Boost to hopes of finding life on Mars as scientists discover network of ancient rivers

The planet was once home to gullies similar to in northern Italy
NASA
Ewan Somerville6 May 2020

Scientists have discovered that Mars was once home to an ancient network of rivers, raising hopes it could support life.

They found that the red planet’s rugged landscape was likely carved by the series of free-flowing gullies some 3.7 billion years ago.

Researchers studied images taken by a high-resolution Nasa camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter craft circling 400km above the planet, which can pick out details just one metre wide.

One of the features they spotted was a 200m-high rocky cliff, about double the height of the White Cliffs of Dover, inside the Hellas Impact Crater.

The 200m high rock face was likely formed by rivers, scientists say Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University)
Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University

The team believe, based on analysis of the sedimentary rock beneath the surface, that the rivers once flowed for more than 100,000 years.

They concluded that Mars once had “rivers that continuously shifted their gullies, creating sandbanks similar to the Rhine or the rivers that you can find in northern Italy".

The findings, published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, will boost hopes that the freezing world was once hospitable to life.

William McMahon, an author of the paper, said: “Here on Earth, sedimentary rocks have been used by geologists for generations to place constraints on what conditions were like on our planet millions or even billions of years ago.

“Now we have the technology to extend this methodology to Mars, which hosts an ancient sedimentary rock record that extends even further back in time than our own.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in