Mars - the Amazonian age

I just came across this article and found it fascinating. I had heard of Mars having liquid water in the past, but never about it being called an Amazonian age. eos.org...

Scientists believe that at some point, flooding and volcanic activity formed a network of valleys across Mars. For example, there's a 370-meter-deep, 800-kilometer-long valley which is a small subsection of this larger network - called Hrad Vallis.



This feature formed within the last 3 billion years.

Using a combination of mathematical models and geologic mapping, the researchers found that Hrad Vallis was probably formed by an intrusion, underground magma that cools and solidifies before reaching the surface, which triggered a flood of water. This most likely was followed by lava flowing along the surface and forming a flat-topped mound called a lava rise plateau, dotted with small depressions called lava rise pits. This likely was followed by more intrusions and flooding. This pattern of activity—lava flows interspersed with flooding events—has been seen elsewhere on Mars and suggests that other formations from the Amazonian were also born of multistage processes, as opposed to single events.

The researchers also found that some of the lava flows forming Hrad Vallis may have interacted violently with ice deposits at the surface, creating a landscape of depressions, lakes, and sinkholes. This type of landscape, called thermokarst terrain, occurs on Earth in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions when permafrost melts. Amid this lava-ice interaction, it’s possible that a warm, moist environment could have formed, providing a habitat capable of - at least temporarily - sustaining life.

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Picturing Mars having river-flows of water and flows of lava interacting with ice is quite something! That kind of environments could have well been supportive of microbial life.

Photos of thermokarst on Earth:

a reply to: wildespace

As the Sun creates the molecular ingredients for life so volcanic activity creates the cooking pot for the creation of life , hydro-thermal vents on Earth , Mars and Moons in our Solar System are likely the source of the organics that lead to the creation of microbial life.

It would be nice if they could narrow the time frame from sometime in the last 3 billion years as that is a pretty wide margin but as we get more pieces of the puzzle the picture will become clearer.

Personally I don't doubt that life started on Mars in the billion or so years it was conducive to life and think it likely that life persists today beneath the surface.

I agree that there was a good chance for life to exist on Mars. Who knows, some chemolithoautotroph microbes might still be hiding in the rocks there.

Here's a Hrad Vallis detail from MRO:



It's 3 km wide on average. Imagine the whole thing being flooded with water, or lava! :-o

a reply to: wildespace

I would put money on finding fossils right there in that ancient river bed.

Thats the kind of place NASA should send their next robot IMO.

a reply to: gortex

I wonder why life isn't spontaneously created still. Why is it regarded as something that happened, and could Only happen, a loooooong time ago.?

Maybe the conditions best for spontaneous life creation are much different than the best conditions for...complex life. Maybe we should be looking closer to Venus or Mars, as the conditions for life creation may not exist on Earth anymore.

Pretty lucky though for earth to develop in a way to be able to make the transfer from that very special first life form's unique environment, to the dinosaur environment and finally our modern environment... If one thing had been slightly different... we would not be here.

Whether you believe in God, or you believe that a one trillion sided die landed on the one side labeled "life", consecutively for one trillion rolls and counting, the universe and life are pretty awesome.



Reply to wildespace:

It's 3 km wide on average. Imagine the whole thing being flooded with water, or lava! :-o

Imagine your great great great grandkids floating down it on an innertube.

a reply to: wildespace

Who knows, some chemolithoautotroph microbes might still be hiding in the rocks there.

For me that's the biggest disappointment with the Mars 2020 rover , the fact it will only cache rock samples ready for return on a future mission , how is it that we can't return samples from our near neighbor in the 21st century but Japan can do it from an asteroid ... WTF ?

The older I get the more impatient I become.

originally posted by: 3n19m470
a reply to: gortex

I wonder why life isn't spontaneously created still. Why is it regarded as something that happened, and could Only happen, a loooooong time ago.?

We currently think that appearance and development of life needs certain conditions, such as relatively warm climate, liquid water, and an atmosphere. These days, only Earth is know to have such conditions in the whole Solar System.

Mars and Venus were very Earth-like in the past, but it all went downhill when Mars lost its magnetic field and most of its atmosphere, while Venus went through a runaway greenhouse effect and is practically hell right now.

That said, subterranean environments like on Enceladus and Europa might well be supoportive of life right now, and might have ingredients for new microorganisms appearing as we speak.

But something tells me that, as soon as an environment produces some life, it starts to dominate and use its environment, precluding any other life originating there.

originally posted by: Silcone Synapse
a reply to: wildespace

I would put money on finding fossils right there in that ancient river bed.

Thats the kind of place NASA should send their next robot IMO.

I wouldn't bet on fossils on Mars. Going by the currently accepted chronology of life on Earth, single-celled microorganisms took almost two billion of years just to evolve into simple multicellar organisms, with another billion years to evolve into animals that could leave fossils. At best, we could hope to find an imprint of some slime created by martian microorganisms on some rock.

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: wildespace
how is it that we can't return samples from our near neighbor in the 21st century but Japan can do it from an asteroid ...

There's a big difference between taking off an airless body with tiny gravity, and taking off Mars which has quite an atmosphere and almost Earth-like gravity. To launch from Mars would require a lot of fuel and heavy equipment.

a reply to: wildespace

I'm sure if the will and funding was there we could have done it years ago , following the successful landing of Curiosity we can do heavy to Mars so a two stage mission , one to collect and one to return , is well within our reach.

It is a great place, a sad place in my opinion which may have a lot more to do with our own true history than Nasa will ever admit, I believe there is evidence of life there but NOT just a few microbial fossil's or perhaps even simple animal's but something far more tragic.
www.marsruins.com...
Compare
nationalvanguard.org...

I wonder how much water could be held within the planet Mars as we have massive water volumes within our Earth right.

a reply to: one4all

Lots, that we know of. So far.
scholar.google.com...

Thanks for the link...now I wonder if an event which caused global continental displacement and which exposes this inner-planetary water volume and then mixes it with the surface volume...might have sucked all of the surface water down deeper into the planet instead of sending water back up and stabilising and balancing it on the surface....like happened on earth after Noahs flood....could Mars have lost its water to its inner planetary body during the event we call Noahs flood and could all of the damages we see evident on Mars of cataclysmic proportions be the result of the same event that scarred Earth.

a reply to: one4all

No

a reply to: LABTECH767

Your link kind of contradicts itself comparing a 32 mile wide image of LA with a 1 mile wide image of Mars which has a scaled pixel width of 3.14 m.

Also laugh when sites like that invert and use any old filter to try and create what THEY want people to see come on Lab use some common sense when you visit those sites.