Redefining Martian Hydrology: Surprising Insights About Debris Flows on Mars

Research pushes the presence of water on Mars further into the past.
The period that liquid water was present on the surface of Mars may have been shorter than previously thought. Channel landforms called gullies, previously thought to be formed exclusively by liquid water, can also be formed by the action of evaporating CO2 ice. That is the conclusion of a new study by Lonneke Roelofs, a planetary researcher at Utrecht University. “This influences our ideas about water on Mars in general, and therefore our search for life on the planet.” The results of the study are published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment.