Barcelona (Spain), March 29 (EFE) .- The enormous spiral-shaped ice canyons of the planet Mars are young and formed by erosion, according to a research led by the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) of the United States and in the Spanish researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) have participated.
The research, published in the journal ‘Scientific Reports’ and in which the universities of Purdue and Arizona (USA) also collaborated, clarifies the mystery of the origin and shape of the system of canyons excavated in the ice in the north polar cap of Mars , one of the largest megastructures in the solar system.
These spiral canyons had already been studied by many scientists, who related their distribution to sublimation processes, by which the ice would go directly from the solid to the gaseous state, although the origin of the canyons and the spiral shape they configure has been a mystery. during decades.
The conclusion of the study suggests that the canyons were formed by loss of ice due to the action of katabatic winds, descending from high altitudes and exposing ancient ice on the polar surface.
‘The discovery implies that the canyons are one of the largest megastructures in the solar system, with a total excavated volume of the order of 10 times the Colorado Canyon,’ explains José Alexis Palmero Rodríguez, a researcher at the PSI who leads the study. .
“The emergence of the spiral pattern was due to intersections of the canyons, as they grew, on the dome-shaped geometry of the polar cap,” he details.
This enormous amount of excavated ice would have been carried by the winds and deposited in the form of mantles at mid-latitudes, and even conserved in mountain glaciers at lower latitudes.
‘The canyons were formed between a few million years and 50,000 years, during periods of time in which Mars has been continuously in freezing conditions. Therefore, this ice would have been formed by inverse sublimation, without becoming liquid, ‘says Mario Zarroca, researcher from the Department of Geology of the UAB and co-author of the study.
According to Zarroca, “this ice is not a candidate to harbor possible signs of life, but it can be considered as a possible pure water resource, available for future colonization missions to Mars.”
“Taking into account that an ice mass equivalent to twice the volume of the Baltic Sea is estimated, the availability of this resource could be guaranteed for a long time on the planet,” says Zarroca.
The researcher highlights that “one of the main implications of this research is that these canyons have been able to expose a paleoclimatic record that could cover a few hundred million years in the walls carved out of the ice.”
This record, according to the researcher, could help to better understand the great changes that the conditions of Mars have suffered throughout its history, such as the evolution of its atmosphere and hydrosphere. EFE
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