New Evidence Reinforces the Idea that Mars Once had a Huge Ocean

Scientist say that Mars may have had oceans that once covered up to a third of the planet. Although the idea of an Ocean on Mars is not a new idea (NASA scientists have speculated for years that Mars was once a very wet place, perhaps even with oceans), scientists are now finding more solid evidence of these oceans.

New evidence indicates a river delta emptied into a large ocean on Mars

Technology have analyzed new high-resolution images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and discovered evidence for a delta where a river may once have emptied into an ocean.

"Scientists have long hypothesized that the northern lowlands of Mars are a dried-up ocean bottom, but no one yet has found the smoking gun," said Mike Lamb, assistant professor of geology at Caltech and coauthor of the study.

also

Mars May have had a Huge Ocean

"Scientists are finding a rich sedimentary record on Mars that is revealing its past environments, which include rain, flowing water, rivers, deltas and potentially oceans,"

NASA was pretty sure that large amounts of water had existed on Mars in the past. The landing place for the Curiosity Rover (Gale Crater) was chosen specifically because they knew that Gale Crater was once a wet place (they knew this from analysis of the soils of Gale Crater made from orbit, which indicated the presence of clays that only form in watery conditions.

However, this new study may give some additional evidence reinforcing the speculation that Mars once had oceans.

I'm waiting for the discovery that WE came from Mars!
I havent followed all this as closely as some, but am I right in thinking that Mars appears to have dried about about the same time as the Cambrian explosion happened on earth?
Could it be that if intelligent life existed on mars that they managed to shoot a rocked at earth in an attempt to seed life here? because they knew mars was doomed?

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

.. which indicated the presence of clays that only form in watery conditions.

You need to look at surface interactions of plasma with various materials. Water may be involved, but not in the form of a flowing liquid. JP Chang at UCLA has written many papers that look at the chemistry of plasma-surface interactions. Why scientists are so determined to show Mars once had flowing water I don't know, but they are IMO, barking up the wrong tree.

reply to post by GaryN


I was just wondering what you mean by plasma, it's not as term I'm familiar with in this context.

Originally posted by GaryN
reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

 

.. which indicated the presence of clays that only form in watery conditions.

You need to look at surface interactions of plasma with various materials. Water may be involved, but not in the form of a flowing liquid. JP Chang at UCLA has written many papers that look at the chemistry of plasma-surface interactions. Why scientists are so determined to show Mars once had flowing water I don't know, but they are IMO, barking up the wrong tree.

I don't believe they are 'determined to show Mars once had flowing water'. They are matching the evidence of probes with the same features that occur on Earth in depositional environments and drawing logical conclusions.

reply to post by onebigmonkey

I don't believe they are 'determined to show Mars once had flowing water'. They are matching the evidence of probes with the same features that occur on Earth in depositional environments and drawing logical conclusions.

Logical conclusions if you assume that all the clay deposits on Earth are from millions of years of slow erosion. Volcanic sources are also offered as the source.
Clay Deposits Don’t Prove Existence of Ancient Martian Lakes
www.universetoday.com...
So volcanic eruptions might have been one answer. Many clay deposits though are a mystery to geologists, as the thickness and purity of some of them would seem to have required many millions of years of uninterupted, steady, erosion, or volcanoes that put out such huge amounts of material with such consistent grain sizes with no inclusions of different material. Again, and I'm only offering a possible alternative, surface stripping by plasma could have been the source of the Earthly deposits, so saying the Mars deposits are like Earth deposits so it must have been water, is being very presumptuous.

reply to post by GaryN



What about gypsum?

NASA Mars Rover Finds Mineral Vein Deposited by Water

I'm not sure why you are doubting that there was once standing water on Mars. The solar system is shown to be full of water; Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Enceladus, Titan, Clouds of Jupiter, Clouds of Venus, comets, etc have been shown to contain water in relatively large amounts.

Water seems to have been a ubiquitous part of the proto-planetary cloud from which our solar system formed, so why would you doubt there was ever water on Mars?

reply to post by GaryN


And what about the pebbles that indicate a river bed with a fairly fast flow?

There are many various clues that indicate the past presence of liquid water, so it's not like NASA have to clutch at straws or invent anything. ESA's Mars Express Orbiter also produced evidence of flowing water.

I'm dreading asking this question, but here goes: what would be the source of plasma that created clays on Earth?

P.S. being a visual person that I am, here are the views of the Martian delta in the article, as seen in Google Earth using CTX imagery.

Top-down view


Oblique view, with x3 elevation exaggeration

What is the reason why water can not exist on mars in any quantity at this time now? Was there some form of radical change in the past that forced all the water from the planet, if it had any to begin with?

Originally posted by mikelkhall
What is the reason why water can not exist on mars in any quantity at this time now? Was there some form of radical change in the past that forced all the water from the planet, if it had any to begin with?

There may be liquid water locked up in the soil or underground, but the lack of a thick atmosphere causes the atmospheric pressure to be too low for liquid water to stay on the surface. Without the weight of the air pressure holding the water molecules together in liquid form, the water basically "boils" away into vapor, eve in the freezing temperatures. Mars was once thought to have a thicker atmosphere, but it lost its atmosphere, probably a few billion years ago.

Some water-ice still exists on the surface locked up in the polar ice caps (along with frozen carbon dioxide), and there are water-ice clouds in the Martian atmosphere -- so some water (water ice) still does exist on mars, it just no longer flows in liquid form in rivers.

NASA's Phoenix Lander, which landed near Mars' North Pole in 2008, found water ice by digging a few inches below the surface, and also found some liquid water condensation on the lander's legs. that condensation is believed to have not evaporated quickly because it contained some salts that allowed it to exist in liquid form for a while before evaporating.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

What about gypsum?

I'm not a qualified chemist, but gypsum can be formed by other methods also. I found a pdf that includes some info on the chemisty involved:
wray.eas.gatech.edu...‎

Water seems to have been a ubiquitous part of the proto-planetary cloud from which our solar system formed, so why would you doubt there was ever water on Mars?

I can't prove there was never running or pooling water on Mars, I'm saying there are other methods for the formation of materials on Mars that involve plasma and electro magnetic forces rather than water. Water is neccessary for many chemical reactions to occur, but the amounts needed can be found withing the silicate surface materials themselves.

@wildespace

And what about the pebbles that indicate a river bed with a fairly fast flow?

That is the biggest disappointment to me, that they did not stop and take close-up images of the pebbles. I think that from the available images I detected pebbles that looked like they were of metamorphic origin, and if so, what was the source of the material? Also, it is another assumption to say that pebbles must be formed in fast running water because that is how they form on Earth. I belive my study of pebbles, cobbles, and even much larger rounded boulders shows they were not formed in water flows. The distance these pebbles would have needed to tumble in a river/stream to become shaped they way they are would be many thousands of miles, if they were indeed metamorphic rock. I have also cataloged many pebbles and cobbles at the beach and in rivers that have a common shape and characteristics that defies the odds of their formation by mechanical erosion and smoothing, and indicating some form of short duration, high energy event. I've been trying to get University geoscience departments to explain these characteristics by any erosive forces, but they can't so far.

I'm dreading asking this question, but here goes: what would be the source of plasma that created clays on Earth?

The Sun. If it can be shown that our Sun has emitted CMEs of very high magnitude, then there is lots of energy there. Mars, or our Moon, having no organised magnetic field are much more susceptible to the full force of high energy ions such as iron, as they have no shield. The red/tan dust on Mars and the Moon would then be from iron ion bombardment, and not from impacting comets. Earths magnetic field has weakened quite a lot over just a few decades, and if our sheild was down (during a magnetic reversal?) and the Sun did a major belch at that time, we would also be subject to a good beating. The magnitude of the energies involved, if this scenario was true, would be mind boggling, and I doubt anything on Earth could have survived, which really does open a big can of worms doesn't it?

The ancient Greeks, through what they heard from the Egiptians, told us that there have been many destructions of the Earth in the past, mainly by fire or water, and that there would be many more to come. Sometimes the destruction was so complete that life on Earth had to be reestablished, and then we needed to be helped along till we could manage on our own. That scenario is looking more and more plausible to me all the time.

Originally posted by VoidHawk
I'm waiting for the discovery that WE came from Mars!
I havent followed all this as closely as some, but am I right in thinking that Mars appears to have dried about about the same time as the Cambrian explosion happened on earth?
Could it be that if intelligent life existed on mars that they managed to shoot a rocked at earth in an attempt to seed life here? because they knew mars was doomed?

No. Mars would have dried up billions of years ago. If life evolved, it never had time to get out of the single cell stage. Mars started drying up 4 billion years ago.
science1.nasa.gov...

Originally posted by mikelkhall
What is the reason why water can not exist on mars in any quantity at this time now? Was there some form of radical change in the past that forced all the water from the planet, if it had any to begin with?

Take a look at the link I posted just above this. It explains it better than I could on this post.

Thanks for the answers guys. I honestly had no idea how Mars might have lost it's atmosphere, if it had one in the past.
So with no atmosphere, if there is an ocean, the water just boils off into space.

Originally posted by mikelkhall
Thanks for the answers guys. I honestly had no idea how Mars might have lost it's atmosphere, if it had one in the past.
So with no atmosphere, if there is an ocean, the water just boils off into space.

The prevailing theory is that Mars lost it's magnetic field, allowing solar winds to strip away the atmosphere. They are not 100% sure though.

What I would give to be able to go back in time and see that ocean on Mars. I think it would bring a tear to my eye.

One thing I'm curious about is how far would life on Mars been able to evolve. Would there be simple multicellar organisms? Would the oceans, and perhaps even dry land, get algae / fungi blooms like they do on Earth?

Originally posted by VoidHawk
I'm waiting for the discovery that WE came from Mars!
I havent followed all this as closely as some, but am I right in thinking that Mars appears to have dried about about the same time as the Cambrian explosion happened on earth?
Could it be that if intelligent life existed on mars that they managed to shoot a rocked at earth in an attempt to seed life here? because they knew mars was doomed?

Don't you watch old 50s scifi movies, men are from Mars and women are from Venus.