Water bathed surface of Mars

WATER bathed the surface of southern Mars for millions of years, helping to create an environment theoretically capable of nurturing life, according to a study into the planet’s mysterious oceans.

Scientists at Brown University in Rhode Island used an instrument aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to hunt for traces of phyllosilicates, or clay-like minerals that preserve a record of water’s interaction with rocks.

They found phyllosilicates in thousands of places, in valleys, dunes and craters in the ancient southern highlands, pointing to an active role by water in Mars’s earliest geological era, the Noachian period, 4.6 to 3.8 billion years ago.