Water on Mars!

Let’s talk about Mars, the Red Planet, the fourth rock from the sun. Well as everyone knows, scientists have been debating on whether or not there was actually water on this barren planet at one time. If you did not know this then you need to watch a little less cartoons and more of the news. The debate is over and scientists have come to an agreement that at one time there was at least one body of water on the planet surface. They believe that the water sources were dried up in some catastrophe and that the catastrophe has been the reason why it’s taken so long for them to find remains of oceans. With the use of topographic maps scientist were able to determine that there may have been two oceans at some point in time. According to the shorelines, scientist have come to the conclusion that the oceans shrank over time because of the planet's failing, well they actually do not know and that is why they want to do more tests.

Scientists get their information utilizing the assistance of the Mars Odyssey. Aboard this orbiting probe is the Mars Gamma-Ray Spectrometer, which has the ability to measure the abundance of elements on Mar's surface. With the pictures taken from the spectrometer scientists were able to identify certain elements that are commonly found along ocean shores. These specific minerals are potassium, thorium and iron which usually come from volcanoes. That means at some time there were active volcanoes and their magma flowed out down towards the ocean shores and hardened. This same thing happens here on earth and that is how most land masses are created.

Now that I have explained that, the real reason of this article is to tell you what scientists are trying to discover now. Scientists are trying to figure out how Mars’ water supply simply disappeared. They wish to find the answer to this question because it might help us, as humans, to try to come up with a way to stop this from happening to our planet. Scientists do have one theory in which they suspect that the atmosphere failed and made it easy for solar winds to penetrate and erode the surface. Scientists know that there was water on Mars at one point in time but now it is just one giant, barren rock. They are doing their best to try to discover how to save our planet otherwise we could turn into another floating rock in space.