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Mars' long-lost atmosphere might be hiding in plain sight (www.newsweek.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

6 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Mars' missing atmosphere may be locked up in the planet's clay-rich surface, a new study by MIT geologists has suggested.

According to the researchers, ancient water trickling through Mars' rocks could have triggered a series of chemical reactions, converting CO2 into methane and trapping the carbon in clay minerals for billions of years.

Billions of years ago, Mars was a very different place—likely wet, with rivers flowing across its surface and a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide (CO2) insulating the planet. However, around 3.5 billion years ago, the red planet's atmosphere thinned and its water dried up, leaving behind the cold desert we see today.

A central mystery in planetary science has been: where did all that carbon dioxide go?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Isn't the current hypothesis if there was an atmosphere it would have been stripped away by solar storms due to the lack of a significant protective magnetic field generated by a molten metal core?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

So many questions about Mars.

How was it able to form an atmosphere in the first place?

How was that atmosphere sustained?

How long did it exist?

Was there ever any kind of protective field?

Etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I just want canyons covered with a fish tank growing algae and shielding cool Adobe cities

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

So all we have to do to terraform Mars is what we've been doing to earth??

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

“Hold my beer,” - Humanity

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

On my first play through of Per Aspera, I wildly overshot my terraforming goals and put Mars into a runaway greenhouse loop by accident. As is tradition, I guess? :/