New Mars Data Showed There Were Beaches Long Ago

Bright Side

Mars just dropped some major beach vibes—literally! New data from China’s Zhurong rover showed rock formations that look just like Earth’s coastal beaches. Scientists found layers of sloping sediment, the kind shaped by waves, not wind or volcanoes. That means Mars likely had a massive body of water with actual tides and shorelines billions of years ago. This discovery gives serious weight to the idea that Mars once had conditions perfect for life. Imagine sunny Martian beaches—no sunscreen needed, just a spacesuit!

Transcript

00:00Hmm, it looks like a regular beach, but something sets off an alarm blaring in your head.

00:06The sand looks too red, the sun is too bright, the wind is all wrong, it's hard to breathe,

00:12and there's no water in the ocean.

00:14Well, panic not, it's normal, since you're on Mars.

00:18For the longest time, we've seen Mars as a dry, lifeless dust ball, a freezing desert

00:24where water exists only as ice or vapor.

00:27But new research suggests that billions of years ago, it was a totally different place.

00:32And instead of endless dust, it may have had something much more familiar to us, sunny, sandy beaches.

00:40Scientists from Penn State, UC Berkeley, and Guangzhou University studied radar data from China's Zhurong rover.

00:47It started to roll across Mars in 2021.

00:51While exploring the surface of the red planet, it found sloping rock formations

00:55that looked strikingly similar to the ones found on Earth's coastlines.

00:59Those are called foreshore deposits.

01:01They form when waves push sand onto a shoreline.

01:05But Zhurong wasn't just taking pretty pictures.

01:08It also had ground-penetrating radar,

01:10a tool that allowed it to scan deep below the Martian surface

01:13as it traveled 1.2 miles between May 2021 and May 2022.

01:19And it found something pretty wild.

01:22Layers of sediment sloping down at a 15-degree angle.

01:25This pattern is identical to the ones left behind by waves on Earth.

01:30And not, this wasn't from the wind, volcanoes, or anything else.

01:34It just looked like a real beach.

01:36And that's actually a big deal.

01:39Because if there were waves and tides,

01:41there must have been a large body of water.

01:43That means Mars may have once had just the right conditions for hosting life.

01:49Even after 3.5 billion years,

01:52the formations are still incredibly similar to beaches on Earth.

01:55So there must have been a time when Mars was much more than just a dusty rock in space.

02:01After revealing this shocking news,

02:04Zhurong's radar scanned 260 feet deep into the ground,

02:08discovering sediment layers.

02:09They once formed along a path perpendicular to an ancient shoreline,

02:14the one that likely existed 4 billion years ago.

02:17At the same time, it might not be all that surprising.

02:20Back then, Mars wasn't the dry, frozen wasteland we see today.

02:24It had a thicker atmosphere,

02:26a warmer climate,

02:27and plenty of liquid water.

02:29And I'm not even talking about some tiny puddle.

02:32Beaches don't form without a massive body of water.

02:35For waves to shape the land like this,

02:37there had to be rivers flowing into a vast ocean.

02:41Powerful currents had to be moving sand around.

02:44And water had to stick around for a long time.

02:47This couldn't be just a brief wet spell.

02:49It was a period where Mars was hydrologically active for millions of years,

02:54potentially being a place where life could have thrived.

02:57This discovery gives even more weight to one theory.

03:01It has been puzzling scientists since the 1970s.

03:03That's when NASA's Viking spacecraft

03:06snapped images of what looked like a shoreline

03:09wrapping around Mars' northern hemisphere.

03:12But there was a problem.

03:13The shoreline was all over the place,

03:15with elevations varying by up to 6 miles.

03:18Wow.

03:19Which is nothing like our flat,

03:21mostly consistent shorelines we see on Earth.

03:23This difference made scientists doubt

03:25that a Martian ocean ever existed.

03:28For years, scientists had been trying to crack this mystery.

03:31In 2007, they suggested that Mars' rotation

03:35actually shifted billions of years ago.

03:38As the planet's massive Tharsis volcanic region grew,

03:41the planet's spin axis tilted, warping the surface.

03:45It could explain why the shoreline is so uneven today.

03:48In other words, what once was a flat and level landscape

03:51got distorted over time.

03:54Interestingly, Mars has been dropping hints

03:57about its watery past for years.

03:59Curiosity found ancient ripples in Gale Crater.

04:03There were signs of a long-gone lake.

04:05Perseverance is currently studying

04:07a fossilized river delta in Jezero Crater.

04:10Now, with Zurong's evidence of an ancient ocean,

04:13it all comes together.

04:15Small lakes?

04:16Check.

04:16Rivers?

04:17Check.

04:18A massive ocean covering the northern lowlands?

04:20Quite possibly.

04:22Zurong's mission wrapped up in May 2022

04:25after dust blocked its solar panels.

04:28But future missions could still explore

04:30those ancient shoreline deposits.

04:32Scientists might send new missions

04:34to drill deeper into the ground to retrieve samples.

04:37Or we could use better radar

04:38to map Mars' subsurface in more detail.

04:42There's a real hope to excavate those areas in the future

04:45and find even more clues about Mars' past.

04:47At the same time, NASA's Perseverance rover

04:51is already working hard in Jezero Crater

04:53collecting samples.

04:55Scientists hope that it will bring them back

04:57to Earth in the 2030s.

04:59While those won't include samples from the ancient ocean,

05:02they could still help us find out more

05:04about Mars' wetter history.

05:06For now, the discovery of ancient beaches on Mars

05:09gives us a peek into a time

05:11when the planet might have looked a lot more like Earth,

05:14with water, waves, and rivers.

05:16Now, let's speak about the Perseverance rover

05:19that's still working on Mars in more detail.

05:22It has a special drill on its arm

05:24and uses it to scrape off the dust

05:26and top layers of rock,

05:28making small 2-inch-wide circles in Jezero Crater.

05:31Once, one of its cameras took a close-up photo,

05:34and the image showed that the rock wasn't smooth.

05:37It was made of tiny interlocking crystals.

05:40The rover used two special tools

05:42to analyze the rock's chemistry.

05:43The results confirmed that the rock,

05:46named Rochette, was volcanic.

05:48It meant it formed from lava or magma,

05:51not from mud and clay,

05:53like scientists had expected from a former lake bed.

05:56Perseverance, also known as Percy,

05:58landed on Mars in February 2021,

06:01along with a small helicopter named Ingenuity.

06:04It is the most advanced rover ever sent to Mars,

06:07following in the footsteps of Curiosity,

06:10Spirit, Opportunity, and others.

06:12But Percy has a different mission.

06:15While older rovers mainly studied Martian rocks and climate,

06:19Perseverance is searching for signs of past life.

06:22Scientists chose Jezero Crater

06:23because it looks like it used to be a lake

06:25where tiny lifeforms could have lived.

06:28The rover drills, scrapes,

06:30and collects rock samples to study with its science tools.

06:33It also saved some samples to bring back to Earth

06:35in the future for even closer study.

06:38Perseverance has found some surprising things on Mars.

06:42Scientists studying the data it sent back

06:44have discovered that Jezero Crater

06:46has changed a lot over time.

06:48Long ago, this area had flowing lava,

06:51a lake that lasted for thousands of years,

06:54rivers that carried mud and sand,

06:56and even massive floods that brought in rocks from far away.

06:59It means that Jezero's history is more active and unpredictable than scientists expected.

07:06This definitely made it harder to find the sedimentary rocks they were looking for.

07:10But it has also revealed new places where ancient life might have existed.

07:15Another exciting discovery is that every rock Perseverance has studied so far

07:19contains carbon-based materials,

07:22the same stuff that life on Earth is built from.

07:25NASA's Perseverance rover also carries a special tool called MOXIE,

07:30which has managed to make oxygen from the carbon dioxide in Mars' atmosphere for the first time.

07:36Over 16 test runs, MOXIE produced about 4 ounces of oxygen.

07:41That's enough to keep an astronaut breathing for about 4 hours.

07:44It worked even better than expected,

07:46making up to 0.42 ounces of oxygen per hour.

07:50After running successfully for 2 years, MOXIE completed its final test in September 2023.

07:56It brings us one step closer to sending humans to Mars in the future.

08:01In any case, back to the discovery of ancient shorelines on Mars.

08:05This finding might help us see the red planet with new eyes.

08:09Water might have been flowing across its surface for tens of millions of years,

08:13carving out lakes, rivers, and even a vast ocean.

08:16What else have we misunderstood?

08:18Did Martian dinos stroll across the vast green valleys of the planet?

08:23Or were those bizarre marine creatures the likes of which we can't even imagine?

08:27Well, we don't know yet.

08:29But one thing is very likely.

08:31Mars had an era of warmth, water, and maybe life.

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