What Happened to Mars' Ocean? It's Still Trapped There

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The soil beneath your feet is red and dry.

The place is freezing cold.

Rusty-colored dust is floating in the air.

You make one step.

Then another.

It's hard to move because of the thick layer of dust your feet are sinking into.

You're on Mars and you've come here after hearing some absolutely incredible news.

These days, the so-called red planet indeed looks dry and dusty.

But scientists think that this world might have been very different a long, long time ago.

They have found some evidence of a huge ocean that could have existed on the surface of

Mars about 3.5 billion years ago.

And this ocean probably covered hundreds of thousands of square miles.

It all started with numerous satellite images of the surface of the red planet.

They were snapped at different angles.

As a result, researchers managed to construct a relief map of the area.

They charted out more than 4,000 miles of specific formations that had most likely been

carved by rivers.

Those formations could also be channels once carved out on the sea floor.

Scientists used the data gathered by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2007.

They analyzed the thickness of the ridges and their angles and locations.

Their main goal was to explore the topographical depression called Aeolus Dorsa.

It turned out that all those years ago, this part of the red planet had been undergoing

a series of constant changes.

They could have been caused by the rapid movement of rocks, pulled around by currents and rivers,

as well as noticeable increases in sea level.

Researchers also noticed a pretty clear boundary that separated the southern highlands of

Mars, elevated and highly cratered, from the smooth lowlands of the planet.

It looked very similar to a shoreline, left by a ginormous ocean.

This all likely means that in ancient times, their indeed was an ocean on the surface of

Mars, and a large one at that.

What's even more exciting is that the existence of such an ocean might mean the existence

of life.

This discovery can tell scientists a lot about the ancient climate on the red planet, as

well as its evolution.

We now know there had to be a period on Mars when the planet was quite warm, and its atmosphere

was thick enough to keep so much liquid water.

What's even more incredible, the climate in the Northern Hemisphere of Mars 3 billion

years ago, could have resembled the one we have on Earth nowadays.

But then, where is this ocean now?

What happened to it?

Perhaps the climate of the red planet was becoming cooler, and the surface of the ocean froze.

There's a theory claiming that these days, the ocean remains in its frozen state, deep

under a layer of rock, debris, and dust, under a northern plain called vestitis borealis.

Or the ocean's waters could have been lost to the atmosphere, and eventually space through

the process of atmospheric sputtering.

In this process, atoms get knocked away from the atmosphere after colliding with high

energy particles coming from the sun.

Anyway, the theory of an ocean that once covered a substantial part of Mars' Northern Hemisphere

hasn't been confirmed yet, scientists are still arguing about its existence.

As for now, Mars is a very cold world with an average temperature of negative 80 degrees

Fahrenheit.

The planet's surface is rocky.

It's covered with dry lake beds, craters, volcanoes, and canyons.

The ocean that might have existed on Mars isn't the only awesome thing about this planet.

Let's speak about those sandstorms raging on the red planet.

In movies, they're depicted as incredibly powerful forces of nature, destroying astronauts'

camps, and tearing their spaceships into pieces.

But how much of it is true?

Mars is indeed infamous for producing duststorms so massive, they can be seen by telescopes

on Earth.

They sometimes cover continent-sized areas, and can last for weeks at a time.

But besides them, there are much rarer storms that occur once in three Mars years, which

is about five and a half Earth years.

Such storms are larger and much more intense than regular ones.

They encircle the entire planet.

That's why scientists call them global dust storms.

At the same time, it's unlikely that even a global dust storm could cause serious harm

to astronauts or their equipment.

Even though Martian storms are massive, the wind speed reaches 60 miles per hour tops.

That's less than half the speed of most hurricane force winds on Earth.

Plus, this comparison of wind speeds can be kind of misleading.

The atmosphere on Mars is just 1% or so as dense as the atmosphere on our planet.

It means that the wind there needs to blow much faster to cause any damage, or even fly

a kite.

Now let's move to the next amazing phenomenon spotted on the red planet.

When you look at it from a distance, it looks like an eye.

There are even some winding channels that look like veins running through the eyeball.

The closer you get, the less the formation looks like an actual eye.

It's actually a giant crater, almost 19 miles in diameter.

Around the crater, which looks as if it has a pupil, there are other even bigger craters.

They likely formed billions of years ago.

That's when Mars had to withstand multiple attacks of space rocks.

But why is the eye crater darker than the surrounding landscape?

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Scientists think that once, water filled the ginormous pit.

Remember those channels?

They were likely carrying that water.

And since the crater was filled with water, it stopped some substances and minerals from eroding away.

Your next destination is valus marinaris.

That's an enormous canyon or rather a canyon system.

That runs along Mars's equator.

It stretches for more than 2,500 miles.

It's also four times as deep as the famous Grand Canyon on Earth.

The thing is so huge, it could span the entire continental United States from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.

Most scientists think that valus marinaris is a huge tectonic crack in the crust of the red planet.

It could have formed when the planet was cooling down in the distant past.

Another breathtaking sight on Mars is the largest shield volcano in the entire solar system, Olympus Mons.

It's more than 370 miles in diameter, which means it's almost the same size as the state of Arizona.

The mountain is also 16 miles high and rimmed by incredibly tall cliffs.

To imagine the sheer size of the volcano, let's make some comparisons.

The largest volcano on Earth is monoloa, around 2.6 miles high and 75 miles across, which actually sounds pretty impressive.

But the volume of Olympus Mons is around 100 times larger than that of monoloa.

The Martian giant could swallow the whole chain of Hawaiian islands from Kauai to Hawaii.

Scientists have been wondering for quite some time why this volcano is so large.

It might be the result of lower surface gravity and higher eruption rates, or the reason may be the red planet's crust, which is very different from Earth's.

On our planet, the crust is made up of 15 to 20 moving tectonic plates, as plates move over hot spots that produce lava, new volcanoes form, and the already existing ones become extinct.

That's why lava can get to the surface through many vents.

But on Mars, the crust isn't broken into the same tectonic plates as on Earth, and the lava has nothing to do, but pile in one very, very large volcano.

Now, if you visited Mars and decided to go on an evening stroll, you'd witness a strange phenomenon.

It occurs on the red planet after sunset, when temperatures fall below negative 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

A bizarre, mysterious glow spreads across the Martian sky.

Unfortunately, without special equipment, you wouldn't be able to observe this soft glow.

Visible only in ultraviolet light, this night glow is the result of chemical reactions that occur dozens of miles above the surface of the red planet.