Some researchers are confident that life can be found on Mars in the form of microbes, or at least traces of their existence on the Red Planet in the past.
Today, a wide variety of missions are focused on finding an answer to the age-old question: is there life on Mars? For example, the specialists of the ExoLance program, in order to search for signs of extraterrestrial life, want to bombard the Red Planet with giant arrows. According to scientists, if there is any form of it on the fourth planet, then, most likely, it is hiding under its surface.
Meanwhile, experts at the University of Texas have found another promising place where life could be found: in strange formations that may be the remains of an ancient "ice cauldron." Such formations are rich in chemicals and can also provide potential residents with warm and favorable conditions for life.
These are funnel-shaped depressions located inside a crater in the Hellas plain. It is believed that this region of Mars once housed a giant lake. In addition, the features of the landscape also indicate that in the past there were glaciers in this place and at the same time volcanic activity.
The interaction of lava and ice that could form a depression could also create a warm environment with liquid water and the chemicals needed for life to emerge, experts say.
“We became interested in this place because we thought it might have some of the key ingredients for life - water, warmth and nutrients,” says study lead author Joseph Levy.
The researcher first noticed small features in the Hellas Plain and in the Galaxias Fossae region in 2009. He then studied images taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) multifunctional robotic interplanetary station.
The scientist noted the similarity of the Martian troughs with terrestrial structures, which are called ice cauldrons. The latter are created when a volcanic eruption occurs under an ice sheet. By the way, recently MRO data helped to establish that this kind of phenomena took place in the Martian region of Sisyphi Montes.
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“These terrain features were striking because they look rather strange,” says Levy.
The researchers decided to determine if the formations in the Hellas Plain and in the Galaxias Fossae region are ice cauldrons or simply meteorite impact sites. To do this, they used stereoscopic images to create digital elevation models in 3D, which allowed an in-depth analysis of the relief of these places. So scientists found that both formations have a distinct funnel-shaped shape.
According to experts, the crater in Galaxias Fossae may be the site of an impact, since there are some debris around the site, which is probably the result of a collision of a meteorite with the surface of Mars. Whereas there is no such "garbage" around the funnel-shaped area in Hellas. In addition, the pattern of crater faults corresponds to that of the melting of ice during a subglacial eruption.
According to the researchers, in the course of future missions to Mars, other scientific groups should focus on studying this particular place.
A scientific article describing the study was published in the Icarus journal.
