Now, here is some fascinating news!
Scientist have been theorizing that there just might be more to Mars than we think for quite some time now, but lacked the evidence to back themselves up. Well, not anymore.
Smithsonian.com writes:
Despite claims in the 1890s that Mars was filled with canals teeming with water, research over the past several decades has suggested that in fact, Mars has only a tiny amount of water, mostly near its surface.Then, during the 1970s, as part of NASA’s Mariner space orbiter program, dry river beds and canyons on Mars were discovered—the first indications that surface water may have once existed there. The Viking program subsequently found enormous river valleys on the planet, and in 2003 it was announced that the Mars Odyssey spacecraft had actually detected minute quantities of liquid water on and just below the surface, which was later confirmed by the Phoenix lander.
Now, according to an article published yesterday in the journal Geology, there is evidence that Mars is home to vast reservoirs of water in its interior as well. The finding has weighty implications for our understanding of the geology of Mars, for hopes that the planet may have at some point in the past been home to extraterrestrial life, and for the long-term prospects of human colonization there.
“There has been substantial evidence for the presence of liquid water at the Martian surface for some time,” said Erik Hauri, one of the study’s authors. “So it’s been puzzling why previous estimates for the planet’s interior have been so dry. This new research makes sense.”
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