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Content archived on 2024-06-18

Cold and wet early Mars: Proposing and testing a new theory to understand the early Martian environments

Objective

Geologic evidence indicative of flowing and ponding liquid water on the surface of ancient Mars appears abundantly across most of the Martian landscape, indicating that liquid water was present in variable amounts and for long periods of time on and/or near the surface at different moments of Mars’ early history, the Noachian era. Early Mars appears to have been “wet”. However, the presence of liquid water on the surface of early Mars is difficult to reconcile with the reduced solar luminosity at 3.8 Ga. and before, which would have imposed mean temperatures below freezing all over the planet. Atmospheric greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide ice clouds in the upper troposphere are suggested to provide over freezing temperatures, explaining some of this discrepancy, but these solutions have been probed to face numerous problems. So, it is difficult to explain the early Martian hydrology invoking global “warm” conditions. Here I propose to conduct interdisciplinary investigations in order to define and test a new hypothesis to understand the early environmental traits on Mars: that the young Martian surface was characterized by global mean freezing conditions, as predicted by climate models, and at the same time a vigorous hydrogeological cycle was active during hundreds of millions of years, as confirmed by geomorphological and mineralogical analyses. The aim of this investigation is to comprehensively analyze the triggers, traits and consequences of a cold aqueous environment dominating the Noachian, studying the geomorphological, mineralogical and geochemical evidences that such a hydrological cycle would have left behind, and also proposing new paths for the astrobiological exploration of Mars on the basis of geochemical and geomicrobiological studies in cold aqueous environments. Mission-derived datasets will be used to test hypotheses through paleogeomorphological reconstructions, theoretical modeling and experiments in the laboratory.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Topic(s)

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Call for proposal

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ERC-2012-StG_20111012
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Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-SG - ERC Starting Grant

Host institution

AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS
EU contribution
€ 1 039 318,00
Address
CALLE SERRANO 117
28006 MADRID
Spain

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Region
Comunidad de Madrid Comunidad de Madrid Madrid
Activity type
Research Organisations
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Beneficiaries (2)

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