice-filled asteroids,” says Martin Pizarro of the Center for Star and Planet Formation at the University of Copenhagen, one of the study’s lead authors. “It happened during the first 100 million years of planetary evolution.” In addition to water, icy asteroids also brought biologically relevant molecules such as amino acids. They occur in all organisms known to date and serve as the building blocks of proteins. “Although the rate of preservation of biologically relevant molecules depends on a number of factors, our results provide evidence that exotic organic matter has made its way to the surface of Mars,” the authors write.
Researchers have been able to reconstruct the early history of Mars using a billion-year-old meteorite. The meteorite was once part of the crust of Mars and offers a unique insight into what happened at the time of the solar system’s formation. The chromium isotopes it contains provide information about nucleosynthesis history and time scales of planetary sediment formation. The secret lies in the way the surface of Mars was formed, of which the meteor was a part, the study says, because the surface does not move. On Earth the opposite is true. Tectonic plates are in constant motion. This wiped out all traces of the first 500 million years of Earth’s history.
