A team of planetary researchers led by Caltech has determined the chemical mechanisms by which the ancient Mars was able to sustain enough warmth in its early days to host water, and possibly life.
"It's been such a puzzle that there was liquid water on Mars, because Mars is further from the Sun, and also, the Sun was fainter early on," said Dr. Danica Adams, a researcher at Caltech and Harvard University. "Hydrogen was previously theorized as the magic ingredient, mixed with carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere to trigger episodes of greenhouse warming." "But the lifetime of atmospheric hydrogen is short, so a more detailed analysis was required." In the research, Dr. Adams and colleagues used photochemical modeling to fill in details of the early Martian atmosphere's relationship to hydrogen, and how that relationship changed over time. "Early Mars is a lost world, but it can be reconstructed in great detail if we ask the right questions," said Harvard University's Professor Robin Wordsworth. "This study synthesizes atmospheric chemistry and climate for the first time, to make some striking new predictions — which are testable once we bring Mars rocks back to Earth." The authors modified a model called KINETICS to simulate how a combination of hydrogen and…