Mars has been for long considered to be the planet that is the most similar to Earth. Perhaps, this is the reason scientists have been tirelessly working towards gathering more details about the red planet, in the hope it would be habitable. Finding water on the planet has been a long pursuit in this direction.
It seems the red planet could have been once blue owing to the presence of oceans on its surface. However, the planet may still hold liquid water underground, in the depths which is virtually hard to explore.
Scientists from Penn State University suggest that if there is liquid water on Mars today, it could well be way too deep underground to be detected with conventional methods used on Earth. However, they say that listening to quakes that occur on the planet—dubbed marsquakes–– could prove to be a new tool to detect liquid water.
When marsquakes happen and they move through aquifers deep underground, they generate electromagnetic signals. According to their research as reported in journal JGR Planets, these signals, if produced on Mars could help in identifying water miles under the surface. This study could potentially lay the foundation for analyses of data from Mars missions in the future, said Nolan Roth, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geosciences at Penn State and lead author.
According to Roth, if marsquakes pass through the subsurface and they pass through water, they would create unique signals. “These signals would be diagnostic of current, modern-day water on Mars,” he said in a statement. This is in addition to the existing theories that Mars used to have oceans and that over time it dried up.
“But there is evidence that some water is trapped somewhere in the subsurface. We just haven’t been able to find it. The idea is, if we can find these electromagnetic signals, then we find water on Mars,” Roth said.
The technique called the seismoelectrical method, is not entirely new. This is reportedly highly experimental and geologists are testing it on Earth to detect underground fluids. However, the moisture underneath the ground could be an impediment when it comes to using the method on Earth as the electromagnetic signals could likely get muddled.
Regardless, researchers have more reason to believe that this method could be fruitful on Mars as layers of rock and dust above the groundwater are more likely to be dry without any trace of moisture. Tieyuan Zhu, a geophysicist at Penn State and another of the researchers, said that the surface on Mars naturally removes the noise and exposes useful data that allows the team to characterise several aquifer properties.
Going forward, the team will look for traces of Martian groundwater in existing measurements. Nasa’s Insight Lander, an outer space robotic explorer launched in 2018, delivered a seismometer to Mars and has been observing marsquakes and mapping the subsurface. The limitation of seismometers is that they have difficulty in discerning water from gas or even a less dense rock. This mission also included a magnetometer as a diagnostic tool to help seismometers. Harnessing data from both these devices could reveal seismoelectrical signals, according to the scientists.
The researchers said that sending a dedicated magnetometer meant to conduct scientific experiments on future NASA missions on Mars could potentially produce even better results.
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