NEW YORK (Reuters) - A strange reality has been experienced by Mars for millions of years, but the strangest fact is that the planet is also suffering these days.
According to a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the waters of Mars's lakes and rivers evaporated some 3.5 billion years ago "due to climate variability," or what is now known as climate change.
It is widely believed that the Red Planet once contained abundant liquid water, with lakes, rivers and perhaps even a vast ocean covering most of its northern plains, but the liquid water disappeared for unknown reasons.
To learn more about the subject, William Rabin of the California Institute of Technology in the United States and his team studied data collected by the Corriosity probe in 2017 from the 3.5-year-old Gael crater.
"We know that during this period, the environment of Mars has changed dramatically. Its atmosphere has been eroded by the solar wind," Rabin told AFP. "We are convinced that this has dramatically changed the climate of the planet."
An analysis of hundreds of meters of geologic layers in the Gael crater showed "an intermittent presence of salt deposits in sedimentary rocks," suggesting periods of extreme evaporation of water in that period.
"We found that there were climatic fluctuations ranging from wet to dry periods," Rabin said. "The study also illuminated the types of ions that were in liquid water running on the surface of the Red Planet."
"The lesson shows the kind of environmental changes life has encountered in Mars at those times," he said.
