“Ancient Mars was habitable, but was it inhabited?” – An ancient global megaflood suggests “Yes”

“Early Mars was an extremely active planet from a geological point of view,” said Alberto G. Fairén, a visiting astrobiologist at Cornell University. “The planet had the necessary conditions to support the presence of liquid water on the surface and on the Earth, where there is water, there is life. “So early Mars was a habitable planet,” he said. “Was it inhabited? This is a question that the upcoming Perseverance rover will help answer. “

Gale Crater: The thickest exposed sedimentary rocks in the solar system

The science team of the Curiosity rover currently active at Gale Crater – Gale Crater, an immense, 96-mile wide rocky basin – with its strangely sculpted mountain – three times as high as the Grand Canyon is deep – which is being explored with NASA’s Curiosity rover since 2012 as part of the MSL (Mars Science Laboratory) mission – has already established that the crater had persistent lakes and streams in the ancient past. These long-lived bodies of water are good indicators that the crater, as well as Mount Sharp within it, were capable of supporting microbial life.

Gale Crater may be “one of the thickest exposed sections of layered sedimentary rocks in the solar system,” said Joy Crisp, MSL project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2011. “The rock record stored in those layers contains stories that they are billions of years – stories about if, when and for how long Mars could have been habitable. “

“The death of Mars”: a pluto-sized asteroid triggered an ancient climate change

Raging Megaflood 4 billion years ago

Researchers at Cornell University have announced that a violent mega flood likely triggered by the heat of a meteor impact, freed the ice stored on the Martian surface, releasing carbon dioxide and methane from the planet’s frozen reservoirs and created gigantic ripples that are familiar telltale geological structures. to scientists on Earth. The floods of unimaginable magnitude that swept through Gale crater on Mars’ equator some 4 billion years ago – suggest the possibility that life may have existed there, “according to data collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover and analyzed in a joint project. by scientists from Jackson State University, Cornell University, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the University of Hawaii The water vapor and gas release from the impact combined to produce a short period of hot, humid conditions on the red planet.

This false-color composite image above Mount Sharp inside the Gale crater on Mars shows geologists a changing planetary environment. On Mars, the sky isn’t blue, but the image was made to resemble the Earth so that scientists could distinguish the layering layers.

“Mountain of Mystery” – Power of gravity at the crater of Mars’s Mount Sharp Gale

“We identified megafloods for the first time using detailed sedimentological data observed by the Curiosity rover,” said co-author Fairén. “The deposits left by the megafloods had not previously been identified with the orbiting data.”

Megaripples and Antidunes

This case includes the presence of gigantic wave-shaped features in the sedimentary layers of the Gale crater, often called “megaripples” or antidunes that are about 30 feet tall and spaced about 450 feet apart, according to the lead author. Ezat Heydari, a physics professor at Jackson State University. Antidunes, Cornell reports, are indicative of megafloods flowing at the bottom of Mars’ Gale crater about 4 billion years ago, which are identical to features formed by the melting of ice on Earth about 2 million years ago, Heydari said.

Torrential rain on the planet

The condensation formed clouds of water vapor, which in turn created torrential rains, possibly all over the planet. That water entered the Gale Crater, then combined with the water flowing down from Mount Sharp (in the Gale Crater) to produce gigantic flash floods that deposited the gravel ridges in the Hummocky Plains drive and the ridge band formations and depressions in the Striated Unit.

The science team of the Curiosity rover has already established that Gale Crater once had persistent lakes and streams in the ancient past. These long-lived bodies of water are good indicators that the crater, as well as Mount Sharp within it, were capable of supporting microbial life.

“So in the beginning Mars was a habitable planet,” asks Heydari. “Was it inhabited? This is a question that NASA’s next rover, Perseverance will help answer. ”Perseverance, launched from Cape Canaveral on July 30, will reach Mars on February 18, 2021.

The research, “Deposits from Giant Floods in Gale Crater and Their Implications for the Climate of Early Mars,” was published November 5 in Scientific Reports.

The Daily Galaxy, Jake Burba, via Nature and Cornell University