If Mars was covered in a global ocean - where did it go and why did it go?
Saw an article in Newscientist.com about this.
Where is the ocean and where did it go?
Will the same thing happen here?
Answers:
I watched a Horizon episode a few years ago that showed a satalite with some experiments detected huge amounts of either ice or water under the surface. Using what it had detected they then showed a representation of how the surface would look and there was enough water there for a full blown ocean with land as well. Although with no tetonic activity the land mass wouldn't move like it does here on Earth.
Well scientists are still trying to work that one out...so i doubt you will get an answer
mars is more further away from the sun and so the waters froze and very slowly dried up 4 millions of years. and so venus is closer to the sun and thats y it is so HOT!! earth is perfect-
NOT TO HOT ; NOT TOO COLD!!
Maybe a meteor hit it & knocked it spinning & it all came off & the planet rested to far away to replenish it.
Mars freeze-dried! It was too small to keep most of it's atmosphere, so some of the water evaporated off, although there is probably a heck of a lot frozen in the sub-soil.
Mars should only be covered in chocolate!
If Mars had any water (not to say oceans) it evaporated long time ago.
You see, Mars is too small (gravity speaking) to hold water, in addition Mars magnetic field (North and South poles) is non existent. Gravity and magnetic field are key elements in the formation of a planet.
Read on.
The radius of Mars is about 3395 km on average (compared to the 6371 km radius of Earth). As a result, much of the inventory of the lighter gases of Mars has escaped to space over time. Some atmospheric constituents, such as the predominant CO2 and a small contribution of H2O periodically freeze out into the polar caps in a seasonal cycle. Ground ice, like permafrost, is most probably present down to latitudes quite close to the equator.
A hypothesized early dense CO2 atmosphere of Mars is considered to be today sequestered in carbonate rocks on the surface. These carbonates are thought to have formed in the presence of liquid water, when Mars had a greenhouse effect (q.v.) contributing to the warmth of its early climate. Mars is too small to have plate tectonics and the resulting volcanic activity that together would have recycled the CO2 back into the atmosphere. It is likely that some of the early Martian atmosphere has been lost to space because Mars, like Venus has no substantial intrinsic magnetic field to protect the atmosphere from solar wind scavenging.
The first indication of the weakness of the magnetic field of Mars was obtained during the Mariner 4 spacecraft flyby in 1965. At a closest approach of 3.9 Mars radii, no indication of the Earth-like dipole magnetic field predicted by scaling arguments from theory was detected. Most subsequent magnetic field measurements in the vicinity of Mars were carried out on a series of five MARS spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union between 1971 and 1974.
Today, the only other 'direct' information that Martian magnetism is from a special class of meteorites known as the SNC meteorites (q.v.) which are thought to come from Mars. Magnetic field analyses of these possible samples of the Martian crust indicate that magnetic fields of ~ 1000 nT may have been present on the surface of Mars at the time that these meteorites were ejected by a giant impact some 180 million years ago. (For comparison, the present field on Earth near the equator is about 3 X 104 nT. The present upper limit on the dipole moment implies surface fields of only a few tens Of nanotesla.)
The dynamo theory of planetary magnetism indicates that Mars may have had a dipole moment of about one-tenth of Earth's when it was first formed. The rotation rate Of Mars is approximately that of Earth and is thus sufficient for the operation of this initial dynamo. The other necessary ingredient of a convection driver in the core was supplied by heat left over from the accretion of the planet, which may have been effective for up to a few billion years. If such a field did indeed exist, evidence of it may still be present on the surface in the form of magnetized rocks and crustal regions like those observed on the Moon. No observations indicating the presence of such fields have been reported other than the aforementioned SNC meteorites' magnetization.
http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/r.
Mars actually went through global warming as well to the point that the atmosphere actually burnt away totally and hence the planet surface got so hot that the water evaporated away (into space).
seen the movie "mission to mars" ?
it will give u a lot of fictional idea of where all that stuff went
to get a non fictional idea go to nasa.com or any other site
to get mad worlds idea....
....u dont have to do anything!!
what i think about it is that life may have existed there but due to some asteroid collision or the core movement it must have happned.
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Where is the ocean and where did it go?
Will the same thing happen here?
Answers:
I watched a Horizon episode a few years ago that showed a satalite with some experiments detected huge amounts of either ice or water under the surface. Using what it had detected they then showed a representation of how the surface would look and there was enough water there for a full blown ocean with land as well. Although with no tetonic activity the land mass wouldn't move like it does here on Earth.
Well scientists are still trying to work that one out...so i doubt you will get an answer
mars is more further away from the sun and so the waters froze and very slowly dried up 4 millions of years. and so venus is closer to the sun and thats y it is so HOT!! earth is perfect-
NOT TO HOT ; NOT TOO COLD!!
Maybe a meteor hit it & knocked it spinning & it all came off & the planet rested to far away to replenish it.
Mars freeze-dried! It was too small to keep most of it's atmosphere, so some of the water evaporated off, although there is probably a heck of a lot frozen in the sub-soil.
Mars should only be covered in chocolate!
If Mars had any water (not to say oceans) it evaporated long time ago.
You see, Mars is too small (gravity speaking) to hold water, in addition Mars magnetic field (North and South poles) is non existent. Gravity and magnetic field are key elements in the formation of a planet.
Read on.
The radius of Mars is about 3395 km on average (compared to the 6371 km radius of Earth). As a result, much of the inventory of the lighter gases of Mars has escaped to space over time. Some atmospheric constituents, such as the predominant CO2 and a small contribution of H2O periodically freeze out into the polar caps in a seasonal cycle. Ground ice, like permafrost, is most probably present down to latitudes quite close to the equator.
A hypothesized early dense CO2 atmosphere of Mars is considered to be today sequestered in carbonate rocks on the surface. These carbonates are thought to have formed in the presence of liquid water, when Mars had a greenhouse effect (q.v.) contributing to the warmth of its early climate. Mars is too small to have plate tectonics and the resulting volcanic activity that together would have recycled the CO2 back into the atmosphere. It is likely that some of the early Martian atmosphere has been lost to space because Mars, like Venus has no substantial intrinsic magnetic field to protect the atmosphere from solar wind scavenging.
The first indication of the weakness of the magnetic field of Mars was obtained during the Mariner 4 spacecraft flyby in 1965. At a closest approach of 3.9 Mars radii, no indication of the Earth-like dipole magnetic field predicted by scaling arguments from theory was detected. Most subsequent magnetic field measurements in the vicinity of Mars were carried out on a series of five MARS spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union between 1971 and 1974.
Today, the only other 'direct' information that Martian magnetism is from a special class of meteorites known as the SNC meteorites (q.v.) which are thought to come from Mars. Magnetic field analyses of these possible samples of the Martian crust indicate that magnetic fields of ~ 1000 nT may have been present on the surface of Mars at the time that these meteorites were ejected by a giant impact some 180 million years ago. (For comparison, the present field on Earth near the equator is about 3 X 104 nT. The present upper limit on the dipole moment implies surface fields of only a few tens Of nanotesla.)
The dynamo theory of planetary magnetism indicates that Mars may have had a dipole moment of about one-tenth of Earth's when it was first formed. The rotation rate Of Mars is approximately that of Earth and is thus sufficient for the operation of this initial dynamo. The other necessary ingredient of a convection driver in the core was supplied by heat left over from the accretion of the planet, which may have been effective for up to a few billion years. If such a field did indeed exist, evidence of it may still be present on the surface in the form of magnetized rocks and crustal regions like those observed on the Moon. No observations indicating the presence of such fields have been reported other than the aforementioned SNC meteorites' magnetization.
http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/r.
Mars actually went through global warming as well to the point that the atmosphere actually burnt away totally and hence the planet surface got so hot that the water evaporated away (into space).
seen the movie "mission to mars" ?
it will give u a lot of fictional idea of where all that stuff went
to get a non fictional idea go to nasa.com or any other site
to get mad worlds idea....
....u dont have to do anything!!
what i think about it is that life may have existed there but due to some asteroid collision or the core movement it must have happned.
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