Mars Time Machine: Researchers create a virtual model to decipher the climate evolution of the Red Planet

Researchers are creating sophisticated simulations that will help you understand Mars’ climate history better and help you determine whether it can once be a life-sustaining experience.

An international team of researchers is developing a model of Mars’ evolution that can unlock some of the secrets of many years, including whether they once had life.

François, a space scientist at the Pierre Simon Laplace Institute in France, is a man looking for those answers. He is not a time traveler, but he hopes to do his best next time.

A team of researchers, gathered under the name “Mars Surt Time,” is trying to piece together different periods of the planet’s history. The goal is to answer questions that have been confused for a long time. Was Mars once inhabited?

“Mars is very appealing because it was a place where life could have come out,” Mars’s chief researcher, Forget, said throughout time.

His team’s work is coordinated at the French National Centre for Science and Research in Paris. The six-year initiative, ending in November 2025, aims to shed light on a time frame that Mars is warm and wet, covered in glaciers, and possibly life-friendly.

Previous missions to Mars have tentatively looked at its history, but do not show what the planet actually looks like. Robotic exploration revealed that Mars is not always the desert planet that is today. It witnesses an age that encourages rivers, lakes and ice.

But we still know little about the climate processes that have shaped that surface. This is where Forget’s teams appear.

“We are trying to invent a new model to build a virtual planet that evolves over time,” Forgot said. “This is a very ambitious project.”

Work to develop this model has been underway since 2019 and has proven to be more difficult to develop than originally thought. This is because there is a large amount of computing power needed. But the end is in sight.

“Now I know that’s possible,” he said. “We are confident that our community will soon have some really great tools.”

This means that you may be able to use this virtual time machine to transport yourself during various periods of Mars history and to understand exactly what happened to the planet.

A short history

Like Earth, Mars was born at the dawn of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago. It is about half the size of our own planet and is farther from the sun than we do. At this distance, there is less solar radiation than Earth.

But the evidence increasingly suggests that early in its life, Mars was a warm and wet planet like our own.

Geological and mineralogical evidence indicates that Mars once had a thicker atmosphere than the planets had. Even more interesting, we can see the remains of ancient lakes and oceans on its surface.

Two of these are currently being investigated by the curiosity and patience of NASA Rovers.

At 300-4 billion years ago, Mars lost its atmosphere for reasons that are not yet fully understood, thus making liquid water present on its surface.

Today the planet is barren and dry, but water appears to be trapped beneath its surface and ice that can be seen frozen at the poles.

It’s still an open question when the planet was warm and wet exactly.

“We don’t understand the climate process that allowed it,” he forgot, pointing to an important issue to explore. “Liquid water means that life appeared on Earth at the same time and there was a possibility of life appearing at the same time.”

Mars is also believed to have experienced a vast ice age, carving valleys on its surface when the atmosphere temporarily vanishes.

Forget’s model wants to provide insight into when these periods occurred. Unlike previous Mars climate models, it can do that with accuracy. The current model always provides a climate snapshot.

“We’re trying to have a new model that can simulate the evolution of Mars over thousands or millions of years,” he forgot. “Doing that will simulate the evolution of glaciers and lakes.”

Changes in the atmosphere

To develop the model, forget about his team takes known information about Mars and uses a powerful computer to simulate its surface conditions that this may have resulted in.

For example, one of the major known variables on Mars is its diagonal, the tilt of the planet orbiting the Sun.

It is currently around 25 degrees, similar to Earth, but it has changed from nearly zero to over 60 degrees throughout history. This causes the amount of heat on the surface of Mars to shaking.

The thickness and composition of Mars’ atmosphere over time is also an open issue. Today, the planet’s atmosphere is about 1% of the Earth’s volume, with 95% of that being made up of CO2.

“We thought that if we added enough CO2, we would have a warm climate,” he said. “But that’s not enough. There’s something that allowed for a warm climate.”

The current idea is that ancient volcanic activity on Mars expels a significant amount of hydrogen into the atmosphere and, when combined with CO2, can provide a sufficient greenhouse effect. “But it’s very speculative. There’s a mystery out there,” he points out that forgets.

Major effects such as collisions with asteroids and comets may have also influenced Mars’ climate. “We can use our tools to model it,” he forgot. Evidence of these effects can be seen today as craters on the surface of the planet.

Mars’ face

Mars today is barren, but has shown many faces in the past.

“Through the geological records that can be interpreted in the model, we explore “50 different planets,” glaciated icy planets, fully frozen atmospheric planets at the poles, and atmospheric planets,” he forgot.

This makes this study applicable not only to Mars but also to planets orbiting other stars, with the fundamental idea of ​​searching for habitable environments beyond the solar system.

“Lifeability limits are a big topic,” he said. “We can explore what a planet like Earth needs to put liquid water on its surface. We want to define where the water is stable.”

Understanding Mars gives us the opportunity to gain such knowledge.