New timeline for water-created land on Mars proposed, days before Perseverance rover lands – Technology News, Firstpost

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FP TrendingFeb 12, 2021 18:21:41 IST

A scientist has proposed an update to the historical model of Mars, suggesting that the earth on Mars shaped by ancient water activity on the planet could be hundreds of millions of years older than previously thought. This result could be a good time to consider, with NASA’s Perseverance rover preparing to land on the Red Planet on February 18th. The age of the Earth’s surface is usually determined by measuring the natural radioactivity of the rocks, scientists use a different process to determine the chronology of Mars. For the Red Planet, impact craters on its surface are counted in their place.

Describing the process, Dr Simone Marchi from the South West Research Institute said, “The idea behind crater dating is not rocket science; the bigger the crack, the older the surface”. Marchi, who wrote the study, explained that pits form on any square body when an asteroid or comet hits the surface. It is difficult to convert the number of shakes to the age of the earth, because “the extent of these cosmic catastrophes over the birds is uncertain”. Marchi, instead, has taken a new approach to analyzing the available data with the new findings.

New timeline for water-created land on Mars proposed, days before the Perseverance route landed

A falsely inverted color view of a large carved water channel on Mars called Dao Vallis. Image: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / Lujendra Ojha

Marchi was deliberately targeting the Jezero Crater on Mars, the landing site chosen for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover.

“These overlords could have been created 3 billion years ago, as much as 500 million years older than previously thought,” she said. Now, as NASA’s rover rests on the pit to collect samples that will be returned to Earth for radiometric date and, Marchi hopes that the data will use “critical ground truth data” to improve the existing historical models.

Scientists are also planning to find out if Mars could be a living environment in the future, as the Jezero Crater tended to host a lake many years ago.

The new paper entitled ‘A new Martian crater chronology: Implications for Jezero crater’ was published in The Astronomical Journal.

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