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Water on Mars: A new study changes the date of its disappearance

Water on Mars: A new study changes the date of its disappearance

The secret of the disappearance of water from Mars The scientific community continues to debate it and its solution appears increasingly elusive, especially now that a new discovery has been made question The fact that so far it has been adopted as a fixed point in the question: evaporation dateWater from the red planet.

The study is based on data collected by NASA’s Mars Exploration Orbiter (MRO), from which it emerged Archeology indicates that the surface of Mars hosted water masses between 2.5 and 2 billion years agowhile it was previously believed that complete evaporation occurred about 3 billion years ago.

Therefore, the great chronological discrepancy calls into question what has been assumed thus far. The topic is central to understanding whether life could have formed – even on a microscopic level – and how it could have been in the past on Mars and how this might eventually survive the lack of water. The existence of the precious liquid, in fact, is a An essential piece of life On Earth and this is expected to also apply to other planets, at least for planets close to us as in the case of Mars.

The data collected by MRO made it possible Analysis of the residual effects of the presence of water, often characterized by the formation of salts in craters that included lakes and seas. The estimation of the new date is based on the analysis of archaeological pits located in the areas where salts were discovered: the lower the pits, the more Last The disappearance of water from the affected area. From this data it was traced back to the new estimate of 2.5/2 billion years.

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MRO tools allow the probe to collect data of a different nature, and to exploit its own data crisis (Compressed Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer of Mars) – for example – to identify residual mineral traces that can be linked to the presence of water in the past. In short, the study of Mars continues and our knowledge of the Red Planet is still very limited.