How Did Mars Turn into a Barren Planet?

Among the planets in our Solar System, Mars is the planet that attracts our attention the most and is most similar to Earth. While it’s a barren planet now ravaged by dust storms, we know this wasn’t always the case.

Formed about 4.6 billion years ago, Mars is thought to have had lakes and rivers in the past. What gives us this information is the dried lakes and river beds on the surface of the planet, the sedimentary rocks and the sub-ice water bodies that NASA discovered in the past years. All this information indicates that Mars may have been a fertile and habitable planet in the past.

There is a very important and unanswered question: what happened when all the water resources on Mars disappeared?

This dramatic change on Mars is estimated to have occurred 3.5 billion years ago. In other words, the Red Planet had turned into an arid and barren planet one billion years after its formation. However, a clear answer could not be given to the most important question brought about by the change; Why did Mars suddenly become uninhabitable from a habitable planet?

Scientists have been searching for an answer to this question for many years. Scientists, who have obtained some results by examining the data obtained from Mars missions, have been offered some options, although they have not been able to give a clear answer so far.

According to one of these options, the climate forming the waters on the surface of Mars was initially warm and rainy. This warm climate promoted the necessary precipitation cycle, and thus the waters on the planet. But then, the climate on the planet cooled and the rains ceased. As a result, water resources dried up and Mars became an increasingly barren planet.

The key to this option is ‘why did the planet go cold?’ Until now, carbon dioxide was shown to the question. Due to the low amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the planet, the heat of the planet could not be trapped in the atmosphere with the greenhouse gas effect, thus the planet cooled and dried up.

A new study took carbon dioxide out of the equation

A recent study by a group of scientists, published recently, shows that carbon dioxide is not the ‘driver’ in question. revealed. The team, which created many simulations for the Martian climate and observed the effects by changing the amount of carbon dioxide, saw that the change in the amount of carbon dioxide did not change the result.

So actually one of the most common notions about what happened to the water on Mars was weakened. The research team states that they currently do not know exactly what the variable in question is, what dries up Mars. But they hope some data from NASA’s ongoing missions to Mars will answer these questions.

This is not the only option; There are also studies that say that the waters of Mars have not disappeared and are still hidden on the planet

The only planet we know as humanity that ‘turned from a habitable planet to an uninhabitable place’ is Mars. This allows many different scientists to seek answers to questions about Mars. So many scenarios emerge.

Another remarkable answer to what happened to the water on Mars came last year from a Caltech research team. In this research, it was pointed out that it would not be possible for all the water on Mars to ‘escape’ from the atmosphere and gradually dry out, because there are even ‘ocean’-like formations on the planet with depths ranging from 100 to 1500 meters. Their alternative answer is that the water on Mars is actually kind of still on the planet.

So how is this possible?

The aforementioned research does not deny that the water on Mars is also decreasing through the atmosphere, but concentrates on new data, considering that it will not be enough on its own. Accordingly, the water on the surface of Mars clings to the minerals on the planet and dries up.

Water interacting with rocks and chemical weatherings form water-containing clays and other minerals. A similar process is happening on Earth. But because Earth is tectonically active, it recycles water and other molecules into the atmosphere through volcanic activities. However, Mars is not as tectonically active as Earth, although there is some earthquakes and volcanic activity, and so this once-occurring situation leads to permanent dryness as the water does not return to the surface.

None of these studies yet provide definitive answers

Ongoing and future missions to Mars, this question that has yet to be definitively answered, and many more looking for answers. Particularly, it is thought that the missions that will take place in the coming years may explain what happened to this planet, which is very similar to Earth.

Why is it so important to understand what happened to Mars?

As you know, one of the biggest questions humanity seeks to answer is whether we are alone in the universe. Earth is the only planet we know of that has conditions lavish enough to host life on it. Scientists, too, are evaluating the nearest example, Mars, to better understand how likely a planet is to be habitable, and what scenarios prevent it in the universe.

Also, as you know, the Earth is a planet that is losing its water resources day by day and heading towards an arid future. Therefore, a better understanding of what Mars has experienced in the past can help us better understand the drought and ‘death’ scenarios in Earth’s future. Thus, ‘will our planet be like this in the future?’

While scientists are looking for their reasons, crazy projects that will make Mars habitable again are not produced

What comes to mind when we say Mars? Elon Musk, the first name, is not only interested in building rockets that will take us to the Red Planet. Musk also thinks that Mars can be made a habitable planet again, and he offers solutions by making interesting statements from time to time.

The first of these, and the one that created an earthquake effect all over the world, was the proposal ‘Let’s throw a nuclear bomb on Mars’ a few years ago. Musk made this ‘crazy suggestion’: ‘We know one slow and one fast method to make a planet habitable for now. In the slow method, we expect these gases to thicken the atmosphere of Mars and warm the planet with the greenhouse effect by gradually and gradually increasing the rate of greenhouse gases on the planet. In the second and fastest method, we send several nuclear bombs to the poles of the planet, which you can carry with our “SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy” rocket, I’m sure,” he explained.

However, a few years after this proposal, Musk gave up on the idea and offered another proposal to heat the surface of Mars and create a greenhouse gas effect: With the help of solar reflectors, to collect the Sun’s rays on a single point on the planet and to dissolve the carbon dioxide gas bound in the soil to create the required atmosphere. to create.

Of course, we don’t even know exactly whether any of Musk’s statements will work. However, we know that crazy ideas lead to great developments even if they do not work directly. Maybe such ‘crazy’ ideas will make Mars a habitable planet again in the future, who knows.