2023-05-13 07:23:27
Ancient Mars may have had its share of raging rivers, and there are plenty of signs of liquid water flowing on the Red Planet long ago, but most of this evidence points to relatively temperate lakes, oceans, or streams, like the ancient streams discovered by NASA’s Curiosity rover in a crater. Mega Gale on Mars.
Endurance, which was exploring a Martian crater called Jezero, was floating on the bottom of a dead river that looked very different, and this one had jagged grains and pebbles, huge things that couldn’t be removed from the bottom. Space report
“These indicate a high-energy river carrying a lot of debris, and the stronger the current, the easier it is to move it. he said in a statement. to handle larger pieces of material.”
Perseverance collected some of this new evidence at a site the mission team called Skrinkle Haven (apparently on a beach in England), and NASA officials said the site contains curved groups of layered rocks that are almost certainly flushed with force by water.
But the nature of the river that carved the landscape is still a matter of debate, as members of the expedition team said that it might have been a meandering river whose banks changed over time, or a “braided” river characterized by its high sands.
In both scenarios, the bands of rock might have been much taller than they started, but have been shrunk to their current size by sand-blasting Martian winds.
“The wind acts like a scalpel cutting through the top of these sediments,” Perseverance Science team member Michael Lamb, a river expert at Caltech in Pasadena, said in the same statement.
“We see deposits like this on Earth, but they are never as exposed as they are on Mars,” Lamb added. The land is covered with vegetation that hides these layers.
Other potential evidence of the rapid flow of ancient water comes from Pinestand, a hill 0.28 miles (0.45 km) from Skrinkle Haven. Pinestand contains layers of sedimentary rock, some as high as 65 feet (20 m).
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