This is an image of Mars.
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Image from: NASA
Theories about Martian water & Climate
Scientists have two ideas about what happens to water on Mars. These ideas conflict with each other.
- 1.) Warm weather caused river channels & floods, which released water into the atmosphere. Rain returns water to the same ground. The result is that *water is recycled*.
- 2.) Floods caused water to flow (over time) from the higher ground to low ground. It was not released again, even when the weather became warm, but remained *permanently* frozen into the ground .
How can we tell which of these ideas is correct? Further exploration of Mars would help find the answers.
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Separate from the Martian outflow channels, or the river valleys, are large Martian lakes (600 km, or ~1000 miles across) which once were part of a flood.
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On Mars, the water is trapped, frozen, within the ground. Nevertheless, there is evidence for running water on Mars. When the water is melted and released to the surface, it will run from higher ground
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This image shows how cold the surface of Mars can be. The temperature of the surface was measured by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. The scale to the left shows that purple regions are the coldest,
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On this map of Mars, the lightly cratered Tharsis Ridge is shown, as well as the heavily cratered Martian highlands (near the bottom of the picture), and Valles Marineris to the right. The volcanoes are
...moreThe drawing shows the depth at which water may be frozen into the ground. To have water running on the surface of Mars, this water region must be near to the surface. This may have happened at various
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This picture shows fog on Mars. More fog has been seen in images returned by Mars Global Surveyor of the south polar region of Mars. Martian fog may have a little bit of acid mixed in with the water drops.
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The orbit of Mars is very oval shaped. The orbit is much more oval shaped than the Earth's orbit. This means that the climate of Mars can change drastically between warm and cold.
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This is an image of a storm moving across the Martian land. The camera is looking down on the storm, the same way storms are presented on the news. The storm provides evidence that there is water on Mars.
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