Traces of water flow on Mars - just sand landslides

The fact that there is water on Mars has been written for a long time. In principle, there is no reason to doubt this - scientists were able to detect signs of the existence of ice and liquid water on the Red Planet several years ago. Since then, there have been many direct and indirect evidence of this, provided by vehicles located on Mars and around it. True, there are doubts that water often falls to the surface, leaving dark traces.

For the first time, the physicist Lujendra Oca declared “streams of water on the dunes of Mars” in 2015. He found that traces of this kind appear on the slopes of craters in the southern latitudes of the planet. He also managed to find a similar among the Atcidalian Plain and the valleys of the Mariner. In the photographs that were provided by the scientist, elongated formations that looked like traces of water flow were clearly visible.

Scientists have suggested that it could be ice, which, under certain conditions, melts, and the resulting water breaks out onto the surface of Mars, leaving traces behind it. A little later, experts decided that it was not water, but perchlorates containing water. These chemical compounds have high solubility and can ensure the existence of liquid water in the temperature range from -70 to +24 degrees Celsius. True, experts could not find signs of the existence of salts of hydrochloric acid.
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Whatever it was, but the formation of flows remained a mystery. They tried to solve it with the help of materials obtained by the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter probe. Scientists have fixed any structure similar to that described above. In total, one and a half hundred "streams" were noticed. A pattern was also revealed: water flows, as it turned out, occur on slopes whose bases are similar to the foundations of the Martian dunes.

In this case, the slope of the “stream” is unusual and ranges from 28 to 35 degrees. And this led the scientist to the idea that water flows are really flows, but not water, but sand. The fact is that for loose granular particles such a slope is critical. Particles stop precisely at this slope.

If it is water, then it should drain quite a bit, because along the creek it will be possible to understand that it “ran” down. But no, all the structures found by scientists had approximately the same characteristics . Moreover, they were located on fairly similar slopes, which had clearly similar characteristics.

Besides the fact that these are just streams of sand that have broken from their rightful place, there is one more assumption. Maybe it is water that gets to the surface of Mars, but in the conditions of the Martian atmosphere it just evaporates. The assumption that the dark “streams” are actually sand was made by astrogeologist Colin Dundas of the US Geological Survey. It was he who, after studying photos taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, saw a slope characteristic of the sand “washes”.

This phenomenon has a seasonal nature. "Flows" appear in the warm time of the Martian year, disappear in the "winter" and then return. Findings regarding the nature of the “streams” are published in the Nature Geoscience science publication.



New research does not exclude the possibility of the appearance of liquid water on Mars. "The emergence of" flows "in the warm season, as well as the presence of hydrates indicates that water plays a certain role in the formation of these formations," the scientists write.

For the first time, longitudinal structures resembling water flows or traces of these flows were seen by scientists on the pictures taken by HiRISE of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on July 21, 2015. The photos were taken at the time of the satellite’s flight over the Mariner valleys.

The fact of the possible presence of liquid water on Mars is now very important for future colonists. After all, people need something to drink, and from Earth you will not take water as much as is necessary for the existence of the Earth colony on Mars for many years. And although water ice deposits have been found in the high latitudes of the Red Planet, survival in cold weather for colonists is a problem.

In 2015, scientists at the University of Copenhagen published an article in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that the surface of the Red Planet could be covered with giant glaciers that are covered with a layer of dust. Because of this layer, glaciers are not visible. According to experts, the majority of glaciers on Mars are located in middle latitudes (these are 30-50 degrees) in both hemispheres of the planet. In a study of experts, it was indicated that the approximate amount of ice on Mars is 150 billion cubic meters.