Reveal the living world on the 'dead planet'

The building blocks of life brought by meteors, the atmosphere is thick enough to protect the germ from radiation, the vast river system . has been present in Mars.

A number of new studies have demonstrated that Mars was a close-up copy of Earth with great conditions for life, before becoming a barren and harsh "dead planet" as it is today.

Mars - (photo: NASA).

Following last year's discovery of NASA's Mars exploration robot, the team led by Dr. Rafael Navarro-González - of the Nuclear Science Institute, University of Mexico's Autonomous National University - published the findings about the birth and fate of these life building blocks.

In the article published in the journal Science of Geophysical Research: Planets , Dr. Navarro-González said that the above building blocks can be derived from the material of asteroids brought in bouncing collisions. fire, the same way life has come to earth, some previous studies have demonstrated.

At that time, Mars had a thick atmosphere made of ancient hydrogen, thick enough to protect the life precursor that asteroids bring - nitrogen - conditionally exist and start a chain of reactions. Create the first life building blocks. Evidence is nitrate - what NASA's Mars Curiosity robot has found on Mars since 2015.

In simulated experiments, the team of Dr. Navarro-González, nitrate has been surprisingly prolific when hydrogen is introduced into laser shock experiments describing the impact of asteroids, without the need for oxygen as previously known. here.

Another new study, led by planetary scientist Edwin Kite of the University of Chicago, has published another detail in the science journal Science Advances on the vivid picture of ancient Mars. : large rivers.

The photo from the University of Chicago team revealed traces of rivers - (photo: NASA).

Based on NASA's Mars surface data, Kite and his colleagues concluded that even larger rivers than Earth's rivers have flowed on the surface of the red planet several billion years ago and the This great river extends to 1 billion years.

At that time, Mars was still cold, even colder than today, but the greenhouse effect "trapped" solar energy, melting frost and helping liquid water flow easily.

Unfortunately, at the end of the wet era, Mars became even colder and rivers had suddenly disappeared. Today, it is only an arid planet with an atmosphere so thin that it does not prevent harsh radiation from the sun, making it difficult for organisms to survive.