Scientists Come Up with a New Theory Why Mars is Red (5 photos)

Are you missing the latest discoveries from scientists? No? And in vain, news from space has arrived just in time.





Since time immemorial, Mars has been called the "red" planet. At first, the ancient Greeks believed that it was the god of war, covered in blood, and the Egyptians called the planet "Her Decher", which means "red". Then it turned out that not everything is so simple. Humanity has developed to such an extent that it began to actively send a large number of all kinds of spacecraft to the neighboring planet.



Together, the orbiters and landers provided scientists with data showing that the red color of Mars is not really red, but rather rusty. Scientists sat and thought and came to the conclusion that at some point, the iron in the rocks on Mars reacted with water or water and oxygen in the air to form iron oxide, much like rust forms on Earth. Over billions of years, the iron oxide broke down into dust and settled across the planet after being moved by Martian winds that still whip up dust devils and powerful dust storms. Well, that's how Mars turned red.





The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission captured this image of Mars as it flew past on February 24, 2007.

The iron oxide was later determined to be hematite. This dry mineral, the main component of iron ore, was thought to form through chemical reactions with the Martian atmosphere, a process that took billions of years. If this assumption is correct, hematite should have formed on the surface of Mars later, after lakes and rivers were suspected on the planet.



This graphic from the European Space Agency shows how Mars went from a grey and wet planet to a dry and red one.

And then, during the course of recent research, it suddenly turned out that this is not hematite at all, but a mixture of ferrihydrite and basalt. Actually, what does this give us, mere mortals, well, basically nothing. It’s just important for scientists, based on this data, they came to the conclusion that a long time ago there was much more water on Mars than previously thought, and there was plenty of oxygen there too.

Since ferrihydrite is formed in cold water, it is possible that it appeared about 3 billion years ago.



"This was a time of intense volcanic activity on Mars, which likely triggered ice melting and water-rock interactions that created favorable conditions for ferrihydrite formation," the study says. "The timing coincides with the period when Mars was transitioning from its earlier, wetter state to its current desert environment."

What do we conclude from this? That's right, none, we sit back, crack sunflower seeds, and wait for Musk to go to Mars to instill democracy in the Martians.