Heat from a volcano break through beneath a glacier on Mars may have create large lakes in the relatively late past times , according to anew study . Hundreds of three-dimensional kilometers of liquid water may have been present for 100 , even thousands of long time . And as we know by now , where there ’s a hint of water , there ’s also the possibility of life .
One of the large pile in the solar system , the Martian volcano Arsia Mons is nearly twice as high Mount Everest . scientist have speculated since the seventies that the northwestern wing of the tropical vent was once covered by icy ice . Then , about a decennium ago , researchers showed how the terrain around the gargantuan volcano testify striking similarity to features leave alone by receding glaciers in the Dray Valleys of Antarctica : pot of debris deposit at the border of a fall glacier .
Using data fromNASA ’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter , a team led byKathleen Scanlon from Brown Universitysurveyed the glaciovolcanic landforms in the glacial deposits on the volcano , looking for grounds that lava flux the same prison term that the Methedrine was present . They found several features suggestive ofvolcano - ice interaction : pillow and hyaloclastite mounds , ice - confined flows , and a tuya .
On Earth , pillowandhyaloclastiteformations occur when lava erupts at the bottom of an ocean or a glacier . When the press of the ice sheet of paper stiffen lava flowing , and frozen meltwater chill the lava into volcanic ice number , mound and ridges are formed with steep sides and flat tip , calledtuyas . The young psychoanalysis also turn up grounds of a river that formed in ajökulhlaup(“glacier running game ” ) , a giant outburst flood that happens when water entrap by , or under , a glacier breaks free .
harmonise to the study , passion from the eruptions along the northwest flank – when a glacier covered the area around 210 million years ago – would have melt down monumental amounts of ice , forming “ englacial lake , ” like liquidness bubble you ’d find in a mostly - frozen ice regular hexahedron .
Using basic thermodynamics , they calculated that the eruption of century of cubic kilometers of subglacial lava would have produced a similar volume of liquified meltwater . Two of the deposits would have created lakes containing around 40 cubic kilometers of water each , for case , while another of the formations would have create around 20 cubic kilometers .
Additionally , their back - of - the - envelope calculation judge that these bodies of meltwater may have persisted on 100 to 1,000 - yr timescales . That may have been long enough for , say , microbes to colonize the lakes .
According to recently recrudesce clime model for Mars , during periods of increased bloc tilt , methamphetamine now at the poles would have moved toward the equator . That make gargantuan mid - latitude wad like Arsia Mons prime location for glaciation around 210 million years ago . That means that this giant vent may have been home to one of the most recent habitable environments found on Mars . Other possibilities turned up by various bird of passage were senior than 2.5 billion age . " If signs of preceding life are ever found at those old sites , then Arsia Mons would be the next place I would want to go , " Scanlon says in anews release .
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Image : NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center / Arizona State University / Brown University
