About four billion years ago, Earth and Mars still young, hot and wet. If not twin planets in the Solar System, then they must be “brother and sister”. Almost all of the water on Mars has disappeared since the planet was formed.
Planetary and astrologers suspect that the water turns into oxygen and hydrogen in the atmosphere and the element hydrogen disappears into space. A model shows that if Mars once contained water, the rest is currently trapped in minerals in the bowels of the red planet.
Currently, Mars, which has been dubbed the Red Planet, looks more like a dead planet. The surface is dry and cold, well below freezing, with no moisture content.
Some geologists suspect that the seawater that once covered Mars is still remaining, but is now trapped beneath the surface of the ground.
Research conducted by Dr Eva Scheller and colleagues from the California Institute of Technology concluded that most of the water on Mars is now stored as molecules in the planet’s crust.
If this is the case, can the water stored in the crust of the planet Mars one day be used to help humans live there?
According to Dr Eva, it depends on the crystal structure of the rock. Clay structures, for example, will lose their water content at a temperature of about 400 degrees Celsius. Only then can we collect the liquefied gas and freeze it.
“But the amount of water content is quite small, so we have to heat so many rocks to get more water,” he explained.
The world of water The Eridania Basin in the southern hemisphere of Planet Mars is believed to have had an ocean area of 800 km with a depth of 1 km 3.7 billion years ago.
Supplied: NASA
It is estimated that the water that fills the oceans of Mars and Earth originates from the bowels of the planets sent by comets and other remains of celestial bodies that occurred as a result of the formation of the Solar System. The volcanic eruption then spewed water vapor into the planet’s atmosphere.
Today, planetary and astrologers have an idea of how much water once existed on Mars after examining features such as the shape of ancient coastlines and the depth of basins.
Calculations made on all water and ice content when Mars still had water – including water vapor in its atmosphere – and then distributed evenly over the entire surface of the planet, the oceans on this planet are estimated to have a depth of between 100 and 1,500 meters.
If similar calculations were made for the time being, where most of the water is ice at the planet’s poles, the ocean would only be 20 to 40 meters deep.
So where does most of the water on the planet go?
There are two parts to the explanation. First, water vapor in the upper atmosphere breaks down into hydrogen and oxygen, and the lighter hydrogen is carried off into space.
Such a process continues today. The MAVEN and Mars Express spacecraft measure the runaway rate of hydrogen, which appears to change with the seasons and dust storms.
“By seeing this incident, we certainly conclude that the escape of atmospheric elements into space is the cause of the disappearance of water there,” explained Dr Eva.
But the loss of water content that changes form into the elements oxygen and hydrogen into space will cover a maximum of 240 meters from the depths of the primeval oceans on the Planet Mars.
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