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Was Mars doomed to be a desert? Study proposes new explanation
- Scientists published on July 2 in Nature a study explaining why Mars became a barren desert despite once hosting liquid water.
- The study grew from decades of Mars exploration and rover discoveries, including Curiosity's finding of carbonate-rich rocks that trace lost atmosphere.
- Researchers modeled how Mars' slow volcanic activity failed to replenish carbon dioxide, causing the atmosphere to lock carbon in rocks and trigger long freezes.
- Edwin Kite highlighted the longstanding mystery of why Earth has remained hospitable to life while Mars lost its ability to sustain a warm, habitable environment, emphasizing the differences in their carbon cycles.
- This model implies Mars had brief warm periods driven by solar brightening but consistently reverted to desert conditions, limiting long-term habitability.
12 Articles
12 Articles
On Mars there was once water – but a treacherous cycle made it a desert. A new study shows: the red planet contains a fatal secret.
Why is Mars deserted and uninhabitable, while life has flourished on a fairly similar planet Earth? The discovery of a NASA vehicle, presented in a study on Wednesday, suggests that if rivers sank sporadically on the red planet, it was doomed to remain desert.
Was Mars doomed to be a desert? Study proposes new explanation
One of the great unsolved problems in modern planetary science is written on the surface of Mars. Mars has canyons that were carved by rivers, so it was once warm enough for liquid water. How—and why—did it become a barren desert today?
Martian Streaks Are Dry
Dark lines appearing on Martian slopes have triggered theories of flowing water or brine on the planet’s surface. But a new study suggests that these features are, instead, dry. To explore these streaks, the team assembled a global database of sightings and correlated their map with other known quantities, like temperature, wind speed, and rock slides. By connecting the data across thousands of streaks, they could build statistics about what var…
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