The Red Planet's Blue Past

The Daily: 06/22/2016, Mallory Culbertson

Elena Amador, a UW graduate student in Earth and Space Sciences, recently published an article on bulk silica deposits on Mars and the hydrological history of the planet. Image: Tiana Neuerburg

Mars, the red planet, wasn’t always the rusty wasteland we see it as today. The scientific community believes there was once liquid water on Mars, possibly even while there were humans roaming around the Earth, but are unsure how much water existed and for how long. While the history of Mars is becoming more explicit, we still don’t know most of the details of the ancient Martian surface, but due to the work of UW graduate student Elena Amador, we now have evidence to believe that there was water on Mars much later than previously believed, and a lot of it. Read more...