Mars Pebbles Carried for Miles by River

The shape of a few Martian pebbles suggests these rocks once rolled dozens of miles down a river, hinting that ancient Martian waterways were stable and not merely ephemeral streams, researchers say. “If we have an image from a pebble on another planet, or on Earth for that matter, can we say something quantitative and definitive about how far that pebble has [been] transported?” They found that the sample of adjustments noticed within the rocks carefully resembled their mannequin. This meant that they traveled about 30 miles from their source, which is the best evidence yet of large, flowing rivers on the Red Planet in the distant past. Agency scientists previously identified these rocks as similar to those typically found in rivers systems on Earth, which become rounded as they roll, slide and hop down riverbeds and hit other rocks.

He mentioned that they had been capable of determine a particular code that may assist researchers perceive the pure historical past objects such because the sand usually discovered on a seaside.

Studying rivers on Mars is useful for a number of reasons. If you go to beach, natural history is written underneath your feet.

Scientists were not sure about how exactly the shapes of the pebbles were associated with the distance travelled by them.

As a physical test of their model, limestone fragments were rolled in a revolving drum, and the changes in their shape as well as the loss of mass was recorded.

Data from all three terrestrial experiments agreed nicely with the geometric model Domokos had developed – proving they could accurately use the model to determine how far a pebble had traveled based exclusively on its shape.

The staff then traveled to a Puerto Rican mountain river to review the native rocks.

Douglas Jerolmack and Gabor Domokos from the University of Pennsylvania have for the first time quantitatively estimated the transport distance of river pebbles based on their shape.

“We started at the headwaters, where chunks of angular rock are breaking off from the walls of the stream, and went downstream”, Jerolmack said.

The rover’s images included fine details of pebbles on the planet, revealing their unusually smooth and round shapes. To see how shape varied in a more Mars-like environment, they examined stones at the Dog Canyon alluvial fan in New Mexico, which is somewhat similar to the Martian deposits. When they factored in the shrunk Martian gravity – which is simply 40 percent of the Earth – they assessed that the pebbles have journeyed around 30 miles (50 km) from their root source, perhaps from the northern rim of Gale Crater. Scientists believe that the new find could help in reconstructing what the ancient Mars looked like.

“This is the first attempt to deduce the history of a particle from its shape alone”, Domokos told Space.com.

The study appeared in the journal Nature Communications.