The scientific community has for some time agreed on the fact that the eroded landforms of Mars could come from ancient rivers and streams, present on the surface of the red planet in its infancy.
But apparently a recent study by researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) goes against this hypothesis. Thus, after meticulous work, these researchers demonstrated that the red planet would not have been hot and humid, but rather a cold world, covered with ice.
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Consequently, the beds supposed to have belonged to ancient rivers are in fact the results of an underlying erosion due to the ice cover.
A study whose singular results have just been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Compare the Martian valleys with those of the island of Devon
To learn more about the ancient surface of Mars, Anna Grau Galofre, the lead author of this research, and her team compared the valleys of Mars with various valleys on Earth.
Like those on our planet, Martian valleys differ from each other. However, many of them have similarities to the subglacial channels of Devon Island, located in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
According to Gordon Osinski, one of the co-authors of these jobs, Devon Island, which is a dry and particularly cold desert, can serve as a comparison model between Mars and Earth.
And thanks to a new algorithm, scientists examined at least 10,000 Martian valleys to learn about the erosion mechanisms that led to their formation. Which allowed them to find that the channeled drainage of meltwater under an ancient ice cap on Mars led to extensive subglacial erosion.
Read also : An extraterrestrial life form in the depths of Mars?
Mars was apparently much colder in its early days
Scientists then suggest that only a small part of Martian valleys is due to erosion of surface water. While adding that Mars was rather full of patches of ice, but not rivers and lakes in its early days.
Note that 3.8 billion years ago, added to the fact that Mars is further from the sun than the Earth, solar radiation was less intense. Anna Grau Galofre points out that during the formation of these valleys, it was surely very cold on the red planet.
Read also : The mystery of Martian methane revived by a signature discovered in the planet’s atmosphere
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