New Study Suggests Discovery of Liquid Water on Mars May Have Been an Illusion
New Study Suggests Discovery of Liquid Water on Mars May Have Been an Illusion

New Study Suggests , Discovery of Liquid Water on Mars , May Have Been an Illusion.

According to a new study, liquid water previously discovered beneath the Martian south pole may have just been an illusion.

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'The Independent' reports that a new study suggests that bright reflections at the pole match those of volcanic plains found across Mars.

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Reserchers say that the current temperature and pressure of the red planet makes the presence of stable liquid water unlikely.

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Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin suggest volcanic rock buried under ice was mistaken for large bodies of water.

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For water to be sustained this close to the surface, you need both a very salty environment and a strong, locally generated heat source, but that doesn’t match what we know of this region, Cyril Grima, Lead author and planetary scientist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG),via 'The Independent'.

According to 'The Independent,' lava flows rich in iron on Earth and leaves behind similar rocks that produce similar reflections.

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The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, is based on three years of data from Marsis.

Marsis is a radar instrument that was launched aboard the European Space Agency’s Mars Express in 2005.

'The Independent' reports that other hypotheses include mineral deposits left in ancient riverbeds.

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Isaac Smith, a geophysicist at York University, suggests the bright reflections are from a kind of clay made when rock erodes in water.

I think the beauty of Cyril Grima’s finding is that while it knocks down the idea there might be liquid water under the planet’s south pole today, it also gives us really precise places to go look for evidence of ancient lakes and riverbeds and test hypotheses about the wider drying out of Mars’ climate over billions of years, Isaac Smith, Mars geophysicist at York University, via 'The Independent'