SAN FRANCISCO, iNews.id – Mars is one of the smaller planets in the Solar System and home to some of the largest canyon and valley systems ever to be spied on by robots. New research suggests many of the Martian features were shaped by catastrophic climate-driven events of the kind that currently pose a more significant threat to Earth.
“We found that at least a quarter of the total volume of the eroded Martian valley network was carved out by flooding that penetrated the lake,” Planetary Science Institute (PSI) research scientist Alexander Morgan explained in a statement.
Morgan is one of the authors of a paper published in the journal Nature that describes how ancient lakes on the red planet became swollen enough to cover their edges. The resulting massive floods carved deep canyons and valleys into the planet’s surface.
“It has long been known that some select Martian valleys were formed from lake overflow floods, but our study is the first global analysis,” Morgan said.
Morgan and colleagues applied algorithms to a global map of Mars to calculate the total volume of eroded valleys formed by lake-intrusion floods.
“Our results suggest that many Martian valleys are actually more similar to catastrophic floods on Earth, such as those that formed the northwestern United States at the end of the last glacial period,” Morgan said.
Some of the deep canyons and valleys of the Himalayas and the Rocky Mountains were formed when glaciers melted more than 15,000 years ago and the lakes below overflowed. On both Mars and Earth, catastrophic floods that change the landscape are driven by a warming climate.
Editor: Dini Listiyani
