First Evidence of “Planet-Wide Groundwater System” on Mars Found
The European Space Agency (ESA) reports: “28 February 2019 – Mars Express has revealed the first geological evidence of a system of ancient interconnected lakes that once lay deep beneath the Red Planet’s surface, five of which may contain minerals crucial to life.
Mars appears to be an arid world, but its surface shows compelling signs that large amounts of water once existed across the planet. We see features that would have needed water to form – branching flow channels and valleys, for example – and just last year Mars Express detected a pool of liquid water beneath the planet’s south pole.”
Commentary at https://futurism.com/the-byte/mars-groundwater-system-planet-wide
“Mars may look like a dry, dusty planet today. But scientific models indicate that it was likely once home to massive amounts of water, both above and below its surface — and now, researchers have evidence to back those models up.
“Early Mars was a watery world, but as the planet’s climate changed this water retreated below the surface to form pools and ‘groundwater’,” European Space Agency (ESA) researcher Francesco Salese said in a press release. “We traced this water in our study, as its scale and role is a matter of debate,” he continued, “and we found the first geological evidence of a planet-wide groundwater system on Mars.”
They were even able to estimate past water levels and found they matched up with the expected shorelines of an ocean that many believe existed on Mars between three and four billion years ago — and which may have been connected to a system of subterranean lakes.
Water is a key indicator of life, so any evidence of water on Mars lends credence to the idea that the planet might have once been home to living organisms.
But evidence of a groundwater system isn’t the only ESA discovery with life-on-Mars implications — within five of the craters they examined, the team also found signs of minerals that past research has connected to the emergence of life on Earth.
As Mars Express project scientist Dmitri Titov noted, the discovery could help researchers pinpoint the spots on Mars most likely to contains evidence of past life on the Red Planet — potentially putting us one step closer to finding extraterrestrial life.”
from https://www.space.com/17048-water-on-mars.html
“MARSIS also revealed the presence of a subsurface lake among the pockets. According to the radar echoes, the lake is no more than 12.5 miles (20 km) across, buried nearly a mile beneath the surface. The scientists aren’t certain of the lake’s depth, but they have confirmed that it is at least 3 feet (1 meter) deep. According to the researchers, the lake must have salt to keep from freezing.”
* * * * *
The big question is – will there be more than just bacteria? Will we eventually be told that life on Mars was once developed or advanced along an evolutionary path we would recognize? And what led to such huge changes that Mars is now like a polar desert? Douglas Vogt of the Diehold Foundation suggests that periodic solar micronovas push all the planets a little further away with every event and blast away water vapor and other atmospheric gases with regular outbursts of solar wind. In his theories, Mars was once much closer to the sun and it had a strong magnetic field and atmosphere. He suggests Earth was closer and hotter, and will eventually, like Mars, end up farther from the sun, colder, with less magnetic field and atmosphere. It may take billions of years, but if he is correct, then every 12,068 years a major solar outburst blasts the Earth, causing mass extinctions, ending civilizations with fire from the sky, global tsunamis, and a pole shift. Eventually this will take our planet out of the Goldilocks zone of conditions perfect for life and leave Earth like Mars is now.
I am not the only one to write about pole shift evidence on Mars, or the “monuments” that suggest somebody used to inhabit the Red Planet… Or that NASA and others in science and government have doctored the photos and evidence to deflect our attention from “socially disruptive” evidence on Mars (and the moon.)
About Author
