In addition to water, the icy asteroids also brought biologically relevant molecules such as amino acids to the Red Planet. Amino acids are used when DNA and RNA form bases that contain everything a cell needs. Credit: NASA
Key Points:
- A new study shows Mars was once blue and covered in water.
- The study was made possible by a meteorite that is billions of years old that was once part of Mars’s original crust.
- The study brings us closer to finding out if Mars had ever harbored life.
Most researchers agree that there has been water on Mars, but just how much water—and where—is still debated. Now, a study from the University of Copenhagen shows that about 4.5 billion years ago, there was enough water for the entire planet to be covered in a 300-meter-deep ocean—making Mars look more like earth than the red planet.
According to the study, published in Science Advances, Mars was bombarded with asteroids filled with ice sometime in the first 100 million years of the planet's evolution. In addition to water, the icy asteroids also brought biologically relevant molecules, such as amino acids, to Mars.
It was by means of a meteorite that is billions of years old that the researchers were able to look into Mars’s history. The meteorite was once part of Mars’s original crust and offers a unique insight into what happened at the time when the solar system was formed.
The whole secret was hiding in the way Mars’s surface was created—and of which the meteorite was once a part—because it is a surface that does not move. On Earth, it is opposite. The tectonic plates are in perpetual motion and recycled in the planet’s interior.
“Plate tectonics on Earth erased all evidence of what happened in the first 500 million years of our planet’s history,” said study author Martin Bizzarro. “The plates constantly move and are recycled back and destroyed into the interior of our planet. In contrast, Mars does not have plate tectonics such that planet’s surface preserves a record of the earliest history of the planet.”
Information provided by University of Copenhagen.