Early Mars wasn't covered in rivers but ice sheets - according to new study

[FfFfFfFF 58,134]

A large number of the valley networks scarring Mars’s surface were carved by water melting beneath glacial ice, not by free-flowing rivers as previously though.
The findings effectively throw cold water on the dominant “warm and wet ancient Mars” hypothesis, which postulates that rivers, rainfall and oceans once existed on the red planet.

To reach this conclusion, lead author Anna Grau Galofre developed and used new techniques to examine thousands of Martian valleys. 

 

The similarity between many Martian valleys and the subglacial channels on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic motivated the authors to conduct their comparative study. She and her co-authors also compared the Martian valleys to the subglacial channels in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and uncovered striking similarities.

In total, the researchers analyzed more than 10,000 Martian valleys, using a novel algorithm to infer their underlying erosion processes.

“These results are the first evidence for extensive subglacial erosion driven by channelized meltwater drainage beneath an ancient ice sheet on Mars,” says co-author Mark Jellinek, professor in UBC’s department of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences.

“The findings demonstrate that only a fraction of valley networks match patterns typical of surface water erosion, which is in marked contrast to the conventional view.

Source: https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/08/early-mars-was-covered-in-ice-sheets-not-flowing-rivers/134559

[Gracious Gaga 17,163]

thats not mars, sweetie...

its CHROMATICA 

promo is on point this era. 

[TimisaMonster 31,073]

And this is why life would have had a harder time evolving on a cooler planet like Mars...Earth won but humans are losing so hard right now 

[Guest vivre sa vie]

Mars scientists are like "I'm sick of your 'sheet'"!

[Lord Temptation 11,209]

Here’s the thing. 

So this research was purely theoretical and therefore must be taken with a pinch of salt. Don’t come @ me, I’m a mathematician myself and I appreciate what they did. But they didn’t make any discoveries they just used statistical data to ascribe a probability. So, glacial activity is more likely than a riverine hydrological cycle. Wow...big revelation!!! Mars has a mean temperature of like minus 100 degrees! This kind of research is very black or white. 

I’m not being a bitch i’m just saying we need science that is more empirical and based on fieldwork, rather than stuffing numbers into an algorithm. 

We need NASA/humanity to send actual scientists on Mars to do real observations! Hopefully this happens within the decade