# The mysterious coasts on Mars

About three billion years ago, large amounts of water probably had covered the surface of our red neighbor planet, Mars. Among other things, various geological formations in the northern lowlands speak for themselves, which can be interpreted as shorelines. However, this does not quite match the findings made so far. Between the formations are sometimes vast differences in height from a few hundred meters to several kilometers. Coasts, however, have a constant height for average, on earth we speak of the sea level. A team of planetary scientists at the University of Berkeley headed by Robert Citron believes that they have found a solution for this contradiction.
A big ocean should now have existed earlier than thought on Mars. This would suggest that the shorelines were deformed much later by geological processes. This would also explain how it can come to these considerable differences in height.

 
*Image of Mars captured by Mars Global Surveyor. The Tharsis volcanoes are covered by bluish-white water ice clouds.*
![1024px-Water_ice_clouds_hanging_above_Tharsis_PIA02653_black_background.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQuXabajYfPBTujpkoQ7MjD6tKPGoA9fTNB4nSmiYS63J/1024px-Water_ice_clouds_hanging_above_Tharsis_PIA02653_black_background.jpg)
*[Copyright: NASA/JPL/MSSS; public domain](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA02653)*
 

### Possible evidence of former liquid water
That Mars today is a desert planet is due to its comparatively low mass. As a result, his gravity has not enough force to bind the gases tightly enough in its atmosphere and therefore protect it from erosion by the solar wind. The solar wind is a stream of charged particles that were able to drive the molecules in the air envelope of the Red Planet into space over many millions of years. In this way, the atmosphere became thinner and thinner, so that water on Mars evaporates very quickly today. Remains of water exist at most at the poles, where it has formed together with dry ice from carbon dioxide large ice caps.

An indication of the wet past of Mars are the numerous ravines and ruts in its surface, which once were probably river valleys. Also, clay minerals that have been found in many places and that form on earth in the presence of liquid water, are considered an essential piece of the puzzle.
Researchers but still argue about the correct interpretation of these discoveries. Some scientists say that the clay minerals could also have been formed under the action of water vapor. Moreover, the canyons could have been shaped not only by rivers but also by lava flows.

 
### The impact of volcanic activity and lava on the development of the shorelines
It is clear that volcanoes played an essential role in the development of Mars. They are usually higher than the volcanoes on Earth, as no plate tectonics on Mars continuously shifts the geological formations. So on Mars, volcanoes always stay in the same place and can, therefore, reach extreme heights. Particularly succinct is the Tharsis region. It is home to mighty shield volcanoes, including Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system with a height of around 26 kilometers.

 
*Map of Olympus Mons region and the Tharsis region.*
![800px-Olympus_Mons_Region_map-la.svg.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmcyUdWSmxJTVGrnrXq4QNHUAY8bf9d66ECqb5YSTHbSuc/800px-Olympus_Mons_Region_map-la.svg.png)
*[Copyright: Sémhur](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Olympus_Mons_Region_map-la.svg), [Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)*
 

Perhaps the emergence of this region has even tilted the planetary axis of Mars. Because heavy masses always move towards the equator in freely rotating bodies. Earlier investigations have shown that the shorelines would have been deformed if Tharsis had arisen at higher latitudes and migrated to the equator. However, this does not necessarily have to be associated with volcanism. As images of the space probe “New Horizons” show, on the dwarf planet Pluto, huge masses of ice and perhaps even an underground ocean have tilted the planet’s axis. In Mars, however, this effect is much lower. Most Mars geologists now assume that the Tharsis volcanic area has not arisen far from the equator.

>The emergence of the Tharsis region has probably shifted the poles by about 20 degrees, but that’s not enough to explain the observed elevation changes in the shorelines.

Says Robert Citron of the University of Berkeley, the first author of the now in “Nature” published publication.

During the formation of volcanoes, large quantities of magma are in motion in the underground. Such mass movements take place over a period of tens to hundreds of millions of years. The changes of the rotational axis also take a correspondingly long time, giving oceans more than enough time to form new shorelines. Such displacements of the poles occur more often than thought.

 
*Viking 1 Orbiter color mosaic of the eastern Tharsis region on Mars.*
![Eastern_Tharsis_and_Noctis_Labyrinthus.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZkLbnzkjABVJShvSGdBVknvbk3nSiwVe4gUiXaWxoos8/Eastern_Tharsis_and_Noctis_Labyrinthus.png)
*[Copyright: NASA/JPL; public domain](https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02987)*
 

Robert Citron of the University of Berkeley and his colleagues assume that the immense lava masses were mainly responsible for the deformation of the surrounding terrain. Crucial here was the timing of the emergence of a large Martian ocean. It may have been formed before or about at the same time as the Tharsis region and not, as previously thought, afterward. Thus, the volcanic area could have transformed the ocean bed again and again during its growth.

 
*This is how one of the two potential ocean could have looked like.*
![1024px-AncientMars.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmbpz82VJ1DwnCcryjgdUV81CuXZHi83pPywHafLz7G8VC/1024px-AncientMars.jpg)
*[Copyright: Ittiz](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AncientMars.jpg), [Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)*
 

For their study, the researchers modeled the influence of Tharsis on two vast oceans that could have existed on Mars. The strong deformation of the shoreline of the first ocean, named “Arabia”, is explained by volcanic activity and the movement of the planet’s axis. Therefore, it is likely that the sea formed four billion years ago, before Tharsis or at an early stage in its emergence.

The second ocean, named “Deuteronilus”, which replaced Arabia, was created about 3.6 billion years ago. Researchers said, that its shoreline can be explained solely by lava flows of an already large volcanic region. If these assumptions are valid, Mars would have possessed an ocean at a very early date in the history of our solar system. This ocean has covered much of its northern hemisphere.

However, determining the age of the associated rock formations is not that easy, which is why this theory is not proven.
The planetary scientists hope to gain new insights into these problems from the upcoming NASA Mars mission “InSight”, which will set a seismometer on the surface of Mars. The scientists also want to detect seismic waves that indicate frozen water underground - the legacy of a lost ocean.







 
## References:
https://www.spektrum.de/news/die-raetselhaften-kuesten-auf-dem-mars/1552820

 

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