Scientists have discovered liquid water deep in the crust of Mars, a breakthrough that suggests life could have existed on the planet.
“Large volumes of liquid water transiently existed on the surface of Mars more than 3 billion years ago,” said a paper published on Monday in PNAS, a journal published by the US National Academy of Sciences.
The authors of the paper analysed data from Nasa’s Mars Insight Lander, which arrived on the planet in 2018 and stayed until the end of 2022. It measured seismic movements to determine the presence of liquid water billions of years ago.
“Our results have implications for understanding Mars’ water cycle, determining the fates of past surface water [and] searching for past or extant life,” the authors wrote.
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