A new analysis of the largest known deposit of carbonate minerals on Mars suggests that the original Martian atmosphere may have already lost most of its carbon dioxide by the era of valley network formation.
"The biggest carbonate deposit on Mars has, at most, twice as much carbon in it as the current Mars atmosphere," said Bethany Ehlmann of the California Institute of Technology and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in Pasadena. "Even if you combined all known carbon reservoirs together, it is still nowhere near enough to sequester the thick atmosphere that has been proposed for the time when there were rivers flowing on the Martian surface."
Carbon dioxide makes up most of the Martian atmosphere. That gas can be pulled out of the air and sequestered or pulled into the ground by chemical reactions with rocks to form carbonate minerals. Years before the series of successful Mars missions, many scientists expected to find large Martian deposits of carbonates holding much of the carbon from the planet's original atmosphere. Instead, these missions have found low concentrations of carbonate distributed widely, and only a few concentrated deposits. By far the largest known carbonate-rich deposit on Mars covers an area at least the size of Delaware, and maybe as large as Arizona, in a region called Nili Fossae.
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But if the atmosphere was once thicker, what happened to it? One possible explanation is that Mars did have a much denser atmosphere during its flowing-rivers period, and then lost most of it to outer space from the top of the atmosphere, rather than by sequestration in minerals.
If Mars were losing its atmosphere to outer space, wouldn't we able to detect a trail of gas from the planet?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday September 06 2015, @12:58AM
It's a figure of speech.
Gosh, reading comprehension much? No, it is not, it is a mistake for a figure of speech brought on by people who have heard more than they have read, and create "eggcorns", things that seem to make sense because they mistake what is being said. So this is basic sophmorism: a mistake that only someone with enough education to be dangerous could make.
There is a whole database of them, here: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/ [lascribe.net] . Some people there are "getting a new leash on life". Others are "for all intensive purposes" such that they "lack toast and tolerant". And then there are those who have special day when they can have "holland day sauce". Actually, these mistakes are really quite amusing. I recommend the episode of "The IT Crowd" that involves "pedal stools" and the aforementioned "damp squid".
Sorry that you find trying to save people from continuing to look like semi-literate ignoramouses pendantic. It hangs heavy on me and my meeses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @07:52PM
Point taken, I will try to be more careful next time.