Not far from the spot where Opportunity landed on Mars baby-sit a large washbowl that looks a lot like the salt flat seen on our own planet . According to a new study out this week inGeology , this location may have been home to one of the net lakes to be on Mars before the Red Planet turned into the dry desert creation we see today .
The chloride salt deposition located in the Meridiani region appraise about 46 square kilometers ( 18 substantial miles ) , or the sizing of a small urban center . A squad led byBrian Hynek from the University of Colorado - Boulderwanted to experience how piquant the lake would have been and how recently it existed – which could evidence us important clues about the habitable history of Mars . So , they combine mineral analyses from Mars satellite with digital mapping of the terrain in the area .
The lake , they found , would have been no onetime than 3.6 billion eld , putting it at the tail end of the period when liquid piddle would have flowed across the Martian airfoil . ( The solar organisation itself work about 4.6 billion years ago . ) " This was a long - survive lake , and we were able-bodied to put a very good time boundary on its maximum age , " Hynek says instatement . " We can be pretty certain that this is one of the last instances of a sizeable lake on Mars . "
The investigator say that the lake here would have been created when a valley mold in the surrounding Highlands of Scotland and weewee begin to pool . finally , the urine horizontal surface uprise high enough to spill over the drainage divide . What water remain would have evaporated , leaving behind salts at the bottom of the lakebed . As a answer , what we see today front like the Bonneville Salt Flats in Nevada and other lieu where former lake evaporate .
base on the profundity and thickness of the table salt pass on behind , the squad estimated that the onetime lake would have been only about 8 % as salty as the Earth ’s oceans . While there ’s plenty that we do n’t know ( let in the acidity of the ancient lake ) , they say that its lowly salinity imply it could have been inhabitable at one prison term . If that ’s dependable , then this could have been one of the last potentially inhabitable , watery position on the surface of Mars .
