Through an extensive study of images captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, planetary scientists have been able to identify clay-bearing sediments throughout the northern Ladon Valles, the southern Ladon basin, and the southwestern highlands surrounding the Ladon basin, all of which are a part of the extensively cratered Margaritifer Terra site.
This discovery aims to answer one of the biggest questions about the possibility of "life on Mars," or if there has ever been, a ScienceAlert report specified.
It is indeed one of the biggest questions about the planetary neighbor. To find the answer, researchers have pointed to one specific part of Mars that could have been able to maintain life many times across billions of years.
Clay is pointing to the long-term existence of water, as it's forming under neutral pH conditions with slight water evaporation.
Proof of Life on Mars
The research team believes water flowing here from approximately 3.8 billion years ago up to roughly 2.5 billion years back is a large stretch in the history of Mars.
According to senior scientist, Catherine Weitz from the Arizona-based Planetary Science Institute, colorful light-toned, layered sediments displaying somewhat low bedding dips and containing clays throughout 200 kilometers in the distance are evidence that a lake was most possibly present within the Ladon basin and northern Ladon Valles.
She added the low-energy lake setting and the existence of clay support an environment that would have been advantageous to live in at that time.
While it is not precisely proof of life, there's a need to dig on the Red Planet for fossils to verify that; it suggests conditions that might well have backed life. It is the most recent research to interpret Mars conditions by what can be seen on both its sediments and surface.
Sediments Matching a Part of the Red Planet
Researchers of the new research published in the Icarus journal, think that clays originally formed around the higher ground on top of the Ladon basin before being eroded by water channels and transported downstream into a lake in the Ladon basin, as well as the northern Ladon Valles.
The team also said that the most recent water flow would have been along the southwestern Ladon basin. The sediments here match another part of the Red Planet, the Eberswalde delta, just to the south of the area this research covers.
Weitz explained that their findings specify that the clay sediments deposited by running water in Eberswalde were not atypical during this latest time since they see "many examples of similar young valleys" that deposited clays in the area.
The senior scientist also said that they know that there is ice on the Red Planet, although the quest for liquid water persists.
Water Flowing Once an Extensive Part of the Martian Landscape
This most recent study supports the notion that flowing water was "once an extensive part of the Martian landscape," and it may have brought life with it, a similar Science News report said.
This latest study backs up the idea that flowing water was once an extensive part of the Martian landscape and may have brought life with it.
How transitory or, instead, the existence of water has been on the Red Planet is critical to figuring out whether or not life could have been backed at some point.
Essentially, the clays' distribution, as well as other rocks detected by the scientists, is consistent with water that sticks around.
Furthermore, clays are nutrient sources, not to mention stabilizers to the surrounding environment. As indicated in the research, putting nutrients, water, and stable conditions together, as well as the organisms' chances of being able to survive, goes up substantially.
Lastly, the study authors also reported in their paper that habitable conditions may have taken place recurrently in the region, at least periodically, until relatively late in the history of Mars.
Related information about Mars' habitability is shown on NASA's YouTube video below:
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