Mars may have been an ocean world with the key components for life, scientists say

MARS may have contained oceans of water billions of years ago, scientists claim in a new study.

For decades scientists have believed that there was water on the surface of Mars at one time or another.

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Now a team of scientists from several European universities have theorized that 4.5 billion years ago Mars was filled with water.

In fact, the Red Planet may have had enough water to cover its entire surface in a global ocean as deep as 1,000 feet.

Published in the magazine scientific advancesresearch suggests that the first life in our solar system may have occurred on Mars.

“At that time, Mars was being bombarded with ice-filled asteroids. It happened in the first 100 million years of the planet’s evolution,” said Professor Martin Bizzarro of the Center for Star and Planet Formation.

“Another interesting aspect is that the asteroids also carried organic molecules that are biologically important for life.”

These biologically relevant molecules include amino acids, which help form DNA and RNA.

hell of Earth

At that time, there was very little water on Earth, which was still a molten ball of rock, Bizzarro explained.

“This happened within the first 100 million years of Mars.”

Bizzarro said that it was around the same time that the Earth itself was undergoing a dramatic transformation.

“After that time, something catastrophic for potential life on Earth happened,” Bizzarro said.

“It is believed that there was a gigantic collision between Earth and another planet the size of Mars.

“It was an energetic collision that shaped the Earth-Moon system while simultaneously wiping out all potential life on Earth.”

A look into the past

Due to plate tectonics on Earth, all evidence of what happened in the first 500 million years of our planet’s history has been wiped out.

However, Mars lacks plate tectonics, so its surface essentially preserves a record of the planet’s earliest history.

Through this study, the researchers were able to determine how much water was delivered to Mars by meteorites.

Exactly where the asteroid material that hit Mars came from – that is, from the inner or outer solar system – is still unclear.