(ORDO NEWS) — NASA‘s Curiosity rover has provided the clearest evidence of ancient water ripples on the surface of the Red Planet.
Billions of years ago, waves on the surface of a shallow reservoir shook the bottom sediments, but then the water evaporated, and the planet turned into a frozen desert.
However, prolonged wave activity left behind specific traces that were seen by the NASA rover.
On August 6, 2012, Curiosity landed in Gale Crater, which scientists believe was a lake in the distant past.
Leisurely climbing Mount Sharp (the official name of Mount Aeolis), the rover traveled back in time, studying the layers of rock that formed in different eras.
The base of the mountain is the most ancient formation that appeared in that historical period when Mars was a fairly warm and humid world.
The closer Curiosity is to the top, the younger the rock it encounters, which are dry formations that appeared at a time when the planet had already plunged into its current state.
However, these “petrified ripples” found halfway up Sharpe’s summit show that this place (and the planet as a whole) probably had a more complex and humid climate than previously thought.
“This is the best evidence of water and waves we have seen throughout the mission,” said Ashwin Vasawada, Curiosity Mission Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“We’ve traversed thousands of feet of lake sediment, but we’ve never found such evidence.
And now we’ve found them where we expected them to be dry.”
Researchers were interested in drilling through the rock and getting a sample to study in situ, but it is so hard that several attempts by Curiosity were unsuccessful.
The rover team will make a few more attempts, but if they prove in vain, Curiosity will soon visit the wind-carved Gediz Valley, which also seems to have experienced water erosion due to a small river, a landslide, or some other natural phenomenon.
The Curiosity team also points to “rhythmic layers” in the rocks, which are thought to have been formed during cyclical events such as dust storms or seasonal changes in weather patterns.
“The ripples of the waves, the flow of debris and the rhythmic layers tell us that the wet-to-dry history on Mars has not been an easy one,” Vasavada added.
“The ancient climate of Mars was as strikingly complex as Earth‘s.”
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