‘These results provide evidence for a recent
ice age on Mars.’ say Isaac Smith and his team in this week’s issue of Science.
They have discovered this by using radar.
Cold times
Ice ages
are periods of time when the climate is exceptionally cold, and because of
that, there’s a lot of ice. The last ice age ended 11.700 years ago. Warmer
periods of time separate one ice age from another. We currently live in one of
those warmer periods and the next ice age probably starts in around 50.000
years. We don’t really know yet how ice ages exactly happen. But we know it can
be caused by changes in the earth orbit, which causes the earth to get less
light, so less warmth. So it gets colder. An ice age can also be caused by the
sun. If the sun is less active for a while, earth also gets colder. Another
major factor is the concentration of carbon dioxide and methane in the
atmosphere. More of these gasses create higher temperatures on earth. Anyway,
ice ages are also a thing on Mars.
Give those little green men a coat!
Isaac Smith
and his team have discovered with radar techniques evidence for dramatic
changes in Mars’ climate. They have found evidence of ice growing in
retreating, in the same way you can also see this on earth; small walls made of
dirt that was pushed forward by the ice. They have also discovered that the
amount of ice around the north pole of Mars has grown with 87.000 cubic kilometres
in the last 370.000 years, which is enough ice to cover the whole planet with a
sixty-centimetre-thick layer of ice. Isaac Smith and his team were further
convinced by the facts that Mars shares a lot of earth’s traits that cause ice
ages. Mars orbits around the same sun as earth, of course, which is one thing
that causes ice ages on both planets, but Mars also sometimes changes its
orbit, like earth. The changes in the orbit of Mars are even bigger, since the
planet doesn’t have a big moon, like earth does, to keep the planet in check.
We can use it here too!
With this
discovery, we’ve come to know a lot more about how ice ages on Mars work. Which
makes it easier to predict the next one. It also gives us more insight in the
sun’s influence on ice ages, since we can observe a planet reacting to the sun,
but without many earth’s traits. This new knowledge about the sun can help us
in predicting our next ice age. And even in how the greenhouse effect is
influencing ice ages.
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