Evidence of landslides on Mars may also raise the prospect that the Red Planet was once hospitable to life.
A new study, published February 3 in the journal Scientific progress, found that melting ice combines with the salty underground permafrost of the Red Planet, resulting in a chemical reaction that creates a “liquid-like liquid sludge”. Scientists think that this mudslide causes landslides that leave dark, narrow lines, known as repetitive slope lines (RSL), on the Martian surface. Although the icy sludge is currently too salty to house life, it may not have been 2 to 3 billion years ago, lead author Janice Bishop, a senior research scientist at the SETI Institute, said in an email to Live Science said.
Scientists have known for at least a decade about the landslides, some of which occur near Mars’ Palikir and Krupac craters, Bishop said. During this period, NASA’s High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera captured images of small landslides, known as ‘subsidence’, and the RSLs, which are, according to her, landslide characteristics.
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Previous studies have suggested that dark lines on the surface are only related to the chemical reaction between the subterranean chlorine salts and a large amount of sulfate. The new study takes the idea out and expands it to the permafrost, which results in brine or water with a high salt concentration.
It is possible that the chemical reactions between the sulfate and salt crystals lead to expansion and migration of the salt crystals through the soil; but Bishop said it would be a ‘very slow process’ due to the cold temperatures on Mars, which could drop to minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62 degrees Celsius) on the Martian surface, where the stripes are located.
While the slump and RSLs have been going on for several decades, some of the images recently released by HiRISE show changes within a few months, Bishop told WordsSideKick.
The scientists performed laboratory experiments on sulfates, chloride salts, ice particles and volcanic ash obtained from several Martian-like places on earth: the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica, Israel’s Dead Sea and the Salar de Pajonales in the Atacama Desert. The mixture was frozen at temperatures similar to those on Mars (minus 58 ° C, or minus 50 ° C) before melting as the temperature increased.
Under cold temperatures, the chlorine salt and sulphate separated, while the ice water moved between the mixture “almost like moving a soccer ball through the field”, leading to soil degradation and landslides, according to a statement.
Additional experiments showed a similar interaction between the sulfate and chloride moving through the Mars analog ground.
Raina Gough, a chemistry professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who was not associated with the study, told WordsSideKick that the new study solves the “supplementary problem” encountered by other studies on Mars shifts; With this new finding, the salts and water do not need to be recharged [or replenished] seasonally, because most actions involving the brine are in the subsoil. ”
The new images show that ‘that most salt and water does not move downhill with the landslide of dry grains,’ Gough added.
Although Mars does not currently contain life as we know it, similar conditions have been found on Earth, especially in Antarctica, where shrimp and other marine animals live, according to Quartz.
“We still do not know how the early habitable Mars changed to the modern Mars with a harsh, cold and dry environment,” Bishop added.
But it is possible that the environment just below the surface of the Red Planet was habitable for much longer than the Martian surface.
Gough, whose research focuses on the formation of salt water on the Red Planet, added that it is difficult to definitively prove whether the landslides are related to salt and brine. She explained that spacecraft orbiting can only see the Martian surface from space and mentioned two other recent studies that may have refuted the link between RSLs and chlorine salts, as outlined by the Bishop-led study.
It is possible that these conditions could have been life on Mars once, Gough said. “There are organisms that like salt water,” but the current conditions are probably “too salty to be habitable, given what we know about the limits of life on earth.”
Next, Bishop and colleagues hope to conduct more experiments to further analyze what happens when ice grains in the Martian soil mixed with different sulfates and salts are thawed.
Originally published on LiveScience.