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The researchers have used images to examine a portion of rocks on Mars and determine when the planet had water on its surface.
The new highly detailed images allowed scientists to “read the rocks” of the planet and find the first evidence that rivers existed more than 3.7 billion years ago, according to new research published in Nature’s Communications and first reported by CNN.
According to the images and data, water existed on the planet for 100,000 years, the station said.
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Scientists used the images and topography captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE camera to study a crater from Mars in the southern hemisphere.
“It is not like reading a newspaper, but the very high resolution images allowed us to ‘read’ the rocks as if you were standing very close to the cliff,” said Francesco Salese, study author, geologist and senior scientist at Italy’s International. Planetary Sciences Research School.
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Mystic Mountain, a three-light-year-high dust and gas pillar filled with jets of nascent gas stars buried within, was captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in February 2010.
NASA / ESA / STScI
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The first selfie taken on an alien planet, captured by NASA’s Curiosity Rover in the early days of its mission to explore Mars in 2012
NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
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Death of a star: This image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope shows the supernova of Tycho, a star in our galaxy, the Milky Way
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Arrokoth, the most distant object ever explored, photographed here on January 1, 2019 by a camera on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft 4.1 billion miles from Earth
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An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory in January 2012. Regions of space like this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust.
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The first image of a black hole, captured by the Event Horizon Telescope, as part of a global collaboration involving NASA, and released on April 10, 2019. The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a Massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides about 54 million light years from Earth.
Getty
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Pluto, as shown on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft when it first flew over the dwarf planet in July 2015
NASA / APL / SwRI
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A coronal mass ejection seen by the Chandra Observatory in 2019. This is the first time that Chandra has detected this phenomenon from a star other than the Sun.
Pot
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The dark, narrow, 100-meter-long streaks that ran downhill on the surface of Mars were believed to be evidence of contemporary water flow. Since then it has been suggested that they may instead be made of flowing sand
NASA / JPL / University of Arizona
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Morning Aurora: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of dawn from the International Space Station in October 2015.
NASA / Scott Kelly
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Mystic Mountain, a three-light-year-high dust and gas pillar filled with jets of nascent gas stars buried within, was captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in February 2010.
NASA / ESA / STScI
2/10
The first selfie taken on an alien planet, captured by NASA’s Curiosity Rover in the early days of its mission to explore Mars in 2012
NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
3/10
Death of a star: This image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope shows the supernova of Tycho, a star in our galaxy, the Milky Way
Pot
4/10
Arrokoth, the most distant object ever explored, photographed here on January 1, 2019 by a camera on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft 4.1 billion miles from Earth
Getty
5/10
An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory in January 2012. Regions of space like this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust.
Pot
6/10
The first image of a black hole, captured by the Event Horizon Telescope, as part of a global collaboration involving NASA, and released on April 10, 2019. The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a Massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides about 54 million light years from Earth.
Getty
7/10
Pluto, as shown on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft when it first flew over the dwarf planet in July 2015
NASA / APL / SwRI
8/10
A coronal mass ejection seen by the Chandra Observatory in 2019. This is the first time that Chandra has detected this phenomenon from a star other than the Sun.
Pot
9/10
The dark, narrow, 100-meter-long streaks that ran downhill on the surface of Mars were believed to be evidence of contemporary water flow. Since then it has been suggested that they may instead be made of flowing sand
NASA / JPL / University of Arizona
10/10
Morning Aurora: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of dawn from the International Space Station in October 2015.
NASA / Scott Kelly
“Unfortunately we don’t have the ability to scale, to look at the details on a smaller scale, but the striking similarities to sedimentary rocks on Earth leave little to the imagination.”
Researchers have long studied the crater because it is one of the largest in the solar system, stretching 5.6 miles, according to CNN.
In the edge images, you can see ancient evidence of a large lake, rivers, deltas, and channels in the rock.
By examining the images, the researchers determined that the ancient rivers stretched to several meters deep, according to the report.
By limiting their search to the edge cliffs, the researchers discovered that the rivers were somewhat similar to those on Earth.
These were “rivers that continually changed their ravines, creating sandbanks, similar to the Rhine or rivers that can be found in northern Italy,” the researchers said in their study, according to the report.
Scientists are said to believe that the planet’s water was driven by precipitation, just like rain on land.
However, the rocks captured in the images only contain a small amount of time that water and sediment moved in the region, CNN reported.
They were said to stipulate that other rocks that could be presented as time measurements had not yet been discovered or buried.
