Sun did not blow water off Mars, study finds
View at Reuters.co.uk
Scientists trying to find out where all the water on Mars went ruled out one culprit on Thursday -- new measurements show the Sun did not blow it away.
They measured ions -- charged particles -- being blown off the planet by the solar wind, itself a stream of charged particles.
Very little oxygen or carbon dioxide was blown off the planet during the year they measured it, the team at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics and Center d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements in Toulouse, France, reported.
'Mars was once wet but is now dry, and the fate of its ancient carbon dioxide atmosphere is one of the biggest puzzles in Martian planetology,' they wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.
Scientists trying to find out where all the water on Mars went ruled out one culprit on Thursday -- new measurements show the Sun did not blow it away.They measured ions -- charged particles -- being blown off the planet by the solar wind, itself a stream of charged particles.
Very little oxygen or carbon dioxide was blown off the planet during the year they measured it, the team at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics and Center d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements in Toulouse, France, reported.
'Mars was once wet but is now dry, and the fate of its ancient carbon dioxide atmosphere is one of the biggest puzzles in Martian planetology,' they wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.
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