2023-09-21 11:36:56
This conceptual image reveals what the Kasei Valles region on Mars may have looked like 3 billion years ago. The white areas are glaciers and the blue areas represent the ocean. – F. SCHMIDT/NASA
MADRID, 21 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The first use of a novel method to analyze the gravitational pull of Mars supports the idea that the planet once had an extensive ocean in its northern hemisphere.
Gravity anomalies are areas of greater or lesser gravitational force exerted by surface features of a planetary body. A mountain would exert a greater gravitational force because it has a greater concentration of mass than would be expected on a planet with no surface features. Ocean basins and trenches would have less gravitational force.
In their research on Mars, the authors used a process developed by Jaroslav Klokocník, professor emeritus at the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, who led the work.
Your method analyzes aspects of gravity calculated from measurements of gravitational anomalies. Gravitational aspects are mathematical products that characterize gravitational anomalies.
They also used topographic data from the Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter instrument aboard NASA’s Mars Global Surveyorwhich launched in November 1996 and mapped the planet for 4 and a half years.
Klokocník used that approach to confirm previous research into the existence of extensive paleolakes or paleo-river systems beneath the Saharan sands on Earth. His 2017 research paper also suggested a part of the Great Egyptian Sand Sea as another candidate for paleolake.
The gravity aspects method has also been used to compare the geographic features of Earth to those of cloud-shrouded Venus, reports the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which participated in the research.
The work was published in the magazine Icarus.
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