The Red Planet was as soon as BLUE: Mars was coated by 984ft-deep oceans 4.5 billion years in the past

Now a desolate pink desert, a brand new examine has claimed that Mars was as soon as truly predominantly blue.

Whereas researchers have lengthy agreed that our pink neighbour as soon as held water, simply how a lot water it had was topic to debate. 

Now, a brand new examine has revealed that 4.5 billion years in the past, Mars was coated by 984ft (300 metre)-deep oceans.

Researchers from the College of Copenhagen hope the findings may carry humanity one step nearer to answering a significant query: did Mars ever have life? 

The examine estimates that the oceans coated the whole planet, and will have ranged wherever from 984 ft (300 metres) to three,280 ft (1,000 metres) deep.

On condition that the planet is about half the scale of Earth, Professor Martin Bizzarro, from the Centre for Star and Planet Formation says that compared, there may be truly little or no water on our planet. 

This water was dropped at Mars by asteroids stuffed with ice, in line with Professor Bizzarro. 

Along with water, the icy asteroids additionally introduced biologically related molecules corresponding to amino acids to Mars.

Amino acids are used when DNA and RNA kind bases that comprise all the pieces a cell wants. 

Professor Bizzarro defined: ‘This occurred inside Mars’s first 100 million years. 

‘After this era, one thing catastrophic occurred for potential life on Earth. 

‘It’s believed that there was a big collision between the Earth and one other Mars-sized planet. 

‘It was an brisk collision that shaped the Earth-Moon system and, as the identical time, worn out all potential life on Earth.’

To achieve these conclusions, the researchers studied a meteorite that’s billions of years outdated. 

Talking to MailOnline, Professor Bizzarro defined that the meteorite was shaped 4.5 billion years in the past and is now ‘a fraction of the unique crust of Mars.’

‘Thus, it information the bombardment historical past of the planet,’ he defined. 

Not like Earth, Mars would not have tectonic plates deep beneath its floor, because the searing molten rock has lengthy cooled to kind a rocky mantle. 

Because of this, the researchers observe that the crust stays static, holding the floor of the planet unchanged. 

This permits them to review Mars’ previous in a manner that might be not possible to do on Earth.

Professor Bizzarro added: ‘Plate tectonics on Earth erased all proof of what occurred within the first 500 million years of our planet’s historical past. 

‘The plates always transfer and are recycled again and destroyed into the inside of our planet. 

‘In distinction, Mars doesn’t have plate tectonics such that planet’s floor preserves a document of the earliest historical past of the planet.’

The brand new examine comes shortly after consultants claimed that historic microbes may survive for a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of years beneath the floor of Mars in ‘suspended animation’. 

Researchers say a bacterium known as Deinococcus radiodurans may survive 280 million years on Mars – almost 300 instances longer than beforehand assumed – if it was buried 32 ft under the Red Planet’s floor.

D. radiodurans is also called ‘Conan the Bacterium’ and a ‘superhero of the bacterial world’ attributable to its toughness, which has even earned it the title of ‘world’s hardest identified bacterium’ within the Guinness Guide of Information.  

Like a muscle-bound film hero, it withstands assaults from acid baths, excessive and low temperatures, and even radiation doses.

Whereas Conan the Bacterium probably would not exist on Mars, the researchers consider an equal microorganism may exist on the Red Planet for the same time interval.