Mars Gullies Show Water Once Flowed

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A new analysis of puzzling gullylike features on Mars offers further evidence that water flowed on the Red Planet's surface, perhaps as recently as several hundred thousand years ago. The findings bolster the case that melting snow from a departed Martian ice age carved these gullies, rather than shifting sands or other 'dry' phenomena."

Comments

Where did it go?

[guruevi]

That is the real question. Is the atmosphere too thin to keep the water there or did it all freeze or go underground. Do we (earth) lose water as well?

Re:Where did it go?

[antirelic]

Ok, I'll bite.

Someone else pointed out this site, I'll post the link and pull some references from it:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast31jan_1.htm

Where did it go?

"New evidence from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft supports a long-held suspicion that much of the Red Planet's atmosphere was simply blown away -- by the solar wind."

So... according to NASA, Mars has been screwed for about 4 billion years:

"How do scientists know when the dynamo turned off? "Mars has been kind to us," explains Mitchell. "There are two large impact basins, Hellas and Argyre, about four billion years old that are demagnetized. If the dynamo was still operating when those impact features formed, the crust would have re-magnetized as they cooled. The dynamo must have stopped before then.""

According to the following link, life started on earth 3.8 billion years ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution

According to the following link our solar system is about 4.6 billion years old:

http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/the-solar-system/how-old-is-the-solar-system/

So... this gives Mars approximately 600 million years to come up with "some" form of life before its magnetosphere stopped working (because after that, the environment probably became very inhospitable). Considering it took earth 2.2 billion years to create life... we are gambling that Mars had life sooner than Earth?

Would it even be possible for a planet to have life on it within 500 million years of its creation? From what I understand, Earth was awfully uninhabitable to life in its first billion years (fire and brimstone kinda stuff, Venus like). Why would Mars be any different?

Re: Mars Gullies Show Water Once Flowed

[Anonymous Coward]

Would be excited to hear if underground water is found. The ice caps probably don't have the volume to fill what potentially could have been an Earth-ish looking planet.