New evidence suggests Mars once had ‘vacation-style beaches’

Present-day Mars is a barren and inhospitable planet, but it may have once had sandy beaches and tranquil ocean vistas. According to findings published on February 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Red Planet may have remained a vacation-worthy destination for tens of millions of years—while also providing the proper conditions to support microbial life.

The evidence comes from data collected by China’s Zhurong Mars rover, which landed in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars in 2021. Unlike other rovers traversing the planet, Zhurong arrived with high- and low-frequency radar systems that allow it to conduct ground-penetrating scans of the Martian subsurface. After reviewing the rover’s data, an international team, including researchers at Penn State, believe that they have spotted layered structures with remarkable similarities to what can be found all over Earth.

“We’re finding places on Mars that used to look like ancient beaches and ancient river deltas,” Benjamin Cardenas, a Penn State assistant professor of geology and study co-author, said in an accompanying statement. “We found evidence for wind, waves, no shortage of sand—a proper, vacation-style beach.”

Cardenas and colleagues are particularly focused on what appears to be ancient, long-buried “foreshore deposits.” A common feature on shorelines across Earth, foreshore deposits are downward sloping geological formations created by tides and waves as they gradually wash sediment into a large body of water.

“This stood out to us immediately because it suggests there were waves, which means there was a dynamic interface of air and water,” Cardenas added.

According to the authors, both the Martian foreshore deposit angles and sediment thicknesses fall right within the range of those on Earth. Further analysis also indicated these foreshore deposits on Mars weren’t the result of river flows, volcanic activity, or wind—leaving oceanic coasts the most likely explanation. If true, this further supports the hypothesis that an ocean once covered a substantial portion of the northern pole of Mars. A body of water big enough to generate waves and tides also raises the chances of the planet supporting life.

“[I]t suggests… there was a dynamic interface of air and water,” Cardenas said. “When we look back at where the earliest life on Earth developed, it was in the interaction between oceans and land, so this is painting a picture of ancient habitable environments, capable of harboring conditions friendly toward microbial life.”

These warm, wet conditions suitable for life possibly spanned tens of millions of years on Mars, presenting ample time for shorelines to shift while fostering the development of organisms.

“We tend to think about Mars as just a static snapshot of a planet, but it was evolving,” explained Cardenas.

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