The picture of an ancient Mars that looked a lot more like Earth came into sharper focus this week with a new study showing that the planet’s northern regions apparently shared a proclivity for water.
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Kudos to a team of French and American scientists who found the north’s first telltale clay mineral deposits, which form in water’s presence. Thousands of similar deposits have been found in the planet’s southern highlands, which are about 4 billion years old. The detections by Europe’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance orbiters are the first time the minerals have been found in the north, which has younger surface rocks due to more recent volcanic activity.
Writing in this week’s Science, the researchers explain that the minerals were found in some large craters that had cut through the younger, overlying rocks. In nine of 91 craters scanned, clay-like minerals called phyllosilicates, which on Earth form in wet environments, were found. The discovery raises the prospect that early Mars had water on a global scale.
(Lyot Crater, located on the northern hemisphere of Mars, is one of nine sites that have hydrated minerals, as detected by instruments on French and American satellites. Credit: NASA/ESA)
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