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Rivers on Mars Flowed for More Than a Billion Years

Author: Evan Gough / Source: Universe Today

A photo of a preserved river channel on Mars. The color is overlaid to show elevation, with blue being low and yellow being high elevation. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Univ. Arizona/UChicago

The ancient climate of Mars is a mystery to scientists. Even with all we’ve learned about Mars, it’s still difficult to explain how lakes and rivers existed. A new study shows that Martian rivers were swollen with runoff and that they flowed far later into the planet’s history than previously thought.

The question is, how did the Martian climate create these conditions?

The new study comes from researchers at the University of Chicago and other institutions, including the USGS Astrogeology Program, the Imperial College of London, and the Smithsonian Institution. It’s titled “Persistence of intense, climate-driven runoff late in Mars history” and was published in Science Advances. The lead author is U of Chicago Assistant Professor Edwin Kite. Kite is an expert in Martian history and in the climates of other worlds.

“It’s already hard to explain rivers or lakes based on the information we have. This makes a difficult problem even more difficult.”

Study lead author Edwin Kite, University of Chicago.

As spacecraft have revealed, water channels are not rare on Mars. There are hundreds of old river channels on the surface of the planet, alongside other evidence of water. There are basins full of silt, and pebbles worn round from tumbling in the water. One line of inquiry even suggests that Mars may have had a large ocean, possibly covering as much as one third of the planet.

At one time, Mars had a global ocean that may have covered about one third of the planet. Credit: NASA/GSFC
At one time, Mars had a global ocean that may have covered about one third of the planet. Credit: NASA/GSFC

This new study shows that there were hundreds of rivers on Mars, and that they were wider than rivers on Earth. It also shows that the rivers were fed by run-off, and that they persisted for much longer than previously thought. But we still don’t know why Mars had water.

The Martian atmosphere is extremely thin, though evidence…

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