HKU geologist proposes the number of ancient Martian lakes might have been dramatically underestimated by scientists - India Education Diary

Though Mars is a frozen desert today, scientists have shown that Mars contains evidence of ancient lakes that existed billions of years ago, which could contain evidence for ancient life and climate conditions on the red planet.

Through a meta-analysis of years of satellite data that shows evidence for lakes on Mars, Dr Joseph MICHALSKI, a geologist in the Department of Earth Sciences, The University of Hong Kong (HKU) proposed that scientists might have dramatically underestimated the number of ancient Martian lakes that once existed.

Michalski and the international team recently published their results in Nature Astronomy, which describe a global analysis of ancient Martian lakes.

“We know of approximately 500 ancient lakes deposited on Mars, but nearly all the lakes we know about are larger than 100 km2,” explains Michalski.

These small-sized lakes are difficult to identify on Mars by satellite remote sensing, but many small lakes probably did exist.

It is likely that at least 70% of Martian lakes have yet to be discovered.” Scientists monitor these small lakes on Earth in order to understand climate change.

The missing small lakes on Mars might also contain critical information about past climates.

Michalski adds, “Because of the lower gravity on Mars and the pervasive, fine-grained soil, lakes on Mars would have been very murky and might not have allowed light to penetrate very deeply, which could present a challenge to photosynthetic life, if it existed.”.

In other words, some Martian lakes would be more interesting for microbial life than others because some of the lakes were large, deep, long-lived and had a wide range of environments such as hydrothermal systems that could have been conducive to the formation of simple life.” From this point of view, it might make sense to target large, ancient, environmentally diverse lakes for future exploration.