{"id":9598,"date":"2014-04-16T08:43:23","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T15:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/?p=9598"},"modified":"2021-01-18T01:34:56","modified_gmt":"2021-01-18T09:34:56","slug":"ancient-mars-may-have-been-too-cold-for-liquid-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/?p=9598","title":{"rendered":"Ancient Mars may have been too cold for liquid water"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/mars-crater.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9599 alignleft\" alt=\"mars-crater\" src=\"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/mars-crater.jpg\" width=\"335\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/mars-crater.jpg 630w, http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/mars-crater-300x201.jpg 300w, http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/mars-crater-600x403.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 335px) 100vw, 335px\" \/><\/a>By simulating hundreds of impacts in Mars&#8217; equatorial region, a team of scientists have determined that the ancient Martian atmosphere was likely too thin to support flowing liquid water on the planet&#8217;s surface.\u00a0 The team, including iPLEX researcher Jean-Pierre Williams, identified and catalogued hundreds of large craters near the Martian equator.\u00a0 They then used a computer simulation to calculate what atmospheric density would have caused the range of craters observed.\u00a0 They concluded that the Martian atmosphere was 150 times thicker than today, a value that is only a fraction of the atmospheric pressure required to support liquid water.\u00a0 This presents a mystery, since many Martian geological features appear to have been carved by massive flooding.\u00a0 The paper&#8217;s authors suggest that the Martian atmosphere may have been temporarily thickened at times by severe volcanic activity or a large impacts that would spew large amounts of gases into the atmosphere, allowing the surface of the planet to warm up enough to allow liquid water to flow.<\/p>\n<p>Read more about their Nature Geoscience paper, published on April 13, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/ancient-mars-probably-too-cold-for-liquid-water-1.15042\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By simulating hundreds of impacts in Mars&#8217; equatorial region, a team of scientists have determined that the ancient Martian atmosphere was likely too thin to support flowing liquid water on the planet&#8217;s surface.\u00a0 The team, including iPLEX researcher Jean-Pierre Williams, identified and catalogued hundreds of large craters near the Martian equator.\u00a0 They then used a &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/?p=9598\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Ancient Mars may have been too cold for liquid water&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":9599,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9600,"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9598\/revisions\/9600"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}