Science

Mars asteroid tsunami: Ancient impact triggered 1,000FT wave of 'blue water' on Red Planet


An asteroid hurtled into Earth 66 million years ago, creating out a 93 mile-wide (150km) crater in what is now the Gulf of Mexico. The resulting blast wave echoed around the world, while the impact also triggered a 100-metre high mega-tsunami. Now a new study suggests Mars may have suffered a similar mega-tsunami event 3.7 billion years ago, and scientists think they have spotted ground-zero for this apparent asteroid impact.

If true, the research adds weight to the theory Mars once had an ocean, with implications for future searches for alien life on Mars.

Dr François Costard, a planetary geomorphologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, told Express.co.uk how two successive waves were formed during asteroid impact on Mars.

He said: “It was a really large-scale, high speed tsunami. At the very beginning, a crater of 70km in diameter was created by the impact.

“This expelled a huge volume of water, with wave propagation at 60m/second.

“The initial wave was about 300m in height. After just a few hours, that tsunami wave reached the palaeo-shoreline located at a few hundred km from the impact crater.

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“Finally, due to the Martian ocean filling in that crater, which produced a kind of rebound, there was a second wave propagation.”

The researchers focussed their study on the Lomonosov crater, which they think is likely to have been created by a rogue 10 mile-wide space rock.

The Martian crater closely resembles the marine craters back here on Earth.

The researchers concluded this supposed Martian ocean could be a good place to look for evidence of life on the planet.

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Some people theorise that the ocean would have been fed by underground bodies of water so geochemical signatures of any ancient microbiology could indicate basic forms of alien life could still be under the surface of Mars in suspected liquid acquirer rocks.

However Dr Costard cautions against jumping to any hasty conclusions concerning the presence of on Mars.

He said: “So was it a good condition for the presence of life? It is very difficult to say something about that.

“And it would be interesting to land on the surface of that crater.

“But before that I think we need much more detailed studies of that impact crater and some more studies of the terrain between the crater and the lowlands.”

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The question of whether the red planet may have once been blue surfaces again with the discovery of evidence supporting ancient tsunamis on Mars.

This is of particular interest to NASA Ames as it is invested in uncovering evidence of water on Mars an essential step along the way to supporting extraterrestrial life.

Dr Alexis Rodriguez, elaborated that the Lomonosov crater containing tsunami deposits could serve as a leading candidate for a landing site to search for evidence of Martian life.

The ocean may have been fed by catastrophic floods from underground caches of liquid water.

If so, sediments in the north “may be a window into the subsurface habitability of Mars,” Dr Rodriguez added.

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