Unique Martian Formation Reveals Brief Bursts Of Water
Researchers from the United States and the Netherlands report that several formations on Mars indicate incidents of rapid release of water from the planet's interior. Mars has many basins that contain formations that look like fans. A few of these fans, only about 10, have steps down into the basin. Since scientists first reported this feature three years ago, there has been no clear consensus on how they formed.
So, following an example of a project they had created for high school students, geosciences faculty members at Utrecht University in the Netherlands reproduced the process. "There are no fans with steps on earth, so we had to build one," said Erin R. Kraal, now a geosciences research scientist at Virginia Tech.
In the article, "Martian stepped-delta formation by rapid water release," published in the Feb. 21, 2008, issue of Nature, Kraal and her Utrect colleagues, Maurits van Dijk, George Postma, and Maarten G. Kleinhans, describe how they made a stepped fan -- and what it says about at least one source of water on Mars.
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