{"id":246539,"date":"2025-02-25T16:38:25","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T16:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/25\/ancient-mars-wasnt-just-wet-it-was-cold-and-wet\/"},"modified":"2025-02-25T16:38:25","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T16:38:25","slug":"ancient-mars-wasnt-just-wet-it-was-cold-and-wet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/25\/ancient-mars-wasnt-just-wet-it-was-cold-and-wet\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient Mars wasn\u2019t just wet. It was cold and wet"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/MAR_014_25_A_598X336_option2_V02.png?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Ancient Mars wasn\u2019t just wet. It was cold and wet\" title=\"Ancient Mars wasn\u2019t just wet. It was cold and wet\" \/><\/div> \r\n<br><div data-component=\"video-embed\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\n\n\n\n<p>Frigid water helped paint Mars red and may have shaped a vast coastline, two new studies into the planet\u2019s history reveal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scientists have detected a possible ancient beach in Mars\u2019 northern hemisphere and identified a water-containing mineral responsible for the planet\u2019s rosy hue. The findings reveal details about conditions on Mars when the planet last contained large volumes of liquid water more than 3 billion years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cEarly Mars has historically been thought of as either \u2018cold and dry\u2019 or \u2018warm and wet,\u2019\u201d says Alberto Fair\u00e9n, an astrobiologist at the Center for Astrobiology in Madrid and at Cornell University who was not involved in the new work. \u201cThe two new studies, together, resolve the second part of the equation: Early Mars was wet; it was never dry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<aside class=\"sn-conversion rich-text rich-text--with-sidebar\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n.email-conversion {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  color: white;\n  margin-top: 50px;\n  background-image: url(\"\/wp-content\/themes\/sciencenews\/client\/src\/images\/cta-module@2x.jpg\");\n  padding: 20px;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"rich-text embedded-conversion-content is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article-type\/deep-end-podcast?cta=top\">\n  <\/a><\/div><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article-type\/deep-end-podcast?cta=top\">\n<\/a>\n\n<style><![CDATA[\n#dynamic-conversion {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  max-width: 100%;\n  height: auto;\n  clear: both;\n}\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n\n<\/aside>\n\n\n<p>Mars\u2019 northern lowlands lie at a lower elevation than the rest of the planet, leading some scientists to suspect that the area had once been the site of a vast ocean. Zhurong, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/salty-water-ice-mars-equator\">a Chinese rover that landed on the edge of this region<\/a> in 2021, used ground-penetrating radar to probe for signs of a past shoreline buried deep beneath the surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The rover <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/cgi\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.2422213122\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">detected a kilometer-long sloping region<\/a> buried 10 to 35 meters underground that closely matches the slope of beaches on Earth, planetary scientist Michael Manga and colleagues report February 24 in the <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em>. Radar data suggest that the slope is made of pebble- to sand-sized sediments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The researchers considered the idea that the sandy slope is a buried dune, like those found elsewhere on the Martian surface. But the detected features don\u2019t match the expected shape of windblown sand dunes, nor are they likely to be caused by rivers or lava flows, the researchers say. Instead, the sediment deposits resemble deposits on Earth\u2019s coastlines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The findings don\u2019t yet confirm that Mars hosted full-sized oceans. But if the area does represent an ancient shoreline, it could help scientists understand more about the planet\u2019s past potential to host life. \u201cThe interface between water, rock and air is a nice environment in which for life to exist,\u201d says Manga, of the University of California, Berkeley. \u201cSome of the earliest life on Earth formed in those kinds of environments, in shallow water, along shorelines.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another study could hint at the state of Mars\u2019 liquid water just before it disappeared. The planet\u2019s red color comes from a <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1038\/s41467-025-56970-z\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">water-containing mineral called ferrihydrite<\/a>, which probably required cold surface waters to form, researchers report February 25 in <em>Nature Communications<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image  has-alignleft\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"450\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/022425_sw_mars-surface_inline.jpg?resize=450%2C450&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"illustration of what Mars looked like 3.5 billion years ago\" class=\"wp-image-3150873\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/022425_sw_mars-surface_inline.jpg?resize=450%2C450&amp;ssl=1 450w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/022425_sw_mars-surface_inline.jpg?resize=383%2C383&amp;ssl=1 383w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/022425_sw_mars-surface_inline.jpg?resize=186%2C186&amp;ssl=1 186w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/022425_sw_mars-surface_inline.jpg?resize=580%2C580&amp;ssl=1 580w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/022425_sw_mars-surface_inline.jpg?resize=214%2C214&amp;ssl=1 214w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/022425_sw_mars-surface_inline.jpg?resize=80%2C80&amp;ssl=1 80w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/022425_sw_mars-surface_inline.jpg?w=680&amp;ssl=1 680w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><span class=\"caption wp-caption-3150873\">Mars may have once hosted a liquid water ocean in its northern lowlands, according to a new study. This illustration shows what Mars may have looked like 3.6 billion years ago, if such an ocean covered the lowlands. The location of the Chinese rover Zhurong, which detected a possible ancient coastline, is marked with a star.<\/span><span class=\"credit wp-credit-3150873\">Robert Citron<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe basically were asking this long-standing question of why Mars is red, and many people probably understand that it\u2019s due to rust,\u201d says Adam Valantinas, a planetary scientist at Brown University. \u201cBut there are many types of rust on Earth, many different mineralogies of these rusts, and each specific flavor of this rust can tell you about the environmental conditions of when the rust formed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For years, scientists suspected that Mars got its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/curiosity-mars-rover-five-year-anniversary\">red color from hematite<\/a>, a form of iron oxide, or rust, that contains no water and therefore must have formed after the planet lost its liquid surface water. But hematite doesn\u2019t absorb and reflect light quite the same way as Martian dust, and discoveries of other water-containing minerals on the planet\u2019s surface led Valantinas and his colleagues to question whether hematite was truly responsible for the red hue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The team measured the wavelengths of light that different laboratory samples of minerals absorb and reflect and compared those with similar measurements of Mars dust collected by orbiting and ground-based spacecraft. The researchers found that a mixture of one part ferrihydrite to two parts basalt, a volcanic rock, best matched the color of the Martian surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ferrihydrite, a form of iron oxide that contains water, would probably have required cold, wet conditions to form on Mars, Valantinas says. On Earth, the mineral is somewhat unstable and will gradually transform into a more stable form of iron oxide, like hematite. But cold temperatures and an acidic environment could slow that transition, stabilizing the ferrihydrite until the planet\u2019s liquid water disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n<aside class=\"sn-conversion rich-text rich-text--with-sidebar\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-elements-27c40654034fbeecef6418d6adfe0794\" style=\"color:gray; margin-bottom:0px; font-size:.9rem;\">Sponsor Message<\/p>\n<!-- Tag ID: sciencenews-org_leaderboard_incontent -->\n\n<\/aside>\n\n\n<p>\u201cCombining the two studies, we can imagine an early Mars with abundant liquid water on the surface, to the point of forming seas or oceans, in a generally cold to very cold climate, similar in some sense to the beaches of the Arctic Ocean,\u201d Fair\u00e9n says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n<br>\r\n<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/ancient-mars-wet-cold-planet\">Source link <\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Frigid water helped paint Mars red and may have shaped a vast coastline, two new studies into the planet\u2019s history reveal. Scientists have detected a possible ancient beach in Mars\u2019 northern hemisphere and identified a water-containing mineral responsible for the planet\u2019s rosy hue. The findings reveal details about conditions on Mars when the planet last [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/MAR_014_25_A_598X336_option2_V02.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[8221,17116,251,12750,4651],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246539"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246541,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246539\/revisions\/246541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}