Geophysicists have discovered a huge hidden ocean Mars‘ surface, and they say there might be life there.
The huge underground reservoir was discovered using seismic data collected by NASA’s InSight landercontains enough liquid to cover the entire planet with a mile of water. However, it is far too deep to be reached by any known means.
The water is trapped in a layer of broken rock 11.5 to 20 kilometers below the outer crust of the Red Planet. To reach the water, a borehole would be necessary, which still to be reached on earth.
But if humans can get there one day, its discoverers say it is a promising place to search for life. The researchers published their findings on August 12. In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences The authors of the study are:
“Water is necessary for life as we know it,” co-author of the study Michael MangaProfessor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Berkeley, said in a statement. “I don’t understand why (the underground reservoir) shouldn’t be a habitable environment. On Earth it certainly is – deep, deep mines host life, the sea floor hosts life.”
“We have not found evidence of life on Mars, but at least we have identified a place where there should in principle be life,” Manga added.
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Dried rivers, deltas and lake beds crisscross the surface of Mars and provide scientists with ample evidence that Water was once abundant on the surface of the barren planet. But about 3.5 billion years ago, an abrupt climate change drained Mars of water from its surface.
What caused the rapid drying out is unclear, although scientists suspect that it was due to a sudden Loss of the planet’s magnetic fieldan asteroid impact or ancient microbial life that Climate change has destroyed the planetFinding the right explanation and figuring out where the water went has become an important question.
To probe the planet’s interior for clues, researchers behind the new study used data collected by NASA’s InSight lander, a robotic seismology laboratory that studied the Red Planet’s inner workings from 2018 to 2022. InSight’s sensors enabled the probe to record quakes up to magnitude 5 that rocked the planet as a result of meteorite impacts and shifts caused by volcanic activity.
By feeding that data into a mathematical model similar to those used on Earth to search for aquifers and oil deposits, scientists mapped Mars’ interior to find out “the thickness of the crust, the depth of the core, the composition of the core and even a little bit of the temperature in the mantle,” Manga said.
Studies of the deeper crust revealed that it is most likely made up of a patchwork of broken igneous rocks containing more than enough liquid water to fill Mars’ oceans, a sign that the water did not escape into space all those billions of years ago, but dripped into the planet’s crust.
Currently, reaching the secret ocean is far beyond humanity’s technical capabilities (the deepest hole ever dug on Earth, the Kola Superdeep Borehole, reaches only 12.2 kilometers into our planet’s surface). Nevertheless, this is not the only place where scientists are looking for life on Mars.
In fact, samples of Martian dust and even evidence of early life have been found. could have already been collected from the Perseverance rover, which has been exploring the surface of Jezero Crater since 2021 to collect geological samples.
NASA had originally planned a sample collection mission for 2026, but that date has since been postponed. delayed until 2040 for budgetary reasons. The agency is currently soliciting proposals from private companies to speed up the mission’s schedule.
