Mars may once have been a blue and water-covered world long before Earth even finished forming. That's the tantalizing finding that researchers from Arizona State University and Stanford University announced on October 18, 2022.
— The sands on Mars may actually be greener than scientists have thought. Brand new observations from the Mars rover Perseverance have found that the “Red Planet” is also home to the same kinds of rocks that turn beaches on Earth a dark shade of green!
Mars appears to have had a watery past, with ancient river valley networks, deltas, and lakebeds, as well as rocks and minerals on the surface that could only have formed in liquid water. Some features suggest that Mars experienced huge floods about 3.5 billion years ago.
From a long way away, the whole planet looks kind of reddish. But if you get a close-up view -- with an orbiter, lander or rover -- you'll see that a lot of Mars is actually more of a butterscotch color. Depending on what minerals are around, some landscapes can be more golden, brown, tan, or even a little greenish.
Planetary scientists see evidence of water all over the red planet, but a new study of meteorites suggests that Mars was once a blue planet, like Earth, covered in water as deep as 1,000 feet/300m.
And when that happened, hydrogen in the atmosphere was blown out to space by solar wind, leading to the breakdown of water vapor and eventually the evaporation of the Martian oceans. And this would all have taken place about 4 billion years ago.
Mars is known for its crimson, frozen terrain, but a recent discovery from a team of researchers provides new evidence that there was once an ancient ocean on the now-harsh Martian terrain. The discovery is evidence that Mars was, at one point in its history, quite different–a warm, wet planet.
To date, no proof of past or present life has been found on Mars. Cumulative evidence suggests that during the ancient Noachian time period, the surface environment of Mars had liquid water and may have been habitable for microorganisms, but habitable conditions do not necessarily indicate life.
Why are Mars sunsets blue? Now let's apply this to sunsets on Mars and Earth. The Martian atmosphere is dominated by large-sized dust particles. These particles cause something called 'Mie Scattering,' which filters out the red light from the sun's rays and only lets the blue reach our eyes.
The simple explanation for the Red Planet's color is that its regolith, or surface material, contains lots of iron oxide — the same compound that gives blood and rust their hue. But why does Mars have so much iron, why is that iron "oxidized," and why does iron oxide look red? It all started 4.5 billion years ago.
Billions of years ago, when life emerged on Earth, the climate of Mars could have been Earth-like as well, with a thicker atmosphere than today and oceans of liquid water. A study funded by NASA and international partners indicates this period could have lasted longer than originally thought.
Venus was downright Earth-like for 2 to 3 billion years and didn't turn into the violent no-man's land we know today until 700 million years ago. Venus was a cloudy mystery to astronomers until 1978, when the Pioneer Venus Project reached the planet and found indications that it was once home to shallow seas.
Earth may have been a 'waterworld' without continents 3 billion years ago, study suggests. Around 3 billion years ago, Earth may have been covered in water – a proverbial "waterworld" – without any continents separating the oceans.
Mars is usually considered a geologically dead planet, but a new study challenges that idea. Multiple lines of evidence reveals a giant plume of magma is forcing its way up through the Red Planet's mantle and producing seismic activity in one particular region of the surface.
As the planet is almost tidally locked and takes 58 days to rotate once. It's 176 days from one sunrise to the next, meaning the Sun bakes the surface of Mercury for months at a time. With no active volcanism renewing the rock, the planet is now covered in impact craters, leaving no doubt that Mercury is a dead world.
Magnesium, Aluminium, Titanium, Iron, and Chromium are relatively common in them. In addition, lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, niobium, molybdenum, lanthanum, europium, tungsten, and gold have been found in trace amounts.
The fourth planet from the sun, Mars has geological features like the Earth and moon, such as craters and valleys, many of which were formed through rainfall. Although there is a growing body of evidence that there was once water on Mars, it does not rain there today.
Martian winds have about 99 per cent less force compared with the winds of the same speed on Earth due to the planet's thin atmosphere. Studies of Martian winds since the 1970s have either concentrated on landing zones – which must be low-wind for safe landings – or on single assessments of mountainous ridges.
For the moment, it is very difficult to say how long Mars would have remained habitable. Bottom line: Life on Mars may have initially thrived early on, but then ultimately caused its own extinction. The atmosphere might have became too cold after microbes altered its composition.
If Mars possessed an Earth-like biosphere in the past, Mars may contain subsurface deposits of oil and natural gas indicating past life. Life might still exist in these deposits.
As the martian interior cooled, leading theories hold, its magnetic field died out, leaving the atmosphere undefended and ending this warm and wet period, when the planet might have hosted life.
Researchers have found that Mars had a planet-wide groundwater system and several prominent features on the planet have been produced by the action of groundwater. When water rose to the surface or near the surface, various minerals were deposited and sediments became cemented together.
The current loss figure is equivalent ~25,920 liters per day, or 9,467 m3 per year. And the reference of that figure seem to be the paper Escape of O+ through the distant tail plasma sheet, that used measurements from the STEREO‐B (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) spacecraft.
Scientists have speculated that if liquid water existed on its surface before the runaway greenhouse effect heated the planet, microbial life may have formed on Venus, but it may no longer exist.