They discover that a vast ocean covered a third of the surface of Mars

A vast ocean covering one third of the surface of Mars 3,500 million years ago, according to a study released Sunday by the journal Nature Geoscience.

Two researchers from the University of Colorado (Boulder, USA), Gaetano Di Achille and Bryan Hynek, reached that conclusion after analyzing data from 52 sedimentary deposits "deltas" and valleys of ancient rivers that once irrigated the planet red.

"More than half of the 52 tanks of river deltas identified by researchers (...) probably marked the boundaries of the ocean course, since all are located at about the same height," says the University of Colorado in statement.

Of the 52 deltas, 29 were connected with the missing Mars or the ocean of water tables that feed, as well as large lakes adjacent Di Achille detailed in the report.

According to Hynek, this is the first study that integrates the data (delta, a network of valleys, topography) from the observer missions of the red planet made since 2001 by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

"Mars probably had a global hydrological cycle similar to Earth, with rainfall, cloud formation, ice and groundwater aquifers," he explains.

Di Achille and Hynek estimated that the ocean may have covered 36% of the surface of Mars with a total of 124 million cubic kilometers of water, a volume ten times lower than all existing terrestrial oceans, but Mars is smaller than Earth.

According to another study led by Hynek and published in the Journal of Geophysical Research (Planets), have been detected on Mars about 40,000 ancient river valleys, which were the source of the accumulated sediments in the deltas.

Following these two studies, researchers now think the big question of what happened to the water to over 3,000 million years bathing the Martian surface.

Perhaps future Mars missions, including NASA's being dubbed the 'MAVEN' (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission), scheduled for 2013 and conducted by researchers at the University of Colorado, provide the answer.



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