by Stephen Smith
August 19, 2011
from Thunderbolts Website

So-called "flood channel."

Olympia Fossae in the Martian Tharsis region.
Original image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Scientists from the University of California reported in June 2007 that a “confirmation” for the Martian liquid ocean theory was found: “shorelines” extending for thousands of kilometers around a large lake that existed a little over three billion years ago.

It is speculated that the "liquid oceans" have been gone for over two billion years.

Planetary scientists have correlated deep canyons, ripples, and other structures on Mars with floods of water flowing on the surface, eroding it in the same way as water is supposed to erode features on Earth. A theory supporting oceans of water on Mars millions of years ago seems to be contradicted by mineralogical evidence, such as deposits that would be destroyed by water.

The flowing water hypothesis continues to guide consensus theories, however.

According to a recent press release, some researchers are beginning to move away from water as the active agent in creating channels like the one shown in the image above.

Instead, lava flows are thought to play a more significant role than previously considered.

As David Leverington from Texas Tech University wrote:

“This paper highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the two theories that these outflow channels were formed by volcanic or water activity. Many scientists realize there are issues with aqueous interpretations of these channels.

 

They recognize that if these systems formed by giant subsurface flows of water, there would need to have been extraordinarily high ground permeability, up to a million or more times greater than what we’d expect for the crust of the Earth, just to allow sufficient amounts of water to make it to the outflow locations and erupt to the surface.”

The prevailing view of Mars is that it is covered with a layer of ice.

The soil temperature has been measured to be about minus 50° Celsius; so cold that carbon dioxide freezes solid. If water exists, it has to be locked in icy soils or in underground vaults, since the low-density atmosphere would cause water-ice out in the open to sublime to its vapor phase.

Several Mars missions were sent to confirm the water hypothesis. Clouds and low-lying fog were reported, and the Phoenix lander is reputed to have detected water just below the surface, although there has been no result that can stand up to close scrutiny.

Despite what was called "visual evidence," the devices used to test for water returned a null reading.

The soil around Phoenix was nonconductive, indicating no water. Phoenix froze to death when it was encased by almost 3 meters of frozen carbon dioxide during the Martian winter, so it is probable that it was dry ice providing the visual clue rather than water-ice.

Martian areography bears witness to violent events in the Red Planet's past.

Many images (below image) taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) indicate that Mars was once the scene of devastating plasma discharges that, among other effects, ripped out the northern terrain to a depth of six kilometers below the planet's mean elevation.
 

Burned craters and piles (below image) of scorched dust lead to the conclusion that lightning thousands or millions of times more energetic than we know today resurfaced Mars.

The existence of these formations constitutes a confirmation of the Electric Universe hypothesis.

Valles Marineris, Olympus Mons, the terraced mounds in Arabia Terra, as well as both Martian poles demonstrate strong support for the electric discharge theory.
 

Valles Marineris

Olympus Mons

terraced mounds - Arabia Terra

It is possible that there are ice deposits on Mars formed during the catastrophic events that altered its surface.

The aforementioned plasma discharges left behind sinuous rilles, flat-floored craters, "railroad track" patterns in canyons, intersecting gullies, and giant mesas (below image) with Lichtenberg "whiskers."
 

Lightning of sufficient power can compress material in the discharge channel and accelerate it along with the negative charge, forming a jet.

If the jet contains water vapor, liquid water or even ice might form inside the spinning Birkeland filament due to z-pinch effects. If this phenomenon were to be scaled up to planetary dimensions, the increased electric discharges might have dumped quantities of ice particles onto the surface that clumped together into the frozen piles of debris that MRO's imagers allegedly detected.

The fact that aerologists are thinking about lava instead of water is a step toward an understanding of catastrophic evolution on Mars.

If what we find on Mars took place in the presence of planetary lightning bolts and was not the result of ice or water moving across the surface, should we rethink our ideas about similar observations here on Earth?

Mystery Solved

Mars Had Large Oceans
by Dave Mosher
13 June 2007

from Space Website

A view of Mars as it might have appeared more than 2 billion years ago,

with an ocean filling the lowland basin that now occupies the north polar region.
CREDIT: Taylor Perron/UC Berkeley
 

Since 1991, planetary scientists have floated the idea that Mars once harbored vast oceans that covered roughly one-third of the planet.

Two long shore-like lips of rock in the planet's northern hemisphere were thought to be the best evidence, but experts argued that they were too "hilly" to describe the smooth edges of ancient oceans.

The view just changed dramatically with a surprisingly simple breakthrough. The once-flat shorelines were disfigured by a massive toppling over of the planet, scientists announced today.

The warping of the Martian rock has hidden clear evidence of the oceans, which in any case have been gone for at least 2 billion years.

"This really confirms that there was an ocean on Mars," said Mark Richards, a planetary scientist at the University of California at Berkeley and co-author of the study, which is detailed in the June 14 issue of the journal Nature.

Twin shores

Two major shorelines exist on Mars, each thousands of miles long - one remaining from the older Arabia Ocean, and another from the younger Deuteronilus Ocean, said study co-author Taylor Perron of UC Berkeley.

"The Arabia would have contained two to three times the volume of water than in the ice that covers Antarctica," Perron told SPACE.com.

Somewhere along the way to toppling over 50 degrees to the north, Mars probably lost some of its water, leaving the Deuteronilus Ocean's shoreline exposed.

"The volume of water was too large to simply evaporate into space, so we think there is still some subterranean reservoirs on Mars," Perron said.

The remaining sea would have been located in the same lowland plain as the Arabia Ocean, but almost 40 degrees to the north.
 

Unstable spin

As a planet spins, the heaviest things tend to shift towards the equator, where they are most stable. Earth, too, has a bulge at its equator.

The volcanic Tharsis region of Mars, a vast raised area along Mars' equator, is evidence for how this works.

"This is the reason why this discovery packs extra punch," Perron said.

 

"More than a billion years ago," he explained, "something happened in the way mass was distributed on Mars to cause the imbalanced portion to shift toward the equator, and allow the vast shores of the Martian oceans to warp."

"We found evidence of the path the shift would have to have occurred, and it matches with the deformation of the shorelines," Perron said.

Elastic surface

Near the equator, the surface of a planet stays in a relatively flattened bulge under the pressure of centripetal forces. But outside of the equator, the rock behaves elastically and often bunches up, like the surface of a deflating balloon.

Perron and his team reasoned that the oceanic shorelines were once near the equator, but warped into hilly up-and-down elevations of rock as they move towards the north with the tilting planet.

"On planets like Mars and Earth that have an outer shell that behaves elastically, the solid surface will deform," Richards said.

By calculating the deformation, which occurs in a predictable way, the planetary research team found the ridges had to have once been flat, like ocean shorelines.

"This is a beautiful result that Taylor [Perron] got," Richards said.

 

"The mere fact that you can explain a good fraction of the information about the shorelines with such a simple model is just amazing. It's something I never would have guessed at the outset."

Perron and his colleagues aren't certain what caused the toppling of the planet, but they think forces beneath the surface are to blame.

"There could have been a massive change in the distribution of mantle," Perron said, "which would have caused the planet to shift into its current position."