How lost our space neighbor, Mars, its water and its atmosphere? With the mission to answer the question sent the US space agency NASA in the way Maven spacecraft (Mars atmosphere and volatile evolution) in September last year.
Now, NASA unveiled the project’s first research results. And at a hyped-up press conference in NASA Headquarters in Washington found himself Michael Meyer, research director of the Mars Exploration Program, compelled to quote Bob Dylan:
– The answer is blowing in the wind.
cooled
Based on analyzes of data from the maven think Mar. The researchers think this is a likely sequence of events:
At the beginning of our solar system’s history was solar activity is much greater than now. The solar wind (the Sun ejects particles, mainly energetic electrons) was stronger and eruptions of solar flares (sharp bursts of solar wind) is more frequent.
For some four billion years ago was the solar wind at its strongest. Mars had magnetic fields that protected against the bombardment of particles, but the process did the magnetism subsided and the atmosphere began to thin out. The result was that the planet cooled and the water disappeared.
And here then?
In March of this year, Maven study the three major solar flare in the upper part of the March is now very thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and argon. Currently loses in March about 100 grams of atmosphere in seconds. In a few billion years, the atmosphere is likely gone.
The question is whether Earth’s atmosphere also likely to blow away some time. The researchers provide reassuring answers. As long as we have strong, protective magnetic field, there is no danger.
Recently, researchers in the United States that it most likely has liquid water on Mars today, after finding the first secure evidence for salt solutions formed recently on the planet’s surface.
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