A perspective rendering of the Martian chloride deposit and surrounding terrain. Image by LASP / Brian Hynek
Mars might have had a life-harboring liquid water lake much more recently than scientists previously thought, according to a new finding by researchers at the University of Colorado.
An 18-square-mile chloride salt deposit is thought to have once been a lake bed with water that had only 8 percent the salinity of earth’s oceans, and may have been home to life. The dried up pond — “one of the last instances of a sizable lake on Mars,” — was digitally mapped by a team from CU’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, along with researchers from two other universities. The study was published earlier this month in the journal Geology.
The existence of salt deposits on Mars has long been known, but those deposits can form in different ways.
“This is the first time we could say that at least these salt deposits formed in a lake,” said Brian Hynek, of LASP, who was the lead researcher on the study. The liquid-water lake probably dried up about 3.6 billion years ago, indicating that Mars had bodies of water for longer than previously recognized.
But was there life in those bodies of water?
“That’s the million dollar question,” said Hynek. “If there was life, here’s a spot that it could have existed.
Hynek noted that Earth’s bodies of water did have microbial life 3.6 billion years ago.
The salt deposits share some similarities with Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats, according to the release from CU. An advantage of such deposits is that the salt can contain fossilized microbial life.
“It can capture a lot of the organic material,” Hynek said. “It’s a good place to look.”
