Martian volcano may have been habitable - Times of India

LONDON: The slopes of a giant Martian volcano, once covered in glacial ice, may have been home to one of the most recent habitable environments yet found on the Red Planet.

Brown University geologists have found that heat from a volcano erupting beneath an immense glacier would have created large lakes of liquid water on Mars in the relatively recent past.

And where there's water, there is also the possibility of life, scientists said on Wednesday.

Nearly twice as tall as Mount Everest, Arsia Mons is the third tallest volcano on Mars and one of the largest mountains in the solar system. This new analysis of the landforms surrounding Arsia Mons shows that eruptions along the volcano's northwest flank happened at the same time that a glacier covered the region around 210 million years ago.

Scientists have speculated since the 1970s that the northwest flank of Arsia Mons may once have been covered by glacial ice. That view got a big boost in 2003 when Brown University geologist Jim Head and Boston University's David Marchant showed that terrain around Arsia Mons looks strikingly similar to landforms left by receding glaciers in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica.

Parallel ridges toward the bottom of the mountain appear to be drop moraines—piles of rubble deposited at the edges of a receding glacier. An assemblage of small hills in the region also appears to be debris left behind by slowly flowing glacial ice.

via Science - Google News http://ift.tt/1riEJlo

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