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Dry Ice or Flowing Water on Mars Surface

Branched gullies Jim Secosky/NASA

Recently some of the formations on the slopes of the craters on Mars were assumed to be the evidence of seasonal flowing water. However, now there is a different proposal for the formation of these structures.

According to the new proposal, the main actor might be dry ice, not flowing liquid water.

It is known that most of the seasonal icecaps and frost are formed by CO2. When sun rays penetrate to the depth of dry ice layers, it may cause sublimination (vaporising without entering a liquidation phase). This process might create a frictionless surface layer and cause the dry ice to behave like a flowing liquid carrying some deposit together with it.

So, actual reason of the formation of gullies might be flowing dry ice instead of liquid water flow.

I hope, that puzzle will be solved in a short time.

Ahmet Aksoy

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Mars Had An Ocean 4.3 Million Years Ago

(Reported by ScienceAlert)

Mars once held more water than the Arctic Ocean

And it would have been ideal for alien life.

Scientists at NASA have measured signals from ancient water on Mars to estimate that 4.3 million years ago, there was probably enough water to cover the entire Martian surface in a layer about 137 meters deep. More likely, this water accumulated in an ocean bigger than the size of Earth’s Arctic Ocean, covering almost half of Mars’s northern hemisphere. This means at its deepest point it would have reaching down to more than 1.6 kilometers. And yep, that’s about as much water as you’d need to make an ideal environment for life.

“Our study provides a solid estimate of how much water Mars once had, by determining how much water was lost to space,” lead researcher Geronimo Villanueva, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in the US, said in a press release. “With this work, we can better understand the history of water on Mars.”

Please, Click for the other details and the video : http://www.sciencealert.com/mars-once-held-more-water-than-the-arctic-ocean