New study favors cold, icy early Mars

[Waspie_Dwarf]

New study favors cold, icy early Mars

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The high seas of Mars may never have existed, according to a new study that looks at two opposite climate scenarios of early Mars and suggests that a cold and icy planet billions of years ago better explains water drainage and erosion features seen on the planet today.

Conceptual rendition of the competing warm and cold scenarios for early Mars. Credit: Robin D. Wordsworth.

For decades, researchers have debated the climate history of Mars and how the planet’s early climate led to the many water-carved channels seen today. The idea that 3 to 4 billion years ago Mars was once warm, wet and Earth-like with a northern sea — conditions that could have led to life — is generally more popular than that of a frigid, icy planet where water is locked in ice most of the time and life would be hard put to evolve

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[XenoFish]

I've always felt that mars might have been a hoth like world. I wonder if we could somehow terraform the martian atmosphere?

[Waspie_Dwarf]

I wonder if we could somehow terraform the martian atmosphere?

We'd need to generate one, there's not much there. Even then it would likely be temporary, Mars does not have enough mass to hold on to an Earth-like atmosphere indefinitely (although temporary by planetary terms can be measured in millions of years).

There are those that believe it would be easier to cool Venus down and make it habitable than to warm Mars up. Either way we won't have the technology to do it in the foreseeable future.

[Zalmoxis]

I sorta thought the same thing when I saw all the Mars rover photos. I was like, doesn't look like anything ever existed there. It's a desperately desolate planet. Thanks for the article. Information on Mars is always great.