Related papers: A massive primordial atmosphere on early Mars
Aeolian sediment transport is observed to occur on Mars as well as other extraterrestrial environments, generating ripples and dunes as on Earth. The search for terrestrial analogues of planetary bedforms, as well as environmental…
Mars is believed to have had a substantial atmosphere in the past. Atmospheric loss led to depressurization and cooling, and is thought to be the primary driving force responsible for the loss of liquid water from its surface. Recently,…
The climate of early Mars has been hotly debated for decades. Although most investigators believe that the geology indicates the presence of surface water, disagreement has persisted regarding how warm and wet the surface must have been and…
Here we discuss one of the current reservoirs of water on Mars, the regolith and rocks exposed at the surface. This reservoir is characterized by the presence of H_{2}O- and OH- bearing phases that produce a broad absorption at a wavelength…
In this Letter, we make use of sophisticated 3D numerical simulations to assess the extent of atmospheric ion and photochemical losses from Mars over time. We demonstrate that the atmospheric ion escape rates were significantly higher (by…
While Earth locks much of its carbon in its crust as carbonates, Venus retains a comparable carbon inventory almost entirely in its atmosphere as CO$_2$. On Earth, the geological carbon cycle that has produced this vast crustal carbonate…
Martian surface morphology implies that Mars was once warm enough to maintain persistent liquid water on its surface. While the high D/H ratios (~6 times the Earth's ocean water) of the current martian atmosphere suggest that significant…
The absence of global magnetic fields is often cited to explain why Mars lacks a dense atmosphere. This line of thought is based on a prevailing theory that magnetic fields can shield the atmosphere from solar wind erosion. However, we…
Mars is likely to be a planetary embryo formed through collisions with planetesimals, which can explain its small mass and rapid formation timescale obtained from 182Hf-182$W chronometry. In the classical theory of planet formation, the…
The formation of the solar system's terrestrial planets concluded with a period of giant impacts. Previous works examining the volatile loss caused by the impact shock in the moon-forming impact find atmospheric losses of at most 20-30 per…
We discuss 3D global simulations of the early Martian climate that we have performed assuming a faint young Sun and denser CO2 atmosphere. We include a self-consistent representation of the water cycle, with atmosphere-surface interactions,…
Abundant geomorphological and geochemical evidence of liquid water on the surface of early Mars during the late Noachian and early Hesperian periods needs to be reconciled with a fainter young Sun. While a dense CO2 atmosphere and related…
Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyzer (MENCA) of Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) measures the \emph{in-situ} neutral upper atmospheric constituents of Mars. Martian lower atmosphere predominated by the presence of $CO_2$ which…
The abundance of highly siderophile elements (HSEs) inferred for Mars' mantle from martian meteorites implies a Late Veneer (LV) mass addition of ~0.8 wt% with broadly chondritic composition. Late accretion to Mars by a differentiated…
We study quasi-static atmospheres of accreting protoplanetary cores for different opacity behaviors and realistic planetesimal accretion rates in various parts of protoplanetary nebula. Atmospheres segregate into those having outer…
Models of terrestrial planet formation for our solar system have been successful in producing planets with masses and orbits similar to those of Venus and Earth. However, these models have generally failed to produce Mars-sized objects…
The study of planetary atmospheres is critical to our understanding of the origin and evolution of the Solar System. The combined effect of various physical and chemical processes over billions of years have resulted in a variety of…
Explaining the evidence for surface liquid water on early Mars has been a challenge for climate modelers, as the sun was ~30% less luminous during the late-Noachian. We propose that the additional greenhouse forcing of CO2-H2…
Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes are commonly thought to have accreted hydrogen/helium envelopes, consisting of a few to ten percent of their total mass, from the primordial gas disk. Subsequently, hydrodynamic escape driven by core-powered…
Many dynamical aspects of the solar system can be explained by the outer planets experiencing a period of orbital instability sometimes called the Nice Model. Though often correlated with a perceived delayed spike in the lunar cratering…