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NASA / MOLA / Smithsonian
Mars' 600-mile Marte Vallis channel system is filled with young lavas that obscure the source of the channels. This map shows Marte Vallis against the background of an elevation map of the planet, based on readings from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor.
A 3-D reconstruction of structures beneath the surface of Mars shows the 600-mile-wide footprint of a mega-flood that carved deep channels into the planet within the past 500 million years, scientists say.
Since that time, the evidence of the flood in a region known as Marte Vallis has been covered over by fresher lava flows. But a team of researchers pieced together the evidence by analyzing readings from a ground-penetrating radar instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The analysis was laid out Thursday on the journal Science's website.
"Our findings show that the scale of erosion was previously underestimated, and that channel depth was at least twice that of previous approximations," lead author Gareth Morgan, a geologist at the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, said in a news release. "The source of the floodwaters suggests they originated from a deep groundwater reservoir and may have been released by local tectonic or volcanic activity. This work demonstrates the importance of orbital sounding radar in understanding how water has shaped the surface of Mars."
Over the past decade and a half, missions to Mars have provided ample evidence that the planet was once warmer and wetter than it is today. However, scientists say the most recent outflows of water came in brief, catastrophic bursts rather than as steady streams. The newly published research is consistent with that view.
Morgan and his colleagues used the orbiter's Italian-built Shallow Radar sounder, or SHARAD, to put Mars' subsurface geology through the radar equivalent of a CT scan. They found that the boundaries between the layers of fresher lava and the underlying rock traced a network of buried channels. The patterns and depths of those channels were characteristic of the canyons that would be cut by flowing water. Lots of flowing water.
The depth of the main channel was estimated at 226 to 371 feet (69 to 113 meters). "This is comparable with the depth of incision of the largest known megaflood on Earth, the Missoula floods, responsible for carving the Channeled Scabland of the northwestern United States," the researchers wrote.
The Missoula floods occurred 12,000 to 18,000 years ago, due to a post-Ice Age warming trend, and discharged dammed-up water at a rate ranging up to 2.6 billion gallons per second. Morgan and his colleagues traced the Martian mega-flood to a radically different type of source: a fracture system in Mars' Cerberus Fossae region that apparently opened up to release water from miles beneath the Red Planet's surface. "It was a big crack in the ground, basically," Morgan told NBC News.
Smithsonian / NASA / JPL-Caltech / Sapienza Univ. of Rome / MOLA / USGS
A 3-D visualization shows the buried Marte Vallis channels. Marte Vallis consists of multiple perched channels formed around streamlined islands. These channels feed a deeper and wider main channel. The surface has been elevated and scaled by a factor of 1/100 for clarity. The area covered by this visualization is outlined by dotted lines in the global map above.
NASA / Goddard / Anna Brunner
NASA interns look down on Frenchman Springs Coulee in Washington state's Channeled Scablands. Researchers say the Martian mega-flood cut channels similar to those created thousands of years ago in the Channeled Scablands.
SHARAD's depth readings suggest that the channels had to have been cut somewhere between 10 million and 500 million years ago. Morgan said that makes the mega-flood channels "much younger" than the geological features being studied by NASA's Curiosity rover in a different region of Mars. Curiosity's science team wants to find out whether Mars had liquid water and the other conditions conducive for life 3 billion years to 4 billion years ago. On the surface, at least, those conditions were long gone by the time the Cerberus Fossae mega-flood washed over Marte Vallis.
More about Mars:
- Curiosity rover finds itself in ancient riverbed
- Did life on Earth get started on Mars?
- Cosmic Log archive on Mars
In addition to Morgan, the authors of "3D Reconstruction of the Source and Scale of Buried Young Flood Channels on Mars" include Bruce A. Campbell, Lynn M. Carter, Jeffrey J. Plaut and Roger J. Phillips.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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We'll be lucky if the icebergs don't melt and flood EARTH, Al. :(
So what happened to the water?
It evaporated and escaped into space, though there might still be some groundwater.
Any story that brings up Glacial Lake Missoula, the flood, and the channeled scablands is fine by me!
It might happen again if Comet C2012/A1 impacts Mars in Oct, 2014.
It would be difficult to separate the groundwater from fracturing from the water from the comet itself. But I'd bet there are a few thousand grad students who would love to try to make the distinction. LOL
I really hope that if such a comet strike happens that both working rovers and the several orbiters are still in good health and able to send back data.
I guess Martian Noah better get to work on that Ark
Maybe the Noah's Ark story IS about the Martian flood?! I can see a book deal and a movie already in the making :)
Good idea!!!
Yes, maybe you can get the nitwit Russel Crow to play the part. Why did we spend a billion plus to send this robot curiocity to Mars? So far it is found out zilch. Looks to me like an expensive toy with no purpose.
If you had bothered to read the article carefully before ranting, you would have seen that the data for this study was obtained by the Italian SHARAD ground-penetrating RADAR on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, not Curiosity. The Curiosity rover is just starting the science portion of a multi-year mission, so unless you have some philosophical objection to the idea of extraterrestrial life, it is far too early to be making any judgments about the success or failure of its mission.
Are they sure this was caused by water and not some other liquid substance flowing like water?
Whiskey?
Well, H2O is the only substance we know of that have these sorts of corrosive and solvent properties. Also, Mars is pretty cold, so whatever other elements might have done it would have to have a really low melting point.
I wonder what a 500 foot deep core drill would unearth? hmm cant use unearth.. Unmars?
Scientists have found a new, previously undiscovered, type of bacteria in Lake Vostok, 2 miles under Antarctica. If this can survive 2 miles down in those temperatures, why couldn't something being alive on Mars? (I use the term "Alive" loosely here).
Even more interesting, they say the still-living bacteria had been buried there for a million years, and was genetically distant from any known bacteria living today. How distant? Our own DNA is closer to house cats than this was to any current living bacteria!
Well, the two have very little to do with each other.
What I believe to be the primary impediment to live existing on Mars is that the qualities that allowed it to begin and thrive on Earth don't exist on Mars. Scientists think that Mars once had an atmosphere, but there are still a number of other qualities necessary (as far as we know).
That's my hypoethesis, anyway. We don't know enough about the origin of life to know yet (unless you're religious, of course; then it comes down to whether God seeded all the planets with primordial beings or just Earth).
What the....They had this radar all this time and just now are telling us about it. Maybe they could tell us how Mars could have been warmer when it is to far from the sun, and is frozen? The only way Mars could have been warmer is if it was closer to the sun at one time, or its core hadn't burned out at the time, and there were lava flows. It seems they know, but never say anything, like it is a big secret, and our enemies must not find out. Very strange, these people from NASA.
SuperNormalGuy Mars is in the habitat zone of our sun and once had an atmosphere. They have speculated that a large asteroid impact blew the atmospere away from mars. When that happened the water that was once on Mars quickly evaporated into space and everthing living on the planet died. If a planet has no atmosphere there is nothing there to help keep the planet warmed.
Kevin is right - Mars is in the habitable zone, and would be warmer if it had a thicker atmosphere like Earth. The smaller rovers also discovered an abundance of evidence of previous large bodies of water on the surface of Mars, something that would not seem to be possible without a much thicker atmosphere than it has today.
However, I do not agree that everything necessarily died. Orbital scans have confirmed a large amount of sub-surface water on Mars. Given what we have seen here on Earth, it is quite possible that some form of sub-surface microbial life could still survive on Mars even today.
It takes time to analyze. There are tons of data that goes back years that hasn't even been looked at yet. Same goes for fossils, geologic cores, etc.
A thicker atmosphere at one time would have made it warmer, even in it's current orbit. Mercury has ice in a crater and look how close it is to the Sun.
It would be warmer with a thicker atmosphere. The core may or may not make a difference, though for us a nice iron core producing a magnetic field works well, it may or may not influence heat. Lava flows not necessary for heat, but they do help with soil regeneration.
No secret. Once the data is analyzed, it is released. Until it is looked at and analyzed, most of the public would have no idea what they were looking at. If you want, I think you can apply to help analyze and see the data before most everyone else. At least you can with many of the sky scans.
Yes, very strange, and I'm glad they are.
A grazing strike by the Oct 2014 comet might even drop a load of ice/water vapor onto Mars. The nominal closest approach is a bit far out for this, but the minimum closest approach is listed as 0.0 in the present two body image of the trajectory.
Should the comet interact enough with Mars' atmosphere and gravity well to slow down a wee bit, then it could even capture into an ellipse. The perihelion as it stands now appears to sit right close to the space the comet will share with the planet. Hence any loss of energy could produce a capture event if not a collision event.
TonyInDalla
The core size/composition of a planet certainly does play a critical role in whether or not it will have an atmosphere, in addition to its size and distance from a sun. The core, like Earth's, has a major iron component, but also a higher amount of lighter element like sulfur. That's not all that is different. The core here on Earth is molten and in constant motion. The core rotates in a different direction than the outer core and the interaction of the two creates our magnetic field, which protects the surface from solar radiation. The Martian core is partially solid and does not move. The planet lacks a magnetic field because of this and is constantly bombarded by radiation.Killing off any potential life long ago.Also eliminating tectonic plate movement.
A core composition also determines the rate of release of heat from the planet's interior so the planet doesn't cool too quickly.It enables circulation of the mantle and renewing of essential resources for life. Plays a role in attracting moons, which also help in life developing life, creating tides. Whatever early promising conditions for life may have existed in Mar's beginnings, the loss of critical support for that life to progress, were lost ultimately. Due to a fatal flaw of planet's interior design. Goldie Locks was right when she tasted that last bowl of porridge, like Earth just right, and we are so blessed to live on this gorgeous blue/green precious island of life.
Not necessarily. Venus has virtually no magnetic field (and what there is of a magnetic field has nothing to do with the core), yet it has a substantial atmosphere.
I was one of those NASA interns! I'm not in the picture, but that's exactly what we were studying-- comparing the coulees to the outflow channels on Mars. It was such a great trip. Also Frenchman Springs Coulee had some great places to climb!
You were a NASA intern? I'm jealous, and I think I love you, you know, in a creepy, old-guy kinda way.
Why, do you think that's actually her picture in the avatar?
It doesn't matter. I"m still jealous. The rest was superfluous.
Hayley; please tell us more about your trip?
Is there anyone out there who is thinking what I am thinking? If there actually is (underground) life on Mars, that microbial life could soon be coming here to Earth in a really big way, if this latest comet (C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) impacts Mars in a really big way. Unimaginable plaques could be in our future here on Earth if this impact happens on October 19, 2014. Just a random thought I wanted to share. - RC
damn it, man, get a grip! the chances of a hit are remote, the chances of microbial life being there are remote, and the chances of hitting just right to avoid vaporizing the microbes while kicking them out on just the right path for Earth are small numbers multiplying those small numbers ... etc.
The Brain: Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Pinky: I think so Brain, but if Jimmy cracked corn, and no one cares, why does he keep doing it?
"Unimaginable plaques could be in our future"
floss, man, floss! and it won't kill you to see the dentist once in a while!
Maybe we're going to win a lot of galactic awards?
So, Noah's ark was a spaceship...I always thought so...
Nice map, it would make a nice scale model globe, case any Taiwanese companies are looking for another great cheap item.....I would be surprised if some american company actually picked up the ball and ran with it, but hey, stranger things have happened!! It would not make a killing but it would be a surprise seller.