An ongoing study headed by Environmental Studies Prof. Alan Howard recently determined that water flowed across the surface of Mars for at least a period of 10,000 total, non-consecutive years.
The study, which has been running for more than a year, involves an investigation of the amount of water and precipitation early in Mars’ history, Howard said. It also involves an examination of Mars’ topography, to see where running water may have carved out valleys, channels and other geographic features that appear on the planet’s surface today.
Researchers could determine the depth of lakes and other bodies of water by seeing, for example, how they may have overflowed and carved a channel in the process, Howard said. He noted that various images from orbiters around Mars supplemented knowledge of the planet’s topography.
Howard added that, although the study concluded that water flowed on Mars for more than 10,000 years, this number simply reflects the total number of years, meaning that water may have flowed during several different time periods. Moreover, though water is commonly thought of as necessary for existence, Howard noted that most scientists would still hesitate to make any conclusions about possible life on Mars, even in light of his findings. He said it is unknown how long conditions would have to be warm and wet for life to develop, but estimated that it probably would have to be millions or even tens of millions of years. Additionally, Howard said Mars is less likely to have conditions suitable to the development of life because it is both colder and smaller than Earth, which means it has a thinner atmosphere.
Also unlike Earth, Mars lacks a strong magnetic field to shield it from solar winds, which are high energy particles that contribute to the erosion of planetary atmospheres, Howard said.
Nevertheless, the question of whether primitive organisms could have developed in the presence of water on Mars remains a mystery.
“At the very best, there’s a lot of uncertainty,” Howard said.
Moving forward, Howard said he and the rest of the study’s team will continue trying to increase the scientific community’s understanding about how much water there actually was on Mars’ surface.
“The exact direction that further research would go would depend on what else we find from this study,” Howard said.
—compiled by Prateek Vasireddy
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