Mars's Life Supporting Window Was Longer Than Initially Estimated

Mars’s life supporting window may have lasted longer than initially believed, according to a new study.

A new study offers evidence that Mars’s life supporting period may have been longer than initially believed, as it could have gone further back into the past. The researchers reached this conclusion after the Curiosity rover discovered “halos”.

Study results are available in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The Planet’s Groundwater lengthened Mars’s Life Supporting Window

The first evidence brought for Mars’s potential habitability came back in 2012. In August of that year, NASA’s Curiosity rover touched down inside the Gale Crater, a 96-miles wide structure. Observations of the area showed that it had once housed a potential lake-and-stream system sometime in its ancient years.

Now, the Gale Crater presented further evidence to sustain this theory and even lengthen Mars’s potential habitability period. Curiosity detected “halos” of silica-rich bedrock. These were noted to surround a series of structures situated near the crater’s floor.

These recent halos were established to be overlying ancient lake sediments. According to the mission team, they presented a high silica content. In turn, this seems to indicate that the halos detected in younger such rocks were very likely “remobilized” from older sedimentary rocks by “the water flowing through the fractures.”

“What this finding tells us is that, even when the lake eventually evaporated, substantial amounts of groundwater were present for much longer than we previously thought,” states Jens Frydenvang.

He is a scientist part of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and also of the University of Copenhagen. Frydenvang is the lead author of the new study as well. He continued by pointing out that the longer presence of groundwater basically extends Mars’s life supporting window.

Curiosity discovered these new silica halos as it was studying the lower north slope of Mount Slope. This is 3.4-miles high mountain situated in the center of the Gale Crater. The rover analyzed its new discovery with many instruments including its cameras, and an X-ray spectrometer. It also used its laser-firing Chemistry and Camera instrument.

Image Source: Pixabay

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When I was younger I used to spend almost all of my free time playing computer games. My mom and dad would go mental over this. “You’re never going to do anything with your life if you are going to play games all day” they used to say. What was even more unusual was the fact that I played more games than most of the guys in my friend group. Looking back, I have to admit that I probably played a bit too much, but I also learned a lot of great things. When I turned 20 I decided that it was high-time to make some money of my own, but the only jobs I could get were that of waitress or cashier. How exciting. After several excruciating months of serving tables I had a great idea: since I love gaming so much, why don’t I write about it? That’s when I started doing small writing projects on Elance. Eventually, I got an offer for a part-time job. During that time I learned all about content marketing strategies and how search engines work. I started writing about various topics such as technology, health and lifestyle and discovered that I was actually good at it. On November 24, 2014, I became part of the ArgyllFreePress team.