“Very early in Mars’ history, possibly 4 billion years back, the world was warm sufficient to support lakes and river networks,” Kite informed Ars. “There were seas, and a few of those seas were as huge as the Caspian Sea, perhaps larger. It was a damp location.” This damp duration, however, didn’t last long– it was too brief to make the landscape deeply weathered and deeply worn down.

Kite’s group utilized their design to concentrate on what occurred as the world got cooler, when the age of salts began. “Big locations of snowmelts produced big salt flats, which ultimately developed gradually, collecting into a thick sedimentary deposit Curiosity rover is presently checking out,” Kite stated. The period of salts did not mark the end of liquid water on the Martian surface area.

Flickering habitability

The landscape turned dry, evaluating by Earth’s requirements, approximately 3.5 billion years back. “There were long durations when the world was completely dry,” Kite stated. Throughout these dry durations, Mars was nearly as cold as it is today. When in a while, little locations with liquid water appeared on the Martian surface area like sanctuaries in the middle of an otherwise unwelcoming desert. It was a sterilized world with flickering, short-term habitable areas with water originating from melted snow.

This rather bleak photo of the Martian landscape’s development makes concerns about our possibilities for discovering traces of life in there challenging.

“You can do an idea experiment where you take a cup of water from the Earth’s ocean and put it into among those short-term lakes on Mars,” Kite stated. “Some microorganisms in this cup of water would do great in such conditions.” The larger concern, he believes, is whether life might stem (instead of simply make it through) on ancient Mars. And, maybe more seriously, whether theoretical life that came from even before the salts age, when the world was warm and damp, might continue the sanctuaries turning up in the Kite’s design.

The response, regretfully, is most likely not.