The mystery of the rock-strewn surface of Mars may have been solved, we learned this Thursday in the journal Scientific Report.
As CNN reports, relayed by BFMTV, the red planet would have been the victim of two gigantic tsunamis!
570,000 square kilometers of land would have been flooded, hence the chaotic appearance of the soils observed.
On July 20, 1976, scientists discovered with fascination the first snapshot taken on Mars by the Viking 1 probe. They saw rocks and stones as far as the eye could see.
They then considered the existence of a disappeared cold sea.
"Our investigation provides a new solution - that a mega tsunami washed ashore, laying down sediment on which, some 3.4 billion years later, the Viking 1 lander touched down" , reveals a researcher from the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson (Arizona, United States).
The tsunami of a frozen ocean
According to the hypothesis on which scientists are working, an asteroid would have hit the surface of Mars, north of the equator, creating a gigantic wave that completely changed the landscape.
The collision was so powerful that it would correspond to a 13 million megaton explosion, according to one of the researchers' simulations.
Millions of years later, a second mega tsunami would hit a frozen ocean, creating huge waves of ice and mud.
To establish this theory, the researchers based themselves on the observation of corridors which could have been dug by the waves.
For now, however, they have no certainty about these events.
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