(ORDO NEWS) — The isotopic composition of Martian meteorites showed that 4.5 billion years ago the Red Planet was subjected to intense asteroid bombardment.
She brought so much water that for a short time Mars turned out to be much more suitable for the origin of life than neighboring Earth.
Modern Mars is not without reason called the Red Planet: its surface is a brown, dusty, icy desert. But in the distant past, Mars was as blue as the Earth today.
There is a lot of evidence that there were extensive and numerous reservoirs on it, it was warm and humid.
According to some scientists, including Professor Martin Bizzarro (Martin Bizzarro), young Mars could well be the place where the first life in the solar system appeared.
In their new work, Professor Bizzarro and his colleagues from the University of Copenhagen have shown that about 4.5 billion years ago, a neighboring planet was subjected to a massive bombardment by asteroids, which brought huge supplies of water to it
It was enough to have an ocean splashing on Mars at least 300 meters deep.
The authors analyzed samples of ancient Martian meteorites that were once knocked out from the surface of a neighboring planet and ended up on Earth after a long space flight. In total, the scientists examined 31 samples, assessing the content of chromium-54 in their minerals.
These figures showed that in the first hundred million years of its existence, Mars was actively bombarded by carbonaceous asteroids, which brought water to the planet, and simple organic matter, which could become the basis for the emergence of life.
According to scientists, there was really a lot of this water. Together with the “primordial” water that was squeezed out of the magma, there was enough moisture to cover the young Mars with a global ocean at least 300 meters deep, and possibly up to a kilometer.
At that time, the Earth looked much less promising for the development of life. It was then that she survived the cataclysmic collision that created the moon, and the entire surface of our planet remained molten and dead.
Only later did it “catch up and overtake” Mars, which cooled down, lost the lion’s share of moisture and turned into the current icy desert.
—
Online:
Contact us: [email protected]
Our Standards, Terms of Use: Standard Terms And Conditions.