Mars may have once been home to sandy beaches, new underground invasion radar data suggests.
Radar data from China's Zhurong Rover is buried under evidence of Mars' surface, which looks like sandy beaches from a large ocean coastline that may have existed long ago on the northern plains of Earth. has been revealed.
The findings are the latest evidence of the existence of this hypothetical ocean called Deuteronilus about 35-4 billion years ago, when Mars (now cold and devastated) had a rich atmosphere and warm climate. . Scientists say the liquid water ocean on the surface of Mars may have embraced living creatures that live like the primitive oceans of early Earth.
Operating from May 2021 to May 2022, the rover traveled 1.2 miles (1.9 km) in areas that exhibit surface features suggestive of ancient coastlines. An underground radar that transmits high-frequency radio waves to the ground reflecting underground features, and penetrates the ground probed up to 80 meters below the surface.
Radar images 10-35 meters underground detected thick layers of material with sand-like properties. All of these were slanted diagonally in the same direction as the Earth's beach, just below the water where the oceans meet land. Researchers mapped these structures, spanning three-quarters of a mile along the Rover path.
“The surface of Mars has changed dramatically over 3.5 billion years, but using underground invasion radars has found direct evidence of coastal sediments that are invisible from the surface,” says the planet at Guangdong University. Scientists and science team for China's Tianwen-1 mission, including the Rover.
On Earth, beach deposits of this size required millions of years to form, researchers say Mars has the effect of waves that distribute sediments carried by rivers flowing from nearby. It suggested that there was a large-scale long lifespan of water. Highlands.
“The beach would have been formed by processes similar to those on Earth – Waves and Tides” said it was one of the leaders of the research published Monday in the National Academy of Sciences' magazine Proceedings. “Such oceans would have had a major impact on Mars' climate, shaping its landscape, creating an environment that could potentially emerge and thrive in life.”
“The coastline is a great place to look for evidence of past life,” said Michael Manga, planetary scientist and research co-author at the University of California, Berkeley. “It is believed that the earliest life on earth began at places like this, near the interface between air and shallow water.”
The rover explored the southern part of Utopia Plantia, a large plain in the northern hemisphere of Mars.
The researchers ruled out other possible explanations for the structures detected by Zhurong.
“The main part of this work was testing these other hypotheses. The wind-blowed dunes were considered, but there were some issues. First, the dunes were in groups. It tends to come, and these groups produce distinctive patterns that are not present in these deposits,” says Benjamin Cardenas, a Pennsylvania geoscientist and research co-author. “We also considered ancient rivers that exist in several locations near Mars, but rejected that hypothesis for similar reasons based on patterns we saw in deposits. Also, we usually see this one. You don't get structures like this in lava flows. The beach is perfect for observation.”
Earth, Mars and other planets in the solar system were formed about 4.5 billion years ago. This means that when the planet's climate changed dramatically, Deuteronilus disappeared into Mars' history about a billion years later. Scientists said some of the water could have been lost to space, but a large amount could remain trapped underground.
A study published last year based on seismic data obtained by NASA's Robotic Insight Lander found that an immeasurable reservoir of liquid water could be deep inside the Mars surface in fractured igneous rocks .
For decades, scientists have used satellite imagery to track Mars' surface features that resemble coastlines. However, such evidence on the surface may have been erased or distorted by billions of years of wind erosion or other geological processes.
That is not the case for newly discovered structures buried over time under material deposited by dust storms, metstone attacks, or volcanic activity.
“These are still buried underground on Mars, so they are beautifully preserved,” said Cardenas.
