Mars used to be a wet world. Scientists have long pointed to evidence such as dried riverbeds and ancient lake basins. For the existence of that water, Mars will require a thick environment – a one that can catch under heat and pressure. But today, Mars is cold, dry, and barely there is no wind. For the first time, NASA’s Maven spacecraft has seen a long-showing process responsible for snatching the atmosphere of Mars directly-spattering. Understanding when and how the atmosphere disappeared, it is important to assess its previous potential to re -organize the planet’s climate history and support life.
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According to Maven’s findings from a new study, sputtering is an important mechanism in atmospheric migration. In this mechanism, solar air -energetic particles collide with the upper atmosphere of Mars. These collisions, in principle, transfer enough energy to neutral atoms and help them free from the planet’s gravity, hoist them into space.
“It is like a cannon in a pool,” said Shannon Curry, the chief investigator of the Maven Mission at Colorado Boulder,. “The guns, in this case, are crashing in heavy ion environment that are actually rapid and excluding neutral atoms and molecules.”
Using nine -year data, scientists created detailed maps of the argon. The study also showed that sputtering is four times higher than the previous model, and faster during solar storms.
This shows that this process was far more extremely billions of years ago, when the young sun was more active and Mars had already lost its magnetic field. Without magnetic security, the atmosphere of the planet was unsafe for tireless solar wind. This accelerated the loss of the atmosphere and leads to the disappearance of surface water.