MEXICO: For the very first time scientists believe that they have obtained evidence of liquid water on Mars. It is just a tiny bit and surfaces only in certain seasons but the salty water will help find past life on Mars.
The study was published on Monday in Nature Geoscience and researchers reported that the Curiosity rover has found signs that thin layers of super-salty water could form as well as evaporate frequently on the surface of Mars.
“These can decrease the freezing point of water by more than 70 degrees,” explained study author Morten Bo Madsen, associate professor and head of the Mars Group at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen. “And they attract water quite violently. This can result in salty water moving up and down the surface.”
“We have discovered the substance calcium perchlorate in the soil and, under the right conditions, it absorbs water vapour from the atmosphere. Our measurements from the Curiosity rover’s weather monitoring station show that these conditions exist at night and just after sunrise in the winter. Based on measurements of humidity and the temperature at a height of 1.6 meters and at the surface of the planet, we can estimate the amount of water that is absorbed. When night falls, some of the water vapour in the atmosphere condenses on the planet surface as frost, but calcium perchlorate is very absorbent and it forms a brine with the water, so the freezing point is lowered and the frost can turn into a liquid. The soil is porous, so what we are seeing is that the water seeps down through the soil. Over time, other salts may also dissolve in the soil and now that they are liquid, they can move and precipitate elsewhere under the surface,” says Morten Bo Madsen.
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