melted water is of the essence for spirit as we know it to exist , so it ’s always exciting when any report about water supply on Mars are released . The latest finding includeevidence that piss existedon Mars a mere 200,000 years ago ; quite late on the geologic timescale . The resolution of the bailiwick come from wind writer Andreas Johnsson and a squad from the University of Gothenburg and were release in the journalICARUS .
In the mid - latitudes in Mars ’ southerly cerebral hemisphere , the research worker discovered a very untested volcanic crater . Inside , they found gullies and deposits that appear to be created by the recent period of liquified water supply . Debris stream deposit form when the deposit ( which is composed of soil , rock ‘n’ roll , corpse , and water ) that is on a gradient becomes oversaturated and begins to slide down as one unit of measurement , kind of like a landslip . The team analyzed those Martian features through picture taking while conducting discipline studies on Earth . Their studies " Our fieldwork on Svalbard support our interpretation of the Martian deposits . What surprise us was that the crater in which these rubble flows have formed is so young , " Johnsson state .
Mars is believed to have undergone anice age2.1 million-400,000 years ago , so it was a surprisal that the researchers ’ analysis of the volcanic crater put it at 200,000 yr old . This is long after water - related activity was believed to have ended in that region , so it is unconvincing that the evidence of water can be explain away that easy .
The crater overlaps with an older , big rampart crater ’s ejecta , which have distinct fluid - like features , belike due to saturate land at the point of impact . " My first opinion was that the water that shape these debris flows had come from preserved ice within the rampart ejecta ” Johnsson explain . “ But when we looked more nearly , we did n’t find any structures such as faults or break in the crater that could have acted as conduits for the meltwater . It is more potential that the body of water has come from evaporate snow packs , when the conditions were favorable for snow formation . This is potential , since the orbital axis of Mars was more tilted in the past times than it is today . ”
