Has been found evidence that billions of years ago, there were ancient rivers in Mars.
Source: Universe Today
Billions of years ago, Mars was likely a much warmer and wetter place than the cold, dry, barren world we see today. Whether there was life there or not remains an open question. But there’s a massive, growing wall of evidence showing that Mars may have had the necessary conditions for life in the past, including at least one system of river valley networks.
In this series of images from the ESA’s High-Resolution Camera on the Mars Express Orbiter, there are clear signs of a system of river valleys. The area is in the southern highlands of Mars. It’s east of the Huygens crater, a large, well-known Martian crater, and north of Hellas. Hellas is the largest impact basin on the red planet.
The area is one of the oldest surface areas on Mars. It’s between 3.5 billion and 4 billion years old, and is a heavily cratered area.
ESA is the European Space Agency. Here are images of the place where there was a river basin, looks like a tree branch. The images are from the same news source.
The image in false colors which represent altitude. Blue is the lowest and red is highest altitude.
This is the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet. Has the same pattern of Martian river.
In a press release, the ESA says that the Martian channels were probably caused by surface water from strong river flow. Heavy rainfall also probably contributed to it. The flow would have “cut through existing terrain on Mars, forging new paths and carving a new landscape.”
Regardless of how the water got there, it is clear that there was water flowing on the surface. A number of current and future missions are studying and will study Mars for clues to its watery past. Martian water is really the central question when it comes to studying the planet.
