Science - Mars Atmosphere

via Foxnews.

I saw this elsewhere the other day but forgot to comment on it. Scientists believe that due to the low loss of atmospheric gasses measured today on Mars that the once abundant (or believed to be) gasses may be actually locked up under the ground somewhere on the red planet. It was previously theorized that the Sun's solar wind slowly eroded the gasses away from our system's fourth planet.

"New findings suggests the missing atmosphere of Mars might be locked up in hidden reservoirs on the planet, rather than having been chafed away by billions of years' worth of solar winds as previously thought. Combining two years of observations by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft, researchers determined that Mars is currently losing only about 20 grams of air per second into space. Extrapolating this measurement back over 3.5 billion years, they estimate that only a small fraction, 0.2 to 4 millibars, of carbon dioxide and a few centimeters of water could have been lost to solar winds during that timeframe."

The atmophere on Mars must have been much denser than today if liquid water was once present on the surface of the planet, as suggested by geologic evidence. The density of gasses in the atmosphere would have to be thousands of times higher than the traces found today, allowing for higher temperatures to allow liquid water to run freely on the surface, up to a half mile deep in spots if the geological evidence is correct. Earth's atmosphere is at about 1 bar of pressure, Mars must have been around that figure as well at one point, today it is at .008 bars.

There is, however, another competing theory that the Martian atmosphere was lost in a catastrophic cosmic collision with a large meteor over 10 km in diameter. On the other hand, an impact of that size and devastation would probably leave a good sized mark on the planet, which we just don't see evidence of today. Maybe a Total Recall terraforming scenario for our planetary neighbor might just be possible over a period of decades after all.