The hypothesis was launched by geologists at MIT, in the United States
The atmosphere that surrounded Mars billions of years ago and then disappeared, leaving the red planet with the cold desert we see today, may have remained trapped beneath the Martian surface.
This is supported by a study published in the journal Science Advances by two geologists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the United States.
According to the analysis, water that once flowed on the surface of Mars may have triggered a series of chemical reactions that converted carbon dioxide (CO2) into methane, which was then stored in the rocky crust, similar to what happens in some areas of the planet. Earth. .
If this were true, the red planet would hide an energy source that could power future manned space missions.
Joshua Murray and Oliver Jagoutz applied their knowledge of some processes that occur on our planet to the peculiar characteristics of Mars, starting from the hypothesis that the atmosphere of Earth’s neighbor was very rich in CO2.
Over the course of billions of years, water running across the surface and seeping through rocks would have slowly reacted with olivine, an iron-rich mineral. Oxygen in the water would then oxidize the iron, giving Mars its distinctive color, and release hydrogen, which would combine with CO2 in the atmosphere to form methane.
Olivine, in turn, would have slowly transformed into serpentine and then into smectite, a type of clay. “Smectite has a great capacity to store carbon,” Murray says.
According to the authors of the study, if Mars were covered by a 1,100-meter layer of this clay, the extract could store an enormous amount of methane, equal to about 80% of the planet’s initial atmosphere.
Source: Terra
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