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A Third of Mars Could Have Been Underwater
Matt_dk writes "An international team of scientists who analyzed data from the Gamma Ray Spectrometer onboard NASA's Mars Odyssey reports new evidence for the controversial idea that oceans once covered about a third of ancient Mars.
'We compared Gamma Ray Spectrometer data on potassium, thorium and iron above and below a shoreline believed to mark an ancient ocean that covered a third of Mars' surface, and an inner shoreline believed to mark a younger, smaller ocean.'"
Wait until we find signs of human civilization there and discover they made a last ditch effort to escape their destructive lifestyle by migrating to a new planet they called Earth.
The question is why Mars would have oceans then and not now. Put water on the surface today and that which doesn't freeze will evaporate due to the low atmospheric pressure. The atmospheric pressure is low because Mars doesn't have that strong a gravitational field to sustain an atmosphere. So the question becomes, how did Mars ever manage to have an ocean in the first place? It's not likely that it was more massive earlier on so it's not likely to have ever had an earth-like atmosphere that recycles the water back to the oceans. Sans gravity, you don't get a steady-state atmosphere. Sans atmosphere, you don't get to keep your water. Bottom line - it's a problem full of paradoxes. Weird.