{"id":1026,"date":"2014-04-13T13:30:36","date_gmt":"2014-04-13T18:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=1026"},"modified":"2014-04-21T10:13:27","modified_gmt":"2014-04-21T15:13:27","slug":"into-thin-martian-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/into-thin-martian-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Into thin Martian air"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1027\" style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/534px-Mars_atmosphere-e1398092451538.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1027\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1027\" alt=\"The atmosphere of Mars, which is very thin compared to Earth's, is visible along the edge of the planet. (Credit: Viking Orbiter Raw Image Archive, Wikimedia Commons)\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/534px-Mars_atmosphere-e1398092451538.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"539\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1027\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The atmosphere of Mars, which is very thin compared to Earth&#8217;s, is visible along the edge of the planet. (Credit: Viking Orbiter Raw Image Archive, <a href=\"http:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Mars_atmosphere.jpg\">Wikimedia Commons<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>By analysing impact craters on the Martian surface, researchers have worked out that the atmosphere on Mars 3.6 billion years ago was still too thin to support life. The researchers estimate that the atmosphere at the time would only be about 150 times thicker than today.<\/p>\n<p>The authors suggest that if Mars had a thick atmosphere, it was likely only briefly and temporarily, and could have been driven by heat and gases from volcanic eruptions and\/or external impacts.<\/p>\n<p>The thicker a planet\u2019s atmosphere, the less likely it is for small meteors to survive long enough to generate an impact crater.\u00a0The craters studied are in an area of Mars known as Aeolis Dorsa.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/ngeo\/journal\/vaop\/ncurrent\/full\/ngeo2137.html\" target=\"_blank\">Original research paper<\/a><\/span>\u00a0published in the journal <em>Nature Geoscience<\/em><i>\u00a0<\/i>on\u00a0<strong>April 13, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<h4><a href=\"http:\/\/geosci.uchicago.edu\/~kite\/\" target=\"_blank\">Edwin Kite<\/a>, Princeton University, USA<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By analysing impact craters on the Martian surface, researchers have worked out that the atmosphere on Mars 3.6 billion years ago was still too thin to support life. The researchers estimate that the atmosphere at the time would only be about 150 times thicker than today. The authors suggest that if Mars had a thick [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1027,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[215,533],"class_list":["post-1026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-environment","tag-space"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/534px-Mars_atmosphere-e1398092451538.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-gy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1030,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions\/1030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}