Most astrophysicists agree that there was once liquid water on Mars. However, it is controversial how much water it was. A research team from the University of Copenhagen now comes to the conclusion that the planet could have been covered by a 300 meter deep ocean about 4.5 billion years ago. The study was published in the specialist magazine "Science Advances". So was the red planet once blue and possibly housed life?
"The still young Mars was bombed with asteroids that were filled with ice in his early phase," says Martin Bizzarro from the Center for Star and Planary Development at the University of Copenhagen, one of the main authors of the study. "This happened within the first 100 million years of planet development." In addition to water, the icy asteroids also brought organically relevant molecules such as amino acids. They occur in all previously known living beings and serve as building blocks for proteins. "Although the preservation rate of biologically relevant molecules depends on a number of factors, our results show that exotic organic matter has reached the surface of the marso," the authors write.
The researchers were able to reconstruct the early history of Mars based on a billion -year -old meteorite. The meteorite was once part of the Mars crust and offers a unique insight into the events at the time of the formation of the solar system. The chromisotopes contained therein provide information about the nucleosynthetic history and the time scales of the formation of planetary deposits. The secret is the way the surface of Mars, the part of the meteorite was once, the study says, because the surface does not move. The opposite is the case on earth. The tectonic plates are in constant movement. As a result, all traces of the first 500 million years of earth history were wiped out.
So, the Martian meteorites provide clues about the composition of the original Martian crust, including the existence of exotic material on the surface of the planet. The scientists conclude from their geochemical analyses and subsequent computer-aided modelling how deep the ocean of liquid water might once have been on Mars.
Just recently, an international research team around Neil Arnold from the Scott Polar Research Institute of the University of Cambridge in the specialist journal »Nature Astronomy« had drawn up the data-based assumption that there could still be liquid water under the ice of the Mars-Südpol.
