Finding NASA puts an end to speculation. A probe established that changed the red planet, once warm and wet, potentially capable of generating life.
The Maven spacecraft, NASA , currently orbiting Mars, found that the Sun probably stripped the red planet than it ever was a thick atmosphere, and its water.
Huge solar storms were common in the first years of the solar system. So billions of years ago, these storms would have been enough to end the atmosphere of Mars, the planet of transforming a humid and warm potentially capable of generating microscopic life in the cold, dry desert it is now.
Yesterday, scientists reported that even now, the solar wind carries about 100 grams of atmospheric gas per second.
“I can not help wondering burgers escaping from the Martian atmosphere, once every second, “he said at a press conference smiling scientist Dave Brain, the Maven project. “Instead it is oxygen and carbon dioxide which is escaping from the planet, which are important for both water and for the climate of the planet as a whole”.
These Recent discoveries of robotic explorers like Maven are a crucial part of the effort of NASA to send human explorers to Mars in the 2030s just over a month ago, the explorer Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed evidence of salt water dripping slopes Mars, at least in the summer.
The next NASA mission begins in March I come with the release of another orbital browser.
Bruce Jakosky, chief scientist of the project, and his team reported that during solar mass expulsions of gas in March, the space ranger warned that oxygen ions were thrown higher than expected in the atmosphere. At the same time, flows of fast-moving magnetic activity reached a height of nearly 5,000 kilometers in space.
That led scientists to conclude that the decrease Martian atmosphere may have been caused largely by large solar events in the initial stage of the planet.
“Like stealing coins from a cash register every day, the loss becomes significant over time, “said Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator of Maven and the University of Colorado in Boulder. “We have seen that atmospheric erosion increases significantly during solar storms, so it is thought that the loss rate was much higher billions of years ago when the sun was young and active.”
The solar wind is a stream of particles, mostly protons and electrons flowing from the sun’s atmosphere at a speed of approximately 1.5 million kilometers per hour. The magnetic field carried by the solar wind as it flows, can generate an electric field that accelerates the electrically charged gas atoms (ions) in the upper atmosphere of Mars and shoots into space. That atmosphere would probably have disappeared in a period of a few hundred million years. Mars no longer has a global magnetic field, but when I took 4,000 million years ago, that would have prevented the loss of atmosphere on a large scale, the researchers said.
The strong magnetic field Earth contains our own atmosphere, avoiding direct erosion by the solar wind.
The findings were published in the journal Science this week. The issue includes four studies conducted by the aircraft, which has orbited Mars to study its atmosphere for a year.
“Mars seems to have had a thick atmosphere and warm enough to withstand water liquid, which is a key ingredient and a means for life as we know it today, “astronaut and associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, John Grunsfeld said yesterday in Washington.
“ancient regions on Mars show evidence of abundant water, and valleys carved by rivers and mineral deposits only form in the presence of liquid water. These characteristics have led scientists to believe that thousands of millions of years , Mars’ atmosphere was much denser and warm enough to form rivers, lakes and perhaps even oceans of liquid water, “said Bruce Jakosky
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