November 13, 2020
Hydrothermal vents on Mars?
The remains of what planetary scientists believe are ancient hydrothermal vents indicate to them that water once flowed on Mars. The structures have a similar appearance to fossilized “mound springs” in the Australian Outback, so researchers theorize that both structures could be of similar origin.
Hydrothermal vents were a startling discovery for scientists when the first deep water exploration of the mid-ocean ridge was conducted. The surprise was not that the vents were spewing black, mineral-rich water at over 300 Celsius, but that there were colonies of living organisms surrounding them, thriving in a frigid environment a thousand meters or more beneath the sea.
Conventional geologists think that the ocean bottoms once changed places with the high places on Earth over millions of years. Formations that were once in the deep are now located on mountain tops or in torrid deserts. The Australian mounds were once active on the bottom of an ancient sea, according to geologists. Some of them are nothing more than circular discolorations that identify striations composed of different chemical composition. Hot, mineralized water once jetted out from the vents, leaving ring-shaped cross-sections, as the theory goes. When the land and sea changed places, the fossilized vents relocated to the desert.
Modern science has retained the long-hoped-for desire that Mars could be the cradle of different life forms that arose and evolved in a separate ecology. As the overall theory suggests, the planet must have gone through a stage when there were oceanic quantities of liquid water on the surface. This idea also implies that Mars once retained an atmosphere dense enough in oxygen (and a moderating gas) that life could respire in the open.
However, there continues to be disagreement in the scientific community about whether such volumes of water could ever have existed on Mars. Allan Treiman, a geologist from Houston’s Lunar and Planetary Institute wrote: “The idea of it being liquid water was a very reasonable hypothesis to start with. From my standpoint liquid water hasn’t been proved at all.”
Recently, astrophysicists calculated the loss of water from Mars because of gigantic electrical storms that lift moisture bearing dust into space, where it dissipates forever.
Mars is not a rounded or softened world like Earth. It does not represent an environment that was weathered by rainfall or blowing dust. Rather, Martian topography is dry, sharp and fresh looking, as if it was formed quickly. The northern region of Mars was electrically sputtered. Some force removed millions of square kilometers out of its crust, throwing dust all over the planet, as well as hurling it into space. That catastrophe eliminated any water-based formations, if they ever existed, since the majority of Mars was resurfaced.
It is presumed by planetary scientists that water on Mars evaporated eons ago, leaving sedimentary rock strata behind. According to a past press release, the Mars Science Laboratory, otherwise known as “Curiosity”, discovered the remains of a lake more than three billion years old in Gale Crater.
The supposed water runoff from the rims of large craters or down the slopes of giant volcanoes is probably not the result of melting ice from beneath the surface dust but from falls of dust down slope. The blackened tracks are evidence for their electrical origin.
The large-scale structure of Mars, with its continent-wide canyon, gigantic volcanoes, thousand-kilometer-wide craters, fractures, plateaus and blasted wastelands of crushed stone was most likely created a relatively short time ago, as has been written for many years in these pages. Planetary scientists are beginning to see the signs of catastrophe on the small scale.
Stephen Smith
