An exciting new discovery on our neighboring planet Mars: Three billion years ago, a massive tsunami would have wreaked havoc of unimaginable proportions on what is now a parched planet. Now American planetary researchers have figured it out.
BILD delivers results.
The European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft captured this image of water ice on the floor of a crater near Mars’ north pole. White water ice stands out in the center of the 35-kilometer-long crater
According to the new findings, the impact of an asteroid in an ocean that existed at the time could generate waves up to 250 meters high that swamped up to 500 km of land on Mars.
In fact, the planet was much warmer and wetter than it is now, and there was a large ocean in the north. Researchers believe Mars once had liquid water, just like Earth does today. It could mean: there might also have been life. In what form is still not clear. So far, none of the many Mars rovers and probes have found any real traces of past life.
American researchers found: The massive impact in the Arctic Ocean left visible traces of the flood. This was reported by the research team in Scientific Reports. The team had previously evaluated recordings from several Mars probes. Scientists were even able to use the traces to determine the trajectory of the tsunami.
This European space probe image shows a giant icy valley on the Red Planet in which water is said to have flowed in the past
The question of why Mars was so dry and lost its atmosphere remains unanswered to this day.
German planetary scientist d. Ernst Huber from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to BILD: “It is quite plausible that tsunamis like this existed on Mars. It is also certain that Mars had an atmosphere denser than carbon dioxide. This created a greenhouse effect. But where most of the atmosphere went remains unclear to this day.”
The new research should clarify the latest mysteries of our neighboring planet.
There was also a catastrophic asteroid impact on Earth that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
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